Joshua Fechter, Texas Tribune

Sept. 22, 2022

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U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg blasted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for sending migrants en masse to Democrat-led cities — accusing the Republican governors of using vulnerable people to call attention to themselves.

"Obviously, there are issues with the border and with migration,” Buttigieg said Thursday during the opening keynote of the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival. “But these are the kinds of stunts you see from people who don’t have a solution.”

Abbott has bused more than 11,000 migrants to cities including Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago. DeSantis followed suit last week when the state of Florida paid to fly migrants from Texas — allegedly luring them by promising housing and jobs in Boston — to the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, where they were stranded.

Missing from Abbott and DeSantis’ tactics are any proposals to tackle the broader issue of immigration and border security, Buttigieg said.

“It’s not just ineffectual — it is hurting people in order to get attention,” Buttigieg said.

Spokespeople for Abbott and DeSantis did not immediately return emails Thursday evening requesting comment.

In a wide-ranging discussion with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith, Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, called out Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn for vowing to vote against a bill to enshrine same-sex marriage in federal law.

“I've met both of your senators and your governor,” Buttigieg said. “I don't know their spouses. I don't really think about their marriages. But I can't imagine a situation where I would attempt to undo one of their marriages. So what makes them think that they are fit to pronounce upon mine?”

Buttigieg said, “The question now for all of us living in America in these times is: Did we just live to see the high-water mark of rights and freedoms?”

A Cornyn spokesperson did not directly respond to Buttigieg’s remarks but instead pointed the Tribune to a July 21 statement to CNS News in which Cornyn says same-sex marriage is “already the law of the land. I think it’s a contrived issue because the Supreme Court decided the issue, so I don’t see any reason for the Congress to act.”

A Cruz spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Buttigieg also blasted Abbott for directing the state’s child welfare agency to investigate parents who allow their transgender children access to gender-affirming care.

“You have a governor who, I mean, one minute they're talking about parents’ rights, and next thing you know, they're attacking parents, who when confronted with that sometimes disorienting and sometimes even frightening situation of your kid coming out to you, being in an incredibly vulnerable position trying to do the right thing for your kids and a government official wants to come and investigate you for trying to take care of your kids?” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg, believed to be a potential contender in the 2024 presidential race, has been criss-crossing the country touting the Biden administration’s $550 billion infrastructure bill, which passed with rare bipartisan support in a gridlocked Congress and stands as one of Democrats’ biggest congressional achievements since President Joe Biden took office. Texas is on deck to get a windfall of $27 billion for roads and bridges, $3.4 billion for public transportation, $1.2 billion for airports and more than $400 million to install chargers for electric vehicles.

“Some of the best use cases for electric vehicles are in places like Texas,” Buttigieg said, “places where people spend more time in their vehicles, where you drive longer distances than in a dense coastal city and therefore spend more money on gas and therefore would save more money — provided you can afford an electric vehicle, which is why we're fighting to make electric vehicles cheaper.”

The infrastructure bill contains $1 billion intended to reconnect communities across the country that are divided by highways. Community groups and activists have pressured Texas transportation officials to halt planned highway expansions in the state’s major metros including Houston, Austin and Dallas. A planned widening of Interstate 45 in Houston — displacing hundreds of homes and businesses — is under federal investigation for potential civil rights violations.

Buttigieg has largely stayed out of fights over freeway expansions in Texas and spats between state and local officials over infrastructure projects. In the past, he has declined to comment on the I-45 expansion, citing the investigation by the Federal Highway Administration.

“Part of what we're doing with [the investigation] is making sure that the law is upheld and that communities are heard,” Buttigieg said. “A lot of our responsibilities and our powers are procedural to make sure that communities are not trampled in this process. Right. So we're going to respect the lawful role of the states but we are watching very closely to make sure that those responsibilities are upheld.

Earlier this year, Buttigieg told the Tribune that expansions in places with high population and economic growth “are called for” but should be “done in a way that minimizes environmental and community impacts.” Automobiles will be a major mode of transportation for some time, he has said —which is why the country needs to accelerate its transition to electric vehicles and invest in other modes of transportation.

“Cars will always play an important role in our lives, but you should not have to bring two tons of metal with you everywhere you're going,” Buttigieg said Thursday night.

