HOUSTON — More than seven months after Hurricane Harvey damaged more than 300,000 housing units, Houston City Council on Wednesday narrowly passed tougher rules for building new homes inside floodplains.
Mayor Sylvester Turner called the vote a “defining moment” for the city, adding 84 percent of the homes that flooded during Harvey would have been spared had they been built under these tougher standards.
The 9-7 vote followed more than three hours of often heated debate after weeks of lobbying from developers.
Both sides agree something needs to change after Harvey’s destruction. However, opponents say council could have spent a few more weeks fine-tuning this bill without risking anyone’s safety.
Under current rules, Houston only regulates new homes built in the 100-year floodplain, or the area that is supposed to have a one percent chance of flooding in a given year.
Starting Sept. 1, new structures or additions of 33 percent or greater will have to be built two feet above the flood level in the 500-year floodplain, or the area that’s supposed to have a 0.2-percent chance of flooding each year. Houston suffered a “500-year flood” each year in 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Some councilmembers suggested waiting until new flood maps are drawn, while others wanted more data and discussion.
“I believe it’s hasty. I believe it’s untimely. I believe it’s being done without bringing the biggest partner to the city, which is FEMA,” said councilmember Michael Kubosh, At-Large Position 3. “We need to do something. I just don’t want to do the wrong thing. I don’t want to regulate people out of their homes.”
Mayor Turner compared this battle to the pension fight and said the longer the city waits to act, the worse off Houstonians will be.
“We’re not going to put profit over people, and we’re not going to be strangled, and we’re not going to say, ‘no’,” Turner said. “What we did today was, I think, a very balanced approach that was constructive.”
Mayor Turner called the ordinance a first step and acknowledges that a large number of homes outside of the floodplains also flooded during Harvey.
An amendment by councilmember Jack Christie that would have instead put the new building elevation at 2 feet above the 100-year level and exempted some homes that didn’t previously flood was voted down. There were concerns it could have kept flood insurance from being issued in Houston.
Ed Wolff of the Houston Association of Realtors says his group supported Christie’s amendment and said the final ordinance as passed will “impact more people negatively than it will positively.”
Wolff says some homeowners will have to elevate their house 5 to 7 feet above ground level instead of 2 to 3 feet and maintains “there is no proven value to elevating your house that high.
“The data that the mayor used was flawed at best,” said Wolff, who says the data was based on how much debris was picked up and did not account for how much water the homes took on.