Texas Stops Second Harris County “Guaranteed Income” Scheme
The Texas Supreme Court ordered the County to pause the program and not distribute any funds while litigation continued.
Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton
AUSTIN, TEXAS (News Release) – Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a stay preventing Harris County from restarting its unlawful “guaranteed income” program after the County made an attempt to sidestep a court order halting a similar program.
In April 2024, Attorney General Paxton sued Harris County to stop its original “guaranteed income” program that unlawfully distributed public money with “no strings attached.” The Texas Supreme Court ordered the County to pause the program and not distribute any funds while litigation continued. However, the Harris County Commissioners Court attempted to restart the program by enacting a virtually identical one—with significantly increased administrative costs—in blatant violation of the Supreme Court’s order. Attorney General Paxton sued and has now obtained another stay blocking Harris County from implementing any aspect of the program.
The Texas Constitution explicitly forbids “any county, city, town or other political corporation or subdivision of the State … to grant public money or thing of value in aid of, or to any individual.” When ruling on the original program, the Texas Supreme Court noted that “the State has raised serious doubts about the constitutionality of the Uplift Harris program, and this potential violation of the Texas Constitution could not be remedied or undone if payments were to commence while the underlying appeal proceeds.”
“Harris County is not above the law and cannot ignore the Texas Constitution,” said Attorney General Paxton. “They made a blatant attempt to end-run a Texas Supreme Court ruling by duplicating their unlawful handout program, and we have successfully blocked them yet again.”
To read the order, click here.
Government Wants to Buy Flood-Prone Homes
In Harris County, the flood control district wants to buy properties along the San Jacinto River that have flooded repeatedly.
By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune
HARRIS COUNTY — After the floodwaters earlier this month just about swallowed two of the six homes that 60-year-old Tom Madigan owns on the San Jacinto River, he didn’t think twice about whether to fix them. He hired people to help, and they got to work stripping the walls, pulling up flooring and throwing out water-logged furniture.
What Madigan didn’t know: The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy his properties as part of an effort to get people out of dangerously flood-prone areas.
Back-to-back storms drenched southeast Texas in late April and early May, causing flash flooding and pushing rivers out of their banks and into low-lying neighborhoods. Officials across the region urged people in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
Like Madigan’s, some places that were inundated along the San Jacinto in Harris County have flooded repeatedly. And for nearly 30 years, the flood control district has been trying to clear out homes around the river by paying property owners to move, then returning the lots to nature.
The recent floods show why buyout programs can be important. These spots typically flood first and worse. Gov. Greg Abbott reported that hundreds of rescues took place in the state while the floods destroyed homes. A man drowned and a child was swept away into the floods. One Harris County resident described climbing on top of his motor home as the water rose before first responders rescued him.
But the disaster and its aftermath also illustrate why buyouts are complicated to carry out even in Harris County, home to Houston, which has one of the most robust buyout programs in the country. The flood control district has identified roughly 2,400 properties as current buyout candidates around the San Jacinto; the district and county have bought about 800 of them.
Nearly all of the district’s buyouts are voluntary. If an owner doesn’t want to sell, the district can’t force them out.
Buyouts make sense for some people who can’t be protected from floods, said Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research for the Center on Environment, Land and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
But buyouts might not provide lower-income people enough money to get somewhere safer, she said, and they could lose important support like child care from nearby family or neighbors.
“It's not as though it's a guarantee of reducing risks to that family,” Jerolleman said.
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People who live near the river and who have endured repeated floods explained that they’ve stayed because it’s affordable and, most of the time, peaceful. Where else would they be able to buy anything like it? Some said they didn’t think the government would offer them what they consider a fair price to sell their land. Some didn’t know the buyout program existed.
Madigan started buying homes more than 15 years ago in the unincorporated River Terrace neighborhood because they were cheap. On Tuesday, the Houston firefighter drank a Heineken and grilled hamburgers for his work crew outside his most damaged house, which he rents to his brother. Sodden rugs baked in the sun on the driveway.
