A Little Louder

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.

Live from the NLIHC’s Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition convening in Washington D.C., our 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.

The group touches on how their lived experience grounds their expertise in disaster housing recovery, and they discussed their critical work in Texas ensuring their communities have a seat at the table in disaster planning, response, and recovery.

We again want to thank @nlihc for the invite and hope you enjoy this lively panel!

On this episode, we're joined by Rich Acosta from My City Is My Home/Mi Ciudad Es Mi Casa as we 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.

Only twice in a decade, Texas reviews its status on fair housing. State officials evaluate how they are affirmatively furthering fair housing, consider the condition of affordable housing across the state, and provide what steps they intend to take to ensure they are proactive in pursuing fair housing practices. All of these findings are collected in an Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing or an A.I.

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.

If you'd like to provide comment on the 2024 Texas A.I., you can do so here. If you have questions on this, you can contact Ben or Sidney via email.

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.

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.

Annually, Texas Housers' team in San Antonio releases its San Antonio District Renter Profiles to deliver a snapshot of how affordable rental housing is distributed across the city, what are the tenant demographics of each city council district, and newly added for this year, how evictions come into play for San Antonio households.

South Texas Regional Director Mia Loseff joins the show to discuss the findings of the renter profiles and how we can improve the lives of low-income tenants not just in SA, but across our state.

High summer temperatures in the Lone Star State are a regular occurrence. However, in recent years, extreme heat has grown more dangerous, with 2023 being the second hottest summer on record.

With this in mind, Texas is not a state that requires rental units to have air conditioning. And even if a tenant is fortunate enough to have AC, a speedy repair or accommodations are also not codified in law.

This was the main reason behind Texas Housers' latest report 'Renters, Air Conditioning, and Extreme Heat in Texas' and its author, Research Director Ben Martin, joined A Little Louder to discuss the current laws for AC in rental units in Texas and what we feel must change.

Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas Coast six years ago this week, back in 2017. And though certain immediate response efforts were swift, the actual recovery has been a long and frustrating process for far too many. Not only are some residents still awaiting funding to make their homes whole again, numerous others have been classified as helped by the Texas General Land Office and have been left behind altogether.

Texas Housers' Southeast Texas Regional Director Julia Orduña joins the show to talk about her work with households recovering from Harvey, how the State wants to take money away from recovery to fund a different program they already had proper funding for, and what we are doing to fix this in 2023.

Did you experience Hurricane Harvey? Tell us your recovery story!

https://bit.ly/HarveySurveyTH