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Op-Ed: Texas grassroots organizers offer a blueprint to help cement equity in local recovery efforts.
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Hear Us” is a column series that features experts of color and their insights on issues related to the economy and racial justice. Follow us HereAt #HearUs4Justice.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey claimed the lives of 68 Texans. 36 of these victims were in Harris County, which includes Houston. The storm decimated more than 200,000 homes, businesses, and displaced 30,000 people. Despite congressional approval, $4.3 billionFederal Emergency Management Agency funds to rebuild were distributed significantly less to low-income Texans (of color) than their white neighbors. Because FEMA’s assessments used a cost-benefit analysis that tends to prioritize areas with higher property values, white neighborhoods with more expensive homes received the most funding. The average Black resident in a low-income Houston neighborhood received $1,050. $84 in FEMA fundsWhile the average white resident in a high-income area is a wealthy one, Received $60,000.
While the federal government provides most of the recovery funding in times of crisis, the state and local governments have significant power to decide how to spend it. Texas Organizing Project, a grassroots non profit organization in Harris County has been working to change the power balance.
Multiple boards and commissions in Harris County oversee economic development, licensing and regulation, the environment, disaster recovery, and building standards. These bodies are often made up wealthy, white residents who have the resources and time to attend meetings and make the connections necessary to be on the boards.
TOP has advocated for more representations from communities of colour on local boards. TOP also works to ensure equitable disaster funding distribution so that those most affected are able to have the greatest say in how the recovery funds are spent.
As Celeste Arrendondo-Peterson, then-Housing Justice Director of TOP, explained, “We needed to find a way to intervene on the money and organize resistance against the usual way that Harris County spends money, which is in wealthier, whiter communities — places where the houses are worth more money. We wanted to influence the funding, how much money was in those programs, where they spent the money, who they spent the money on, and how they spent the money.”
Demos’ Latest case studyThis is the second of four in A series of articles on economic democracy, highlights TOP’s three-part strategy to change the balance of power in Harris County and to establish a more equitable approach to disaster recovery and future resilience.
TOP organizers went door to door in their communities immediately after Hurricane Harvey to assess immediate needs and lay the foundation for their larger strategy of power and equity. First, they continued to work with their Boards and Commissions Leadership Institutes (BCLI), which is an initiative that recruits, trains, and campaigns for women of color to be part of local governance bodies. A diverse pool of candidates was created. TOP had established BCLI in response to inequalities in power representation. The first cohort graduated the weekend after Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast. Unlike the white, wealthy politicians that typically dominate boards and commissions, “our members and leaders have on the ground experience, they know where the problems are, what people overlook, because they’ve been overlooked for so long,” explains Alpa Sridharan, the director of TOP’s BCLI program, in the case study. The lived experience gives BCLI’s members the expertise to achieve tangible gains for their communities.
Second, TOP campaigned for and helped elect a new, equity-minded Harris County Judge, who oversees the county’s boards and commissions and has considerable power over disaster relief spending. Linda Hidalgo, who was elected to succeed Ed Emmet in 2018, is still in office.
The third step in TOP’s strategy involved Building relationships with elected officials, bureaucrats, and Hidalgo, as well as holding them responsible for their campaign promises. Creating a model of co-governance in which community members, and government officials, work together to develop an equity framework to distribute disaster funding.
These tactics paid off. Harris County passed the Harris Thrives Resolution in 2019. It included an equity-based framework that prioritized post natural disaster projects for low income communities that are unable to rebuild themselves. In 2020, Harris County Flood Control District Task Force took over. Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Forcefocuses on equity and health, safety, community engagement, transparency in flood recovery, and resilience.
In 2020 and 2021 Harris County, Houston received $2.3 billion in federal funds for COVID relief under the CARES Act (and the American Rescue Plan) respectively. The funding was used by government officials Social Vulnerability IndexA metric that uses variables that are often overlooked in traditional cost-benefit analyses to determine how to spend the money. Considerations include the communities’ income, the percentage of residents who are elderly, their English proficiency, and the percentage of residents without a vehicle, among other factors that may affect a community’s ability to recover from a natural disaster.
These critical victories would not have happened without TOP’s consistent, targeted focus on building equity and democratic participation into local governance.
Texas still has a lot of work to do at both the state-level and the local level to preserve equity in the face looming climate disasters. In March, a report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that the Texas General Land Office, the state agency responsible for distributing the funds — led by Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush — denied Harris County over $1 billion. According to The investigation, Bush’s office “discriminated on the basis of race and national origin” and “substantially and predictably disadvantaged minority residents, with particularly disparate outcomes for Black residents.” Bush is currently running to be Texas attorney general.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in the state beyond Harvey. Climate change is making storms stronger and flooding more severe. Texas’ power grid remains unstable more than a year after a 2021 freeze left 4.5 million ResidentsWithout power. With millions of dollars of federal funding beginning to pour into cities through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and future climate disaster relief packages, the case study and TOP’s experiences offer a blueprint for organizers in other cities who aim to build more equitable, diverse, and representative local governments as they also meet the challenges of the climate crisis.
Daniella Zessoules, a senior policy analyst at Demos.
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