REGULAR APARTMENT INSPECTIONS Apartment buildings in Houston with more than 2 units would need to submit to regular city inspections to ensure they meet minimum habitability standards — under a bill expected to get final approval today from the Texas House: “Under [State Rep. Dwayne] Bohac’s bill [HB 1819], the city would get broad authority to set up its own inspections regime. One of the mayor’s closest policy aides, Andy Icken, is already working with city lawyers to draft an ordinance for City Council consideration this year. ‘Having a clear, established state law and city ordinance would clearly communicate to all the stakeholders what our expectations are,’ said Icken, a deputy director with the city’s Public Works and Engineering Department. The bill, which only applies to Houston, requires the city to maintain standards for sturdy and sealed walls, floors, windows and ceilings. It also requires complexes to maintain such basics as hot water, working toilets and heating systems. There’s also a provision requiring each unit and building in a complex to have lighted signs so that emergency personnel can locate them at night. Owners who don’t comply would face civil and criminal penalties.” [Houston Chronicle; more details (PDF)]
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Tag: Hazards
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DEPOSIT NO RETURN “Security deposits are dangerous things in Texas and they should only be provided along with the first month’s rent when you pick up the keys. Otherwise you may be spending a long time in our court system and even then may not get it back. Of course in this case you would have to sue to get the rent and the deposit back and even then you might not. It would depend on whether the landlord’s attorney convinced the court that you and the ‘other tenants’ had agreed to live in a commune. If you thnk that is impossible you obviously have not ‘enjoyed the pleasure’ of our court system in Texas. He who has the most convincing attorney wins. And the sleaziest landlords usually have the sleaziest attorneys who are in the courtrooms every day and so they have some ‘standing’ that you don’t. Not to mention that they, or their law firm PAC, have usually written a nice check or two to the judge’s campaign fund. Texas has always been a ‘buyer beware’ state. As well as a ‘renter beware’ state.” [Matt, commenting on Serial Renter Meets His Match]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SULTRY, SCENTED HOUSTON SUMMER SCENE “Love the big cushy sofa in the Armature Works backyard. Imagine reclining there on a sultry Houston summer evening, cold beer in hand, brownfield perfume transporting the senses, viewing the sunset while the humid dusk lights the multicolored drums in a scene worthy of a Thiebaud.” [Miz Brooke Smith, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Broken Armature; photos]
CHINESE DRYWALL AND THE SMELL TEST The first government report on Chinese drywall is out . . . sort of: “On Monday, Florida’s health department said preliminary tests show there’s no ‘specific’ health hazard associated with the sulfur-based gases coming from the drywall, but the agency is conducting additional tests. ‘It’s not that we are saying it’s safe,’ Florida toxicologist David Krause told reporters on a conference call on Monday. ‘We are moving forward on a much more detailed in-depth’ study. The test results released by the state health department on Monday did make one, definitive conclusion: Chinese-made drywall contained strontium sulfide, a material that’s known to have the odor of hydrogen sulfide in moist air. The U.S-made drywall did not contain this material. The most common evidence of Chinese drywall problems is the corrosion of air conditional equipment, which is turning black and failing repeatedly. Homeowners have also complained about respiratory problems they believe are connected to the drywall.” [Developments]
These bright letters, dated this past Friday, are now posted throughout the Wilshire Village Apartments. They’re a friendly notice from the city Building Official, informing the remaining residents of the 17-building maintenance-deprived apartment complex at Alabama and Dunlavy that their residences “pose a serious and immediate hazard to the occupants” — and yanking all Certificates of Occupancy.
Oh . . . but all is not lost! The owner can appeal:
The Owner of the Property is entitled to request a hearing by delivering a written request to the Building Official at 3300 Main, Houston Texas 77002. The Building Official or his designee shall hold a hearing within three business days after receiving such request, unless the owner requests an extension of time.
Given the apparent owner’s evident interest in scrapping the place, that’s not likely. Any objections from anybody else?
Sure is nice for us Houston didn’t get caught up in that big price run-up housing markets in the rest of the country fell for! That’s why in Houston real estate is in much better shape than it is everywhere else, right?
Not according to a study released yesterday by First American CoreLogic. The research firm estimates that 18.3 percent of all mortgaged properties in the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown region are in a “negative equity position,” and another 6.7 percent are within just 5 percentage points of being there. “Negative equity,” AKA “I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up,” means a mortgage holder owes more than the underlying property is worth.
In other words, 1 in every 4 Houston-area mortgages is already in deep doo-doo.
But hey, all it’ll take to recover is for prices to rise a little! And the rest of the country is doing much worse, right?
The Katy real-estate rush spreads to the insect world:
Neighbors say bees are nothing new to the Settlers Village subdivision.
One homeowner just down the block had a similar infestation about a year ago and had to remove the siding from his home to get the hive out, said Rowhan Cummings . . .
“They’re traveling,†Cummings says. “Once they got rid of those, they came back here.â€
The 12-year-old subdivision is surrounded by open fields, and Cummings says the bees simply appear when the flowers bloom, then look for a place to settle down.