Before Buttigieg took the stage at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Austin, climate activists from the Texas Gulf Coast demonstrated across the street, calling on Buttigieg to reject permits for six proposed fossil fuel export terminals along the Texas and Louisiana coasts — which he has the authority to do — on the grounds that the resulting pollution would harm residents’ health, drive up energy costs and exacerbate climate change.

Inside the auditorium, activists briefly unfurled a banner that said, “Please, Pete, No Fossil Fuel Exports” before they were ushered out.

Buttigieg declined to comment directly on the projects but noted the agency has received thousands of comments about the proposals.

“I hear you,” Buttigieg said.

Disclosure: Paramount Theatre has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune Festival is here! Happening Sept. 22-24 in downtown Austin, this year’s TribFest features more than 25 virtual conversations with guests like Eric Adams, Pete Souza, Jason Kander and many others. After they air for ticket holders, anyone can watch these events at the Tribune’s Festival news page. Catch up on the latest news and free sessions from TribFest.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/22/pete-buttigieg-texas-tribune-festival/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Uvalde school district’s police chief — who made the decision to wait for more resources rather than confront the gunman sooner — had stopped cooperating with state investigators and had not responded to requests for information for over two days, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

And the agency walked back an assertion that a teacher at Robb Elementary School propped open a back door prior to the shooting, allowing the gunman to enter and kill 19 students and two teachers. Earlier Tuesday the teacher’s lawyer had pushed back on the state’s account.

Texas Rangers investigating the response to the shooting want to continue talking to Pete Arredondo, chief of police at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. But he hasn’t answered a request made two days ago for a follow-up interview, according to two DPS spokespeople.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police department and the Uvalde Police Department have otherwise been cooperating with the Rangers’ investigation, DPS spokesperson Travis Considine said.

Arredondo did not immediately return a call requesting comment.

Amid the turmoil, Texas’ largest police union — the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, or CLEAT — urged its members Tuesday in a statement to “cooperate fully” with investigations into the police response to the Uvalde massacre — though they didn’t name Arredondo.

Both the police chief and the school teacher had been implicated by DPS officials as, in effect, having failed at their jobs. The change in narrative is likely to deepen the mistrust surrounding the investigation. Already, as in other mass shootings, conspiracy theories and misinformation have begun to proliferate online.

While the U.S. Department of Justice has agreed to review the response to the mass shooting, the ultimate responsibility for carrying out a credible, thorough and transparent investigation rests with the state — and so far, state officials have not offered much confidence in their abilities to carry out such a probe.

In the school teacher’s case, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said Friday that the unnamed teacher had propped open the door through which the gunman entered the school. DPS now says a teacher shut that door but its automatic lock malfunctioned. Considine said DPS is investigating why the lock didn’t work.

The reversal came hours after a lawyer representing the teacher told the San Antonio Express-News that the teacher closed the door before the shooter entered the building.

“She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting,” Don Flanary, the teacher’s lawyer, told the Express-News. “She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.”

Flanary did not return requests for comment from The Texas Tribune on Tuesday.

The revelation was the latest addition to what has become an almost daily need to clean up past statements by state leaders. DPS officials and Gov. Greg Abbott have walked back several of their initial statements about the shooting and the authorities’ response to the call after contradictory information came to light.

For example, Abbott and McCraw said the gunman encountered a police officer before he entered the school. McCraw later said the shooter went inside unopposed. When asked about the discrepancy, Abbott said he was “livid” to have been “misled” in some of his earliest briefings on the massacre.

CLEAT, the police union, blamed state officials Tuesday for “a great deal of false and misleading information in the aftermath of this tragedy,” some of which “came from the very highest levels of government and law enforcement.”

“Sources that Texans once saw as iron-clad and completely reliable have now been proven false,” the union said in a statement.

Police officers who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary have faced heated criticism from parents who said officers did not act quickly enough to stop the 18-year-old gunman.

That criticism reached a new level on Friday when McCraw told reporters that officers did not try to stop the shooter sooner because the district’s police chief wanted to wait for backup and equipment before confronting the gunman — even though 911 calls confirmed that students were still trapped inside with the shooter.

McCraw said Arredondo, who he did not name, treated the gunman as a “barricaded suspect” rather than an active shooter and believed children were no longer at risk — which McCraw called a mistake.

A tactical unit made up of U.S. Border Patrol agents eventually breached the classroom and killed the gunman — more than an hour after the gunman first arrived on campus.

