By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County commissioners court members recently heard an update on work being done to improve housing for some low-income county residents.
Robb Stevenson, director of the Val Verde Self-Help Center, gave commissioners court an update on the work being done by the center and on work being done using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for low-income housing during the court’s most recent regular session on Sept. 26.
Before Stevenson started his presentation, Commissioner Pct. 2 Juan Carlos Vazquez asked, “I’ve had three residents of the Villarreal Subdivision, which I consider to be Val Verde Park Estates, who don’t qualify (for assistance). . . Are they part of a colonia or not? Can you give an explanation on that?”
Stevenson replied, “Many years ago, the Texas Water Development Board, when colonias were being founded, developed a numbering system and it’s an ‘M’ number, and we’ve had to live with that to this day in different maps of the colonias. Val Verde Park Estates is technically two colonias, Val Verde Parks Estates I has an ‘M’ number, and Val Verde Park Estates II has a separate ‘M’ number. Villarreal is not part of either one of those, according to the state’s maps.”
“However, through ARPA and through other programs, such as the A&M Home Program, we can try and concentrate on areas such as Villarreal who haven’t been able to use the self-help center,” Stevenson added.
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. added the court has encountered the “what is and what isn’t a colonia” problem numerous times over the years.
County grants administrator Carl Esser asked Stevenson if there was a way the county could petition the Texas Water Development Board to add unrecognized colonias that were in existence prior to a certain date to its list of recognized colonias.
“You can, and there is a way; however, colonias, have fallen out of vogue, for lack of a better way to describe it, among state agencies. There’s not a whole lot of push for colonias right now. There used to be entire agencies, there used to be an ombudsman program, just for colonias. The attorney general’s office now handles the colonia database. There’s technically a methodology, but to my knowledge, no one’s done it in years,” Stevenson said.
“We could try. We could try and consolidate, and that will again come up in later discussions when we’re looking for a new contract or the next contract, which five colonias to include in it. That might be a good idea, to consolidate some colonias. One brief point on that: currently we have 17 state-recognized colonias in the county. If we start consolidating, and we end up with a dozen, eight, nine, then maybe we don’t pop upon the state’s radar as really needing colonia assistance as much any more. Just wanted to throw that out there as some food for thought,” Stevenson added.
“So you’re saying leave them the way they are?” Owens asked.
“I’m saying leave them the way they are, and I’ll bring in other housing programs for any other needs,” Stevenson said.
“But I guess we can look into it, see if we can get it classified?” Owens asked.
“Absolutely. I’ll look into it and see what we can do,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson then continued with his presentation, presenting the court with a handout that included before-and-after photos of some of the housing sites reconstructed or improved under the programs he oversees.
“We are in the middle of two million dollar contracts at the self-help center. One was a bonus contract we got for advancing our previous contracts. We are five-of-five housing reconstructions into it, and if you follow to the first set of photos, I have some before and after photos. . . I wanted to give the court, if you haven’t had a chance to see some of the manufactured housing we’re doing, just to get some kind of idea of the type of people we’re helping and the kind of disastrous housing they’re living in and what we’re able to provide for them,” Stevenson said.
He told the court the manufactured housing being provided to clients “isn’t your granddad’s mobile home.”
He said the new homes are “EnergyStar-certified manufactured housing units.”
“In fact, it’s rated to be set in Minnesota, the insulation’s so good on it, so we’re hoping it can make a big impact. We’re somewhat limited, due to our budget. The state allows us to spend $100,000 on housing reconstruction, which entails the tear-down of a building that’s just not worth it to try and repair and replace it with a brand-new home,” Stevenson told the court.
“We can’t do a whole lot of site-built one-offs for $100,000, according to the state standards, but what we can do is manufactured housing, and we’ve done dozens of them,” Stevenson added.
He said referred again to the photos and asked the court to note there were also some wheelchair ramps and porches on some of the homes, saying he was able to leverage and combine the self-help program with another state program for elderly, mobility-impaired and disabled homeowners.
“So we combine those two sources of funding to provide accessible, brand-new living quarters for folks,” he said.
Stevenson said the second contract he is overseeing is about 30 percent expended.
“We’ve done three out of four housing reconstructions on that one, and I wanted to show you the singular, brand-new stick-and-brick home that we’re doing. It’s in Cienegas Terrace, and we’ve got a great contractor doing it. We took a shack, we demolished it, and we had to do quite a bit of sitework. We had to elevate the foundation and make sure it was drained. There was quite a bit of grading work involved, and all of this for $30,000, which is not a heck of a lot of money,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson said he is hoping to leverage additional state program funds to add a second bathroom to the home that would be fully accessible to a disabled family member who lives in the house.
Stevenson invited the commissioners to go by and see the structure.
“We also poured concrete in 110-degree weather, so we had to keep wetting it every day for days, and there was not a crack in it. I’m just amazed,” he said.
“The family’s pretty overwhelmed. In fact, this family, we’ve been trying to help for about four or five years, and at first, the state rules were you had to get a half loan, and it wasn’t that they had bad credit, it was that they had no credit, and it was just a difficult, long, drawn-out process. Banks turned them down. USDA possibly lending them the money, but putting in criteria that they had a hard time complying with. We finally got to the point where the state upped the minimum amount for the grant, and now we can build them a brand-new house,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson also addressed work that had been done in Comstock.
“As a commitment to Commissioner Nettleton, I’ve said in the past I really wanted to try and push Comstock, and we finally, finally made some headway. I wish I could take complete credit for it, but in all honesty, the only thing we did was hire a gal who grew up in Comstock. Comstock was just a tough nut to crack. I just couldn’t get people to trust us. They thought the government would take their house or whatever, and they just wouldn’t apply,” Stevenson said.
He said there were other issues in Comstock as well, such as the need for replacing septic tanks, but said he and Esser, along with the ARPA septic program, dealt with those issues.
“You can see a list of seven addresses here that we need septic tank systems for and hopefully we can get that rolling and then follow up with the housing rehab,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson also showed the court a map of the county depicting the locations where the self-help center and the ARPA housing program have assisted residents.
“We wanted to show the spread across the county, to show that we weren’t just focusing in any one area,” Stevenson said.
The court took no action following the presentation.
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