`GLO explains housing options

Published 9:45 am Tuesday, August 7, 2018

By Chris Moore

chris.moore@panews.com

 

BEAUMONT — The Jefferson County Commissioners held a workshop with the Texas General Land Office before Commissioners Court on Monday.

County Judge Jeff Branick said the workshop was to gather information about the buyout and acquisition programs for the unincorporated areas in Jefferson County.

“Port Arthur and the other cities will get their own allocation under the methods of distribution with the (Community Development Block Grant) funds,” Branick said. “The county has $2 million and it’s all CDBG money so 70 percent of it has to go to low-to-moderate-income areas.”

Branick said even though the acquisition program lets the county buy a home at the post-disaster fair market value, there are some incentives for the people who might enter the programs.

“With the acquisition program, you’re also able to do a down payment program. You can actually give the people some more money over and above their post disaster value, which may make it attractive. You can design a program that will give $35,000 in housing incentives and $35,000 in relocation assistance. If you have a $25,000 home that’s in a targeted area that you wanted out of that flood zone, you could make that offer.

“Port Arthur is doing the acquisition program because they have a lot of homes that are worth less than $45,000. They could actually benefit by doing the acquisition program. It doesn’t help somebody that has a $250,000 home that is now worth $110,000.”

The biggest problem the county is facing with either program is finding an accurate number on where the damaged homes are located, Branick said.

“We had a screw up,” he said. “I tried to look at where my damaged homes are in the unincorporated areas. When FEMA came in and did the damage assessments, a lot of those homes in Labelle and Fannett had Beaumont addresses and they were lumped in to the Beaumont data.

“I don’t have good, segregated data on the locations. We’re trying to get that data to find out where the target would be that could meet the 70 percent threshold.”

Branick said GLO also discussed how they would use the money they received from the programs.

“We talked about using the money for infrastructure and road projects,” he said. “We also talked about using it for a potential match hazard mitigation projects hardening (bolstering) Ford Park and hardening the airport. We might build a dome structure that would serve as an evacuation area and a temporary shelter.”

Branick said he will meet with the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Commission to discuss and hopefully approve the final method of distribution for the county Friday.