An article in The Atlantic’s Renewal Project gives props to LISC Houston’s Amanda Timm and the women leaders of four other local groups partnered to repair hundreds of hurricane-ravaged homes in the ongoing wake of Harvey. Together, the collaborative is deploying a $17 million grant to make 480 houses livable again.
The excerpt below is from:
Five female leaders are rebuilding Houston after Harvey
The Harvey Home Repair Collaborative, The Renewal Project
On Aug. 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast as a Category 4 storm. For Houston, Harvey was a “1-in-1,000-year” flood event, dumping 50 inches of rain, the highest ever recorded rainfall for a hurricane in U.S. history. Nearly 150,000 single family homes were damage, with almost half belonging to households qualifying as low-income and unlikely to have the resources to recover without help.
Affordable housing nonprofits quickly realized that no one organization could tackle a disaster of this magnitude—and so the Harvey Home Repair Collaborative was formed. Houston Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) serves as the collaborative coordinator while Fifth Ward CRC, Houston Habitat for Humanity, Rebuilding Together Houston, and Tejano Center for Community Concerns serve as the home repair agencies. Each organization has served Houston for more than 20 years. The collaborative was awarded a $17 million grant to repair 480 homes. Their award was the largest single grant given by the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund, managed by the Greater Houston Community Foundation.
These organizations are uniquely positioned to respond to the call. They are familiar with the neighborhoods and residents and have assembled a myriad of resources to meet the many community needs. More importantly, each of the organizations is motivated to respond to those who are traditionally underserved.
This collaboration is groundbreaking for several reasons. The executive directors of the five partner organizations are all women. It is a partnership in which the organizations share funding to meet the workflow. Independently, the organizations have competencies worthy of applause, and collectively, they can respond to people at every phase of recovery and set a precedent for maximized strength through collaboration.