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Council asks Corpus Christi Housing Authority to review apartment acquisitions, finds prior actions subject to legal review
Summary
The City Council voted June 24 to ask the Corpus Christi Housing Authority to review and, where necessary, terminate or correct a series of apartment acquisitions and related agreements that the council said may have procedural defects.
The City Council voted on June 24 to request that the Corpus Christi Housing Authority (CCHA) acknowledge the council’s findings and terminate certain acquisition‑related contracts and memoranda of understanding that the council said may have been processed without required public posting and with potential Open Meetings Act or bylaw violations.
The resolution covers numerous apartment properties listed by the council and asks the housing authority to (a) acknowledge the city’s findings that specific land‑acquisition actions are void by operation of law and (b) terminate the contracts, MOUs, ground leases and operating agreements tied to those acquisitions. The council’s resolution also asks the housing authority to provide updates and remedy irregularities.
Housing Authority response: Gary Alsup, CEO of CCHA, told council the agency is an independent unit of government that operates under state statutes and that its attorneys had reviewed similar deals elsewhere in Texas. Alsup said the acquisitions were legal under state law as he understood them and asked the council to be careful about implying bad faith. He also said the agency had posted meetings and that the authority’s board had acted under legal advice.
Why it mattered: Council members who supported the resolution said the way some board actions had been posted and executed raised possible legal and procedural concerns, including the Open Meetings Act and local government code provisions. Several council members asked for the housing authority to remedy deficient postings and to bring previously executed transactions into compliance or to unwind them if they cannot be validated.
Public comment and political context: The item drew public speakers who argued both that the housing authority’s actions diverted tax dollars from the public and that the authority’s actions were an attempt to preserve workforce housing. The council amended the original language after legal staff advised that calling acts “illegal” without full adjudication could itself raise procedural problems; an amended version used wording such as “appears illegal” in some places and asked the housing authority to address defects.
Ending: Council approved the amended resolution and asked staff to follow up. CCHA leadership said the authority believed the transactions were lawful and encouraged further dialogue; council members said they expected an accounting and compliance steps to be taken.
