Director Roger Arriaga responds to article in the Houston Chronicle, “Who’s cashing in big on Houston’s affordable housing system? Not the renters.” (Read original article here.)
“Regarding “Who’s cashing in big on Houston’s affordable housing system? Not the renters,” (March 27): Your recent story raises important concerns but lacks critical context. The early days of Public Facility Corporations (PFCs) saw missteps. That’s why housing advocates and lawmakers came together to pass House Bill 2071 in 2023. This legislation established stronger oversight, retroactive audits and new transparency requirements. The properties mentioned in the article were developed before this critical law took effect.
Developing affordable housing is inherently complex, necessitating the involvement of lawyers, accountants and consultants — common in specialized fields like public finance or tax law. But that doesn’t make them suspect Texas has limited dedicated funding for affordable housing development, relying on tax exemptions and local government, voter-approved bonds. These exemptions are among the few tools available to create safe, quality housing for families unable to afford market-rate rents. With the new guardrails of HB 2071 in place to ensure transparency and provide meaningful affordability, utilizing these funding sources is essential for developing high-quality housing for our workforce, veterans and seniors.
While oversight is vital, preserving Texas’s tools for addressing housing needs is equally crucial. Without these resources, we risk exacerbating the housing crisis in our rapidly growing, increasingly expensive state.
Roger Arriaga, executive director, Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers
Housing is an important enough necessity to rightly be defined as a human right. To view it as such by governments whose partial goal at the least is to foster and protect such rights renders the role of developers and private landlords unnecessary. In the case of an extremely important need such as housing, our system of capitalism, with its insatiable drive for private profit, does a terrible job of providing for the neediest. It may be a wonderful system for selling luxury goods or junk food but needs such as shelter, health care, education should never be left up to a system whose primary goal is profit.
In short, those needs should be within the purview of government and the funding to meet them should come from a 90% rate of taxation upon extremely wealthy individuals and corporations.
Regarding “Texas lawmakers are searching for more energy and water. Housing is one place to find it. | Opinion,” (April 7): I agree with this op-ed. More townhouses and apartments would be progress. It would help us both step back from planetary boundaries and meet the basic needs of all.
We will need to pinch pennies. Many say the “Trump Tariffs” will cause a recession. Big Banks are now predicting global warming of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), which will increase air conditioning bills.
The United Nations says 3 degrees would threaten our survival. Because Elon Musk worries humanity could go extinct, he wants us to go to Mars. Trump is playing along with Musk’s goal of a Mars mission in 2026 or 2028.
Last night, while looking for a fun little thriller to watch on Tubitv.com, I found “12th Hour.” This one-hour documentary on global warming has earned awards. In it, a science guy said many folks assume our economy is “too big to fail.”
If only. The solutions are very simple. Welcome the energy transition. Texas leads the nation in solar panel manufacturing. That’s progress. More solar and wind on our grid would reduce our electric bills and ease global warming. But in the Legislature, officials seem to be trying their darnedest to slow down the energy transition. I used Sierra Club’s list of energy bills they support when I called my Texas legislators. Please call yours.”