- Harris County Commissioners Court Okays $20M To Buy Out Some 200 Homes Flooded During Harvey [Houston Public Media]
- Harris County To Sue Arkema Over Crosby Chemical Plant Explosions [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Housing Authority Starts Offering Refunds to 130 Tenants in Public Housing Units Affected By Harvey [Houston Chronicle]
- Harris County Property Values Will Be Based on Post-Harvey Appraisals [Houston Public Media]
- What Spaghetti Warehouse Looks Like Post-Harvey [Houston Chronicle]
- Will the Katy Prairie Berm Be Enough To Save Houston Homes from Flooding? [Houston Public Media]
- Second-Floor Living the New Normal During Harvey Recovery [abc13]
- Kingwood Woman Died from from Flesh-Eating Bacteria After Infection in Flooded Home [Houston Chronicle]
- German Grocery Store Chain Lidl Looking To Open at Least 10 More Texas Locations [HBJ]
- Tex-Mex Institution Molina’s Cantina Closing Wash Ave Location for Good This Saturday [Houston Press]
- Juice Shop JuiceLand Opens Second Location in Houston with Montrose Spot [abc13]
- 3 Houston ISD Elementary Schools On Tap To Get Playground Overhauls [Houston Chronicle]
- The Results of Metro’s Financial Condition and Capacity Audit [Office of Inspector General]
- Crews Begin Demolishing Portion of Bissonnet Near Buffalo Speedway for Reconstruction [abc13]
- Largest Bounce House in the World Setting Up at the Houston Sports Park Halloween Weekend [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of home in West University: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
That fascia is OUT OF CONTROL!
The mold lawyers are going to be carpooling into Houston in about a year. If I were a contractor I wouldn’t touch any flooded house.
The $20M approved for county buyouts of 200 homes seems ridiculously low. An average of $100k per home would not cover much of anything, except maybe some of the worst of the worst in east Houston.
mh005: Lots of areas of Huston have $20/sf land or less. Not just ghettos. And if you have an average 5k SF lot, with a home that’s flooded and is being bought to be demo’d (I assume that’s why the city would buy), then paying an avg of $20/sf seems reasonable.
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Also I don’t think the city is buying homes in River Oaks with that money.
J – Agreed. I was surprised by how many folks on Facebook were talking about mucking out on Friday and contractors starting on Monday. Most with no plan to run dehumidifiers/commercial blowers, just box fans and clorox.
What is the story behind the huge boom in the 70s/80s in warehouse-themed spaghetti restaurants? Pretty much every town has or had one:
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The Spaghetti Warehouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Warehouse
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The Old Spaghetti Works: http://spagworks.com
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The Old Spaghetti Factory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Spaghetti_Factory
imagine if we were spending $20MILLION(!!!!) on proactive measures, such as LID…
That list of spaghetti restaurants suddenly flashed me back to the Great Caruso, which met a fiery end about 10 years ago: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Theater-fans-lament-fiery-close-to-Great-Caruso-1850472.php
@mh005 particularly if they’re buying homes that had insurance $100k per house would go a lot farther than you think
Assume that a 100k buyout would not go to anyone who had flood insurance. But I suspect no one has insurance in the buyout area (wherever it is); too expensive.
The ‘home’ in the photo is a whole new level of minimalist FUGLY.
Seems like this home needs a fire alarm to blare whenever the garage door opens.
RE: Flood Insurance,
Not to harp on this, but every homeowner should have it.
A flood can be created inadvertently by a debris pile that breaks loose somewhere is the storm water run-off area. Your house doesn’t have to be next to a bayou or sit at a particularly low elevation.
This is what happened to some homes in my neighborhood during T.S.Allison.
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That said, I really wonder how much longer this low-cost federal ins. program can stay around. It’s a loss leader.
“Harris County Property Values Will Be Based on Post-Harvey Appraisals” so HCAD is going to follow the law and base 2018 Market Values (and the Appraised value on which property taxes are calculated against) on the value of properties on Jan 1, 2018. That’s good.