PUB BLACKOUTS STRIKE HIGH AND LOW AROUND CITY

Special to EL Rrun-Rrun

When the Brownsville Housing Authority broke ground on the Poinsettia Gardens at Boca Chica on September 2019, it was seen as the watershed construction project for public housing in the City of Brownsville.

The BHA and its private partners were awarded a 9 percent $20 million tax break for the creation of 150 housing units. It was the largest financial awards the Brownsville Housing Authority had received for this type of project.

Then came the Great 2021 Blackout of the Brownsville Public Utility Board. Now, as most of the city is slowly recovering from the last five days of frigid weather, some tenants of the ultra-modern units say that they still haven't received electricity. And some even yearn for their single-story brick dwellings at the old Villa Verde project.

"Those houses were made of brick and retained the heat even if the lights went out," said a woman who was standing outside one of the multi-story units this morning. "These new ones have a real high ceiling with central air but they get really cold when there's no electricity. The others were old, but they were warm."

The woman said that the tenants moved into the new apartments this month, but that since she closed her PUB account at the old project, she had to pay a $48 reconnection fee to have PUB transfer the account to the new apartment. 

"A lot o people never check their mail by in the boxes by the apartment offices," she said. "I did and there was the bill for the reconnection fee. Otherwise, they wouldn't turn on the power."

A BHA supervisor at the site said that some of the units at Poinsettia Gardens are hooked up already after the PUB rolling blackouts and was at a loss on why some of the units had their power restored and others are still in the dark.

"It's not up to us if the lights come back on," he said as he led a group of visitors through the project. "It's either up to PUB or ERCOT up in Austin.

"We're struggling without power as well," he said. "I know we have a lot of families without lights. We've been waiting for the last four days for the power to come back on."

Across town, some older subdivisions have also been left out of the PUB blackout emancipation and say that they are hoping the power comes back on today as it has in other, newer parts of the city. Among this is District 2 commissioner Jessica Tetreau, a chronic complainer of utility services.

In the past, her complaints have drawn the ire of other residents because they see her as a whiner when she could be more proactive to do well by her constituents.

Today, she said her home was one connected to an older part of the PUB system and that it is on the 20 percent of the homes that hasn't received electric power yet.

She included a PUB graphic that shows that her home, as well as the ones at Poinsettia Gardens, are part of some 1,300 still without power.

"And yet you can walk to Boca Chica just a few yards from the apartments and all the businesses have lights and heat," said the woman from the projects. "It doesn't seem fair."