The Great Land Grab

Last August, as Renaissance was preparing its EDI grant proposal, Laguarta wrote Jim Tipps, the city's deputy director of housing, asking for "expeditious approval" of the group's CBDO status. Laguarta opined that Renaissance qualified because a "preponderance" of the board were "owners or senior officers" of area establishments that served the community. In case the city didn't agree, Laguarta indicated he was prepared to let HUD make the determination.

However, Laguarta wrote in closing, "We trust the enclosed materials are sufficient for your department to qualify [Houston Renaissance] as a CBDO without doing so." Apparently, Laguarta failed to immediately convince city housing officials. It wasn't until two months later -- during which time Houston Renaissance went ahead and described itself as a CBDO in its grant proposal to the city -- that housing director Margie Bingham notified Laguarta that HUD had agreed to the designation.

Houston Renaissance probably could have skipped the CBDO gyrations if it had simply put a few Fourth Ward residents or ministers on its board of directors. The most obvious choice would have been Gladys House, director of the Freedmen's Town Association, one of the city's oldest community development groups.

A longtime Fourth Ward activist, House is probably the most strident defender of the neighborhood's black heritage, and she was instrumental in getting Freedmen's Town listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Not surprisingly, she was left almost apoplectic when Laguarta announced Houston Renaissance's plan in November 1994, and she has remained pretty much of the same mind since then.

After so many years of neglect, House wondered, why is the Fourth Ward suddenly so popular with private developers? And why is the city so anxious to accommodate this particular group, especially when House has been trying for years to launch a few modest community development projects of her own?

"I've been here for 16 years, trying to do good," says House, who last summer was responsible for the first new home built in Freedmen's Town in 50 years. "But there's been all of these complaints that Gladys House hasn't done anything. Well, the city never would give us the money that they're throwing at Houston Renaissance."

Nonetheless, everyone involved knew better than to ignore Gladys House, who has filed several complaints with HUD alleging bias in the city's awarding of federal housing funds. City housing officials organized meetings with the Freedmen's Town Association and Houston Renaissance, with the hope that the two groups could collaborate.

No one was surprised, however, when, in late summer 1995, Laguarta and House ended their brief affiliation, as philosophically opposed as the day they met. House now accuses Laguarta of stealing her ideas for redeveloping the Fourth Ward, though the homebuilder says House really didn't have much to offer.

"It became clear to us," says Laguarta, "that there was no compatibility on the basis of her skills and resources. Whether it was management style, experience, whatever, there just weren't the ingredients for a successful relationship."

House submitted her own EDI proposal last summer, a development of traditional single-family houses she envisioned would complement historic homes she hoped to rehabilitate. In December, three months after the city approved Renaissance's plan, she filed another complaint with HUD, alleging racial bias that "assured delivery of money to big developers rather than grass-roots, community-based and minority-run Freedmen's Town Association."

The complaint probably killed any chance that House might have of ever contributing to the Renaissance project, either as a subcontractor or by helping find potential buyers for the group. But in the opinion of Rice University's Stephen Fox, Houston Renaissance, by dismissing House's input, set a dangerous precedent for other neighborhoods the organization may have designs on in the future.

Fox says the revitalization of another inner-city community, the West End, is an example of how the Fourth Ward could be rebuilt. The neighborhood, north of Washington in the Shepherd-Durham area, is made up largely of Hispanic renters, most of them poor. In the past few years, a number of more affluent residents have moved in and rehabilitated old homes or built new ones without disrupting the lives around them. But generally, says Fox, community historic preservation is ignored in Houston.

"We tend to see it in extreme situations, which is either preserving it as a kind of perverse museum of racism and poverty or annihilating it and replacing it with something that is totally unconnected in any respect to what was there before."

Because of its past, fashioning the Fourth Ward's future is a sensitive endeavor that has already wrought considerable conflict. But there is little disagreement that something needs to be done.

A decade ago, the National Historic Register recognized Freedmen's Town as "one of the oldest and most important black communities in Houston," providing the "economic, spiritual and cultural focus" for the city's African-Americans.