Harris County COVID-19 Emergency Direct Assistance Fund Opens Today

If you have not already received monetary relief from Harris County to offset financial difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, you may be eligible to receive assistance now via the Harris County COVID-19 Emergency Direct Assistance Fund. The following FAQ will address eligibility requirements, application deadlines, and the selection process.

How much money is available for financial relief to the residents of Harris County?

Harris County, in partnership with Catholic Charities of Galveston-Houston, is providing $40 million in relief. The funding is expected to help 33,333 families with one-time payments of up to $1,200 to be used for emergency expenses, such as housing, food, utilities, internet connectivity, transportation, childcare or healthcare.

Who is eligible to receive the funds?

Applicants must either have one household member enrolled in a public assistance program or have total household income that is less than 60% of the area median income as measured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Applicants must also prove pandemic-related hardship by providing copies of, for example, unpaid bills.

How many households will receive the funds, and how are the households selected?

The funding is expected to help 33,333 families. Recipients will be selected using a random statistical model that ensures no bias. Unfortunately, not everyone who applies will receive funds.

When can eligible households apply for the relief?

The application period begins on November 2, when any qualified households that have not previously applied for relief can submit a request for financial assistance. Families can apply on their own without cooperation from a landlord or anyone else. The application period closes on November 6. APPLY NOW.

How will the randomly selected applications be processed, and when will funds be distributed?

Catholic Charities will receive the names, review all applications for eligibility, work with those applicants to get the proper documentation within a short time frame, and, finally, process payment for those who are approved. All applications will be reviewed and payment will be made by December 30.

How can I get more information and/or assistance in completing the online application?

Visit this FAQ page on the Catholic Charities website or call 832-990-1318 Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. – 8 p.m., to ask questions, request help in using the website, and voice any concerns.

What options do I have if I am not selected to receive funds?

Catholic Charities has assembled a list of resources for applicants who were not selected but who may still need assistance.

How can I spread the word about this program to those in need?

Download the Fact Sheets (available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese) available on the Catholic Charities website, and share them with Harris County residents who could benefit from this program.

National Pro Bono Week, October 25-31

The 2020 celebration of National Pro Bono Week takes place October 25-31. Legal organizations across the country have organized events to raise awareness of the need for pro bono services and to celebrate the initiatives of those engaged in pro bono legal work. For a list of National Pro Bono Week events, please visit the sites below.

• Pro Bono Week — ProBonoTexas.org

• Celebrate Pro Bono — Probono.net

• Celebrate Pro Bono — American Bar Association

• Pro Bono Week — Taproot

Houston Bar Association Events

• Houston Pro Bono: A Call to Action — Houston Volunteer Lawyers (October 27, 12:00 pm, MCLE: 1.0 hour & Ethics: 0.5) Click here to register.

  Join Justice Jane Bland, Mayor Sylvester Turner, Monica Karuturi, Jeff Kaplan, Kelly Rose, Michael Donaldson, Bill Kroger, Mindy Davidson, and Anne Chandler in this call to action to ensure all Houstonians are able to access justice

If you are a licensed Texas attorney and would like to volunteer to provide pro bono services, contact the Houston Volunteer Lawyers or visit HVL online.

Jovita Idar: Texas Activist, Advocate, and Ally

Jovita Idar may be the most influential Texan you’ve never heard of before today. Idar was at various times an activist, a journalist, a nurse, and an educator, always lending her effort and intellect where she felt they were needed most.

Idar was born in late 1885, into a privileged Tejano family in Laredo. The second of eight children, her childhood home was vibrant, and the conversation was often unflinchingly political. Due to her parents’ relative wealth and social standing, she was able to obtain a high-quality, private Methodist education. Like many educated women of her era, she earned a teaching certificate and set off upon her graduation to be a school teacher.

Disgusted by the conditions of the school, which she felt made learning virtually impossible, Idar shifted her sights to what we might these days call “big structural change.” Seeing an opportunity to leverage freedom of the press into a platform from which to fight for civil rights, she moved back home in 1911 and joined her father in the family business, running a newspaper called La Cronica. That same year, she worked with her family to hold the First Mexican Congress, after which she published an opinion piece in La Cronica calling for women’s suffrage.

After a brief stint in El Cruz Blanco (a local version of the Red Cross active in the landscape of the Mexican Revolution), Idar moved to a different Laredo paper, El Progreso. It was there, as a staffer, where her most cinematic claim-to-fame took place. El Progreso published an opinion piece Idar wrote criticizing then-President Woodrow Wilson for dispatching United States military forces and the Texas Rangers to the Mexican border. Taking umbrage, Texas Rangers appeared at the headquarters of El Progreso. Idar stopped them that day by advocating for the paper’s rights under the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press, and fearlessly blocking their entrance to the building with her own body.

