Sandbar Politics

The housing plan/resolution recently passed by City Council goes so far beyond the Conciliation Agreement that Betty Massey voted against it.

The woman who, former Chair of GHA, pusher of the (failed) Hope VI project, chief architect of the plans that unseated Joe Jaworski…that Betty Massey, voted against this plan because it surrendered control over Galveston’s housing-decision apparatus for 75 years.

Letting GLO make the scattered site decisions, and fight the battles that will attend those decisions, was, imho, a smart ploy. Let them be the people that both sides will hate two years from now – and I guarantee that will happen. But digging yourself a Section 8 hole 75 years deep is stupid. It’s irresponsible. It’s overreach. It’s so bad for Galveston that even Betty Massey thinks it’s bad for Galveston.

It makes you wonder what Joe Jaworski thinks of this plan. Once he gets past the gleeful stage – knowing that even as much genuflecting as he’s accustomed to doing in HUD’s general direction, he’d have never done a deal this bad – maybe he’ll have something to say about it.

Some have said, in the forums and elsewhere, that this deal is better than what Joe was trying to do. Not so, on so many levels it’ll be a topic of discussion for decades. I suspect those people are just trying to avoid facing up to having supported Lewis Rosen only to have him do this to us.

But as Jerry Garcia said (I don’t know if he actually said this, but it beats attributing it to Twain or Ghandi): The lesser of two evils is still evil. Trouble is, you don’t know you’re about to be stabbed in the back until the knife falls. To say before the election that it’s inevitable is a cynical waste of time. Ask those of us who supported Elizabeth Beeton and Norman Pappous. We still feel those were good decisions.

You’d hope that this was a one-time thing, as disastrous as it is. But if you read Micheal Smith, you know that GHA was planning a secret meeting with MBS. Just like the old cabal used to do. When the newspaper outed them, did they cancel the meeting? Only on paper. Two of the commissioners met with MBS, instead of three, which would have constituted an illegal quorum. But the meeting remains.

So it appears that GHA is being run the same way the Gang of Four has run City Council, serially. These two talk, then those two talk to the other two, and decisions get passed back and forth, and plausible deniability is still in place like a shroud over the face of government.

As long as I’m quoting rock stars, I’ll turn to Pete Townshend. You should go look up the lyrics to the whole song and think of Galveston, but he sums it up perfectly:

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Galveston City Council will vote today to approve a plan for rebuilding public housing. One presumes that the plan meets with the approval of all the controlling parties, Appleseed, Texas Housers, GLO and HUD.

It’s about what you’d expect if GHA intended to build 569 units of public housing. It’s still to be seen how the scattered-site portion of this plan goes down with all the parties, given that the only mixed-income part of the deal seems to be the 141 units on Magnolia and Cedar Terrace. MBS wins that round, but it remains to be seen whether they can come up with the private financing to build out the ‘market rate’ portions of the projects. That’s been their chief failing elsewhere when they’ve tried to go that route. GLO has been clear that there should be no mixing of public and private money. It’s hard to see how they can stick to that given that this plan for those two sites looks remarkably like the old one, with the exception of the tax-credit units. That’s not trivial. MBS was depending on that infusion of free tax money to make the deal attractive to investors.

There are two aspects of this document that stand out. One is that any site that gets designated for scattered-site units will be so designated for the next 75 years. In short, once Section 8, always Section 8. Lovely. Sort of gives a perspective on the housing industry’s expectation for eliminating poverty, doesn’t it? Basically they’re saying, ‘not in your lifetime,’

The other interesting item is this:

Council approval of this Plan for submission to GLO and HUD constitutes all Council approval for any and all particular public housing replacement unit site selection decisions made under this Plan

That is to say, here’s your blank check. Don’t spend it all in one place. Any thing y’all wanna do is ok with us.

This is the result of extortion. This is the advocates being given permission by everybody’s favorite duo, Rick Perry and Shaun Donovan, to do whatever the hell they care to do in Galveston.

It surprises no one that HUD will squash the city to see that it’s annual budget is completely spent, but I was, I am, and I will continue to be disappointed…no, disgusted by the Governor’s role in all this. This is your Texas government in Austin, stuffed as it is with pickup-driving Republicans, at work. HUD, like the scorpion that stings the frog that offers it a ride, is just being true to its nature. The governor and his crowd are talking fiscal responsibility out one side of their mouth while selling you into 75 years of bondage out the other.

Is everybody in the capitol suffering from sleep apnea?

Note: I removed a comment about Councilman Norman Pappous; his article did indeed hold Perry responsible for this quagmire, and my comment about his column was unfair.

