Tempers boiled over at a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep John Culberson Monday in Braeswood Place to talk about flooding on Brays Bayou.

In an auditorium at Pershing Middle School, about 200 residents gathered from the neighborhoods hardest hit by floods in May 2015 and April 2016, when some homes soaked under feet of water. It’s a multi-billion dollar-problem for which Houston currently has no quick solution. And no answers surfaced Monday.

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Culberson’s town hall was a place to vent. Many attendees shared similar stories of sinking thousands of dollars in repairs to ruined homes that can never be rented or sold. They feared they would be ruined next time the water came in.

“It’s a hardship to keep our property,” Tim Ryan from Meyerland told Culberson from the audience.

Culberson, with a seat on the powerful House Committee on Appropriations, touted the $194 million in federal funds he’s won for the Harris County Flood Control District since 2002. But even projects funded by that couldn’t contain the great magnitude of recent rains.

“I’m looking for creative suggestions,” Culberson told the audience.

He got several. One woman suggested building giant reservoirs beneath the streets, as has been done in Japan. A man suggested partnering with China to develop a solution.

Another, his face red with frustration, ordered Culberson to make “back room deals” and “threaten some careers” to stop the floods.

Woman: floods have destroyed my house@CongCulberson: "My thoughts and prayers are with you."



Woman: "I don't want prayers, I want money!" — Dylan Baddour (@DylanBaddour) June 6, 2016

Attendees charged that developers were exacerbating the floods, that project construction was way behind schedule, that funds were being poorly distributed and more. One man took the microphone at the front of the room and exclaimed, “What the hell is going on?”, drawing applause.

Culberson, who grew up near the Braeswood area, suggested attendees contact their county commissioner to address those issues.

“We have,” an audience member shouted.

The best viable solution, Culberson said, was to build more retention space, which would require land and money. He needed local entities to be able to match federal funds, he said.

For the owners of swamped homes, a distant promise of more reservoirs meant little. Ryan suggested a federal buyout of the hundreds of flooded properties. An unemployed oil and gas engineer, Ryan said he and his family took $30,000 from his savings to cover costs associated with the two floods, and were stuck paying taxes on the home.

“We’re going broke,” he said.

Culberson said he thought residents “should have an opportunity to sell out and move,” and vowed to “light a fire under FEMA” until the emergency management agency forked over funds for such large-scale disaster mitigation.

Attendees showed little confidence that FEMA would save them. Many recalled frustrations with the agency. Ryan, who has federal flood insurance, had rejected a loss appraisal by a federally-contracted insurer which he said undervalued his home by more than $100,000, and spent months pushing for FEMA to reassess. The process is ongoing.

After the town hall, Ryan said he’d taken nothing hopeful from the event, though he praised Culberson’s effort to come out and listen, even in the face of angry constituents. He doubted that flood control construction projects would soon ease his woes, and remained adamant that the best help government could give the flooded residents would be to relieve them of their property.

“All the houses that flooded in Meyerland,” he said. “They all need to be torn down.”