HOUSTON - One of Houston’s worst examples of blight may finally have a date with a wrecking ball.
The Crestmont West apartment complex has sat vacant since shortly after Hurricane Ike, with many of the buildings on the site wide open to vagrants and drug users.
Ceilings have collapsed, debris has gathered in what once were parking lots and weeds have grown around the abandoned property.
Next door to Crestmont West sits Crestmont Village, another blighted apartment complex shut down last year after KHOU 11 News exposed the squalid conditions in which its low income residents lived.
Together, the two properties constitute a block of blight on Houston’s southeast side.
Now a private developer, with the help of federal grant money administered by the City of Houston, plans to build a new low-income housing complex on the property.
Houston’s city council has appropriated $5 million for the project.
“We’re purchasing the property at market value and then taking (the current owner) out, partnering with another outfit to come in and put up some additional units,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Some council members expressed reservations about taxpayer funds buying a property from a slumlord, but the mayor said it was the best alternative.
"Even if you exercise eminent domain, for example, you got to pay fair market value,” Turner said. “Either way you go, you’re going to pay it. And then, if you do it that way, let’s say you go through the proceedings, it could be lengthy. It could be drawn out months, if not years.
“We’re not paying him any, any more than he should be entitled to,” Turner said. “So there’s no windfall at all here. But it gets him out of the picture and it provides housing for a community that desperately needs housing.”
Neighborhood activists who’ve decried the deplorable state of the property for years said they were glad to hear the place might finally be torn down.
“There are still people squatting in those units,” said Sandra Hines, a civic activist who lives near the complex. “And I’m sure it’s people who probably don’t have a place to go. I’m sure it’s people who are doing drugs. Those apartments have never been secured.”
The apartments should be demolished sometime this fall, said people involved in the deal; and the new complex should open in the summer of 2018.
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