Program Success September 2017 | Page 6

Buying up the deepest corners ofthefloodplain makes enormous sense . Landowners get enough money to start over somewhere else . Yet more than 40 % of Houston residents actually rent . Since they won ' t be getting a buyout , what happens to them ?

MAKING SURE YOUR HOUSTON RELIEF MONEY IS GOING TO THE BLACK FOLKS WHO NEED IT MOST ISN ' T EASY

Charles D . Ellison Guest Columnist , The Root
Houston Relief Money Charles D . Ellison Houston , Texas September 2017
Houston state Rep . Shawn Thierry s majority-black district houses nearly 200,000 residents , the Houston Texans football stadium , and a
massive population of folks who were already low-income and living from paycheck-to-paycheck . They were all in the eye of the storm when Hurricane Harvey hit . " Its really that bad , " Thierry , a single mom of a 4-year old , told The Root . " My house got hit , too ; theres mold everywhere . But I just really don 1 have time to think about that ; I ' ve got to make sure my people are taken care of "
But as millions upon millions of dollars roll in from a growing lineup of celebrities , athletes and a nation of sympathetic Americans eager to save # HoustonStrong , there ' s no guarantee that much of that money will reach already economically battered Houstonians who need it most .
As govermnent and nongovermnental agencies transition into the recovery phase , there ' s growing skepticism that they will prioritize black and brown folks dealing with the compounded devastation from generations of dire economic straits-and , now , climate-change-instigated " 1,000-year " floods .
Already , the push to focus on property rather than the dispossessed is becoming abundantly clear . During a press conference laying out recovery efforts , Federal Emergency Management Administration acting Director Brock Long was weirdly emphatic on the property part : " . . .. and the most important
thing , the mission of saving houses ." No one seemed to pick that up .
Meanwhile , Houston-based Forbes Senior Editor Christopher Helman wasted no time calling for a FEMA " buyout " of flooded homes , which is really a rallying cry for full-scale property-owner windfall and redevelopment : " Buying up the deepest corners of the floodplain makes enonnous sense . Landowners get enough money to start over somewhere else ." Yet more than 40 percent of Houston residents actually rent . Since they won ' t be getting a buyout , what happens to them ? " Honestly , there are a lot of folks down here in Texas who have no problem that this hurricane hit ," said Rickie Keys , a national financial literary advocate and founder of WhenEndsDontMeet . Keys , along with his
Program Success 6 September 2017 family , was displaced to Texas in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina . " These people view this as an economic boon . This as a major economicdevelopment opportunity . Think about Katrina . That was an economic boon for the New Orleans area-but only for certain areas and for certain people ." Still , the raw emotional reaction for most Americans is to get online and dump donations

Buying up the deepest corners ofthefloodplain makes enormous sense . Landowners get enough money to start over somewhere else . Yet more than 40 % of Houston residents actually rent . Since they won ' t be getting a buyout , what happens to them ?

into the Red Cross . But historically , Red Cross money doesn ' t always find its way to hurting black folks . That comes from experience : When Katrina hit , black residents watched Red Cross dollars flow more easily to white areas than harder-hit black ones . A ProPublica investigation exposed " understaffed " and " mismanaged " Red Cross shelters in majority-black Baton Rouge , La ., after historic 2016 floods . Another ProPublica piece found that the Red Cross only built six homes in earthquake-ravaged Haiti after claiming that it provided 130,000 people with housingyet , again , another place full of black folks receiving inadequate disaster response .
" Many of my constituents already lived in underserved communities ," added Rep . Thierry , who oversees a district where 34 percent of residents ages 25-64 are not in the labor force . " They are now completely displaced and almost destitute . I want to make sure that when it comes to charitable donations to the Red Cross , and other wellknown nonprofits , that Houston does not become another Haiti ."
Thierry took matters into her own hands , opening up her district office as a base of operations and setting up a GoFundMe page to raise needed funds for resources . Yet , Instagrarnming and tweeting black celebrities like Kevin Hart and former President Barack Obama earnestly egg the public into one big national telethon for the Red Cross . Crazy amounts of cash are heading straight to organizations that won ' t be prioritizing anyone black or brown , least of all those who don ' t own a home .
It ' s not as if tl1e $ 250,000 Tyler Perry lineitemed to embattled megachurch hustler Joel Olsteen ( out of a total $ 1 million donation ) will be relayed to Thierry ' s district or anywhere else underwater where residents never had tl1e assets , bank accounts or credit cards to begin with .
And even with Beyonce ' s heart-in-the-rightplace move , BeyGoodHouston , as a relay center for Houston organizations Bread of Life and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner ' s Greater Houston Community Foundation , giving to those most in need is not as simple as one might think . Both organizations