What John Whitmire Is Doing to Houston
John Whitmire became mayor promising to fix Houston’s problems. But some of the biggest things his administration has done look less like fixing problems and more like moving them, watching them, or clearing them out of sight.
Take homelessness.
Whitmire’s administration developed a plan to get homeless people off the streets and “restore public spaces.” That sounds good until you look at who was pushing hardest for action. The Texas Observer reported that Downtown Houston+ and the Greater Houston Partnership told Whitmire’s housing adviser that homelessness was one of their biggest concerns. Those groups represent downtown and business interests.
Whitmire’s team then went to Austin looking for more power to involuntarily commit homeless people. In plain English, that means putting some people into treatment or confinement even when they do not agree to go. The city helped push for a law that made it easier to do that.
So the question is simple: Was the goal mainly to help homeless people, or to get them out of sight of businesses and visitors?
Then there is the spying question.
Houston is paying about $620,000 to a company called Zencity. Zencity uses artificial intelligence to study what people are saying online, including social media, Nextdoor, 311 complaints, surveys, and other public information.
The company says it is not spying because the information is public and anonymous.
But City Hall can still learn things like: people in this part of Houston are angry about ICE; people in another area like Whitmire’s position; Spanish-language media is producing a different reaction.
That means the city is paying an AI company to keep track of what Houstonians are thinking.
Whitmire’s people say the system is only used to measure public opinion, not to help his reelection campaign.
Maybe.
But if a mayor knows exactly which neighborhoods like his policies, which ones dislike them, and which messages work best, that information could obviously be useful in an election.
That raises more questions.
Is Zencity connected in any way to Houston’s other surveillance systems?
Is any of this information tied to Flock license-plate cameras?
Could city technology be used to follow people who may run for mayor?
I cannot prove that any of those things are happening.
But Houstonians have a right to ask what these systems can do and what rules prevent politicians from abusing them.
Then there is money.
Whitmire solved the long fight with Houston firefighters by agreeing to a huge settlement. But the money did not magically appear. Future taxpayers will be paying much of the bill.
That is like solving a household money problem by putting the bill on a credit card and leaving the payments for later.
Houston has also talked about moving garbage costs from the city budget into the utility system.
Again, the cost does not disappear.
It just moves to another bill.
And now Houston has agreed to give up its future right to annex The Woodlands in exchange for $50 million.
That means Houston gets money today but gives up something that could have been worth much more in the future.
It is like selling part of your backyard because you are short on cash this month.
So a pattern begins to appear.
Homeless people are removed from sight.
Costs are moved into the future or into another account.
An AI company watches what residents are saying.
And Houston sells away future power for money today.
The Observer ends by asking whether Houston’s mayor is still as powerful as people think.
Maybe there is an even simpler question:
Is Houston solving its problems, or just moving them around until somebody else has to deal with them?
Texas Observer
Whitmire agreed, saying he was about to put that fire to use. “I’m gonna leave here and probably go to work,” he said.
But work toward what? Increasingly, it seems that even Whitmire’s not sure. While he might remove a bike lane or knock down an abandoned building to perform his authority now and then, real leadership has absconded elsewhere. And as the might of his office wanes, what should concern Houstonians even more is that—barring drastic change—he’ll still be more powerful than any of the city’s top executives to come. The suburbs will keep sprawling, and the soil will keep sinking, taking America’s strongest mayor down with it.