Dolores Mendoza lived in the Houston neck of the woods of Allen Field for most of her life . Once , when her daughter was young , she be active to a north Houston suburb not far away , so her daughter could grow up with safe street and good school . “ I detest it , ” she said categorically , remember her attempt to leave alone . “ I did n’t know my neighbors — there are 100 household and you do n’t do it anyone . ” She came back within a class .
In this street corner of unincorporated Harris County , 13 of her closest neighbor are also her family : her mom , aunts and uncles , cousins , siblings . Her parent and grandparents both met in the neighbourhood , got married , and stayed here . “ I have my paternal family on one street , and my paternal family line on the other , ” she said , express mirth . Her computer memory of growing up include bike rides through the street from one admirer or cousin ’s firm to the next .
But her upbringing was also punctuated by intense flood that put her neighborhood underwater over and over again — to name a few , tropical Storm Allison in 2001 , Harvey in 2017 , and Imelda in 2019 . When it flooded during Mendoza ’s puerility , the neighborhood Thomas Kyd would put on floaties and float through the stifle - abstruse or once in a while waist - high waters . Her kids have develop up with the same memory .
The Buffalo Bayou, a constant source of flooding, winds through the city on 31 March 2025 in Houston, Texas.Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)
The community of interests sits behind Greens Bayou , a minor river that meanders through northern Harris County before emptying into the Houston Ship Channel . Overgrown grassy ditches burst with xanthous wildflowers line Darjean Street , the small route that Mendoza grew up on . The channels are mean to funnel flood pee away when it rains and the river spill over . But more often than not , when a tempest comes , Allen Field still flood .
With each storm , kin in Allen Field reconstruct menage and raise them higher off the ground to avoid floodwaters in the next one . Despite the repeated calamity , most family have n’t left the neighbourhood . They know just who to call for help during a crisis , and who to believe afterwards as they put their lives back together .
But in recent days , flood in Allen Field has have worse and more dangerous as clime changefeeds secure stormsand fresh developments further upstream remold the area ’s floodplains . Mendoza remember vividly when Hurricane Harvey dump more than 60 inches of rain on the realm in 2017 . That was the first time that the floodwaters were chest deep . “ You could n’t even see the street signs , ” she said . Her home , which had been kick upstairs 6 feet above ground after Allison , took on several inches of water supply and the cap started to leak .
For decennium , Harris County , home to Houston and its surrounding town , had a buyout program operating in Allen Field and other neighborhoods in the northeast pocket of the metropolis : Residents could deal their house to the county at market value and get assist to move out of the floodplain . The house would be pulverise and the portion underneath it restored as agreenspacethat could suck up flowage water .
“ A lot of area were developed within the county that should never have been develop — expanse that we now cognise are several foot deep in the floodplain , ” said James Wade , Harris County Flood Control District ’s dimension acquirement manager .
Because the buyout was funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency , or FEMA , it had to be voluntary . The county could n’t force anyone to move if they did n’t want to . Between Hurricane Allison in 2001 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017 , only a smattering of homeowner sold their properties . Year after year , most family select to stay and reconstruct .
But in 2020 , the county chose to make the buyout in Allen Field — andsix other neighborhood — compulsory . The county had just gotten federal relievo dollars for Hurricane Harvey from the Department of Housing and Urban Development , or HUD , give it a bigger budget to execute buyouts . “ These particular communities … have flooded about 12 times in the past 40 years , ” said Christy Lambright , the director of Disaster Recovery & Resiliency Planning at the Harris County Community Services Department . “ We could n’t establish anything that would salve these community . There ’s no detention pond we can build , no broadening of the bayou that we can do — we need that land to save the neighboring neighborhoods . ”
But the conclusion has left residents of Allen Field and several other Harris County country scrambling to navigate a complex buyout process while also trying to keep and protect the community that they ’ve dwell in for generations .
Last December , Mendoza was among the first in the neighborhood to move out through the required buyout . It choose nigh two years for the sale of her planetary house to go through . The county pay up out the sales event damage of her young place in Kingwood , 15 naut mi away , but she had to circumstantially pay thousands of dollars in closing fees out of pocket . Her property taxes and homeowner tie fees are also seven times higher now .
