Whitmire raises environmental concerns over housing project

Mayor John Whitmire has asked the Houston Housing Authority to halt plans to move residents to The Pointe At Bayou Bend — a controversial and long-delayed housing project in the East End — until further environmental testing is completed.

“The level of lead found is above what is acceptable to the public,” Whitmire wrote this week in a letter to HHA Chairman Joseph Proler. He also said the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality “has indicated that HHA’s requests to resolve the violations are inadequate.”

His request to halt the project centres on concerns about the well-being of future residents, who – according to the HHA’s plans – will include around 400 families by 2025.

“The health and safety of the citizens of Houston is of the utmost importance,” Whitmire wrote in the letter. “It is imperative that the entire 21.68-acre property, which includes the southern portion on which the apartment complex sits, as well as the undeveloped northern portion, be deemed safe and free of environmental hazards.”

The mayor’s concerns stem from a December 2022 incident on the northwest side of the 800 Middle Street property, where construction workers unearthed incinerator ash while installing sewer lines. The TCEQ cited the housing authority for four violations: failure to remove the ash in a timely manner, failure to notify the TCEQ, failure to obtain an appropriate sample of the ash, and failure to maintain documentation of sampling procedures.

The mayor is now asking the housing authority to conduct additional environmental assessments on the portion of the property northwest of the apartment complex. That portion once housed ashes from the city’s municipal waste incinerator, which was located nearby from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The HHA and InControl Technologies, the authority’s longtime environmental contractor, previously told The Landing that the property had been properly cleaned.

“At the request of the Mayor’s Office, we have already conducted additional testing at the housing project site that confirms there are no issues. We are also conducting an additional environmental assessment of the surrounding undeveloped property before moving residents in,” Houston Housing Authority CEO David Northern said in a statement Friday night.

The HHA provided the additional information requested by the TCEQ and “to the best of our knowledge” answered the outstanding questions, Northern said.

The TCEQ did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Residents were expected to begin moving into the 398-unit affordable housing complex next month, although Harrison said a specific date had not yet been agreed upon.

A story of problems

The mayor’s request to halt move-ins is the latest in a series of delays that have plagued the complex originally planned to house residents displaced from HHA’s Clayton Homes community when it was razed for the widening of Interstate 45.

Clayton Homes was already in dire condition when it was closed in 2022 for the I-45 expansion project: 112 of the units had been deemed uninhabitable after contaminated floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey took hold in 2017, resulting in “surprisingly high levels” of E. coli, as well as elevated levels of lead and arsenic.

When the Texas Department of Transportation purchased the property in August 2019, it agreed to pay for the relocation of all tenants. The Texas Department of Transportation and HHA agreed that 80% of the units would be built within a 2-mile radius of Clayton Homes. It took the housing authority just over six months to identify such a location, at 800 Middle.

Meanwhile, the hundreds of residents who left Clayton Homes were scattered throughout the region; many were placed in other public housing complexes in the city, including Irvinton Village and Cuney Homes; others obtained vouchers from the HHA to rent from private landlords.

Northern told The Landing last month that it expects at least 20% of former Clayton Homes residents to move to the East End complex during its first two phases of move-in, which it said are scheduled for next August and next January.

The HHA purchased the 800 Middle property in October 2020, using $54.4 million in federal funds. In the four years since, it has drawn public and private concerns from neighborhood residents, developers, the city, environmental experts and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Last summer, the property’s environmental problems and neighbors’ discontent made headlines on television, angering housing authority leaders. In an early August email to then-Mayor Sylvester Turner and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, Northern wrote that through “rigorous testing” under TCEQ oversight, “we have reaffirmed our commitment to transparency and security at our site, known as 800 Middle.”

The problem, Northern wrote in the email, which the Landing obtained through a public records request, was not the property or the land. Instead, he blamed “sinister forces that seek to exploit vulnerable populations for personal gain. These forces propagate the ‘Not in My Backyard’ (NIMBY) agenda and spread misinformation about contamination to undermine our efforts.”

In his letter to the housing authority, however, Whitmire said he was “very concerned” by the TCEQ’s findings. He also said in his letter that the TCEQ will not sign the certificate of occupancy until the aforementioned violations are resolved.

Whitmire, through spokeswoman Mary Benton, declined further comment Friday.

“The letter speaks for itself,” Benton said.

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