Arredondo, who has been chief of police since March 2020, was set to be sworn in as a Uvalde city council member Tuesday, but the event was postponed. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said in a press release that nothing in city law prevented him from taking his seat.

Arredondo’s law enforcement career spans nearly three decades, including 15 years at the Uvalde Police Department. He completed an active shooter response training in December, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records.

The first funeral for one of the victims of the attack was held Tuesday, for Amerie Jo Garza. She was 10.

Disclosure: CLEAT has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/31/uvalde-school-police-chief-investigation/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Texas’ top law enforcement official admitted Friday that police officers made key errors when responding to a shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

Police officers did not act sooner to stop the 18-year-old gunman because a supervising officer at the scene wanted to wait for backup and equipment, said Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. By the time a specialized team of federal officers arrived and entered the school — they had to get keys from a janitor to open locked classroom doors — more than an hour had passed since the shooter arrived at the school, McCraw said.

That was a mistake, McCraw said at a Friday press conference.

"Of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision."

“When it comes to an active shooter, you don't have to wait on tactical gear, plain and simple,” he said.

McCraw gave more details about the shooting Friday, revealing that the gunman entered the school through a back door that minutes before had been propped open by a teacher. He said a police officer employed by the school district responded to an initial 911 call about an armed man near the school but drove past the gunman and mistook a teacher for the shooter.

McCraw also detailed harrowing 911 calls by teachers and students trapped inside with the gunman, including one at 12:47 p.m. — more than an hour after the shooter entered the school — when a student begged the 911 operator: “Please send the police now.”

Weeks before the shooting, the gunman discussed his plans to buy a gun with others on Instagram, McCraw said.

Law enforcement officials have faced increasing questions in the days since the shooting about whether officers on the scene could have acted more quickly to stop the gunman. Videos circulated on social media show desperate parents begging officers to enter the school, and parents have reported being handcuffed and Tased by law enforcement officers when they implored officers to act or tried to retrieve their children.

At the same time, DPS officials — who are leading the shooting investigation along with local police — have often given conflicting details about how the police response played out.

For example, DPS officials initially said the 18-year-old gunman encountered a school district police officer when he arrived on school grounds — and gave conflicting accounts about whether the officer fired at the gunman.

On Thursday, the agency reversed course, saying that no campus police officer confronted the gunman when he stepped onto the premises.

Uvalde police received the first call around 11:20 a.m. Tuesday, when the gunman’s grandmother called 911 to report that he had shot her in the face at her home about two minutes from Robb Elementary. The shooter fled in his grandmother’s pickup truck and crashed it in a ditch near the school at 11:28 a.m.

McCraw said the gunman fired at two passersby on the street, then went to the school, where he fired shots at the building from outside before entering the building at 11:33 a.m. through the back door that a teacher had left propped open.

Once inside, the gunman entered a pair of connected classrooms — Rooms 111 and 112 — where he killed 19 children and two teachers and wounded 17 others. McCraw said the gunman fired more than 100 rounds at that point.

Local police officers arrived at the school and entered at 11:35 a.m., McCraw said, but fell back after two officers were shot and wounded by the gunman. Officers tried to negotiate with the shooter, officials have said, but the man “did not respond.”

McCraw said the commander on site at that point treated the situation as a “barricaded suspect” and thought children were no longer at risk, which he also called a mistake.

“There was plenty of officers [at the scene] to do what needed to be done,” McCraw said.

By Joshua Fechter, The Texas Tribune

"Some landlords got a piece of Texas’ $2 billion in rent relief money — and evicted their struggling tenants anyway" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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When Cherice Scott received a notice last September that she, her husband and their four children would soon be kicked out of their Katy apartment, she said employees at the complex told her not to worry about it.

Scott and her husband had fallen behind on rent in June after Scott stopped working to take care of her youngest daughter, who has Down syndrome, and the medical bills piled up.

The next month, their landlord started the eviction process, even though Scott, 37, had taken the rental office staff’s advice and requested help from Texas’ $2 billion, federally backed rental assistance fund. Scott said she spoke to the office staff and walked away believing she didn’t need to worry about eviction as they waited for the relief money — or to bother showing up to court.

When the state sent the rent relief check to the wrong address, Scott said the staff assured her they were working to get the money re-sent.

“I trusted them,” Scott said. “I shouldn’t have.”

