Friday, February 26, 2010

Running Houston Like a Business

Isiah Carey* drops a bomb on the City's Housing Department. If you remember, Bill White appointed David Mincberg to the board of HHD after Mincberg lost an election to Ed Emmett for County Judge.

Prior to that Mincberg was one of Mayor White's $1 executives who acted as a special advisor for multi-family housing.


This could not come at a worse time for the Bill White campaign, who've been trumping his fiscal success while Mayor as one of the main reason's Texans should vote for him as Governor.

Rick Perry's oppo-research team has to be salivating right about now.





*Give it up to TV media AGAIN, for scooping ChronBlog on a big local story. (But hey, ChronBlog's got the Good Life and that's what matters (to them)

2 comments:

Slampo said...

Not sure how this redounds to White, unless the city was jumping the gun in approving these payouts, which the stories don't document or even suggest. It seems to be a problem of timely payments from the Texas Dept. of Housting and Community Affairs to the city, and if I'm not mistaken the board members of the former were all appointed by Rick Perry, so maybe Perry's oppo researchers should start researching Perry (which they probably have already).

The real scandal, which is a bipartisan one, so to speak, is located in the boilerplate graf in the Chronicle story: " ... provided $19,500 in assistance to anyone buying a home in the city who made up to 120 percent of the median area income. For a family of four, that is about $76,500. Those willing to move into low- to moderate-income neighborhoods as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could receive up to $40,000."
Although this would require a bit of time and elbow grease, it would possibly result in a good story if one of our city's investigative-reporter types were to go back & see how things turned out for each of these grant receipients---whether they're still in the houses they were OKed to buy, whether they've met all their payments, etc. It may be all good, grossly unfair middle-class entitlement that it is.

Cory said...

It sounds as if the Houston Housing Authority was not requesting reimbursement as the funds went out:

"I'm hearing part of the problem is those in charge never pursued reimbursement as they should've as money went out!"


I'm not suggesting the problem is all White's, but I'm guessing Perry's folks will, with great success.

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