Texas Tribune
How Texas prioritized children’s state health care 25 years ago
by Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune – 2024-04-02 05:00:00
SUMMARY: In 1999, Randy Fritz faced the challenge of launching Texas' new Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) within 10 months, amidst political pressure to deliver high enrollment numbers to potentially aid then-Governor George W. Bush's presidential campaign. Despite typical program rollouts taking years, Fritz and colleagues managed to enroll 428,000 children by September 2001, showcasing the efficiency of state action under certain goals. However, recent Medicaid and CHIP roll unwinding, instigated as pandemic-era protections ended, has been criticized for procedural issues resulting in many eligible Texans being erroneously dropped from coverage. The Texas Health and Human Services is working towards improvements, but the current climate starkly contrasts with the proactive enrollment efforts witnessed during CHIP's inception.
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An impossible task. That's what Randy Fritz was faced with in the summer of 1999.
As executive assistant to then-Texas Health Commissioner William “Reyn” Archer III, Fritz had 10 months to create from scratch a new statewide health insurance program for poor kids who did not qualify for Medicaid.
Why the rush? There was public pressure to get the program rolling after a recalcitrant Texas Legislature had been slow to adopt what leadership Republicans regarded as an entitlement.
But underlining the urgency was the fact that Gov. George W. Bush had recently announced his candidacy for president — and his allies on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature knew that a successful program would give him a boost if he made it through the primaries to become the Republican nominee, Fritz said.
At the time, the massive Texas Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, existed only on paper, the Legislature having just passed it weeks earlier as the state version of a 1997 federal program.
These kinds of programs can take years to create and build up, but Fritz and his counterpart at the agency, Texas Health and Human Services Commission, had to get it off the ground by spring 2000 and deliver gangbuster enrollment numbers in a few months, Fritz recalled.
In California, which at the time had a population of 33 million, it took two years to enroll 400,000 children. Fritz's directive from state budget leaders, who were also Bush allies, was to eventually enroll nearly half a million kids in the first 18 months.
Fritz figured the tight deadline was being employed as an effective way to make sure that “we went bananas with the enrollment” in time to get good enough numbers to use in the campaign, he recalled in an interview Monday with The Texas Tribune.
“We were told in no uncertain terms (by a powerful Democratic lawmaker who worked on Bush's campaign team) that our careers would suffer if we didn't deliver,” Fritz said. “He provided no context or explanation for that directive, but we didn't need that. We knew why he was putting the screws to us.”
Whatever the motivation, what followed was a powerful illustration of what a state can accomplish when the goal is to cover as many Texans as possible in as short a time as possible.
A quarter century later, the state has faced a different massive challenge. After going years during the pandemic without ending Medicaid and CHIP coverage for anyone, Texas Health and Human Services began the process last spring of rechecking the eligibility of anyone on the rolls. Some 2.1 million people were dropped at least temporarily as of late February. Only 700,000 were determined ineligible — the other more than 1.3 million who lost coverage because the state couldn't confirm their eligibility.
State officials said they worked hard to keep eligible people enrolled, and hired new staff to get the job done. But advocates for the poor and disabled say other states did more — and they found themselves wishing for a 1999-like effort from Texas again.
“It was a scenario where Democrats and Republicans and the governor, especially, said, ‘This is what needs to happen for children. We're going to get some bureaucrats to figure out how to actually operationalize it. And we're not going to worry about all the details. We just know that the job is getting as many kids enrolled for that program as possible because they need it. It's very important,' ” Fritz said.
What was at stake in 2000
From the advocates' point of view, success in 1999 also meant that Texas — which was and still is the state with the highest rate of uninsured kids — would finally be addressing an urgent need.
Good enrollment numbers would also give Bush a needed “compassionate conservative” counter to then-Vice President Al Gore, the Democrats' frontrunner for 2000, who had turned the wildly popular 1997 bipartisan federal children's health insurance legislation into a compelling campaign message.
Fritz said it was clear that if the state's health and human services workers screwed up the rollout, “we would be crucified” both by those with political plans riding on it, and perhaps by a public counting on them to get it right.
