This should make every taxpayer sick!
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The city of Houston wasted millions of your tax dollars buying empty lots that are still empty six years later.
That is the latest headline in an ongoing investigation by investigative communications firm Dolcefino Consulting.
Here is the trail.
One third of money collected in some neighborhood TIRZ piggy banks must be given back to the city of Houston for affordable housing. Since 2009, that’s more than $70 million.
We have already discovered the City Housing and Community Development Department gave City Council false information on the way the money was spent.
And the truth isn’t pretty.
In 2009, Houston City Council voted to spend $8 million in TIRZ 2409 funds on the LARA program.
That’s the City Hall idea of buying empty lots at auction or that no one else wanted and then get some developer to build houses on them. It represents more than 10% of all the TIRZ money spent on affordable housing.
Flash forward to September 2015. Records reviewed by Dolcefino Consulting reveal more than 90% of those empty lots are still empty today. Of more than 270 empty lots bought with this money, only five have actually been sold, another 10 in some stage of development. Two others have been turned into urban gardens.
Does that count as affordable housing?
The city hasn’t ever audited Fund 2409, but it is increasingly clear someone should.
The truth is getting uglier by the day. The question is how long will City Hall allow TIRZ money to be thrown away or blatantly misspent to benefit folks with blatant conflicts of interest?
Houston…we have a problem!
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