HUD Conciliation Agreement An Important Step towards Protecting Homeowners’ Rights

On August 26, 2024, Harris County and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that they had entered into a Voluntary Compliance Agreement/Conciliation Agreement that has the potential to make mandatory buyout programs, designed to move families away from environmental risk, more fair for Harris County homeowners. You can read the full agreement here. 

Since 2022, Texas Appleseed has been conducting a study to understand the impacts of home buyout programs on families health and well-being in collaboration with Texas A&M University and Ronquillo Consulting Group. We’ve met with families who were not aware of their right to appeal the County’s offer on their home, families who felt discriminated against by program staff, and those who faced language barriers when trying to navigate the mandatory buyout program. This Agreement would not have resolved all of our participants’ problems with the program, but it provides solid groundwork for ensuring that participants in mandatory buyout programs have their rights upheld through the buyout process. The mandatory buyout program has disrupted the lives of hundreds of Harris County families, so programmatic changes like these are desperately needed. 

The Conciliation Agreement, a legal term for a contract to resolve a dispute, resolves a civil rights complaint filed with HUD by an unidentified Harris County resident whose property was selected for a mandatory buyout after Hurricane Harvey. The Complaint alleged that the way the County designed and operated its mandatory Post Disaster Relocation and Buyout Program discriminated against him based on his race and national origin in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Section 109 of the Housing and Community Development Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Because Harris County, HUD, and the Complainant agreed to a settlement, there was no finding about whether discrimination occurred.  

The Agreement outlines new requirements that Harris County must meet when implementing a HUD-funded mandatory buyout program; including, providing affected families with a notice of their rights, training staff so that they will comply with fair housing requirements, and enhancing reporting. 

Fair Notice
The County must now provide homeowners who are targeted for mandatory home buyouts with a notice of their rights — including their right to appeal the County’s buyout of their home,in English and Spanish. That notice will go out to all property owners currently going through the mandatory buyout process and to property owners targeted for future buyouts. HUD provides a copy of the notice in the Conciliation Agreement, however the notice could be improved. The current draft contains legalistic language, and only an English language copy is provided with the Agreement. 

Providing participants with fair notice from the start would have dramatically improved the experience of some residents. In our interviews, we spoke with some Spanish-speaking families who received the preliminary information about the program in English. This led to confusion, with some families only understanding part of the message — the County is kicking you out — without understanding that they would also be eligible for benefits through this program. These misunderstandings added fear to an already stressful process. 

Non-Discrimination and Equal Access to Benefits
The Agreement also requires that the County submit any future proposal to use HUD disaster recovery funds for a mandatory buyout program to HUD for review and approval. Part of this process is an Equity Buyout Initiative Protocol that lays out the steps the County will take to ensure that the proposed buyout program does not result in discrimination, including reviewing the design and proposed administration of the program and addressing “affirmative marketing,”a HUD term for promoting fair housing by reaching out to households who are the least likely to learn about available opportunities otherwise. Mandatory buyout plans will have to show how Black and Hispanic communities will “benefit equitably and commensurate with need”  from the program. This includes providing housing and rental supports that are compliant with the Uniform Relocation Act that enable families to move to lower flood-risk, well-resourced areas.. 

Staff Training
Harris County will provide Title VI and limited English proficiency training to all staff in the department administering mandatory buyouts, including subcontractors who interact with the public. This training would address a central complaint of our participants — that program staff were neither knowledgeable or respectful. As one participant put it, “I would also change some personnel who were there [working for Harris County] … because there is discrimination, racism, and arrogance.”

These measures are a start. As you’ll read in our home buyout report coming this fall, it’s not enough to fix a broken mandatory buyout program. To prevent harm to participating families, buyouts need to be voluntary and fairly compensated. The buyout process must be simple, transparent, just, and humane. Communities must be involved in the decision making process, including whether to relocate at all and the design of the program if they do. 

Community flood risk is not inherent to that community. Rather, it is shaped by policy decisions like racial residential segregation and infrastructure investments. Addressing our current flood risk map, where low-income neighborhoods, particularly Black and Hispanic communities, often face the greatest risks, will require proactively addressing past injustices to create inclusive flood safe communities. 

Relocation away from harm will continue to be an important strategy for reducing flood risk, as families move on their own or through buyout programs. This Conciliation Agreement provides a basic framework for upholding participant rights through that process, and jurisdictions can build on that framework to make buyout programs that are truly just and accomplish their goal of moving families out of harm’s way.