Scott had landed a new job as a dietician at a local hospital when she returned from work one afternoon in early October to find most of her belongings spread out on the lawn and the locks changed. Thieves had walked off with their electronics.

Jeff Williams, a Harris County justice of the peace, had approved the eviction without Scott present in court — a typical outcome in eviction cases when tenants don’t show up to their hearings.

Scott wanted to know: What happened to the rent relief money?

After weeks of phone calls, a Texas Rent Relief program staffer told Scott that her former landlord had indeed received the rent relief money in mid-November — more than $11,000, enough to cover the six months’ back rent they owed.

Cherice Scott’s son, 6-year-old Teegan McKinney, plays at a park in Houston. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

“They were very well informed that that money was there and it was coming to them,” said Scott, who’s now living in a short-term rental in Missouri City with her four kids. “Yet they still pushed us out.”

Scott’s former landlord — Blazer Real Estate Services, a Houston property management company — did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment. An employee at Blazer’s office who answered the phone declined to answer questions.

The federal government and the state of Texas both had people like Scott and her family in mind when they hurriedly created a safety net for struggling renters amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas received more than $2 billion out of the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package President Joe Biden signed into law last year, to set up the Texas Rent Relief program, designed to help such families stay in their homes as the pandemic triggered a tsunami of business closures and hundreds of thousands of layoffs.

But The Texas Tribune interviewed tenants from across the state who were approved for federal rental assistance and were evicted anyway.

Two landlords, like Scott’s, evicted their tenants in the period between the initial rent relief application and when the government money arrived and then kept it — an apparent violation of the program’s requirements for landlords. In those cases, the check was initially sent to the wrong property — and only arrived after the tenant was kicked out.

One landlord received federal money through the Texas Rent Relief program and later chose not to renew their tenant’s lease — which was legal in that case.

In order to receive federal rent relief funds through the state, landlords had to sign an agreement that forbids them from evicting tenants for nonpayment during the time period covered by the assistance.

But housing advocates and lawyers who represent tenants facing eviction say they routinely see cases of Texas landlords accepting thousands of dollars from the government and evicting the tenants the money was intended to help.

The Tribune contacted government agencies involved in the program and found that none of them — including the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which runs the state rent relief program — track how often this happens.

And it’s not just happening in Texas.

According to the National Housing Law Project, 86% of the 119 lawyers across the country who responded to a survey gauging how the end of a federal moratorium on evictions was affecting tenants said they had seen cases where landlords either declined to apply for assistance from rent relief programs or took the money and proceeded to kick out their tenants.

“The industry standard here is fraud,” said Stuart Campbell, managing attorney at Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, speaking generally about instances in which landlords receive rent relief funds and evict tenants. “These landlords are the prime beneficiary of these rental assistance programs and just en masse have been violating the provisions of the programs and on top of that consistently misleading judges and securing judgments and evictions, even when they’re receiving funds.”

Many landlords have tried to work with their tenants to try to avoid evictions for back rent during the pandemic, said David Mintz, vice president of government affairs for Texas Apartment Association, a trade group of rental property owners.

But receiving rent relief dollars wasn’t guaranteed, so some landlords filed for eviction in case the money didn’t come through and as a last resort after months of going without rent, Mintz said. Under the program rules, landlords are allowed to evict only in specific situations, such as lease violations related to criminal activity, property damage or “physical harm” to others, Mintz pointed out.

If tenants feel they have been unjustly evicted, they can appeal the eviction, Mintz said. Any allegations that “either a renter or a rental property owner isn’t following the program rules” should be reported to the program to be investigated, he said.

“We believe owners have done their best to try to understand the intricacies of the program and comply with its requirements,” Mintz said.

When Congress set aside more than $46 billion for emergency rental assistance, they intended for that money to keep people in their homes, said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Houston. The idea of landlords taking rent relief dollars and still evicting tenants is “outrageous,” she said, and could warrant investigation.

Since being evicted from their home in Katy, Cherice Scott and her four children have lived in hotels and other temporary settings, most recently a short-term rental in Missouri City. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

“I think any landlord that accepted money or got money directly for rent absolutely should not have evicted anyone,” Garcia said. “And if they did, it should be audited and reviewed by [government investigators] so that we can recoup our funds for the misuse of the dollars.”

