“Our community has always survived without, so this isn’t necessarily new, but during a state of emergency, we are more…
Category: Local issues
Podcast Episode 27: Addressing ‘The Gap’ for Low-Income Renters
Last week, the National Low Income Housing Coalition published their 2020 edition of The Gap report, which annually evaluates the…
Read Texas Housers’ statement on COVID-19 preparedness and protections in the State of Texas
When Texans are confronted with rising floodwater, violent tornadoes, or other threats, we have shown that we band together to…
Podcast Episode 26: Don’t eat the toxic fish
For decades, federal, state and local officials knew that the fish in Donna Lake in the Rio Grande Valley carried…
Podcast episode 25: A Voice for San Antonio Renters
Nearly half of the city of San Antonio’s residents are renters, and the cost of renting an apartment in the…
Cleanup of Donna Lake to officially commence in March, due to pressure from ARISE, LUPE, and local allies
Texas Housers has worked for years in the Rio Grande Valley, partnering with motivated organizations like LUPE and ARISE, to…
Moms4Housing is a model of how to center tenants on the path to housing justice
In early January 2020, Oakland group Moms4Housing was subjected to a militarized eviction from an unoccupied home it had taken…
I-45 expansion in Houston offers little to numerous displaced residents, Texas Housers outlines in comments to TxDOT
The proposed expansion of I-45 in Houston, officially known as the North Houston Highway Improvement Project (NHHIP), is a prime…
Podcast Episode 24: Free Our People
In Texas, and across the country disability rights activists have demanded, worked for, and won improved transportation services, the right…
Texas Housers defends AFFH rule in statement to Congressional Oversight Committee for ‘Fair Housing Accountability’ hearing
On February 5, Congress is holding a hearing entitled “The Trump Administration’s Proposal to Gut Fair Housing Accountability” to discuss…
Harvey Forgotten Survivor Caucus show the long road to disaster recovery with their first ‘home tour’ (VIDEO)
On January 16, a group of residents who have come together to utilize their collective power under the name Harvey Forgotten…
In a series of op-eds, Texas Housers outline injustices with HUD’s protection rollbacks and Houston’s cancer cluster
Texas Housers is committed to housing justice in all the avenues that we use. Communities where individuals and families suffer…
Substandard colonias are an enduring result of housing segregation that we can fix
The challenge of substandard colonias are not unique to the border or even our era, but are actually an age…
Podcast Episode 22: Creosote in the Greater Fifth Ward
The Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens areas of Houston are historic Black neighborhoods where families have proudly planted roots for…
‘Unsafe. Unsanitary. Unequal.’ is a digital experience from Texas Housers detailing segregation in Houston’s Project-Based Section 8 Housing
In 2019, Texas Housers spent the entire year documenting the disadvantages for Black tenants in HUD-subsidized, Project-Based Section 8 Rental…
Disaster Recovery in Houston is a tangled mess. This is what I learned that needs to change in my first six months.
Julia Orduña is Texas Housers’ Community Navigator in the greater Houston area. She is sharing her initial impressions of working…
Episode 21: The Stink Of Unequal Sewage
Housing inequality can often manifest in ways that many do not think of and some take for granted. For example,…
Texas’ Health Department study officially confirms cancer cluster exists in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens
In August 2019, the Texas Department of State Health Services discovered what many residents of Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens in…
Episode 20: A Look At RAD Conversion
In 2012, Congress authorized some public housing agencies to convert units from their original federally-funded public housing developments to project-based Section 8…
Episode 18: The Power of Renters
More than one-third of households in Texas are renters, and in Austin, more than half of residents rent their homes.…
Texas Housers presents the Tenant view of Houston’s segregation of Project Based Section 8 Housing in latest report
Texas Housers is exploring the issues of HUD-subsidized housing from the perspective of the tenants. In Part 1 of a…
Podcast Episode 17: When Highways Threaten Our Legacy
In 1915, Independence Heights was the first town incorporated by African Americans in the state of Texas. For more than…
Houston’s I-45 expansion deeply damages life for low-income residents. Upholding the Four Rights could help them.
In 2015, partners of Texas Housers developed the Four Rights as a framework to discuss and practice fair housing. Those…
Houston’s downtown Opportunity Zone is a prime example why the program desperately needs reform
Since its creation in 2017, the Opportunity Zones program was touted by the Trump Administration as a measure to revitalize…
Lubbock’s zoning has a history of Jim Crow. City officials refuse to reckon with it.
Untangling a century of discrimination takes hard, dedicated work. For nearly two years, neighborhoods in Lubbock’s East and North Side have…
San Antonio Could Pilot the State’s First Right to Counsel Initiative To Help Renters Facing Eviction
San Antonio could be the first city in Texas to pilot a Right to Counsel initiative to guarantee renters in…
HUD is giving Fort Worth an Envision Center when its at-risk neighborhoods need a clear vision for their fraught future
“Housing assistance should be more than just putting a roof over someone’s head,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson told a Fort…
Two years of disaster recovery: we are holding our fire for now as we listen to survivors and ask government for a honest accounting
In the two years since Hurricane Harvey made landfall, so much has changed. There has even been some encouraging movement…
Podcast episode 15: Sonido del Agua Part 2
If you want to change law and policy, you have to change people’s minds. And to change people’s minds, you…
Harris County steps into a future of equitable recovery by passing the #HarrisThrives Resolution
Two years ago this week, Hurricane Harvey made landfall over Southeast Texas. The storm’s strength didn’t just punish with its heavy…