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City Of Houston Responds To GLO Claims On Harvey Housing Funding

The City of Houston has sent an official response to the Texas General Land Office’s (GLO) July 1 letter regarding the City’s progress on providing relief and recovery to residents using Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief (CDBG-DR) federal funds.

As the response notes, the City’s Housing & Community Development Department invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into administering these programs for the betterment of our entire community, including those affected by Harvey facing social and economic disadvantages, despite facing difficult economic and societal challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite GLO’s continuous efforts to hinder our success, since January 2019, when the parties signed the original GLO Contract (No. 19-14-147-001- B489), the City has accomplished numerous goals.

“Given GLO’s unfair treatment of the City and Houstonians during the Competition and over the life of the Contract, as evidenced by GLO’s most recent attempts to redirect funds away from the City, the City has grave concerns that GLO will continue to make the administration of the CDBG-DR 2017 grant allocation prohibitively burdensome because of duplicative, inefficient, inaccurate, and expensive processes and requirements,” noted Keith Bynam, HCD Director, in the letter.

Source: houstontx