The human and financial costs of neglecting older neighborhoods are huge.
Substandard housing abounds across Texas.
From the older neighborhoods of big cities and small towns to the fast growing colonias along the Rio Grande, communities contain dilapidated, deteriorating housing. Unfortunately, this housing is often the only affordable housing available to low-income families. Much of the housing in older neighborhoods is destroyed through arson, converted to commercial uses, gentrified, or neglected to the point that it simply falls down. Residents of older inner city neighborhoods are often the elderly and children. As neighborhoods deteriorate they become magnets for crime, making the people who live there captives in their homes.