[Excerpts]

COPS/Metro representatives will be making the rounds with City Council staffers this week, pushing for a rent-control measure to reduce the stress weighing down working families during the COVID-19 outbreak.

With stay-at-home policies shutting down much of our business activity, the biggest victims have been hourly workers, many of whom have been employed in sectors (namely the service industry) where working from home is not an option, and where the money to meet payroll has dried up.

The problem is most acute for undocumented immigrants, whose jobs have been among the first to go, and who don’t have access to the kind of safety-net programs that are temporarily keeping others afloat.

....

[Specifically,] COPS/Metro is proposing an ordinance that would prohibit residential property owners from charging late fees for nonpayment of rent for the duration of the emergency disaster period declared by Gov. Greg Abbott. (The alliance’s draft ordinance would make this policy retroactive to March 13, the date that Abbott issued his initial disaster declaration.) 

[Photo by Bob Owen, San Antonio Express-News]

Garcia: COPS/Metro Proposes Sweeping Late-Fees Protection for Renters, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]

[Excerpts]

“It’s a special time with everything that’s happening because of the pandemic, but we have to think of our homes as having converted into our church where the word of God reaches us through the TV and social media,” said Jesus Belmontes, the priest of the San Juan Diego Catholic Parish in Dallas.

....

Belmontes, the Dallas priest, helped organize a drive-thru food distribution with Dallas Area Interfaith the day before Easter and looks forward to seeing some of his church community through car windows. He’ll spend Sunday mostly alone, streaming from an altar where he’d usually lead thousands of congregants for mass...

[Photo Credit: Vernon Bryant, Dallas Morning News]

How Dallas Religious Leaders Are Keeping the Faith Despite Coronavirus-Induced Social Distancing, Dallas Morning News

Limited Seating and Pajama Bottoms: How Texas Churches are Preparing for a Socially Distant Easter, Texas Tribune [pdf]

[Excerpt]

COPS / Metro focuses on arming residents through community organizing, and [Rev. Frédéric] Mizengo has been handed the baton to continue that legacy.

....

When Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller shuttered the archdiocese’s churches in mid-March to help stop the spread of COVID-19, Mizengo began live-streaming a daily Mass on the church’s Facebook page.

He used his iPad and invited a group of about 10 people, including readers and singers, to the church’s 450-seat sanctuary. To a great degree, they’ve practiced social distancing.

Mizengo hasn’t been alone in noticing the number of those watching, which has reached 400 at times.

It’s Holy Week, when church attendance normally rises everywhere, but some worshipers from outside of San Antonio have left comments on the parish’s page, too, and have kept tiny heart and thumbs-up icons floating on the page.

The parish already had seen growth, as Mexican and Mexican Americans from throughout the city heard of Mizengo’s preaching style....

[Photo Credit: John Davenport, San Antonio Express-News]

Ayala: This San Antonio Parish Isn’t Holding Mass, but Worshipers Keep Showing Up Online, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]

With the coronavirus transforming the way religious congregations operate all over Texas, Central Texas Interfaith has been at the forefront of efforts in Waco and McLennan County to bring together congregational leaders and help them navigate Stay-at-Home orders.  

Town Hall Held with Faith Leaders, CBS-KWTX [pdf]

WTOS & Llano Estacado Alliance for Democracy (LEAD) clergy and leaders succeeded in getting City of Lubbock Utilities to halt robocalls to residents.  The automated calls were causing "fear and anxiety that utilities would be shut off," even after the emergency declaration was put into place.

[Photo Credit: AP Graphics]

City of Lubbock Utility Robocalls to Stop, KCBD News [pdf]

[Excerpt]

While health and government officials work to manage the outbreak, families are struggling to pay bills and buy groceries.

Josephine Lopez Paul, the lead organizer for the Dallas Area Interfaith, a coalition of nonprofits and religious organizations that advocates for low-income families, said local, state and federal policymakers need to spend this month thinking about how to reshape the economy.

Lopez Paul said she hopes officials find a way to mitigate debt families may build as they continue to stay unable to work.

“This is going to be a depression,” she said. “This is the fastest economic decline we’ve seen in modern history. We’re not going to flip a switch one day and everyone go back to work. Some folks are never going to be able to recover from this.”

[Photo Credit: Smiley N. Pool, Dallas Morning News]

April Will Be a Make-or-Break Month for North Texas in Coronavirus Fight, Dallas Morning News [pdf][pdf]

[Excerpts]

Alba Garcia, 51, has a decision to make. Does she pay rent Wednesday or does she buy food for her 7-year-old daughter?