Texas closed the rent relief program to new applicants in November, citing overwhelming demand for rental assistance dollars. The state received another $47 million in March, which TDHCA said would go toward helping tenants who applied before the November cutoff. As of Wednesday, the program has assisted more than 300,000 households.

The money was considered crucial to prevent a wave of tenants losing their homes as eviction bans expired; in recent months, three Texas metro areas — Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth — have seen some of the highest eviction case filings in the country among the 31 cities tracked by Eviction Lab, a research center based at Princeton University that tracks eviction filings.

To qualify for rental assistance from the Texas program, tenants had to fall below a certain income level, prove they experienced some kind of financial hardship during the pandemic and make the case that they would be at risk of losing their home if they didn’t receive rent relief.

A collection of state and federal agencies — including the TDHCA — are tasked with looking into allegations of fraud, waste and abuse in rent relief programs. But none of the agencies contacted by the Tribune would say whether any landlord has been credibly accused of taking rent relief money and improperly ousting their tenants, or whether they have imposed penalties on landlords for doing so.

Some tenants who spoke to the Tribune about their cases said they called a hotline used to report fraud, waste and abuse in the state rent relief program and never heard back about their complaints.

Scott said she complained to a program staffer in October about her landlord’s conduct, and the staffer referred the complaint to the program’s anti-fraud division. Two months later, Scott received an email acknowledging her complaint — but said she hasn’t heard back since.

Stephanie Gates’ rental assistance check initially went to the wrong address — and reached her landlord less than two weeks after she was evicted from her Round Rock home in January. Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune

“I was a good tenant”

Stephanie Gates also thought the state rent relief program would save her from an eviction. In her case, the check arrived in time — but went to the wrong place.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Gates, a 42-year-old Round Rock resident, saw her hours as a temp working in guest services at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport cut in half, and by January 2021 she was behind on rent for her two-bedroom apartment. In June, Gates said she lost her job after she missed a week of work because of a medical problem.

But in September, Gates received good news: Not only did she qualify for help paying back rent, but the program would cover her rent through November — 11 months all together, totaling $12,740.

“I’m sitting thinking, ‘My rent’s paid, OK, all I have to worry about is December and January,’’’ Gates said.

Then in December, the property owner filed an eviction case against Gates and gave her a notice to vacate.

It turns out the state program had sent the check in September — to the wrong address.

At a Jan. 10 eviction hearing, Gates said she told Williamson County Justice of the Peace KT Musselman she had been approved for rent relief and explained that the check went to the wrong address — facts she said the property manager, who represented the landlord in court, backed up.

Despite that, the property manager told Musselman they wanted to proceed with the case, Gates said. Musselman sided with Gates’ landlord and granted the eviction.

In a phone interview, Musselman declined to say why he ruled in favor of Gates’ landlord. But Musselman expressed sympathy for the landlord, noting that they had gone 11 months without rent from Gates. Even if the rent relief check was in hand, it wouldn’t have covered the amount sought by the landlord, Musselman said.

“I can understand an apartment complex coming at this point in the process and saying, ‘It's time to figure out what's going to happen here or move forward,’” Musselman said.

Alexander Stamm, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid who is representing Gates, said Musselman shouldn’t have let the trial take place at all because of a Texas Supreme Court order requiring judges to postpone eviction cases if a landlord confirms they have joined a tenant’s application for rent relief.

“In our view, the judge made a mistake letting the trial proceed as soon as [the property manager] confirmed that the owner had a pending application for rental assistance,” Stamm said in an email.

On Jan. 27, Williamson County constables came to execute the eviction. Newly homeless, Gates stood on the curb in the cold guarding her belongings until a friend could get off work to help her move them.

“I did everything right, and to still have my stuff thrown down the street … it’s just something that I’m still trying to process,” Gates said.

Less than two weeks after Gates’ eviction, she spotted something in her online account with the rent relief program: A pair of checks totaling $12,650 had cleared the property owner’s bank account. Her former landlord had taken the rent relief funds after they evicted her.

Attempts to reach the property owner — RDRH Holdings Inc., an Austin-based corporation — and its president were unsuccessful. Lee Reznicek, a property manager who oversees Gates’ former home for Austin-based Hill Country Property Management, declined to comment when reached by email.

Stamm alleges that RDRH Holdings violated six requirements set out by the program in a contract landlords must sign in order to receive funds.

For example, the program bars landlords from accepting rent relief payments after they evict a tenant. The rent relief checks cleared RDRH’s bank account on Feb. 4 — less than two weeks after Gates was evicted.

