Houston, HUD unveil generator installations at Acres Home with CDBG-DR backing

At a press event at the Acres Home Multi-Service Center, Mayor John Whitmire and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials announced a HUD-backed effort to add backup generators and other power-protection measures at strategic city sites.

Dr. Teresa Tran, director of the Houston Health Department, opened the event and noted the center serves more than 10,000 Houston residents each month and that the city has seen increased heat-related illnesses this June. "Over 10,000 Houstononians visit the multi-service center here at Acres Home every month," she said.

Mayor John Whitmire said the city identified critical gaps in infrastructure after recent storms left some fire and police stations without power. Whitmire credited collaboration with HUD for securing recovery funds and said the city obtained "$11 million of recovery funds from HUD" to support power generation at strategic locations, including libraries, health clinics and multi-service centers.

"We reached out to HUD, Secretary Turner, the collaboration with his staff, and we got $11 million of recovery funds from HUD," Whitmire said, adding the broader recovery allocation totals $314 million. He said the city prioritized $150 million of the allocation for home repairs while also funding the power-protection initiative.

HUD Secretary Turner said HUD has awarded $314 million in Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds to Houston for hurricane recovery and resilience and described recent outages and storm debris as drivers of the effort. Turner also announced that HUD approved a waiver increasing the public-service cap from 15% to 21% to allow Houston to fully fund three public-service activities in its CDBG-DR action plan: emergency response/public safety, vegetation management and debris removal, and homeless services.

"We approved a waiver increasing the public service cap to give Houston more flexibility and fully fund three public service activities as outlined in your CDBG-DR action plan," Turner said.

Brian Mason, director of the City of Houston Office of Emergency Management, said staff have identified a large list of candidate sites for generators — fire stations, police stations, libraries, clinics and multi-service centers — and that site selection must follow federal grant rules and environmental reviews. Mason said the city has run multiple federal procurement rounds and that costs could rise as bids are analyzed, potentially reducing the number of sites that can be completed.

City officials said the immediate next step was a short public tour of the generator at the Acres Home site and continued procurement and environmental review to finalize installations. No local legislative vote was recorded at the event; officials described the announcements as executive and administrative actions coordinated with HUD.

The city and HUD did not provide an installation schedule for all sites at the event; officials said sequencing will depend on procurement results, environmental clearance, and compliance with HUD grant conditions.