HOUSTON — Houston will have two more years to distribute federal funds for Hurricane Harvey disaster relief, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced at a city council meeting on Wednesday.
Buckingham said the U.S. Housing and Urban Development has granted the city a two-year extension to get the funds to those in need. The previous deadline was 2025, meaning all unspent funds would have had to be returned to the federal government. There is still around $200 million in disaster relief funds that need to be spent.
Additionally, the city will be working the the Texas General Land Office to find and contact hundreds of households that were displaced by a housing project after the hurricane. By law, the residents were supposed to be reimbursed by the city, but Buckingham said that never happened.
Now there's an effort to get those residents the money they were entitled to, a total of around $45 million.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire held a media briefing after the meeting to discuss the announcement with other local leaders. Watch the full briefing: