Texas prices for lodging, necessities skyrocket amid storm

Hotel rooms for $1,000 a night. A system set up Wednesday in Houston for residents to report incidents of price gouging received more than 450 complaints in less than 20 hours, said Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, the chief civil attorney for Texas’ largest county. “We’ve seen allegations of packs of water being sold for two to three times the normal price, or packs of water being divvied up and the individual bottles being sold at excessive prices.” Dashawn Walker, 33, searched for a hotel room Tuesday night to avoid the cold of his powerless Dallas apartment. Everyone is just trying to make it and they’re capitalizing off a crisis, and that’s so unfair to people who really can’t afford it.” Such price spikes are illegal under Texas law, which prohibits selling fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building materials or other necessities “at an exorbitant or excessive price” during a state or federal disaster declaration. Mike Parson said he’s asked the attorney general there to investigate complaints of price gouging related to natural gas, which has spiked amid supply problems and the extreme cold snap that’s enveloped a wide swathe of central and southern U.S. “I realize the shortages of whether it’s fuel, whether it’s natural gas or whatever it might be, but I don’t want anybody taking advantage of that either,” Parson said, adding he found it frustrating that prices are “skyrocketing” after just a few days of bitter cold temperatures.