Landlords who received rent relief dollars can’t evict tenants “for any reason related to rent or fees during the time period covered by the funds,” according to the program requirements. But those are the exact grounds that RDRH Holdings cited when it sued to evict Gates, Stamm said.

According to the program rules laid out in the agreement Gates’ landlord signed July 13 to receive the funds, if a landlord receives rent relief money after evicting the tenant, they’re supposed to send the money back to TDHCA within 10 days. As of Feb. 17, Gates’ former landlord hadn’t done so, Stamm said.

“You can’t have it both ways with Texas Rent Relief,” Stamm said. “You can’t get paid directly, and also break the promises you made that were designed to keep someone in their home.”

At the moment, Gates is bouncing back and forth between her father’s house and a friend’s while she appeals her eviction in an attempt to strike it from her record and make it easier for her to find a new place.

“I was a good tenant,” Gates said. “You know, we just had the problems from [the pandemic] last year, which everybody did.”

“Tenants are still the ones holding the bag”

Both the federal and state government added enforcement provisions when they created the rent relief programs. In Texas, two state agencies — the TDHCA, which oversees the statewide rent relief program, and the State Auditor’s Office — have the authority to look into allegations of waste, fraud or abuse within the program. At the federal level, that job falls to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.

TDHCA operates the state hotline where complaints originate. If the agency finds the allegations are credible, it can refer the cases to the state auditor’s office, the Treasury’s inspector general or local law enforcement agencies.

TDHCA says it has received more than 7,500 complaints through the hotline — not all of them related to fraud, waste or abuse — but the agency won’t say how many times it has referred cases to outside agencies for investigation. The State Auditor’s Office declined to say whether it has launched any investigations into potential fraud, waste and abuse of the program.

As of last week, $20.1 million in rent relief has been recaptured, TDHCA spokesperson Kristina Tirloni said, adding that not all of that was connected to allegations of fraud, waste or abuse.

Tirloni said the agency doesn’t track what portion of those clawed-back funds came from landlords found to have improperly evicted their tenants after receiving assistance — or categorize what scenarios would result in recapturing the money.

“TDHCA has taken very seriously the responsibility of helping Texas renters and landlords overcome the financial burden brought on by the pandemic,” Tirloni said.

But none of that recovered money is helping tenants ousted from their homes, said Julia Orduña, Southeast Texas regional director for Texas Housers, a nonprofit low-income housing advocacy group.

“Maybe the money will be returned to Treasury and the wrong will be righted for the government,” Orduña said. “But the tenants are still the ones holding the bag.”

That happens even when tenants win their eviction cases in court.

Diana Johnson, 35, was waiting on rent relief in January when her landlord tried to evict her and her seven children from their three-bedroom apartment in Southeast Dallas.

Johnson, a manager of a hair salon and certified nursing assistant, had asked the program in October for help covering rent while she recovered from giving birth to her son and couldn’t work. Texas Rent Relief approved her for a little over $3,100 — about three months’ worth of rent.

Johnson’s landlord — a partnership owned by Mark Musemeche, a Houston developer — had already accepted more than $4,200 in federal money in August to pay four months of rent, according to a copy of Johnson’s rent ledger she provided to the Tribune. Around that time, Johnson said she caught COVID-19 and had to miss a month of work.

Johnson had asked the office manager whether they had received the latest check, she said. They told her there was no way to see if they had received it, she said.

The morning of her March 18 eviction hearing, a Texas Rent Relief staffer told Johnson that her landlord had cashed the check two days earlier and gave her the check number. Johnson’s lawyer recorded the call.

When Dallas County Justice of the Peace Juan Jasso heard about the check and phone call, he asked the property manager whether they had received the check, Johnson said. The property manager quickly confirmed that they had — and Jasso tossed the eviction.

But Johnson’s victory was short-lived. The same day, her landlord told Johnson her lease wouldn’t be renewed when it expired the following week, she said.

Johnson’s trying not to dwell on the saga. She’s focused on finding a new place for her and her seven children to live. Her landlord gave her until the end of May to do so.

“The more I sit here and think about it, I just know to just go ahead and do what I need to do,” Johnson said.

Calls to Musemeche were not returned. An employee at the apartment complex, Crestshire Village Apartments, declined to comment.

