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Decades ago they were cool apartments where people wanted to live.

Now thousands of them are marginally habitable.

“When you’re driving either to or from Hobby you kind of just put your eyes over your head until you get to 45,” said City Councilwoman in Dist. I, Carol Alvarado.

Mayor Bill White is now backing a major effort to fix up the falling down. “That again can be tens of millions of dollars.”

Apartment owners can apply for federal money, up to $30,000 per apartment.

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The first targets are Fondren Southwest and that area right around Hobby.

All of this came about in the last five or six months when the mayor and a couple of others went to New York and drove around Brooklyn and the Bronx and were impressed with improvements that had happened in the last 30 years or so.

Complexes that get money to fix up have to fix prices so the units remain affordable.

“It was always told to me you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig at the end of the day,” said Jarvis Johnson, City Council Dist. B.

The apartments would also have to maintain standards over 15 years, or face paying back the money.

Jennifer Paneral is with the Alliance Residential Management. “We’ve had some properties where we’ve invested a lot of capital and tried to maintain them and to see some of the neighboring properties brought up in the area would be a great thing for us.”

Some apartment owners and developers tell us they are intrigued.

“We’re going to see them cleaned up and we’re going to see places that people are proud to call home,” said David Mincberg with the Mayor’s Apartment Committee.

And those behind it believe if it can work in the Bronx it’s bound to work in Houston.