Houston Strategies has an excellent post post summarizing Houston’s Third and Fourth Wards making the cover of Governing magazine. Or more specifically, the controversy surrounding the secretive actions of one TIRZ, and its implications for development. Its a far more in-depth treatment than I was able to give the subject two years ago.

Essentially, an anti-development activist (edit: State Rep. Garnet Coleman) has taken control of the Midtown TIRZ, and is using it –ostensibly to prevent development. However, because it refuses to list what it owns, no one outside the board is really sure exactly what is being done, or how well it is doing it.

From his fifth-floor office, Garnet Coleman can almost see the gleaming new urban lofts lapping at the edge of Houston’s Third Ward. Artists began moving into the poor, largely African-American neighborhood about a decade ago, converting historic but run-down shotgun shacks into cutting-edge art spaces. Now, in the next step of an increasingly familiar cycle, blocks of new townhouses are rising over the freeway, front yards turned toward the downtown skyline just a few miles away. Yuppies, empty nesters, childless couples — mainly white and Hispanic people with enough money to drop $250,000 — are starting to move in. And Coleman, an intense, chain-smoking power broker who represents the neighborhood in the Texas legislature, isn’t happy about it. “You can tell a neighborhood’s turning,� he says with dismay, “when you see them out at night walking their dogs.�

Coleman is determined to stop gentrification in Houston’s Third Ward before it gets out of hand. “I understand how this happens,� he says. “I understand how to stop it.� He’s also uniquely situated to do something about it. Coleman is an influential player in Houston’s local politics, owing partly to his House seat and partly to his family lineage. Coleman’s father, whose name adorns the office building he works in, was a prominent black physician, businessman, philanthropist and Houston civic leader.

Coleman is taking an unconventional and controversial approach to keeping the Third Ward affordable for longtime residents. Quietly, the board of a tax increment financing district that he partially controls has been buying up land in the Third Ward. Not only does Coleman want to keep the land away from developers. He also wants to saddle the property with restrictive deeds and covenants that would ensure that it could be used only for rental housing in perpetuity. “Quite frankly, this is personal,� Coleman says with grim determination. “We can give tax abatements out the wazoo for lofts and condominiums. The question is what are our values and whether or not we are willing to spend the same money on people who need a nice, affordable, clean place to live.�
(emphasis added)

I have to admit, I find it darkly humorous that affordable means it’s unsafe to walk your dog at night. But essentially, Coleman’s at least partially right. The developers will leave us saddled with hordes of cookie-cutter townhomes and loft units. (You don’t want to know how much trouble we have with their corner cutting in our department. Trust me.) Forget affording anything; those new warehouse lofts you can see from the elevated Hwy. 59 behind the convention center? They start around $300k.

It feels to me that the article is somewhat anti-Coleman.

The board of the Midtown TIRZ is divided between Coleman loyalists and appointees of Mayor White. The board has chosen to use almost all of its revenues — $10 million in the past five years — to purchase and then “bank� land in the Third Ward. “If you look at Midtown, that was all publicly induced — ain’t none of it affordable,� says Coleman. “Why can’t we do the same thing for people who need an affordable place to live?�

It’s a decidedly unorthodox arrangement, one whose very existence seems to be something of a secret. Coleman declines to say how much land the Midtown TIRZ has banked in the Third Ward.

Well, it’s a “secret” because our local rag is rarely worth the paper it’s printed on. I’ve noticed Matt Stiles asks questions, but the editors don’t seem to be interested in turning over any rocks. I have to agree that this is clearly not the intent of the TIRZ. But when you get down to it, what is a TIRZ but a state sponsored method to give selected individuals control over other people’s private property, without them being accountable in any way?

Think I’m kidding? Go back and read this early Houblog post. Add the Kelo decision to the claimed powers. Now turn Mr. Coleman loose with the power to take property to protect his vision.

Scary?

Now take the other 20 Houston TIRZ’s and turn their boards loose with this power to make profits for the local land owners, er, developers appointed to the boards. Oh excuse me. 21 TIRZ’s. Think you’re safe because you’re not in one? Too bad. They can expand themselves, at will, without any permission or oversight authority to deny them.

Remember that your property rights are something you have to fight for. And voting in the primaries is TODAY.

Get a move on.