Idar’s accomplishments are literally too many to list here, including founding La Liga Femenil Mexicanista, fighting for the eradication of the Texas “Juan Crow” laws, and even working as a Spanish language translator in a Bexar County hospital to ensure Tejano access to medical care. But it is important to note that her political philosophy was at all times driven by a belief that equality of the sexes was crucial to the liberation of all marginalized peoples.

Hispanic Activists You Should Know

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which today enters its final week, we are shining a spotlight on four important Hispanic activists who are not attorneys, but who have had an impact on United States law.

Joan Baez, the daughter of a prominent Mexican-American physicist, was born on Staten Island in 1941. In her late teens, she found herself immersed in the deeply political folk music scene of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her debut album was released by Vanguard Records 60 years ago this month. In 1963, she entered households all over America through her performance of We Shall Overcome at the March on Washington. As discussed in No Direction Home, Baez radicalized Bob Dylan and introduced him to the folk scene. Often through interpretation of his songs, Baez and Dylan together created an iconic soundtrack to various political movements, including draft reform and lowering the age to vote. Baez has worked tirelessly for a wide variety of civil rights causes in the decades since, and these days posts images of her politically-charged paintings to her official Instagram as she continues to shape policy changes through her compelling art.

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan is not a lawyer, but has influenced the law as an LGBT activist and a White House staffer during the Obama administration. Born in Honduras in 1987, she was adopted by Americans as an infant, and raised in Brookline, an urban town that borders Boston. After a rise to prominence working with the National Center for Transgender Equality, Freedman-Gurspan accepted a position under President Obama as the Senior Associate Director for Public Engagement and the White House LGBT Community Liason. The Obama administration oversaw numerous regulatory changes that improved legal outcomes for transgender Americans. For example, prior to Freedman-Guspan’s tenure, in 2010 the Housing and Urban Development regulatory guidelines were updated to include transgender people under the Fair Housing Act protections against discrimination based on sex. Freedman-Guspan is currently a leader in the fight to reform gerrymandering laws, as a Deputy Director at All On the Line.

Dolores Huerta may be 90, but she remains an active advocate for labor reform and civil rights improvements. She may be best known for co-founding the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez in 1962. Huerta had previously founded the Agricultural Workers Association. Though originally from New Mexico, Huerta is now closely associated with California. One of the first successful campaigns she worked on was the 1960 effort to get California to provide its driver licensure exam in Spanish. Her decades of activism and lobbying efforts were crucial to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, a national labor law landmark. In 2002, she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which promotes civic engagement so that average citizens can impact the legislative process through which laws are created.

Sylvia Mendez started her life as an activist at age 8, as the plaintiff in Mendez v. Westminister School Dist., 64 F. Supp. 544 - Dist. Court, SD California 1946. In that monumental case, the Ninth Circuit held that the policy of segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, paving the way for the 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Mendez was among the first Hispanic students to attend a previously “all-white” public school in California. In 2011, President Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now age 84, she continues to speak out about her important experience as a young civil rights pioneer.

Texas Free WiFi Map

Do you have a laptop, tablet, phone, or other mobile device but lack consistent, reliable access to the Internet? Do have a limited data plan that restricts your access to online resources just when you need them the most? We found a solution!

The Texas State Library & Archives Commission, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, and Texas Legal Services Center/TexasLawHelp.org have developed an ArcGIS map of free public drive-up WiFi spots in Texas. Users can enter their address or city and search for available public WiFi within a specified distance. (Harris County Law Library is one such location.) Anyone who needs free internet access for school, work, virtual court hearings, telehealth visits, or access to web-phone or -text services will find this information useful. 

The map is available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. 

BPSOS-Houston deserves much credit for their assistance in translating the site for Vietnamese speakers.

Access the Texas Free WiFi Map at either of the links below.

• TexasLawHelp.org Free WiFi Map

• Texas State Library and Archives Commission Free WiFi Map

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission provides a list of additional resources to help Texans get and stay connected to the Internet, a couple of which are listed here.

• Find local internet service providers making price and service adjustments to keep communities connected.

• Find local service providers in your area using BroadbandNow.org

If you have any questions or comments regarding the map tool, please contact TexasWiFiMap@tlsc1.org

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