Hurricane Rita slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast on September 24, 2005 with 125 MPH winds, less than a month after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. More than seventy five thousand homes in the Southeast Texas area suffered major damage or were destroyed. The State of Texas was challenged with providing assistance to households in twenty two Texas counties. The program began on January 1, 2008 and was completed July 31, 2011.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) established the Texas Homeowners Assistance Program to distribute Two Hundred and Twelve Thousand dollars in HUD CDBG-DR funds for the repair or reconstruction of owner occupied properties. The Deep East Texas Council of Governments (DETCOG), Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) and the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Commission were tasked with administering the first phase of recovery for this Texas program.

RM Quality Construction was one of the first companies to respond to this overwhelming project in the initial development of the program. We built some of the first homes that were them modeled to refine the parameters of the program administration. With this rapidly advancing program we also had to take large steps in being able to quickly mobilize and start construction on multiple scattered sites. Phase two of this project launched with a larger scope of work and the SHAW Group was hired as the administrator to handle the larger volume.

As the program ramped up in Phase two, we needed to mobilize quickly into the twenty two counties in Southeast Texas. Ten superintendents were sent in to these counties and were set up with RV’s that acted as mobile offices. We also set up a parameter office to handle this activity as well. While working together with our construction, technical office support teams, superintendents and company headquarters they were able to build two hundred and forty eight homes in record time.