Madigan said he might have taken a buyout if it was a reasonable offer — but he doubted it would be. He said he needed to get the properties ready again for his renters. “I can’t wait,” he said.
Two blocks away, water had swept through a yellow house Madigan rents to a family with a teenage son. One of the workers fixing the property, 21-year-old Omar Reyna, watched the family throw out pretty much everything they had. Piecing together new laminate flooring with his dad, Reyna kept thinking about a trash bag of Teddy bears and stuffed toys he tossed out for them.
He wondered if the parents had been saving the toys for another kid they might have in the future.
“The faster we get it done, the faster they can come back in here,” Reyna said.
Some people choose to live with the risk of flooding
The San Jacinto is the largest river in the state’s most populous county. For years before Harris County’s first floodplain maps were drawn up in the mid-1980s, people built homes near its banks. Even today, people can still build in the vast floodplain if the houses are high enough and have enough stormwater detention.
The flood control district tries to buy out homes in pockets of the floodplain that are deepest, said James Wade, manager for the district’s property acquisition department. Those are places where engineers can’t easily fix flooding problems.
Buyouts are meant to get people out of flood zones before their property floods again, not to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The process is slow: In some cases, it can take 18 months or longer to approve a buyout application, Wade said. The district pays owners the market value or pre-flood value for their house, determined by a third-party appraiser, plus moving expenses and a supplement to help them get into a house out of the floodplain, Wade said.
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“It’s a very equitable, fair program,” Wade said — but still some people don’t want to leave.
Those who stay learn to adapt. They build homes on stilts. They monitor the river level and watch for releases of water from the Lake Conroe dam upstream. Some know intimately the routine of rebuilding: gut the house, clean it, put it back together.
The floor of 49-year-old Sean Vincent’s house in the Forest Cove neighborhood in northeast Houston is 15 feet above the ground. Three feet of water flooded it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. This month, the floods reached five feet high on Vincent’s property. He cleaned out his waterlogged ground-level shed with help from church members. On Tuesday, he was building new shelves for it.
But most of the time Vincent, who works in railroad traffic control, said he enjoys the space surrounded by tall trees with room for his three kids.
“It’s just really not a major part of our life,” Vincent said of the flooding. “Yes, it’s inconvenient. Yes, it’s now happened to us twice in seven years. … It’s sort of a trade-off for us. And it is lovely out here.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Then there are those who stay because they don’t see anywhere else to go.
Jack St. John, 67, a retired long-haul truck driver, moved to Northshore 43 years ago and has had to clean up after two floods. He worries any time flooding threatens, but the neighborhood’s advantages keep him there: He has no water bill because he has a well. His taxes are reasonable. The neighborhood has a fish fry in the spring and a barbecue in the fall.
“You know, when you leave, where are you going to go?” he said. “What's it going to cost to buy into another place?”
Farther northeast, in the Idle Wild and Idle Glen neighborhoods, the floods forced some residents to sleep under tarps. On one largely forested street, boats were turned sideways or flipped upside down. A small building was lodged in the trees. A car was in the ditch.
For several years, Elvia Bethea, 68, has driven from her home in Humble to check on people and pets here, and pick up stray animals. On Tuesday, she and other volunteers gave John Gray, 50, bamboo yard torches to fight the many mosquitoes, plus two trays of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Gray said he couldn’t afford to fix up his destroyed house. He earns a living printing labor law posters for businesses. His printers at home were destroyed.
Gray said he had never heard of the buyout program but would consider taking one.
“Who do I call?” Gray asked. “I don’t have a clue.”
From the back of a white SUV, Bethea handed some hot dogs to Jose Tabores, 68, who lives on Gray’s land in a trailer now filled with mud.
“I’m coming for dinner, remember!” Bethea teased him.
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Nearby, 51-year-old Veronika Scheid had been sleeping in a wet tent. The flood washed the shipping crate she lived in down the road and into the trees — along with her and her neighbors’ belongings.
