By David Taylor / Managing Editor
Then-Senator John F. Kennedy during a campaign speech on national housing in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 1, 1946, said “Let us talk less about conferences, programs, theories, and panel discussions. Homes are not made of talk. They are made with blueprints, hammers, and nails. Hot air may heat them, but it doesn’t get them built.”
The quote was the final words by Harris County Pct. 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia at the Housing Forum hosted by the East Aldine Management District last Friday.
“This is really the first step,” said a pleased Carlos Silva, chairman of the board for EAMD.
“This was something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time, is to get all the people in the same room together, get the public sector. Obviously, you saw the county folks, the Harris County Flood Control District folks, but also some of the private sector, some of these home builders, also the banks, so that we can understand that all of us here in this community have a role to play in trying to address this issue,” he said.
Garcia called the housing shortage a crisis and the affordability only getting worse.
“The question now,” he said, “is how do we move forward?”
Garcia answered his own question by suggesting the district take a strategic look at the land use within their boundaries and see if there are any available parcels of land.
“There are some lots, parcels we’re looking into. We don’t want to be the developer, we want to acquire lots so that we can be in a position to partner with a developer to get some single-family homes built instead of just leaving the free market to do its thing,” he said.
Silva was concerned that they might not build homes but maybe an industrial park, likening it to the wild, wild, west with no zoning in the county.
“We already have a robust industrial sector in East Aldine and we appreciate that. We rely on that for sales tax dollars, but frankly, we need more home inventory,” the chairman said.
The district has a lot to offer with fast access to Beltway 8, Bush Intercontinental airport, and Houston’s most tempting amenities.
“Through these forums, it allows us to rekindle that connection and being able to, not just us as a district, we kind of know who’s out there, but we want those partners to know of each other, to know what they can do,” he explained.
Garcia also spoke about the large role banks play when it comes to mortgages.
Commissioner Garcia talked about, the banks play a crucial role in this, when it comes to mortgages hoping they would show favor towards hard-working families who have shown consistency and have full-time jobs.
The other component, he said, was to bring education and awareness to the prospective homebuyers.
“There’s not just a lot of need here, but a lot of opportunity,” Silva said.
“We’re honored and pleased that from a management district perspective, we can be the convener of these things. We can be the place where people can come together. We can listen, and we can understand what the challenges are, and create some synergy amongst ourselves,” he said.
He also announced that the board had commissioned a realty company to conduct a land inventory and label them either zoned, commercial, or residential. He also said that they would take that information and make decisions on whether to buy it as a districct, then provide incentives for a developer to be able to buy the land for an affordable price so that the base rate starts low and then they can build their houses.
“It’s like Commissioner Garcia says, the dirt oftentimes is the biggest challenge (and expense),” he repeated.
He reemphasized that they’re not interested in being a developer.
“Our business is to provide a better quality of life for our residents and part of that is having better homes that they can move into,” he said.
The ’hot air’ was important to Silva.
“It is important to be able to share and to listen to each other and then the next steps are seeing what we can do tangibly,” he said.
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