Tenant Relief

COVID-19 has led to a historic housing crisis, and with millions of Gulf Coast workers struggling to pay their rent, we have fought to ensure no one loses their home because of the pandemic. In collaboration with local union affiliates and community allies, the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation has led advocacy efforts to encourage elected officials at the city, county, and state to implement policies to keep working people impacted by the crisis housed.

In our letter to the City of Houston on March 19th, we called on the city to pass a grace period ordinance to give working families suffering from financial distress due to the pandemic time to pay their rent. This type of ordinance has been passed in Dallas, Austin, San Marcos, Kyle, and several other cities. To encourage the Mayor and city council to pass the ordinance, we have created an Action Network petition, rallied hundreds of union members to call their council members, created digital ads, and worked with a coalition of unions and community groups to encourage the city to act.

We have also worked to encourage Harris County officials to suspend COVID-related evictions. After the Texas Supreme Court ended its eviction moratorium at the end of May, we started an Action Network campaign calling on Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and the Harris County Justices of the Peace to use their legal authority to suspend evictions in Harris County. We also sent a letter to all 16 Harris County Justices of the Peace laying out our rationale, and followed up with a legal memo created in collaboration with attorneys from Workers Defense Project.

After we sent our letter, Harris County Judge Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner sent a letter to the Harris County Justices of the Peace joining our call to suspend evictions. We are thankful that six of the sixteen judges have responded by suspending evictions in their courts, all of whom we thanked in a subsequent letter.

In recognition of our advocacy, the ALF was invited to join the Harris County/Houston Housing Stability Task Force. We have continued to work with the City of Houston, Harris County, and community allies to get the word out about tenant protections under the CDC Eviction Moratorium and housing aid through local governments.