“It takes away your pride”

Since their October eviction from their Katy apartment, Scott and her four children have lived in hotels and other temporary settings.

She said the past few months have been hard. Around the time of the eviction, Scott and her husband separated. He took the car, which made it difficult for Scott to hunt for work and shelter. Then she gave up her job at the Katy hospital to care once more for her youngest daughter.

Weeks after her eviction, Scott received an email from Texas Rent Relief on Nov. 9 acknowledging that it had initially sent the check to the wrong address. But the program had fixed that error, the email said.

“As the tenant was evicted from the unit associated with this application, pursuant to program policies, rental arrears are only approved for the time period the tenant was in the unit,” the email reads.

In other words, Scott had already been evicted, but Texas Rent Relief was letting the landlord keep the money — more than $11,000 — in apparent contradiction of its own policy.

Tirloni, the TDHCA spokesperson, declined to discuss individual tenants’ cases, including Scott’s, citing state law that prevents TDHCA from disclosing information about people who receive benefits from programs administered by the agency. But she said the program doesn’t allow landlords to receive back rent if they’ve evicted a tenant — the opposite of what the email to Scott said.

“We strive to always do better,” Tirloni said in an email. “As much as we work to mitigate human error, the potential for application errors exists. If issues are discovered or brought to our attention, like payments sent to an incorrect address, or payments sent to a landlord who has evicted the tenant, we will take corrective measures, like recapture or other necessary steps.”

Meanwhile, Scott is trying to rebuild her life. In late March she started a new job teaching at an early learning center. But she still hasn’t found a place to live. She said she has spent thousands of dollars on application fees to at least 10 homes and apartment complexes — and all of them have denied her because she now has an eviction on her record.

“It's embarrassing,” Scott said. “It takes away your pride and makes me feel like I failed as a parent. It hurts, that really hurts. But I don’t want to give up.”

Disclosure: The Texas Apartment Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/08/texas-landlords-rent-relief-evictions/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

“What happened on Jan. 6 was a protest against a rigged election, that's what it was,” Trump said to cheers Sunday at American Airlines Center in Dallas. “This wasn't an insurrection.”

During a four-stop tour with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly revisiting his presidency, Trump hammered on the false insistence that he, in fact, won the 2020 election — even after multiple failed legal attempts by Trump to challenge the election results and his own attorney general’s assurance that the election was accurate and secure.

In his remarks, Trump said he wished lawmakers had more protection during the Jan. 6 attack and that he asked for 10,000 National Guard troops to be present at the Capitol that day — a claim that has been debunked.

The former president made no mention of the revelation last week that several Fox News hosts implored his former chief of staff through text messages to urge Trump to call off the rioters.

Nearly a year out of office, Trump still looms large in Texas.

His nod is highly coveted among Texan Republican candidates eager to prove to primary voters they’re loyal to the former president. But Trump wasn’t here to stump for those he endorsed — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Trump’s obsession with spreading falsehoods about the election may have inspired state Republican lawmakers this year to pass the sweeping voting restrictions bill. He also directly pressured top GOP leaders, including Abbott, to pursue audits of local election results — even though Trump won Texas.

Trump’s remarks about the insurrection this weekend drew swift condemnation from Texas Democrats, who accused the former president of perpetrating the “big lie” that he won the election — not President Joe Biden.

“This is dangerous, and it is a poor reflection for America’s commitment to democracy for the rest of the world to see,” U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle.

Trump’s first stop on Sunday was at the First Baptist Dallas Church — headed by Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s earliest supporters among evangelical Christian leaders and later an informal adviser to the president — to give what was billed as a “special Christmas greeting” to the congregation.

But Trump regularly veered into political territory in his 12-minute speech. The former president, who wanted to pull U.S. troops from combat in Afghanistan, blasted Biden’s withdrawal there as “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.” He alluded to the country’s inflation crisis, rising violent crime and to problems at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I will say that there's a lot of clouds hanging over our country right now, very dark clouds,” Trump said. “But we will come back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.”

Trump entered the church stage left at Jeffress’ side to a standing ovation, many congregants holding their phones aloft to get a snapshot of the former president.

As Trump sat in the front row, Jeffress called him a “great friend to me,” “one of my closest friends” and a “great friend of Christians everywhere.”

“I can say this without any dispute at all: He is the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel president in the history of the United States of America,” Jeffress said.

