Greenspoint, poverty and flooding

Floods, like any natural disaster, are great levelers. All of those affected suffer equally. It is in the wake of a great loss that the disparity emerges. For some, it can be easy to find the resources to rent a new apartment, to move, to turn on your utilities — or at least not extremely hard. For others, those financial challenges are overwhelming.

That division shows sharply in Greenspoint, where some of this week's worst flooding occurred.

The mall, office towers, multi-family apartment complexes, and strip retail development are disconnected and isolated from each other both physically and demographically. Fundamentally there are two communities: one community that caters to the area's office workers, and one community for those who call the area home. The stores and restaurants that line Greens Road and Greenspoint Drive, which cater to office workers, are closed during the evenings and on weekends, when the area's residents would be more likely to shop.

Who are Greenspoint's residents? Over the last 30 years, families have replaced single professionals in the apartments. As a result the number of residents under the age of 18 has skyrocketed, increasing by a factor of six. Specifically, in 1990, only 2,500 residents under the age of 18 lived in Greenspoint. By 2000 that number had soared to over 12,400, and by 2010 increased again to more than 14,000, representing 36 percent of the population.

More than one of every three Greenspoint residents lives below the federal poverty line, and in some areas with high concentrations of multi-family housing poverty soars to over 50 percent.

It's a tough place for a family to live. There are few services or amenities. There are no full-service grocery stores in this area, only small mini-marts and convenience stores. There is only one pharmacy in the far southern corner of the neighborhood. And many residents can't simply drive to another neighborhood: More than 24 percent of the households in Greenspoint do not own a car, compared to 10 percent in Houston overall.

Greenspoint has one of the largest concentrations of multi-family housing in Houston. The 11,000 apartments — 85 percent of all housing in the neighborhood — are, on average, 25 years old, and like many multi-family developments built in the 1970s and '80s, the complexes and units have aged badly.

But most alarming, as we have seen in recent days, is that the multi-family housing in Greenspoint is concentrated along Greens Bayou and the Greens Road corridor, in the northern quadrant of the community, an area extremely prone to flooding. The Harris County Flood Warning System website records that Greens Bayou topped its banks in 2001 during Allison, in 2002, in 2003, and now again in 2016. Forty-one percent of all housing in Greenspoint is in the 100-year flood zone, and 16 percent more is in a 500-year zone. But 72 percent of all multi-family housing is in a flood zone, with a substantial portion in the floodway — the land expected to flood regularly.

As a result, many of the structures have been flooded on numerous occasions. This creates real devastation for residents who are without the economic resources to weather the storms.

Over the last ten years, two strategies have been developed for the neighborhood and the Greens Bayou corridor. The first was the designation of the area as a City of Houston "Multi-Family Revitalization Zone. " For distressed multi-family housing, particularly in the flood plain, the program was supposed to provide resources for demolition, green space, and reconstruction. Unfortunately, nothing has changed.

The other strategy was formation of the Greens Bayou Corridor Coalition in 2002. The Coalition worked diligently to develop strategies to address flooding in the 45-mile stretch of Greens Bayou. In 2015, after six years of advocacy with the federal government, the "Federal Flood Damage Reduction Project on Greens Bayou" was awarded $55 million. According to the Harris County Flood Control District's website, the funds will be used for "3.7 miles of channel conveyance improvements from Cutten Road to Veterans Memorial Drive and approximately 108 acres of stormwater detention storage." The project began construction in 2015 — just a bit late for those who once again lost so much.

What does the future hold for Greenspoint? Strategies to relocate families and demolish multi-family complexes in the flood zone certainly make sense. But at the same time, the housing in Greenspoint is some of the most affordable in our city, and if we demolished all of these units, much less housing would be available to those most in need. The Urban Institute's 2015 housing affordability report notes that as it is, for every 100 extremely low-income renters in Harris County, only 15 affordable units are available, and the units being lost the quickest are multi-family apartments.

On a positive note, the stories coming out of Greenspoint's devastation and tragedy are ones of hope. People are coming together, working together, and fighting together.

Cavanaugh Nweze, a community activist, writes on social media: "They was on point! They had U-Haul trucks, sorted relief goods, people were receiving donations, directing traffic, walking people to either their car or their home with their collected goods. I was quite impressed. They were serving people food, barbecuing, a DJ was set up and spinning the entire time."

Godspeed, Greenspoint.

Susan Rogers is director of the Community Design Resource Center at the University of Houston.

Bookmark Gray Matters. It's approximately 108 acres of stormwater detention storage.