Mendoza counts herself lucky that she can yield those extra expenses on her salary as a credit controller . But she worries that some of her neighbors — the old kinfolk , the ones who do n’t verbalize English fluently , or those on fixed incomes — will have a harder time expire through the process . Others are losing not only their homes , but their businesses as well — and do n’t find that they ’re being fairly compensated . And , of course , there are some losses that ca n’t be quantified : decade - longsighted friendships and relationships will change as neighbors move further by from each other .
“ I just require to verify [ the county ] is going to take care of everybody , ” Mendoza said . Early on , she remembers telling the county functionary handling her casing , “ Use me as your guinea grunter and figure this bullshit out before you go deal with everyone else . ”
The federal government has beensubsidizing flood control buyoutsin some figure since as far back as the 1930s and XL . By the mid nineties , Congress locomote the program under FEMA , and a state and Union partnership model funds the programme nationwide .
Today , Harris County is the largest recipient of federal dollars for buyouts . consort to areportfrom Rice Univeristy ’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research , between 1985 and 2017 , the county drop $ 342 million to acquire over 3,100 properties . The money was allocate from federal agencies , like FEMA , HUD , and the Army Corps of Engineers , as well as local funding sources .
“ The plan really started as a rural program to help Fannie Merritt Farmer whose farm kept flood , ” say Jim Elliott , a researcher at Rice University who focuses on inequities in disasters and recovery . “ There ’s been a kind of policy creep as the [ programme ] has prompt into city , ”
Buyouts are now a major climate version policy to get people out of harm ’s way . FEMA estimates that closely 13 million Americans last within a floodplain — thoughsome scientist send that bit closer to 40 million using more up - to - escort outpouring maps . As climate change seduce utmost conditions more stark and more frequent , buy out these homes should melt off the endangerment that people face , and lower the toll of repetitive payouts from indemnity company , include the National Flood Insurance Program , which is jillion of dollar mark in debt . The program has bear out more money to residents in Harris Countythan any other areain the country .
But such programs often deepen exist social inequalities . In 2021 , Elliot and a team of researchersfoundthat wealthier , whiter neighborhood were able-bodied to maintain social tie-up and social capital after a buyout . family resettle closer to each other and the agreeableness they bask . But lower income areas saw the opposite event : They resettle further from each other , and the welfare of their social ties were weakened .
“ Flood control condition experts assess achiever by how many homes they purchase out . mass in a community measure achiever by how much they ’re capable to keep the community , ” Elliott said . “ So , who has to give up that societal value to conform to climate change ? ” In Harris County , there ’s evidence that , over and over again , it is humiliated - income residential district and communities of color .
Mendoza ’s household cost the county about $ 60,000 to purchase . It has about thesame floodlight potentialas houses in the moneyed , whiter Fall Creek neighborhood ofHumble , also turn up along Greens Bayou , that cost more than 10 times as much . But only Allen Field , which is majority Black and Latino , is being impel to participate in a buyout .
When asked about these unfairness — historic and present — and the overflow ascendence district ’s responsibility to address them , Wade , from the Harris County Flood Control District , said that the agency has not below the belt targeted low - income neighborhoods for buyout . HUDrequires that sure grantsbenefit low- to moderate - income area .
“ From the flood mastery perspective , we ’re just interested in relocating masses out of harm ’s way and getting them to higher ground — regardless of subspecies , ethnicity , and income storey , ” Wade pronounce . “ I have it away in Texas , we ’re very bad on property right . But at what point does the government become paltry for allowing folks to live in harm ’s way ? ” Lambright echoes that think . “ We did not enter into this thinking it was going to be an well-fixed task , ” she said . “ This river is never going to block flow . It ’s going to take out the road , it ’s going to be detrimental to homes . There was no way that Harris County could ignore this issue . ” And despite the influx of financial support from HUD post - Harvey , it still come down short . There are far more communities in hurt ’s style that have n’t been yield a course out of the floodplain at all .
Some residents in Allen Field receive the buyout . Lena Apodaca has endure in the region for four X . Her married man passed away in 2019 and since then she ’s lived alone in the house he leave her . “ I ’m not struggle it , ” she said . “ I do n’t desire to go through another flood by myself . ” Apodaca describes herself as old - school : She does n’t have a smartphone or a computer . She ’s fill out all the paperwork the county postulate to approve the sale by hand , and she ’s been waiting ever since . “ Last year , that was the last time I heard from them , ” she sound out . “ I prove calling them , no answer , no nothing . ”
In February 2021 , a record - break winter cold snap grip Texas ; as temperatures dipped into the single digits , million of Texans lost power . In Lena ’s family , the pipes freeze and split , and she did n’t have escape piss . The county has caution against spend a penny resort to homes because those costs wo n’t be reflected in the sales event price . But Apodaca ’s Logos help her supersede the pipes anyway — if they had n’t , she would have been without run water for more than a class now . Others have decided it ’s not deserving sinking more money into their household . So they ’ve lived without kitchens or a free bathroom since the freeze . At Mendoza ’s mother ’s house , an total back room ooze every clock time it rain down , the smell of mold percolate the bulwark .
But other Allen Field residents struggle that a buyout program should n’t have been their only option . Their neighborhood has long been neglect for infrastructure improvements . Property values are far low to begin with precisely because they do n’t benefit from public services : There were no street lights in Allen Field until a few year ago . The ditches that the neighbourhood bank on for deluge control are unequal for today ’s climate change - fuel tempest , and it ’s difficult to get anyone from the county to maintain them so that they function properly during even a scant rainfall . Mendoza ca n’t call back a clock time when anyone from the exterior amount to save them from rising flood weewee . “ We take care of ourselves here , ” she said . “ [ First responders ] do n’t come out to this area . ”
Of the sevenareasthat are facing a mandatory buyout in the county , six are locate along Greens Bayou , which have some of the worst implosion therapy in Harris County during Hurricane Harvey . The watershed and its tributaries encompass more than 200 square mile across north Houston , an surface area that ’s home to some 600,000 people . According to a 2018 news report from Rice University ’s Baker Institute for Public Policy , Greens Bayou caused 24,000 household to oversupply during Hurricane Harvey , roughly 16 percentof all the base damage in the county by the tempest .
But the city and state have for the most part nullify funding flood ascendance labor along the bayou because , harmonize to the samereport , a high concentration of low - income neighborhoods with low place values border it , making it difficult to excuse the toll using Union measure .
“ The property value measure is inherently inequitable , and frankly racist , ” sound out Maddie Sloan , the disaster recovery theater director at Texas Appleseed , a nonprofit advocacy group . “ Many of these communities are also historical communities of color that masses have a deep investment in , and it can feel like an flack on those communities . ”
In 2018 , Harris County communicate a$2.5 billion bondwith the promise of correct some of the inequities in Harris County ’s flood substructure . The money should have finally brought projects to Greens Bayou and its tributaries , but that never materialized either .
By all means , Mendoza said , the new house she and her nipper inhabit in now is nice than her home in Allen Field — and it ’s not in the flood plain . “ It ’s quiet , ” she said . “ It ’s a nice neck of the woods . I have a huge house , a pool , all that . But it ’s not the same . I ’m a single mom , and it train a village to elicit kids , and I do n’t have that anymore . It ’s rifle . ”
In a fiscal sense , the computer program worked for her . “ I ’m in my mid-30s , I can utilize this as an investment and finally move out to the area like I ’ve always require to . ” But for some of her neighbors , she ’s not certain that they ’ll ever be made whole after lose the communities that they ’ve live in for their whole lives . Her 80 - year - old neighbor , for exercise , has always been take fear of even though she go alone . Neighbors aim her to the doctors , miss off meal and favourite solid food , and even drive her out to convenience store to grease one’s palms scratch - offs . There ’s no warranty that she ’ll be able-bodied to stay close to her financial support system .
Many of those neighbors have scattered now — some , like Mendoza and her babe , found house 10 minute aside ; others are 35 minutes aside , choose not to resettle in a subdivision with homeowner affiliation mandates after decades of living in unincorporated county landed estate , where there are no nonindulgent rule .
Over the preceding two year , Mendoza has become the neighborhood ’s unofficial spokesperson . She ’s writtenop - edsin the local newspaper and joined a community committee that ’s been advising the county on how to provide financial support to Allen Field house physician through the tenacious , technical procedure . neighbour and relative are used to seeing Mendozawalk up and down the street with reporters , orient out which place have been sell already , which ones are still in indigence of repairs from Winter Storm Uri , and the vandalism of recently vacated property . Other occupant are hesitating to verbalize publicly , worried about set out in problem with the caseworker deal their property gross sales .
There ’s a joke around the region that the county moved Mendoza out first so that they would n’t have to deal with her anymore . But she has no intention of going anywhere . “ They whole tore asunder our village , ” Mendoza said . “ They ’ll be hearing from me till the last resident moves out . ”
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