Houston's Housing

Down a worn concrete path are two dilapidated tennis courts. The nets have been taken down, awaiting the work crews that will begin building Oak Lake's new community center. Once complete, the center will allow Bridges Community Friends to provide job training, immigration services, a food pantry and health clinics for women, children and the elderly on-site. Those needs are now available to Oak Lake residents at the Northwest Assistance Ministry, two miles away.

Those involved with Oak Lake say they believe it's a model of what the RTC affordable housing program was really meant to be. Nonprofits, which aren't concerned with the bottom line, can combine truly low-cost housing with social services to address the long-term problems of being poor.

"It's not that the housing authorities of the cities aren't capable," says J.O.T. Couch, a staff member at Houston Interfaith Housing. "In fact, the city's sales aren't necessarily wrong in the sense of taxpayer benefit. The question is, what is the spirit?"

Doran says that both the churches and the residents of nearby neighborhoods had to be convinced that the complex could thrive under the nonprofit's ownership. But in the end, she says, it boiled down to common sense.

"One of the reason we did this was because there were people tripping over our doorstep saying, 'We can't find anyplace to live,'" Doran says. "And another was that this place is smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood. If we said, 'Wow, look at that property going downhill,' and five years later had done nothing about it, we had nobody to blame but ourselves."

One-bedrooms at Oak Lake rent for between $295 and $325. Most of the 136 two-bedroom units are available for under $400. While those rents may still tax the resources of many working poor, they are about 25 percent less expensive than the units bought from the RTC by the city. And the for-profit investors who bought from the city aren't offering social services.

Bingham, the city's community development director, says that, yes, the city received offers from nonprofits for the seven complexes the city sold. Houston Interfaith Housing was not one that expressed interest, says its board chairman, Paul Nichols, because the organization was not made aware that the city was putting the complexes up for sale.

Bingham says the city decided to sell to for-profit investors because it feared a nonprofit might not be able to afford necessary rehabilitation. And, she admits, the city's profit wouldn't have been as large if they had sold to a nonprofit.

"The RTC would have paid us a 5 percent resale bonus for selling to a nonprofit," Bingham says. "But we wanted more than 5 percent."

Lanier is confident that the city's purchase and resale of the RTC properties was not only the most economical way to increase the city's affordable housing, but will bode well for the future. He says the profits realized by the city will go toward "a whole range of things" that will bring about 5,000 new affordable housing units "on stream."

Those plans include providing subsidies to low- and moderate-income families who want to buy a house. And, the mayor says, more privately owned apartment units will be rehabilitated.

"I think we're having a positive impact on housing and a positive impact on neighborhoods," says Lanier.

But not everyone is convinced that the mayor's words now are any more reliable than his words were in 1993, when he spoke before the president and vice president about the future of Winwood Club apartments. And some suspect that even if his plans come to fruition, they will be of little help to those at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.

"The only way working people on the lower end of the income stream can afford a place to live is through public programs, and there has not been enough of a public outcry to do that," says Sally Shipman of the Coalition for the Homeless. "About all [housing advocates are] doing is promoting something because it's the right thing to do. And not everybody agrees it is the right thing to do.