[Excerpts]

Before the coronavirus pandemic thrashed the country, Maria Ramirez and her husband made plenty of money to afford their modest two-bedroom apartment in northeast Dallas. 

Now they owe more than $4,000 in back rent and late fees.... They applied for aid without success.

With tens of thousands of similar stories across North Texas, housing advocates are worried that money set aside by the state and local governments to help people pay for housing is not reaching the most vulnerable....

What’s more, advocates are worried that millions of dollars will be sent back to Washington because local and state governments will not meet the Dec. 30 congressional deadline to spend the money.

"When people can't pay their rent, there are all sorts of consequences,´ said Josephine Lopez Paul, the lead organizer for Dallas Area Interfaith, a nonprofit that advocates for working families. "We should feel shame that we're not able to meet the tremendous amount of need in our city. It's becoming a shell game of shifting pots of money." 

The interfaith group estimates as much as $20 million of the city's rental assistance programs, which first began in April, has not been spent."

"For four months, millions of these funds have wafted around the corridors of City Hall while each day vulnerable families are threatened with evictions," said Jon Lee, a retired pastor of King of Glory Lutheran Church, demanding the city ease restrictions and get money to residents now.

[Photo Credit: Vernon Bryant/Dallas Morning News]

North Texas Has Millions in Unspent Aid For Renters During the Pandemic, Yet 75% of Applicants are Denied, Dallas Morning News [pdf]

[Excerpts]

On Nov. 3, 77 percent of San Antonio voters approved Proposition B, Ready to Work SA, and 73 percent approved Proposition A, Pre-K for SA. These outcomes clearly indicate San Antonio’s desire to invest in its most important resource, its people.

COPS/Metro and our sister organizations in the [Texas] Industrial Areas Foundation, or IAF, made it possible for both to be on the ballot by authoring the state’s Better Jobs Act in 2001. This law allows cities to invest sales tax dollars in early childhood education and job training. Passing Ready to Work SA is the latest in a series of victories in COPS/Metro’s decades-long strategy to invest in human development. Others include the creation of Project QUEST, Palo Alto College and the San Antonio Education Partnership.

COPS/Metro created a program that blossomed into a nationally recognized model because of its extraordinary results for its participants. We named it Project QUEST.

The wraparound services, tutoring and counseling provided for every single participant produced remarkable results. On average, 90 percent of Project QUEST participants graduate and are placed in higher paying jobs with benefits.

...

COPS/Metro’s leaders delivered more than 50,000 voters in support of Ready to Work SA because we believe in investing in people. This commitment has propelled the city of San Antonio into a national leadership role for COVID-19 recovery.

[Photo Credit: Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News]

Commentary: Accountability Key to Workforce Program, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]

[Excerpts]

When the pandemic struck, it was hard for anyone to know what to do in the face of a whole new kind of uncertainty. Community organizer Maria Elena Manzo did what she knew how to do best: She organized. Manzo works for COPA, Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action. She and her COPA colleagues began early in the pandemic meeting twice a week via Zoom to figure out how they would help mostly Latino workers in the hospitality and agriculture sectors get through the crisis.

Through COPA’s connections, mainly through the group Mujeres en Acción, Manzo and others have made more than 1,600 phone calls since March. They listen to the stories people tell and write them down.

“There were all these stories of how people didn’t know where to go to get tested, or once they got tested they didn’t know what to do or where they could go,” Manzo says. “The list goes on and on.”

COPA volunteer Adriana Molina lost her 65-year-old father to Covid-19 in September. The family believes he contracted the virus at work in the fields.

“Sometimes we asked him to stay home, but he says, ‘I’m fine. I need to work for my rent,’” Molina recalls him saying before his illness.

COPA organizers contacted the County Board of Supervisors and the Health Department over the summer, “so they can see where the gaps are,” Manzo says.

...

Since then, they’ve met with Health Officer Edward Moreno and Epidemiologist Kristy Michie strategizing how COPA and the Health Department could work together. From there, a wider group with other county representatives and representatives from agriculture and hospitality was formed that they call “Breaking the Chain of Infection.”

Because of the state’s Health Equity Metric, identifying gaps matters to everyone in Monterey County who wants to reopen. As COPA organizers have been working, so have leaders in the Monterey Peninsula’s hospitality sector, whose fate is now tied to controlling the virus in farmworker communities in the Salinas Valley.

[Photo Credit: Parker Seibold/Monterey County Weekly]

The Only Way Monterey County Reopens During The Pandemic is if All Voices Are at The Table to Find Solutions, Monterey County Weekly

[Excerpts]

The San Juan Diego Catholic Parish in northwest Dallas was a flurry of activity Saturday afternoon.

The nonpartisan political nonprofit is one of several groups in Dallas and across the state working to get Latinos to the polls. The goal is to boost candidates who are more likely to support progressive policies that would expand health care and police reform as well as establish drivers licenses for immigrants without documentation.

The group has targeted six statehouse races in North Texas where they hope to energize voters to pick candidates who support their agenda.

Margarito Garcia Jr., 32, is one of those volunteers making phone calls, despite the fact he cannot vote in this election. He lives in the U.S. under the DACA program, which was put in place by President Barack Obama to give young immigrants brought here as children the ability to remain in the country.

“A citizen isn’t someone who is born here, but someone who cares about the community they live in,” he said about his work in the political process.

When Latino voters come out, he said, it reminds candidates that they are part of this country.