“Maybe I should try and pay my rent because I can’t bear for me and my daughter to be on the streets. I can beg for food but I can’t lose my apartment," she said in Spanish. Joe Higgs, an organizer for The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) acted as a translator. TMO works with Holy Ghost Catholic Church where Garcia is a member.

....

The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) — which is a coalition of organizations and religious institutions — is working with Garcia’s and Hernandez’s church to help them and others in dire situations. Their two big focuses during the coronavirus crisis are ensuring the poorest and most vulnerable people in the Houston area have food security and don’t lose housing.

“As Rev. John Ogletree of First Metropolitan Church and TMO said at a TMO virtual press conference on Wednesday, March 18, ‘hourly and part-time workers like waiters, cleaning crews, bartenders, dishwashers and others are losing their income and this is forcing them to decide whether to buy food, pay utility bills or pay rent,'” the group wrote in a press release.

Among their demands from local lawmakers, TMO is asking that Gov. Greg Abbott place a moratorium on evictions.

[Photo Credit: Click2Houston.com]

Faced With Desperate Circumstances, Nearly 2M People in Texas - Including These Houstonians - Won’t See a Stimulus Check, Click 2 Houston [pdf][pdf]

Parish identification cards, an IAF immigration strategy developed in collaboration with the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, are now accepted at Dallas County Covid-19 mobile testing units.  

[Photo Credit: Smiley N. Pool, Dallas Morning News]

Coronavirus: Condado de Dallas Responde a Preguntas Frecuentes Sobre 'Quédate en Casa' y Covid-19, Al Día Dallas [pdf]

In the only public testimony at today’s Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) meeting, Texas IAF leader Rev. Miles Brandon of Central Texas Interfaith called on the PUC to create assistance programs and halt cutoffs for customers impacted by the economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.   At the meeting the PUC voted to create the “COVID-19 Electricity Relief Program” providing financial assistance and halting service disconnections for low-income and unemployed customers in deregulated markets such as Dallas, Houston, and Round Rock  

 “COVID-19 is causing uncertainty and many hardships, and during this time, Central Texas Interfaith and our partner organizations in Texas IAF don’t want Texas citizens to have their physical or financial health put in danger unnecessarily," said Rev. Brandon.   

PUC Chair DeAnn T. Walker recognized Fr. Brandon and the work of the Texas IAF organizations in advocating for families across the state. 

6 million Texans live in the areas impact by the measures enacted by PUC today.  Today’s actions were a first step.  Texas IAF leaders plan to work with PUC leaders to extend and potentially expand these protections and assistance programs as long as the COVID-19 crisis continues.

Texas Regulators Vote to Ban Residential Utility Shut-Offs During Pandemic While Buoying Companies, Texas Tribune [pdf] 

Texans Unable to Pay Rent and Utility Bills Get Emergency Relief, NBC-DFW [pdf]

Statement by Rev. Miles Brandon, St. Julian of Norwich Episcopal Church, Central TX Interfaith

Statement by Bryan Lopez, Assumption Catholic Church in Houston, TMO

Texas IAF Letter to the Public Utilities Commission 

In small group conversations organized through their congregations, Valley Interfaith leaders Elisa Alfaro of Holy Spirit parish and Dayra Campos of San Juan Diego kept hearing the same stories: workers in cold storage facilities earning less than the minimum wage and experiencing rampant labor abuse. 

While the federal minimum wage is $7.25, parishioners shared that they are often paid less than half that by McAllen producers.  When one company closed access to the bathroom for employees, they were forced to walk 10 minutes to a gas station for their bathroom break.  Another parishioner shared constant threats by their boss if they were to admit working 10 hours per day for $600 per month (less than half the minimum wage).   

In response, Valley Interfaith leaders are calling on the City of McAllen to ensure that no company that pays workers under the minimum wage, or is guilty of wage theft, receives incentives from the city.  They are also calling on the City to investigate abusive labor practices. Leaders are now meeting with the McAllen Economic Development Corporation and McAllen City Manager about making these changes.   

"Nobody should earn a slave wage," said Elisa Alfaro.

[Image Credit: KVEO footage]

Faith Leaders, Lawyer: Wage Theft Rampant at Local Cold Storage Facilities, The Monitor [pdf] 

Produce Industry Wage Dispute, KVEO [pdf]

Fair Pay a Distant Dream for Produce Packers in the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio Express-News