Harris County Housing Department Issues

Harris County Housing Department Issues

One of the most consistently pressing issues facing the local government's of Houston and Harris County respectively is that of housing. Houston has been one of America's fastest growing urban centers in the last two decades, rendered thus by its appeal to corporate investment and its many accessible, low-wage neighborhoods. Recent challenges in the population landscape relating both to the continual influx of Mexican immigrant laborers and, more recently, the deluge of impoverished peoples feeling post-Katrina conditions in New Orleans. Given that so many of the individuals arriving to the Houston metropolitan area are in need of assistance, it has fallen significantly upon the Harris County Housing Department to actively pursue ways to integrate a wide array of new arrivals.

Of course, any failure to properly absorb such troubled populations as those arriving from south of the Mexican border or from New Orleans could negatively stimulate higher incidences of crime, resource shortfall and gang activity. This is already quite well evidence by the dire situation in housing which is part and parcel of the Hurricane Katrina migration. Those who relocated following the devastating 2005 hurricane and flooding have largely done so on the basis of pubic assistance. Indeed, "more than 30,000 evacuee families in Houston still live in government-subsidized housing, and a Zogby International survey sponsored by the city found three-fourths of the adults receiving housing help were not working." (Bustillo, 1) This points to a serious problem facing the Housing Department, which must find ways to balance its responsibilities to the public with the need to stretch scarce resources. Though federal assistance has taken part in footing the bill, much of this aid has by now or will soon expire. With that, many non-working transplants will occupy public housing to no prospect of economic improvement.

This speaks to the demand placed upon the Housing Department to act more closely in concordance with local employment groups and agencies to help place such transplants in state of gainful employment. Indeed, it could not be considered humanitarian to withdraw public housing assistance to those already so terribly afflicted by the events of the hurricane and its aftermath. However, it is most certainly necessary for Harris County and Houston to achieve some sort of long-term resolution as it is now clear that so many transplants have inevitably become integrated into the Harris County public housing system.