Pete Laney, a Panhandle Democrat who was state House speaker at the time — during which every statewide office holder was a Republican — said that while the program had its detractors, it generally had bipartisan support.
“It was a public relations star for some folks, it was good government for some folks, and it was, ‘It satisfies my constituents' for some folks,” Laney recalled.
Then-Health and Human Services Commissioner Don Gilbert and Archer, gave the state's health commissioner, Fritz and others carte blanche to decide things like how to structure the program, which providers to include and which contractors to hire for jobs like software design.
Public awareness campaigns were mobilized. Easy-to-follow, illustrated application forms were designed, and processes that helped applicants bypass long arduous in-person interviews were put in place. State workers and volunteers fanned out across the state to educate Texans about qualifying for coverage.
It worked.
The state's enrollment campaign began in May 2000. By the time Bush faced off against Gore in the Oct. 11, 2000 debate, they had enrolled 87,000 kids in the first five months — a fact Bush was able to boast about. (Bush said 110,000 but was later corrected in follow-up statements.)
By the time September 2001 came around a year later, the new Texas program had reached full enrollment with 428,000 kids.
That's an average of nearly 800 kids per day, a triumph for the politicians who needed a win — and a heady victory for the social advocates who had long been frustrated by the the state leadership's lack of energy behind addressing the uninsured crisis.
Had the program kept pace with the California timeline, which was typical of the rollouts in other states, it would have taken the state until 2004 to reach that level of enrollment.
“It was a wonderful time,” recalls Anne Dunkelberg, a retired health policy expert with Every Texan, a progressive think tank in Austin, who was involved in the initial enrollment push. “We had both a huge pent-up demand for CHIP, and we had really strong, good-faith permission to try to drive up enrollment. It was clear they had a big, bright green light to do it, and do it aggressively, and do the best job they could. The outreach to get CHIP enrollment going was an example of how Texas can clearly do a bang-up job if they chose to.”
‘The environment is flipped'
Some two decades later, HHS – the same state agency that was tasked with covering as many children as possible during the genesis of CHIP – faces scathing criticism for the way the agency has dropped millions of Texans from the Medicaid and CHIP rolls
The process has led officials at the agency to hire more workers and promise better efficiency in the future as the “monumental task” winds to a close.
The state has a May 31 deadline for the year-long process of updating its rolls in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time federal regulations barred states from removing people from Medicaid or CHIPs. Some 6.1 million Texans were able to access health care continuously, a 50% increase from the typical estimated 4 million recipients.
But when these protections were lifted a year ago, the state began rechecking the eligibility of all adults and children on Medicaid and CHIP and requiring everyone to reapply for benefits through a system that had not dropped anyone for the past three years.
Officials at Texas Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid/CHIP programs, say they will likely complete the task a few weeks early. The rolls have returned to pre-pandemic levels, with just over 4 million people still on the programs.
In the months since the state launched this “unwinding,” critics have said it is being done too quickly and has resulted in too many qualified people being dropped and losing critical coverage.
It has been “a monumental task” that revealed areas where the state could improve for future similar endeavors, said Tiffany Young, an HHS spokesperson.
“We have learned many lessons from these efforts, not just operationally, but also how to better communicate with providers and clients,” she said. “Our nationally recognized outreach campaign and ambassador network of community providers and stakeholders has built a strong foundation for us to move forward.”
Lawmakers last year earmarked funding for HHS to hire additional eligibility workers to help with the workload created when they began the unwinding. HHS has been able to fill some 97% of those positions, and has also leveraged outside contractors, technology and increased training to meet the workload, Young said.
So far, Texas has a net Medicaid/CHIP enrollment decline of 31.6% — second highest decline in the country. That number reflects people who were disenrolled during the unwinding process, new people entering the program and those who re-enrolled within a short time after being dropped, a dynamic known as “churn.”
When the state couldn't determine whether a person was eligible, the person was dropped from the rolls. That can happen when people don't receive or respond to renewal notices or are not clear on what's required to renew. It can also happen when enrollment workers can't process the application in time.
“The main concern with procedural disenrollments is that many people losing Medicaid for these paperwork reasons may still be eligible and do not have another source of health coverage,” KFF researchers wrote in a recent report.
