Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Houston Housing and Affordability Committee, chaired by Councilmember Thomas, met on October 20, 2026, to discuss administrative amendments, funding reallocations, program updates, and a resolution of support. Presenters from the Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) and partner agencies provided updates on compliance, single-family programs, multifamily projects, power generation (generators), and public services. The committee received one public comment and recommended several items for full City Council approval.
Staff representing our mayor pro tem Martha Castic's Tatum, uh Councilmember Martinez District I, staff representing council member Salinas at large four, and then for everyone who is um uh watching on HTV, and we will acknowledge staff and council members as they attend. We have a fairly clean agenda for the day. We'll hear from public services, compliance and grant administration, single family, um, and then of course, we'll have our directors' comments, and um as a reminder, we will allow our uh top staff from the department to complete their presentation, then we'll open up from QA. Good morning, director. Madam Chairwoman, thank you so much for having this meeting. Uh, as we go through these projects, uh, we deeply appreciate the interest and support that this group gives us, and and the questions only make us better, so um feel free to ask all the questions you want. Uh, as you mentioned today, we'll go through compliance, single family, then multifamily, and then we'll have a little bit of a change of agenda, and we'll discuss the power generation project, and then come back to the director's comments. Um, we'll start with compliance. Kinesha London uh has been with the department for more than two decades and has great experience in this compliance area. Um the more I spend time with Kenisha, the more I like her work and appreciate her work because her very careful, careful work allows us to make sure that we don't get too many findings and that we get our money back as needed. Right. Amen. And thank you, Director. Uh the housing and community development department recommends council's approval of an ordinance authorizing a substantial amendment to our community development block grant disaster recovery action plan for the 2024 Doratio and Hurricane Barrel, resulting in the following changes. First, we would like to add the urgent need national objective to the following disaster recovery programs emergency response and public safety, debris repository acquisition slash development program, the vegetation management and debris removal program, and the power generation resilience program. In addition to um adding the urgent eat national objective, we are also seeking to revise the eligible activity for the vegetation removal, excuse me, the vegetation management and debris removal program from interroom assistance to public services. The reason why this change is important is because it would allow for the purchase of necessary equipment to carry out preventative and mitigation um functions for this activity. Adding the urgent need national objective will expand the city's ability to serve a greater population impacted by the disasters. However, per HUD's universal notice, the department will ensure that no more than 30% of the funding will go to projects under the urgent need national objective. This amendment would not result in any changes to the funding allocations for these programs, and in accordance with the citizen participation plan, the city is required to amend components of its action plan for a variety of reasons, including changes to program benefits or eligible or eligibility criteria. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you so much. I want to acknowledge Councilmember Sally Alcorn in the room. But she's back. So happy to have you in the horseshoe. And then we do have staff from Councilmember Ramirez's office in the queue, but before we move forward, I do want oh and staff from Council uh Vice Mayor Pro Tim Peck's office. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry, it's the Vice Mayor Pro Tem Peck. I'm sorry, I thought you were a young staffer that just speaks to your youth and your taking your vitamins. Um thank you for joining us as well. Um, just as a reminder, DR24, remember the 314 million dollars, and a part of that was vegetation maintenance. Um, and um uh making sure that um the generator generators 100 million dollars towards generators, and so this is just an administrative change for those who are new to the horseshoe in terms of staff, um, and what this allows us to do, and so um you will see this on the agenda coming up pretty soon. I think this is a good direction. Um Leah. Thanks. So just to check my understanding, um so it's not changing the allocation because we already approved the money for this purpose, it's just adding some kind of administrative language to allow us to do it. Is that right? Yes, and so what happens is that um primarily with CDB GDR funds, we're required to spend at least 70 percent of the funds in low low and moderate income areas. And so what this change is gonna do um is allow us to serve that 30 percent of the funds in areas that are not uh considered low to moderate income areas and prime and primarily residential. So in order to be a uh low mod area, you have to have the low to moderate income representation in addition to being primary residential. And so when a project doesn't have both of those components, then it qualifies to be under that urgent need category under the CDBGDR. Okay, so it's not more money for generators, it's just allowing it to be spent in a different geography or something. Yes, okay. So, for example, um, we talked about the generators for the generator program. If we were to use a site that was in an area that wasn't primarily LOMAD or residential, then we could still serve it under that urgent need category. And when we originally submitted the action plan, urgent need was not included in the programs listed.