Brays Oaks, Houston
Brays Oaks is a district in Houston, Texas, United States. The Brays Oaks Management District (BOMD), also known as the Harris County Improvement District #5, governs the district. Much of the district includes the Fondren Southwest community. Other areas in the district include Westbury. Fondren Southwest includes many apartment complexes.
The area now known as Brays Oaks was originally the ranch property of Walter Fondren, an oil businessperson.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s many apartments opened in an 8 square miles (21 km2) area then known as Fondren Southwest. The community was mostly White and Jewish. The newly established apartments attracted young, White professionals who were leaving Stella Link and other declining areas. The area economy benefited from the increase in population, and many expensive restaurants and strip malls opened in Fondren Southwest. At one time many members of the Houston Rockets and other sports teams resided in the Northfield subdivision, which was among the outermost parts of the city in 1974, in Fondren Southwest.
In the mid-1980s the oil-based economy collapsed. Property values decreased and apartment complexes began to decline. The young professionals left the apartments. The expensive restaurants left the area, since the young professionals left. The owners of the apartments lowered rent rates and offered "free move-in" specials. Many poor African-American and Hispanic families moved into units originally designated for singles and couples. Apartment complexes failed and received foreclosure. Many apartments had changed of ownership around every two years; the out of state owners were more interested in maximizing profits and less interested in the maintenance of the complexes. In the late 1980s the White population decreased and the Black and Hispanic populations increased.
By the mid-1990s property values in the area began to increase and several middle class minorities moved into Fondren Southwest. Around the 2000s Orthodox Jewish congregations moved to Fondren Southwest. In 2005 Houston City Council Member Mark Goldberg and Jim Myers, head of the nonprofit group Southwest Houston 2000 Inc., lobbied the state government, asking the state to create what was originally called the Fondren Ranch Management District. In June 2005 the 79th Texas Legislature created the Brays Oaks Management District in the area.
...
Wikipedia