Young said that her agency is continuing to seek ways to make the process easier and more efficient.
“We are actively working on additional opportunities to further streamline and automate our eligibility processes,” she said.
For those concerned about the uncovered-but-eligible Texans without Medicaid, that can't come too soon.
According to a recent report by Texas 2036, an Austin nonprofit think tank, nearly half of all uninsured children in Texas are qualified for CHIP or Medicaid but are not enrolled.
Texas has notoriously tight restrictions on who may use Medicaid. The vast majority of recipients are low-income children or medically complex kids. It also covers new mothers under a certain income level and some low-income adults with disabilities. Most Medicaid recipients are indigent children of color.
The limitations have served to keep the rolls low, but the lack of eligibility requirements is only part of the reason Texas has lower participation.
“It's very attention-grabbing to actually cut Medicaid eligibility or cut Medicaid benefits,” Dunkelberg said. “But you can have a huge effect on reducing Medicaid enrollment by limiting outreach, limiting application assistance, making it harder to get enrolled and to stay enrolled, whether by state law or under-the-radar agency actions.”
Under Republican Govs. Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, administrative processes have been “dramatically weaponized” as illustrated by not just the current unwinding but by declining numbers and increasing red tape attached to the programs both by agency actions and legislative inaction, Dunkelberg said. Abbott's office did not return a request for comment.
As examples, she pointed to how changes in agency rules, like requiring kids to re-enroll once a year starting in 2014, and a lack of focus on how to better educate immigrant parents about the right to Medicaid and CHIP for US citizens and immigrant kids who have legal documentation can have great impact, advocates say.
Losing a critical function
For a frightening moment last summer, 5-year-old August Johansen was one of the kids to lose coverage.
The McKinney boy had inoperable brain cancer and depended on Medicaid to pay for full-time home nursing care from a private agency.
He had been getting care through a specific Medicaid program for “medically dependent” children, which covered kids like him even if their family's income didn't qualify them for Medicaid or CHIP.
August had a number of health challenges associated with his cancer, including effects from a stroke, deafness in one ear that required him to go to a school for deaf students, and for 3-and-a-half years, a tracheostomy tube that required his mother to travel with a nurse any time she left the house with her son.
“Medicaid is a critical function for us being able to provide the care that he needs between the pharmacies and the private duty nursing and then, of course, the actual care itself that he receives for the acute situation,” said his mother, Erica Olenski Johansen. “I mean, there's a lot involved, obviously, when you have a kid with medical complexity.
The re-enrollment process had snagged when Johansen missed the paperwork for renewal over last summer because she wasn't looking for it. But her son should have maintained his coverage because it wasn't income-based, she said.
In November she got notice that he'd be dropped. Her new income levels prevented her from re-enrolling, even though her income wasn't a factor in August's eligibility. Then on Dec. 1, he lost coverage and nursing care.
And it wasn't until then that an HHSC official was able to help her restart his benefits 10 hours later and resume care the following week.
“They were very apologetic, which I appreciate,” she said.
August had one thing going for him, though: A mother who had worked for years in the health care industry and who was adept at navigating it.
Hundreds of thousands of Texans were not so good at avoiding the bureaucratic landmines.
Texas 2036's researchers wrote in February that these persistent “administrative barriers” should be addressed by lawmakers when they convene in January 2025 for a new session and budget cycle. “Texas policymakers could make significant inroads toward reducing the state's uninsured population by increasing awareness of the availability of affordable health coverage options, reducing bureaucratic and administrative complexity during the enrollment process, and improving the customer experience for Texans seeking out coverage,” the report says.
In some other states, enrollees are given administrative express lanes to help with the unwinding and reapplication process — like automatic eligibility if the family already qualifies for food assistance, for example.
Those in Texas who recall the scramble to enroll kids in CHIP during the election season of 2000 say it's difficult now to watch other states make it easier for qualified people to stay covered — while the processes they put in place decades ago to get so many low-income kids covered have fallen by the wayside.
“The environment has completely flipped,” Fritz said. “It's like it's no longer a high priority to get kids enrolled and keep them enrolled. It's exactly the opposite. It's sort of like, ‘You're on your own, people.' This is where we are. Is this where we want to be?”