“Latinos have a voice,” he said. “Politicians need to know that when they make decisions, we are important and that we exist.”

[Photo Credit: Jason Janik/Staff Contributor]

Latino Voters Could Make a Difference in National and North Texas Races, Dallas Morning News [pdf]

“The unwarranted provocation, aided and abetted by fringe group extremists, is an affront to the democratic process," said clergy and religious leaders of the Arizona Interfaith Network.  Prior to the election, they reminded "all citizens that it is important to vote, regardless of your party affiliation, and to vote with confidence."

Arizona Election Updates: More Ballot Results Expected Friday Morning, Arizona Republic [jump to 5:15 update] [pdf]

Letter to the Editor by Pima County Interfaith: Count Every Vote, Arizona Daily Star [pdf]

VIP/AIN Statement Against Unwarranted Electoral Provocation, Valley Interfaith Project

Vote With Confidence- Arizona Runs Election Well, Arizona Capitol Times [pdf]

[Excerpt below]

Proponents of a local ballot measure that would set up a pandemic-relief job retraining program are making a last-minute push to ensure it's not lost as voters go to the polls for the high-stakes presidential election. 

Proposition B, dubbed SA Ready To Work, calls for redirecting $154 million in sales tax revenue from aquifer protection and into retraining 40,000 workers who lost their jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Proponents argue the program, which includes stipends and daycare, would allow the Alamo City to remake what's long been a low-wage, tourism-driven economy.  

"These were people who, before the pandemic, were working jobs that weren't very high paying and often didn't have benefits," said San Antonio Councilwoman Adrianna Rocha Garcia. "Very often, they were working multiple jobs to make ends meet." 

Proponents Make Last Minute Case for Proposition B, San Antonio's Job Training Measure, San Antonio Current [pdf]

Kim Crecca, VIP leader and coordinator of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona's prison ministry program, commends the department for testing all inmates in the state in a short period of time, but says "There's no plan in place for continued testing...so, somebody who tested negative, you know, a week ago, could be positive today based on something somebody brought in from the outside." (Arizona Republic)

Inside an Outbreak: How Tucson Prison's Whetstone Unit Became a COVID-19 Hotspot, Arizona Republic

After COVID-19 Cases Spike in Tucson Prison Unit, Advocates Demand Action to Spare Inmates, AZ Central

[Excerpt]

Regardless of the outcome, it’s clear the election has brought out many new voters. According to the Metropolitan Organization, a coalition of faith-based nonprofits in the Houston area, “low propensity voters” — which the group defines as voters who are newly registered, infrequent, young, or from communities of color — are casting ballots at rates on par with or exceeding those seen in the 2016 election in nearly all of the precincts that the group is monitoring.

Metropolitan Organization leaders credit that in part to a recent ramping up of ongoing get-out-the-vote efforts, including having church leaders focus more on civic engagement within their congregations ahead of the election.

[Photo Credit: Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle]

Campaigns Try To Reach Election Day Voters After Record Early Voting, Houston Chronicle [pdf]

[Excerpt below]

Increasing participation in the political process is at the heart of Bastrop Interfaith’s mission as Election Day approaches.

A nonpartisan, multi-issue organization, Bastrop Interfaith is part of a larger organization called Central Texas Interfaith, which works to address public issues that affect members of different communities.

Made up of community institutions like churches, neighborhood associations and public school groups, Bastrop Interfaith pulls together community members to address common issues.

A large part of this effort, according to Edie Clark, a Bastrop County resident and leader with Bastrop Interfaith, is developing leaders within local communities so people have the skills and opportunities to engage with public officials about salient topics.

This year, that means informing as many county residents as possible about the issues at hand for the election, and where different local and state candidates stand on them.

[County Map Courtesy of Bastrop County]

Bastrop County Nonprofit Works to Increase Voter Participation in Low Turnout Area, Austin American Statesman [pdf]

[Excerpts]

As political groups across the country make their last appeals to Christian voters, often pointing to a narrow set of issues, Sister Jane Ann Slater, chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, wants the people of faith to think more broadly...

“You look at the breadth of issues under the umbrella of common good and quality of life,” she said.

The workforce development initiative, known as “Proposition B,” is as much about helping those hit hardest by COVID-19...

For years Slater has been working with C.O.P.S./Metro, an alliance of community organizations that started with coalitions of local churches and grew over time to include labor unions and other activists to organize on immigration and living wage campaigns...winning victories throughout the 1990s and instituting programs that continue to bear fruit today, including Project QUEST, the program on which Proposition B is modeled.

When the pandemic hit, the Archdiocese of San Antonio quickly worked with C.O.P.S./Metro to ensure the city directed millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funds toward housing security, but Slater said charity isn’t enough for the long term. That’s where Proposition B comes in.

C.O.P.S./Metro worked with the local community college district and employers to assure that the kind of training the new program provides will make participants eligible for jobs that already exist with room for salary growth.

They’ve also been trying to get word out to voters that the program Proposition B aims to replace, a popular aquifer protection program, will be funded by another revenue stream. Protecting environmental resources, especially clean water, is not a trade off C.O.P.S./Metro is asking people to make.

“You don’t listen to your bishop. You don’t listen to the pope. You don’t listen to the church as an institution,” Slater said, “You vote your conscience and no one can tell you you were wrong … well, they can, but you don’t have to listen.”

[Photo Credit: Our Lady of the Lake University]

Listen to Your Conscience, Not the Bishop or Pope, Texas Nun Urges Voters, SoJourners [pdf]