Rebecca Schuetz

4 weeks ago | houstonchronicle.com | Rebecca Schuetz |Yilun Cheng |Matt Zdun

The public agency says it accomplished this monumental task by exempting apartment complexes from property taxes in exchange for making some units affordable. In Houston, there are over a hundred of these deals, all created under a state program called Public Facility Corporations. The program allows apartment developers to receive 100% property tax breaks in exchange for marking some units as "affordable."But are these good deals, and for whom?

1 month ago | houstonchronicle.com | Rebecca Schuetz

The clock was ticking. On Sept. 17, Karen Ussin caught an Uber from her daughter's apartment in Jersey Villageto the Harris County Housing Authority's office east of downtown, nearly an hour's drive away. It was an expensive ride, but she had few options - like many housing authority clients, she didn't have a car of her own. As she traveled across Houston, she steeled herself for the difficult housing search and bureaucratic morassshe knew lay ahead.

Jan 23, 2025 | houstonchronicle.com | Abby Church |Rebecca Schuetz

Homes are inundated with water from the overflowing Buffalo Bayou north of Briar Forest from Hurricane Harvey. Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has penned a letter to federal law enforcement officials encouraging them to reject “unsubstantiated findings” submitted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that accuse the Texas General Land Office of mishandling Houston’s Harvey recovery dollars.

Jan 15, 2025 | houstonchronicle.com | Rebecca Schuetz |Abby Church

Overhead view of the floods from Buffalo Bayou on Memorial Drive and Allen Parkway, as heavy rains continued falling from Hurricane Harvey, Monday, Aug. 28, 2017, in Houston. Karen Warren/Staff photographerA complaint stemming from the Texas General Land Office’s allocation of Harvey disaster recovery funds, which originally awarded no money to Houston or Harris County from a $1 billion distribution, has been escalated to the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice.

Jan 7, 2025 | houstonchronicle.com | Rebecca Schuetz

Visitors pack the hallway and entrance to Harris County Southwest Courthouse Annex 19 as landlords, tenants and attorneys prepare to appear before Justice of the Peace James Lombardino. Kirk Sides/Staff photographerOn the coldest day Houston had experienced in nearly year, a whopping 759 eviction cases were scheduled to be heard Tuesday by one judge, causing hours of delays and frustration for residents forced to wait outside the courthouse.