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Ted Cruz files bill to protect IVF
by By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 09:45:47
SUMMARY: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Katie Britt have introduced the IVF Protection Act to safeguard access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) amid changing anti-abortion laws. The bill aims to make states ineligible for Medicaid funding if they ban IVF. This legislative effort follows an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that classified embryos as protected human life, prompting some IVF providers to pause services. The Texas Supreme Court may also consider a case impacting IVF. Cruz, seeking reelection against Democrat Colin Allred, emphasizes IVF's importance for families. Texas Governor Greg Abbott supports clarifying state laws to protect IVF, while Senate Democrats and House Speaker Mike Johnson diverge on federal versus state jurisdiction.
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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is leading a charge to protect access to in vitro fertilization as conservative states scramble to figure out where IVF fits in the new anti-abortion legal landscape.
On Monday, Cruz and Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, both conservative, anti-abortion Republicans, filed the IVF Protection Act, which would make states ineligible to receive Medicaid funding if they ban IVF.
This bill comes in response to a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court earlier this year that said embryos are protected human life when it comes to the state's wrongful death statute. After that ruling, many IVF providers paused those services until the Alabama Legislature passed temporary protections.
The Texas Supreme Court is considering taking up a case that could “upend IVF in Texas,” experts say. A woman has asked the court to overturn previous court rulings that awarded her ex-husband their three frozen embryos in their divorce, arguing that Texas' new abortion laws require embryos to have the same rights as living children.
Almost as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in summer 2022 and allowed states to ban abortion, questions emerged about the legal status of IVF.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed announcing this legislation, Cruz and Britt said Republicans want to “protect both life and IVF.”
“IVF has given miraculous hope to millions of Americans, and it has given families across the country the gift of children,” Cruz said in a statement. “I'm proud to partner with Sen. Katie Britt to ensure that couples in Texas and across the country have the opportunity to be loving parents, by ensuring that IVF is fully protected at the federal level.”
IVF is “profoundly pro-family,” the pair wrote in the op-ed. “Our bill will honor and support families seeking to welcome a new baby into their lives through IVF.”
Cruz is up for reelection this year, facing Democratic Congressman Colin Allred, who has made Cruz's support for Texas' abortion laws a key part of his campaign. In a statement after the Alabama court ruling, Allred said Cruz had done nothing to protect IVF, and his “dangerous record” on abortion and fetal personhood issues puts Texas families “rights and freedoms at risk.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has expressed his support for IVF, saying he believes the Legislature will clarify state law to protect the procedure.
Meanwhile, in D.C., Senate Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to pass two bills to protect IVF access, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he believes this is an issue best left to the states.
Pointing out that 86% of Americans believe IVF should be legal, Cruz and Britt say this should be a bipartisan bill that protects “life, family and personal liberty.”
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Trump says Paxton would make good U.S. attorney general
by By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 08:47:03
SUMMARY: Former President Donald Trump is considering Ken Paxton, Texas' Attorney General, for the role of U.S. Attorney General if re-elected. Trump commended Paxton's abilities and loyalty, highlighting his legal challenge to the 2020 election results and his support during Trump's impeachment defense. Paxton was impeached for bribery allegations but acquitted, with Trump claiming credit for the outcome. Recent polls show Trump leading President Biden in key states. Paxton's legal issues have diminished following the dropping of securities fraud charges, although federal investigations continue. If nominated, Paxton's Senate confirmation faces partisan challenges and opposition from notable Republicans.
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Former President Donald Trump said he would consider tapping Ken Paxton for U.S. attorney general if he wins a second term in the White House, calling his longtime ally “a very talented guy” and praising his tenure as Texas' chief legal officer.
“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He's very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he's a very talented guy.”
Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump's 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.
Paxton's loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers.
Trump also came to Paxton's defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform, where he denounced the proceedings and threatened political retribution for Republicans who backed the impeachment.
“I fought for him when he had the difficulty and we won,” he told KDFW. “He had some people really after him, and I thought it was really unfair.”
Trump's latest comments, delivered at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Dallas, come after a series of recent polls have shown the presumptive Republican nominee leading President Joe Biden in a handful of key battleground states.
