Houston Mayor John Whitmire and the Houston Housing Authority will give an update Thursday on a $146 million affordable housing project in Houston that has been on hold for more than a year due to contaminated soil concerns and potential health risks to future residents.
City officials and housing authority leaders will hold the news conference at The Pointe at Bayou Bend, a completed affordable housing complex at 800 Middle Street in Houston, where they will outline the current status of the development and then lead a media tour of the site.
The Pointe at Bayou Bend project was designed to add nearly 400 affordable housing units to Houston’s inventory and is part of a broader effort to increase housing options for low and moderate income residents in the city.
In July 2024, Mayor Whitmire ordered the Houston Housing Authority to halt plans to move tenants into the complex after environmental testing showed elevated levels of lead in ash found on the property.
The site once operated as a municipal trash incinerator and also held underground petroleum storage, and environmental reports identified those past uses as potential sources of contamination.
Multiple soil and ash test results showed lead concentrations ranging from about two times to nine times higher than limits set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Mayor Whitmire cited those test results and the site’s industrial history when he directed the housing authority to stop tenant move-in preparations at the completed complex.
Public records obtained through an open records request show that Houston Housing Authority officials received warnings about environmental risks at the site as early as 2019, before the agency finalized the purchase and moved forward with construction.
An environmental attorney, Robert Karl, who worked with NRP Design on the project, wrote in a 2019 communication that several aspects of the parcel’s environmental condition remained uncertain and required further investigation.
Karl noted that some areas of the property had not yet been sampled and recommended that the housing authority avoid risking any earnest money on the acquisition until additional environmental review could be completed.
Despite those cautions, records show that the Houston Housing Authority proceeded with the site purchase and continued construction of The Pointe at Bayou Bend under its then leadership.
In early 2024, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requested updates on soil testing at the site from then Houston Housing Authority President and CEO David Northern, indicating federal awareness of the environmental concerns.
The housing authority continued work on the project and advanced toward occupancy plans even as questions persisted about soil conditions and the adequacy of testing and remediation.
After Mayor Whitmire’s directive in July 2024 to prevent tenant move-ins, federal agencies began their own review of conditions at the property.
In October 2024, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development collected soil samples from The Pointe at Bayou Bend site.
Officials have not yet publicly detailed the findings of those federal soil tests or any subsequent actions that may result from the analysis.