“Those bees were probably here before we were,†he says.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WILSHIRE VILLAGE TOWN MEETING “Residents met with an official of the City of Houston Police Department last night at a “town meeting†regarding the fate of Wilshire Village. They were informed that in the next 2 days the city will post orange notices for residents to vacate. They will follow up no later than the first week in March to remove personal items and toss them “on the side of the road, off the propertyâ€. Matt Dillick also reportedly has a request to a district judge to have anyone still on the property next week “removed†as well. Considering the age of those who were told they didn’t have to leave by Jay Cohen and now have 4 days to get out, I hope the authorities won’t feel the need to pull a Robbie Tolan on any of them.” [Hellsing, commenting on Comment of the Day: Wilshire Village Plan]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WILSHIRE VILLAGE PLAN “The notices from the fire marshall are actually Fire Hazard warning stickers not condemned notices. Yes, they are very different according to the Fire Marshall. The condeming of the property will take a little more time but I am sure the plan is in motion. According to the fire marshall when he was at the property on thursday we will still have till the end of the month to get out. After that it’s going to get messy for the people who decide to stay.” [Dawn, commenting on Wilshire Village Apartments: Okay To Stay?]
City officials have declared the Wilshire Village Apartments on Dunlavy and West Alabama a fire hazard, reportedly slapping these notices on all the buildings. Residents, here’s that number to call: (713) 865-7100. A little more here.
- Wilshire Village Apartments: Condemned? [Swamplot]
- Wilshire Village coverage [Swamplot]
SOOT’S US Some public-health and environmental groups are complaining that Houston isn’t getting enough respect for the particularly fine quality of the air here, and are asking the EPA to give this city the recognition it deserves: “Houston’s concentrations of soot — a piercing mix of airborne matter from diesel exhaust, industrial flares and road grit, among other sources — exceeded the EPA’s yearly standards from 2005 to 2007, according to the most recent federal data available. . . . ‘Residents of Houston are breathing unhealthy levels of soot pollution,’ [the NRDC’s John] Walke said in an interview this week. . . . Soot has been a special concern near the Houston Ship Channel, which is home to heavy industry and a busy port. It’s the only place in Texas where the particulate-matter levels exceed the annual standard.” [Houston Chronicle]
Ready to see some fun pix from around town? Here’s the guardhouse for the loading dock at the Igloo plant in Katy, as captured a while back by blogger Donna B.
A few more:
On the City of Pearland website, the fire marshal has posted a photo presentation highlighting a few of the more than 2,800 safety violations found this past weekend at Cole’s Antique Village & Flea Market. And on the Cole’s Antique Village website, the owners have put up an MP3 recording of Elvis Presley singing “My Way,” which plays automatically for visitors.
Cole’s had more than 900 permanent vendors on its extensive campus at 1014 N. Main St., at the southwest corner of Beltway 8 and Telephone Road. But the flea market’s likely regrets are clearly not too few to mention: The fire marshal’s photos show personal padlocks on emergency access gates, mounds of stacked tires and mattresses, insufficient and improperly marked exits, bypassed circuit breakers, Gordian tangles of extension cords, propane tanks stored indoors next to generators, and a broad range of other problems.
State agencies have finally caught up with the chemical soup left to seep into the soil for two decades at a 3.5-acre abandoned tank farm in south Pearland, poisoning the wells of nearby residents with high levels of lead and other contaminants. Now the Camtraco Enterprises site, at 18823 Amoco Dr. — along a rail line running west of Highway 35 — is poised to become the latest addition to Texas’s Superfund registry.
Camtraco, which operated the fuel storage, blending, and distillation facility under a series of assumed names (Beaumont Chemicals, Camtraco Chemical Corp., Glycols Inc., Mondobello Chemical Services, Picos Chemical Plant, Okemah Hydrocarbons, and Southeastern Oil Company), halted work at the site in 1992. A sampling of the chemical bouquet discovered both on- and off-site from recent TCEQ efforts: arsenic, barium, chromium, lead, mercury, bis(2-ethylhexyl)adipate, bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, diethyl phthalate, di-n-butyl phthalate, methylene chloride, 1,4 dicholorobenzene, toluene, and tricholoroethene (TCE).
- Pearland Gets The State’s Newest Superfund Site! Take That, Pasadena! [Hair Balls]
- Camtraco Enterprises [TCEQ]
- Hazard Ranking System Documentation Record (PDF) [TCEQ]
Map showing the Camtraco Enterprises site’s former features: TCEQ
Thelma’s Bar B Que — on the corner of Live Oak and Lamar in . . . oh, all right: EaDo — is closed, after the restaurant was singed by a fire last Friday. Robb Walsh from Eating . . . Our Words reports from the scene:
The front of the business appeared as ramshackle as always, but a sign on the door announced the bad news. The rear of the building where the barbecue pit used to be was badly damaged as was the kitchen area. The old-fashioned cinderblock barbecue pit used at Thelma’s had a small metal door on the outside where the wood was loaded and a grate with a steel door inside the building where the meats were cooked. The fire appears to have originated in the fire box or chimney as that part of the building has been torn away.
- Thelma’s Closed By Fire [Eating Our Words, via Cook’s Tour]
Photo: Flickr user Jennifer Lynn