Paxton has also seen his political prospects rise in recent months, after prosecutors agreed in March to drop three felony counts of securities fraud that had loomed over Paxton for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general. The resolution of the nine-year-old case, along with Paxton's impeachment acquittal in the Senate last fall, has brought him closer than ever to a political career devoid of legal drama.
Still, Paxton's critics say he is far from vindicated. He remains under federal investigation for the same allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, and he continues to face a whistleblower lawsuit from former deputies who said they were illegally fired for reporting Paxton to law enforcement. A separate lawsuit from the state bar seeks to penalize Paxton for his 2020 election challenge, which relied on discredited claims of election fraud.
If nominated, Paxton would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The chamber is narrowly divided along party lines, with Democrats holding a 51-49 majority. One of the most prominent Republican members, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, has been an outspoken critic of Paxton, while Paxton has openly entertained the idea of challenging Cornyn in 2026.
Paxton is not the only Texan Trump has floated for a high-profile spot in his potential administration. In February, he said Gov. Greg Abbott is “absolutely” on his short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Abbott has since downplayed his interest in the job.
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Texas Tribune
These Texans aren’t taking buyouts despite repeated floods
by By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Recent floods in Harris County, Texas, have devastated homes along the San Jacinto River. Tom Madigan, who owns multiple properties, quickly started repairs without knowing the Harris County Flood Control District aims to buy out such flood-prone properties. The region has a longstanding buyout program to remove homes from high-risk flood areas, with about 800 out of 2,400 targeted properties purchased. However, buyouts are voluntary and often insufficient for low-income residents. Despite the program, many choose to stay due to affordability and community ties, while others like Madigan remain skeptical of receiving a fair offer.
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HARRIS COUNTY — After the floodwaters earlier this month just about swallowed two of the six homes that 60-year-old Tom Madigan owns on the San Jacinto River, he didn't think twice about whether to fix them. He hired people to help, and they got to work stripping the walls, pulling up flooring and throwing out water-logged furniture.
What Madigan didn't know: The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy his properties as part of an effort to get people out of dangerously flood-prone areas.
Back-to-back storms drenched southeast Texas in late April and early May, causing flash flooding and pushing rivers out of their banks and into low-lying neighborhoods. Officials across the region urged people in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
Like Madigan's, some places that were inundated along the San Jacinto in Harris County have flooded repeatedly. And for nearly 30 years, the flood control district has been trying to clear out homes around the river by paying property owners to move, then returning the lots to nature.
The recent floods show why buyout programs can be important. These spots typically flood first and worse. Gov. Greg Abbott reported that hundreds of rescues took place in the state while the floods destroyed homes. A man drowned and a child was swept away into the floods. One Harris County resident described climbing on top of his motor home as the water rose before first responders rescued him.
But the disaster and its aftermath also illustrate why buyouts are complicated to carry out even in Harris County, home to Houston, which has one of the most robust buyout programs in the country. The flood control district has identified roughly 2,400 properties as current buyout candidates around the San Jacinto; the district and county have bought about 800 of them.
Nearly all of the district's buyouts are voluntary. If an owner doesn't want to sell, the district can't force them out.
Buyouts make sense for some people who can't be protected from floods, said Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research for the Center on Environment, Land and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
But buyouts might not provide lower-income people enough money to get somewhere safer, she said, and they could lose important support like child care from nearby family or neighbors.
“It's not as though it's a guarantee of reducing risks to that family,” Jerolleman said.
People who live near the river and who have endured repeated floods explained that they've stayed because it's affordable and, most of the time, peaceful. Where else would they be able to buy anything like it? Some said they didn't think the government would offer them what they consider a fair price to sell their land. Some didn't know the buyout program existed.
Madigan started buying homes more than 15 years ago in the unincorporated River Terrace neighborhood because they were cheap. On Tuesday, the Houston firefighter drank a Heineken and grilled hamburgers for his work crew outside his most damaged house, which he rents to his brother. Sodden rugs baked in the sun on the driveway.
Madigan said he might have taken a buyout if it was a reasonable offer — but he doubted it would be. He said he needed to get the properties ready again for his renters. “I can't wait,” he said.