At a low point, when Scheid was crying over all she lost, she found a pink-and-white beaded necklace with stitching in the shape of a “V,” like her name. At the end was a charm shaped like a house.
She was grateful the person who owned the land where she stayed hadn’t taken a buyout. Otherwise she would have nowhere to go.
“At least we have this,” Scheid said.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/20/texas-harris-county-flood-buyout-program-trinity-river/.
FBI announces investigations into deaths at Harris County Jail
Since Jacoby Pillow’s death last month, at least three others have died at Harris County Jail.
By Alex Nguyen, The Texas Tribune
The FBI is opening civil rights investigations into the deaths of two men in Harris County Jail.
In a statement posted Monday afternoon, the FBI announced that it’s scrutinizing the deaths of Jaquaree Simmons and Jacoby Pillow, who both died in custody following an altercation with jail staff. Their deaths took place almost two years apart.
These probes come after a request last week from the Harris County Sheriff's Office, which operates the downtown Houston jail, according to a Monday press release.
“I look forward to learning the FBI’s findings, because we must all know the full truth if we are to improve our operation and make the jail as safe as possible for everyone entrusted into our care,” said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez in the press release.
Simmons, a 23-year-old man who had mental health issues, was arrested in February 2021 on a felony weapons charge. A week later, he was found dead in his cell. Harris County’s medical examiner would eventually rule Simmons’ death as a homicide.
An investigation by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office determined that staff had used excessive force and failed to document it or intervene, on top of making false claims to investigators. As a result, the sheriff’s office suspended six detention officers and fired 11 others. And earlier this month, a grand jury charged Eric Niles Morales — the 6-foot-5-inch former detention officer who allegedly kneed the 5-foot-4-inch Simmons in the head, struck his head against a door and then dropped him on his head — with manslaughter.
LaRhonda Biggles, Simmons’ mother, told The Texas Tribune on Monday that she’s “excited and happy” to hear about the FBI’s investigation. She’s not satisfied with the manslaughter charge against Morales, noting that it should have been more severe. She also said more detention officers should face criminal charges beyond being fired or suspended.
“I just want justice for Jaquaree,” Biggles said.
“I feel like I owe that to him to get that justice for him because he laid there and died by himself alone. As a mom, that's horrible. … I'm working really hard to try to keep myself from breaking or cracking because it's like reliving it all over again, but I am glad to know the [investigations] are there.”
Pillow’s death in early January is this year’s first death at Harris County Jail.
The 31-year-old man was initially arrested for a misdemeanor allegation of trespassing and was set to be released on a $100 bond a few days later. But the Harris County Sheriff’s Office claimed that he assaulted a jail officer, resulting in staff using “force” to restrain him.
Pillow was found dead the following morning, though the sheriff’s office said he had been examined by medical personnel before being returned to his cell.
The Houston Police Department and the Harris County Sheriff's Office have since opened separate investigations into Pillow’s death.
“The facts of this case are extremely alarming, and they point to a pattern and culture of inmate abuse that we have seen before in Harris County facilities,” Ben Crump, an attorney representing Pillow’s family, told FOX26 last month. “There is no legitimate excuse for this young man to have lost his life for an arrest on a misdemeanor charge right as he was about to get out on bail.”
Crump also held a press conference earlier on Monday urging the Department of Justice to investigate deaths at the jail.
Since Pillow’s death last month, at least three others have died at Harris County Jail. They followed a record high number of deaths last year, where 27 people died while in custody at the county jail. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo acknowledged last week that “the entire system does have challenges” and announced initiatives to address overcrowding, but advocates say more needs to be done.
In its statement, the FBI said its investigations will “proceed independently of any state investigations.” The agency has also stated that it will not be publicly sharing details about the ongoing investigations to protect their “integrity and capabilities.”
“These investigations will be fair, thorough, and impartial,” the FBI’s statement said.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/13/fbi-investigations-harris-county-jail-deaths/.