Former MRA Official to Plead Guilty in $8.5 Million Housing Fund Theft

For years, hundreds of vacant lots scattered across Third Ward sat choked with weeds and illegal dumping while the Midtown Redevelopment Authority kept cutting checks for their maintenance. No crews showed up. The lots stayed overgrown. The money disappeared.

Todd Alan Edwards, the MRA's former real estate asset manager, is expected to plead guilty Wednesday in a scheme that prosecutors say drained $8.5 million in public funds from the agency, money earmarked to build affordable housing in a historically Black neighborhood that had watched gentrification close in for two decades.

Edwards, who joined the MRA in 2003 and spent more than 20 years overseeing its real estate operations, faces four first-degree felony charges: abuse of official capacity, money laundering, theft, and misapplication of fiduciary property. Co-defendants Veronica Ugorji, of Cortez Landscaping, and Kenneth Jones, of KCK Demolition and Landscaping, each face money laundering and abuse of official capacity charges. All three carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Harris County DA Kim Ogg and Houston Mayor John Whitmire announced the charges at a joint press conference on June 21, 2024. Prosecutors allege Edwards used his control over invoicing and contracting to direct payments to Ugorji and Jones for landscaping work on roughly 450 vacant Third Ward lots, work that was never performed. Edwards allegedly spent the stolen funds on expensive cars, houses, lavish trips, and pornography.

Ogg was pointed about how long it went undetected: "The scheme was so unsophisticated that the slightest investigation or second look would reveal a great deal of self-dealing and that just didn't happen." Whitmire warned that the investigation was far from over: "More investigative work will reveal more."

The fraud was not uncovered by auditors or oversight boards. It was exposed by two Third Ward residents. Brian Van Tubergen first raised concerns at an MRA board meeting in October 2019, noting that agency lots were overgrown despite billed maintenance. Ed Pettitt II, who later became vice president of the Greater Third Ward Super Neighborhood, traced tips from a Facebook thread to text messages and checks revealing Edwards' self-dealing. Both spent years bringing findings to the MRA and to City Council, where they were repeatedly dismissed, before escalating to the City of Houston Office of Inspector General. The Texas Rangers and the Harris County DA's Office built the criminal case.

The scope of what was diverted from Third Ward goes beyond the stolen $8.5 million. The MRA, Houston's Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone No. 2, is legally required to dedicate one-third of its tax increment to affordable housing. Since the mid-1990s, Midtown property values have surged from $211 million to over $1.6 billion. Beginning around 2005, the agency spent nearly 15 years acquiring hundreds of Third Ward lots at $5 to $6 per square foot, a fraction of Midtown's $40 per square foot, in a land-banking strategy meant to slow gentrification. Those lots are still vacant. The agency's single largest expenditure remains a half-empty $22 million office building at Emancipation and Elgin, built with affordable housing funds.

Whitmire declared the MRA "broken" and overhauled its board. City Council Member Julian Ramirez, noting that Midtown still owns hundreds of vacant lots intended for housing, said the agency "is in great need of change." In October 2024, Houston City Council authorized $770,000 in audits of all 28 TIRZ districts, on top of $580,000 already spent, with the city intending to seek reimbursement from the TIRZs.

Edwards' expected guilty plea Wednesday would be the first resolution in a case that took two decades of quiet corruption and two determined Third Ward neighbors to finally drag into the open.