Later Sunday afternoon, attendees — who paid up to $200 for admission — stood for more than an hour in the cold outside of the American Airlines Center to see Trump and O’Reilly. Lines stretched around the arena and onto adjacent blocks. Many wore classic Trump garb like hats with his slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Inside, large sections of the arena were filled, though there were many visibly empty seats — the number of which grew slightly throughout the event as some attendees trickled out after an intermission. Other sections were blocked off entirely.

During the Dallas show, Trump nodded at Abbott’s move to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border using state funds and private donations, though he didn’t mention the governor by name. He also shouted out Paxton’s lawsuits against major social media companies — a source of ire for the former president, still resentful that Twitter banned him from the platform in January.

Trump took a swipe at Abbott's Democratic challenger — former Congressman Beto O’Rourke. Two years ago, O’Rourke defended his support for a mandatory assault weapon buyback program in the wake of a mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso that killed 23 people.

Trump predicted O’Rourke’s positions on gun policy would help Republicans keep Texas “bright, beautiful red.”

“He's against guns, God and what else?” Trump said of O’Rourke. “How is he going to do in Texas? He should not be a problem.”

A spokesperson for the O’Rourke campaign did not immediately provide a response.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/19/trump-texas-gop-elections/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Texas Republicans want to use billions in federal pandemic relief to send checks to homeowners just ahead of next year's November elections — and call it property tax relief.

House lawmakers are pushing a proposal that would put $525 checks in the mailboxes of some 5.7 million homeowners who claim a homestead exemption — by tapping $3 billion sent to the state under the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill aimed at pandemic relief.

Senate Bill 1, which passed out of the House on Friday afternoon, is a roundabout way for Republican legislators to deliver on a longtime pet issue — property tax relief — without running afoul of a federal rule barring the use of stimulus dollars for tax cuts.

The bill originally came over from the Senate as a straight-up tax cut bill. House lawmakers gutted the Senate proposal to use it as a vehicle for the $3 billion in checks for homeowners. Now, lawmakers in both chambers will have to work out a compromise.

House lawmakers have justified the use of federal relief money, saying their plan addresses "negative economic impacts" resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic "including assistance to households."

Not all households would benefit. Excluded from that relief are renters, who make up more than a third of Texans.

"Here's the problem: A third of Texans don't own their property," state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, said during debate on the House floor. "So none of this $3 billion would go to the one-third of Texans who rent. Not a penny."

Republicans argued that renters have already been taken care of because Texas has already received $2 billion in federal stimulus money for rent relief, state Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Houston, said.

"I think everyone has been hit hard by the pandemic, Mr. Wu," said state Rep. Morgan Meyer, a Dallas Republican who carried the bill in the House. "Everyone."

The checks would arrive no later than Sept. 1 — about a month before voters head to the polls next year for early voting in the November midterm elections. Dick Lavine, senior fiscal analyst with the liberal-leaning Every Texan, blasted the proposal as a "transparent political ploy."

"They'll have to print the check on legal size paper to fit the signatures of all the people who want to take credit for it," Lavine said.

Republicans tried to head off criticism that the checks would be politically timed.

The bill previously gave Comptroller Glenn Hegar until July 1 to identify property owners eligible to receive the money. Meyer amended the bill to move that date up to May 1, possibly allowing homeowners to get paid sooner.

The House proposal is significantly different from a $2 billion tax cut proposal that sailed through the state Senate last month intended to take about $200 off of an average Texas homeowner's tax bill.

That measure — authored by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's point person on property taxes — would use $2 billion in state surplus funds to "buy down" public education funding normally collected by school property taxes, which make up most of a homeowner's tax bill.

A homeowner whose property is worth $300,000, the median value of a Texas home, would see $200 in temporary tax relief under the Senate proposal — though that could grow depending on how much the Texas economy grows by next June.

Bettencourt did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans are under pressure from the party's right wing to tackle the state's high property tax burden in one way or another.

Gov. Greg Abbott added property tax relief to the third special session agenda in September — after primary challenger Don Huffines, a former state senator, blasted Abbott for initially leaving it off the table. Abbott had included it in previous sessions this year, but nothing passed.

Patrick, meanwhile, called legislation cutting property taxes his top priority for this special session, which has a packed agenda that includes figuring out how to spend $16 billion in federal coronavirus relief dollars and redrawing the state's political maps.