I have to admit, I’ve lost my enthusiasm for the public housing fight. Maybe it will get interesting again here shortly when either HUD, GLO or the ‘advocates’ reject whatever comes out of City Council tomorrow. Heber Taylor complains in the GDN today that Council and GHA are being secretive about it, but I think that’s probably the best approach. Nothing, but nothing they do will satisfy everyone. Try to picture a world in which David Stanowski and John Hennenberger agree on public housing in Galveston…I didn’t think so.

David’s excellent article in the GDN yesterday laid out the legal technical hurdles – the things that a judge looking solely at the law would consider. But I suspect it will never be that clean, no matter what court you get into. And HUD Secretary Donovan and the Austin powers have so totally drunk the Koolaid on mixed-income housing that no plan that doesn’t send money straight to St. Louis will ever pass muster. MBS has a $12 million stake in just the building of this (the management fees are yet to come) and trust me, MBS drinks with more people in Congress than you do.

That the advocates now demand mixed-income developments is a measure of how wrong this system has gone. The Conciliation Agreement makes no mention of mixed-income, but it is the advocates’ current whim, and HUD and GLO are both dedicated to seeing that the poverty industry gets whatever it wants, regardless of the cost. Like worshiping some new fad diet, the advocates are wedded to the concept. Instead of being honest about the whether it works, they close their eyes and repeat ‘I think it will, I think it will.’ They don’t just ignore, they deliberately delete data about increases in crime, the increased number of subsidized units that come out of it, the increases in poverty rates that accompany it – in short, all those things that should make someone interested in fighting poverty oppose mixed income.

There’s just too much money at stake, and the money will override common sense and good will every time.

So yes, keep the plan secret until you throw it out there, do or die. I’m guessing Buddy Herz will tell Council what will pass muster, then Terrilyn Tarlton will try to talk it to death, but in the end, they will produce a plan that will keep the CDBG money flowing. This is probably just the first in a string of outrages that Galveston will have to swallow if we want to keep living on the dole ourselves. But as I’ve argued several times before, not taking the money doesn’t mean that HUD won’t come in here and build anyway.

The ironic thing is this: After four years of obfuscation and delay by the Thomas and Jaworski administrations, it’s Lewis Rosen who will get blamed for rebuilding public housing.

So Council, stop talking about responsibility and what’s good for Galveston and do whatever will make GLO happy and let’s get to court.

We tend to focus on what’s right in front of us, and sometimes forget what came before.

Mayor Rosen and GHA Chair Buddy Herz have only been in office since July. In less than three months, the public housing issue has gone from outrage over the millions that Betty Massey and Stanley Lowe were determined to spend on unnecessary public housing, to a daily struggle over whether GLO would cut off all Ike-related CDBG funding to Galveston. Why is that?

There has always been some vague and unconvincing blather about how Galveston’s foot-dragging threatened the more than $2.5 billion due to Texas, but that argument has never seemed convincing. Neither Houston nor Texas appeared in any imminent danger from City Council’s refusal to give James Dennis his $25 million. They simply took it back and gave it to him directly.

So what was it that Rosen and Herz did that so enflamed HUD that they should be summoned to Washington to be upbraided by Napoleon Dynamite himself, and GLO should be induced to cut off the flow of money?

Consider that we’ve just ‘celebrated’ the 4th anniversay of Hurricane Ike. Four years, during which, with the exception of the past three months, City Hall was in the firm grip of pro-housers. Joe Jaworski appointed the entire GHA board of 2010, and with the occasional waffling of Chris Gonzales, had a solid four-vote majority on City Council. Joe, Betty and company could have started building public housing any time they pleased.

But they didn’t. They stalled, and planned, and recounted their chickens, literally for years. Progress was always just around the corner. Yet the weight of the bureaucracy never fell on them; it has swiftly fallen on Mayor Rosen.

What changed? Mixed income housing, and its place in the design of future PH in Galveston, that’s what. Under Jaworski, the numbers floated from 700 to 1100 and back again, but it was always going to be lots and lots of mixed-income housing.

Did Mayor Rosen declare his intention to not endow the poor? No. He attempted to pull the rug out from under MBS. That was his sin. You can pretend to want to help the poor for years without lifting an actual finger, and HUD and its poverty-industry overlords simply watch. They’re in it for the long haul – the fifty years of management fees, not the quick fix.

But shove them off the table, and wham! The Secretary of HUD’s on the phone, shouting ensues, the money train stops abruptly, and a recall effort cranks right up. Stanley Lowe’s last gasp before he hit the road was to try, in secret, to reinsert his friends from MBS back into the picture with a 264-mixed-income-unit behind Randall’s.

That’s what all this shouting is about! MBS, not the poor.

Give GLO what they want. Say yes to 288 scattered sites, as the half-adopted Alternative Plan 1 does, and get the money flowing. HUD will never stand for it because MBS won’t stand for it, and MBS, like the smoking man in the shadows on X-files, is really running this show.

They may still win in the long run, but in the short run, it makes HUD GLO’s problem.