Name: Annise Parker
Title: Mayor, City of Houston
Why is it important for Houstonians to become homeowners?
Homeownership stabilizes communities by causing a ripple effect through the community back into the housing market and the economy. There is nothing wrong with living in a home as a tenant but if you own that home you have a stake in that community. Over the course of our history in this country, homeownership has been a method of asset accumulation for families and it’s something that can be passed on from one generation to another.
How is the city of Houston coping with the challenge of ensuring that its citizens have access to affordable housing?
It’s always a challenge to make sure that there’s a range of housing options, so one of the great things about the programs that we are starting to put in place is that it helps to link the potential buyers with available property. We are showing people that these are the houses that are available for you in this price range and the buyer will be able to see them online or they will be able to visit them.
Can you go into detail about any new partnerships the city of Houston is working on in terms of housing?
We are currently launching an expenditure of another round of Ike money from the disaster recovery funds. It’s been several years since Ike but we still have money available through the federal government. The first crunch of money was allocated to multi-family homes; this crunch is going to go to single family homes. Instead of going into the neighborhoods evaluating each home and dispensing the monies to every head of household like we did the first go round, we are targeting certain neighborhoods so that we can have a more transformative effect instead of just being transactional. If we can concentrate our resources in a smaller area it has more of a neighboring impact so we are in the process of targeting the neighborhoods where we are going to put this money and those who have suffered from Hurricane Ike damage and have qualified can move into the neighborhoods that we are targeting.
For more information, please visit www.anniseparker.com.