Two blocks away, water had swept through a yellow house Madigan rents to a family with a teenage son. One of the workers fixing the property, 21-year-old Omar Reyna, watched the family throw out pretty much everything they had. Piecing together new laminate flooring with his dad, Reyna kept thinking about a trash bag of Teddy bears and stuffed toys he tossed out for them.
He wondered if the parents had been saving the toys for another kid they might have in the future.
“The faster we get it done, the faster they can come back in here,” Reyna said.
Some people choose to live with the risk of flooding
The San Jacinto is the largest river in the state's most populous county. For years before Harris County's first floodplain maps were drawn up in the mid-1980s, people built homes near its banks. Even today, people can still build in the vast floodplain if the houses are high enough and have enough stormwater detention.
The flood control district tries to buy out homes in pockets of the floodplain that are deepest, said James Wade, manager for the district's property acquisition department. Those are places where engineers can't easily fix flooding problems.
Buyouts are meant to get people out of flood zones before their property floods again, not to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The process is slow: In some cases, it can take 18 months or longer to approve a buyout application, Wade said. The district pays owners the market value or pre-flood value for their house, determined by a third-party appraiser, plus moving expenses and a supplement to help them get into a house out of the floodplain, Wade said.
“It's a very equitable, fair program,” Wade said — but still some people don't want to leave.
Those who stay learn to adapt. They build homes on stilts. They monitor the river level and watch for releases of water from the Lake Conroe dam upstream. Some know intimately the routine of rebuilding: gut the house, clean it, put it back together.
The floor of 49-year-old Sean Vincent's house in the Forest Cove neighborhood in northeast Houston is 15 feet above the ground. Three feet of water flooded it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. This month, the floods reached five feet high on Vincent's property. He cleaned out his waterlogged ground-level shed with help from church members. On Tuesday, he was building new shelves for it.
But most of the time Vincent, who works in railroad traffic control, said he enjoys the space surrounded by tall trees with room for his three kids.
“It's just really not a major part of our life,” Vincent said of the flooding. “Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it's now happened to us twice in seven years … It's sort of a trade-off for us. And it is lovely out here.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Then there are those who stay because they don't see anywhere else to go.
Jack St. John, 67, a retired long-haul truck driver, moved to Northshore 43 years ago and has had to clean up after two floods. He worries any time flooding threatens, but the neighborhood's advantages keep him there: He has no water bill because he has a well. His taxes are reasonable. The neighborhood has a fish fry in the spring and a barbecue in the fall.
“You know, when you leave, where are you going to go?” he said. “What's it going to cost to buy into another place?”
Farther northeast, in the Idle Wild and Idle Glen neighborhoods, the floods forced some residents to sleep under tarps. On one largely forested street, boats were turned sideways or flipped upside down. A small building was lodged in the trees. A car was in the ditch.
For several years, Elvia Bethea, 68, has driven from her home in Humble to check on people and pets here, and pick up stray animals. On Tuesday, she and other volunteers gave John Gray, 50, bamboo yard torches to fight the many mosquitoes, plus two trays of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Gray said he couldn't afford to fix up his destroyed house. He earns a living printing labor law posters for businesses. His printers at home were destroyed.
Gray said he had never heard of the buyout program but would consider taking one.
“Who do I call?” Gray asked. “I don't have a clue.”
From the back of a white SUV, Bethea handed some hot dogs to Jose Tabores, 68, who lives on Gray's land in a trailer now filled with mud.
“I'm coming for dinner, remember!” Bethea teased him.
Nearby, 51-year-old Veronika Scheid had been sleeping in a wet tent. The flood washed the shipping crate she lived in down the road and into the trees — along with her and her neighbors' belongings.
At a low point, when Scheid was crying over all she lost, she found a pink-and-white beaded necklace with stitching in the shape of a “V,” like her name. At the end was a charm shaped like a house.
She was grateful the person who owned the land where she stayed hadn't taken a buyout. Otherwise she would have nowhere to go.
“At least we have this,” Scheid said.
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The post These Texans aren't taking buyouts despite repeated floods appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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