Episode 60: Tenant’s Rights From Nepal To Denton – While most folks in the housing justice community have a strong idea of how tenant’s rights and evictions shape our broader world, Andrew Nelson, Associate Professor for Department of Anthropology at University of North Texas offers a unique perspective in how the fight for these essential rights globally affected his advocacy in Denton.
On this episode, we discuss what works across our globe to gain rights, what his team has observed in Denton courts, and what cultural shift will be required to make Texas a tenant-friendly state.
Episode 61: Unmasking Ownership at Problem Properties – Over the past six months, Texas Housers has spotlighted the stories of uninhabitable conditions and mass evictions at Cabo San Lucas apartments in Houston and the ensuing barriers tenants faced to remain housed.
Our work led us to investigate who actually owns Cabo San Lucas, yet no one seems to know. While our outreach team worked with tenants in Houston, our research team had coincidentally been at work to find information on property owners who attempt to escape accountability by filing as a “single property LLC”.
To tie this all together, Housers research analyst Sidney Beaty joins the podcast to talk about how problem properties utilize these loopholes and what we can do to bring these owners to the light.
Episode 62: What’s wrong at Bear Creek Apartments? – We are joined by Melody Herrera and Aggie Jaramillo to speak about their work alongside tenants of the Bear Creek Apartments in San Antonio. Residents have described issues with poor water, pests, rodents, and air conditioning that have dated back years, and now things have finally reached an inflection point. We speak about public comment, raising visibility, and what is next.
If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening at Bear Creek Apartments, please reach out our Houser in San Antonio Suzanne Baker (suzanne@texashousing.org).
Episode 63: How we would fix ‘A.I.’, meaning the Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing – The 2024 Texas A.I. is now available for comment, and Housers’ research director Ben Martin and research analyst Sidney Beaty join the podcast to talk about what’s in this document, how Texas must do a better job in engaging affected parties and everyday people for feedback, and how you listeners can express your thoughts as well.
Episode 64: How to make your city your home via advocacy – On this episode, Rich Acosta of My City Is My Home/Mi Ciudad Es Mi Casa and Housers’ Michael Depland touch on a wide variety of housing issues in San Antonio, including fighting for renters’ rights, battling against source of income discrimination for veterans, pushing back against property tax assessments for lower-income homeowners and much more.
Episode 65: Let’s Talk Disaster Recovery LIVE! – Southeast Regional Director Julia Orduña speaks with members of the Northeast Action Collective out of Houston – Sade Hogue, Cheryl Henderson, Dana Jones, and Rita Robles – during a special panel live from NLIHC’s Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition convening in Washington D.C.
Episode 66: How Food and Housing Insecurity Connect – As we work to serve low-income communities, it’s important to recognize that they often are dealing with many issues at once, and they often overlap. Jamie Olson from Feeding Texas joins this episode of A Little Louder to talk about their mission to eradicate hunger across the state, how food and housing insecurity are linked, and how we must endeavor to work across issues to serve low-income people.
Episode 67: Replacement Reserves restore aging properties. But where are they actually going? – On this episode of the show, Michael is joined by Heather Way of the University of Texas School of Law’s Housing Policy Clinic to discuss their latest report.
Best Practices to Prevent Substandard Conditions in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Properties: An Examination of Replacement Reserves Policies in Texas’ LIHTC Program dives into the issues that aging properties face as their change ownership, rules and accountability loosen, and tenants need far more protection.
To learn more, you can read Professor Way’s report on our website.
Episode 68: Land use deregulation and its limitations on achieving housing affordability – On this episode, Ben Martin and Sidney Beaty from our research team join the show to tell us what exactly land use deregulation is, in what ways it falls short to help populations most in need, and what we can do to help those who are missed by this kind of policy.
You can read more about Land Use Deregulation in our research team’s latest report that can be found on our blog.
Episode 69: What data in Dallas tells about the future of affordable housing– Ashley Flores from CPAL joins the show to talk about the organization’s recent 2024 Rental Housing Needs Assessment. With populations growing, but not enough rising wages or homes to match that influx, the data highlights an urgent need for affordable housing, especially for Very Low Income households. The report uses Dallas as its basis of study, but its lessons can be felt throughout the Lone Star State.
Flores tell us about her findings in the report, what all of these compounding demographics indicate in terms of need, and how 10 years down the road will look if we do not act now.