The county has bought out 11 homes so far in 2023, with a goal to purchase 50 by the end of the year, Montgomery County Recovery Manager Morgan Lumbley said in an interview.
Of the 73 home buyouts, 10 houses were bought out in the Conroe-area neighborhood of River Plantation, which saw 12-14 feet of water during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, Community Impact previously reported.
The county’s home buyout program relies on two funding sources—the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In May, $13.64 million in funds from FEMA’s 2021 Flood Mitigation Assistance program is set to be received, with buyouts anticipated to begin in November, Lumbley said. Twenty-eight eligible homes were included in the initial application for the program.
Since 2015, Montgomery County has sustained a number of flooding events, including Harvey, and the Tax Day and Memorial Day floods in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The Conroe area, in places such as Ladera Creek and Trinity Park, also experienced flooding following Tropical Depression Imelda in 2019, Community Impact previously reported.
“I wish more people would take advantage of this program,” Montgomery County Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley said. “For so many years, we’ve been watching people get flooded and flooded and flooded, and we just go back and let them rebuild and rebuild. The time’s come that we’ve got to get away from that program. We’ve got to get these people out there somewhere else where we don’t have to continually rebuild stuff that we know is not going to last.”
Breaking down the buyout program
When it comes to home buyouts, Montgomery County has received around $66 million across four FEMA programs and two programs through HUD’s Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery.
“They are vastly different from each other,” Lumbley said.
For FEMA’s programs, eligible applicants are identified before the county applies for the funding while HUD’s program works in the opposite way, with eligible applicants being identified after the county receives the funding, Lumbley said. The Texas Water Development Board provides oversight for FEMA’s grants while the Texas General Land Office oversees HUD’s grants.
Through the FEMA and HUD programs, Montgomery County has been awarded $44.96 million and $21.08 million, respectively.
“Typically, once the funds are awarded, the funds are ‘earmarked’ on the county side,” Lumbley said in an April 5 email. “Funds are spent on the front end, and throughout the program the county seeks reimbursements from the state.”
There is no structure cap for buying out homes through the FEMA program, and homes that have been bought have ranged from $60,000-$750,000 in price, Lumbley said.
“A lot of the low dollar ones came from the 2016 program because the majority of those that were named as part of the application were damaged in Harvey and not rebuilt,” she said. “So the value was current market value, so it was valued in a damaged state. That’s why they’re so low.”
For HUD grants from the 2015-16 floods and Hurricane Harvey, the structure cap is $175,000 and $200,000, respectively. But homeowners eligible for buyouts through the program can receive up to a $100,000 relocation incentive if it was their primary home and the homeowners are considered low-to-moderate income, Lumbley said. The new home must be located within Montgomery County and outside a flood plain.
“The majority of our focus thus far has been in Patton Village [between New Caney and Splendora],” Lumbley said. “That area is socioeconomically disadvantaged, so it’s definitely lower dollar values of homes. And we created incentives and the relocation incentives, because we had an idea of the values of the homes going into this. There’s no way in this day and age that someone’s going to be able to relocate for that amount of money.”
Buyout delay factors
With around three years elapsing between the funding application due dates and final awarding of funds for the FEMA programs, other factors can delay the buyout process. Lumbley said obtaining a clear title on the home has been the biggest factor in delaying a buyout.
“That is ultimately the big one because if we can’t have a clear title, we cannot purchase the home,” she said. “So that can actually stop [the buyout] in its tracks.”
According to Brittany Eck, director of communications for the Texas General Land Office, the federal requirements behind the FEMA and HUD programs create many stalemate situations as the state and local governments work to meet them.
“Montgomery County is actually one of the most proficient grantees utilizing buyout funds,” Eck said. “It is a difficult undertaking, and many counties and cities simply do not wish to administer the program due to the federal process requirements.”
Lumbley said sometimes participants can withdraw from the program, which is usually done when they receive the offer letter. Under the HUD grant, delays can also occur if a participant needs to relocate.
“Maybe it’s not [the amount] they were expecting or they thought they could get more, so that can stop it,” Lumbley said. “We work with them, and we provide them time to try and get an alternate housing plan prior to us purchasing [the home]. So that might delay it a little bit.”
Lumbley also said all the paperwork associated with a HUD buyout must go through the General Land Office for approval before the county can issue an offer letter.
“The grantee and GLO work together to ensure offers and associated costs are allowable by HUD, determine relocation needs, and perform the real estate transactions,” Eck said. “These requirements are all federal, and the GLO cannot waive them.”
Lumbley said Montgomery County bought out its first property on March 27, 2020.
“We purchased them all throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022,” Lumbley said. “[The COVID-19 pandemic] didn’t slow me down.”
Looking ahead
With 11 buyouts completed so far in 2023, Lumbley said her goal is to reach 50 buyouts by the end of this year. The county also is anticipating receiving the 2021 Flood Mitigation Assistance award in May, for which buyouts are expected to start taking place in November.
Montgomery County is also in the process of closing out its 2016 FMA program, which had $9.07 million in funding and allowed the county to buy out 27 homes, Lumbley said.
The funding closeout process includes submitting missed paperwork, such as the appraisal, title and any survey information to the state and then initiating the final mitigation through FEMA so the property can be removed from its repetitive loss list, Lumbley said.
For the 2016 FMA program, the remaining funds left unspent—around $2.97 million—will stop being earmarked for Montgomery County. Lumbley said the goal is always to spend the entire amount funded.
“I think where some of the complication comes in is the waiting time between when we submit the application—and that homeowner is engaged and involved, and it’s something that they want—versus when we actually get the funding,” she said.
Barring another flooding event, Lumbley said she expects the 2021 FMA—which had 28 homes submitted as part of the initial application—to be the last buyout initiative for Montgomery County.
“After we’ve received that allocation, and we purchase the homes, unless there’s a specific need to do additional buyouts, I think that might be it,” Lumbley said. “The goal is to have all buyouts completed by 2025.”
At the same time, FEMA is in the process of revising the flood plain maps for the Greater Houston area, which may mean new areas of the region could fall into a flood plain. According to Montgomery County Floodplain Administrator John McKinney, the Texas Water Development Board is in the process of reviewing the Spring Creek area for vulnerabilities and solutions to prevent major flooding impacts in the future.
As hurricane season approaches June 1, Riley said he believes Montgomery County homeowners can help protect themselves and their homes from flooding by checking their property’s drainage.
“It’s as simple as going out in your front ditch and seeing if there’s anything that’s blocking your culvert, see if anything is in your backyard that’s maybe blocking drains behind your house, beside your house,” Riley said. “If everybody would do that, that’s pretty simple to do. That could save a lot of potential flooding right there.”
