Dominic Anthony Walsh / Houston Public Media
U.S. HUD Secretary Scott Turner speaks with Mayor John Whitmire beside a power generator at the Acres Homes community center on June 29, 2026.
During his visit to Houston on Monday, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Scott Turner celebrated the installation of a backup power generator at the Acres Homes Multiservice Center in the northwest part of the city.
“You identified a need for stronger energy, resilience,” Turner said. “We gave $101 million out of the total available to support power generation and resilience program. This generator which is going to be outside today … is a mark of the success of our cooperation and working together.”
The generator is one of 15 already installed under Mayor John Whitmire’s Power Protection Initiative, launched after Hurricane Beryl and the derecho wind event in 2024 left millions of Houstonians — and many city facilities — without power for days.
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Power protection initiative scaled back
HUD awarded about $315 million to the city after the natural disasters in 2024. Most of the money is flowing to the backup power generators and housing repairs. The award also funds homeless services and debris pickup.
RELATED: Houston City Council approves amended disaster recovery plan with $100 million for housing repairs
The city plans to install generators at an additional 49 locations across Houston. The update provided on Monday marked a scaling back of an earlier version of the initiative, in which more than 100 sites had been identified as priority locations for generators.
“We had a big wish list. As we’re going through, we’re really trying to prioritize them based on the restrictions we have to follow, but also what communities and what areas need it the most,” said Houston emergency management director Brian Mason.
In the aftermath of the power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl, nearly 70,000 Houstonians sought shelter in the city’s cooling centers, according to Mason, the city’s interim chief of resilience and recovery. Of the city’s 13 multiservice community centers, only one had a generator at the time.
Houston Health Department director Theresa Tran said the city has seen a higher number of heat-related illnesses this June compared to last year.
RELATED: There are more than 20 summertime cooling centers where Houston-area residents can escape the heat
“We are seeing the heat rise and the temperatures rise, so an investment like this benefits our community so greatly, especially when we have storms and natural weather events,” Tran said.
Turner criticizes ‘housing-first’ approach to homelessness
The city is using just over $40 million in HUD funding to support Whitmire’s initiative to reduce homelessness, including a 222-bed residential service center at 419 Emancipation Ave. in East Downtown.
The facility is intended to operate as a “front door” to the region’s homeless response system, which relies on a more than $70 million allocation from HUD, overseen by the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County.
About 57% of the Houston area’s allocation supports permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless people. Under President Donald Trump and Turner, HUD is seeking to cap such support at 30% of the federal allocation across the country. The effort has faced legal challenges, including a court ruling against the plan on Tuesday.
Houston Public Media asked Turner about the effort on Monday.
“The housing-first model is a failed model,” Turner said. “The Bible says to put the axe to the root. What does that mean? What is the root cause of homelessness? Mental illness, drug addiction. And so we want to make sure that we not only house people, we treat people to get them healed and transformed and then back to a life of self-sufficiency.”
According to a survey of homeless people conducted during the Houston-area coalition’s annual point-in-time count in February, job loss, eviction and housing costs were the foremost drivers of homelessness — with about 32% of respondents stating those factors were the primary reason they lost housing, followed by about 22% who pointed to family or relationship conflict.