Housing Is a Human Right with Julia Orduña

Housing is more than a place to live. It’s a matter of dignity, safety, and survival.

In this episode of Working Girl, I sit down with Julia Orduña, Southeast Texas Regional Director at Texas Housers, to unpack the realities of the housing crisis, from rising rent and evictions to disaster recovery and policy reform.

But this conversation is also deeply personal. We talk about the emotional toll of housing instability, the lived experiences that shape this work, and why women are often at the center of both the struggle and the solutions.

If you’ve ever wondered how housing injustice actually impacts real people and what it means to do this work on the front lines, this episode will stay with you.

Listen now and subscribe.

Check out the show notes for ways to get involved, learn more, and support the work: http://www.workinggirlpodcast.com

Transcript

What Housing Justice Work Means

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Working Girl, the podcast where we pull back the curtain on the real work of building a more just world. I'm your host, Rachel and Paula. Each episode, I sit down with women who are on the front lines of change, organizing, advocating, healing, and challenging the systems that shape our lives. Together we talk honestly about the victories, the setbacks, and the deeply human stories behind the fight for justice. Because in a world where change can feel painfully slow, these are the women who refuse to give up. Welcome back. Today we are talking to Julia Orduña. And Julia is a Laredo native living in Houston who works alongside local community leaders and partner organizations across Texas to tackle affordable housing challenges by centering the impact and needs of the lowest-income communities. As the Southeast Texas Regional Director for Texas Housers, her work spans affordable housing advocacy, disaster recovery, eviction prevention, and policy reform, all through a deeply community-driven lens. Julia believes that housing justice is inseparable from gender justice and that women are often the ones holding communities together while pushing real change forward, which obviously I wholeheartedly agree with. Julia, it is so exciting to have you on. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, no, of course. I can't wait to hear more about you, more about the work your organization is doing. So for listeners who may not be familiar with housing justice work, how do you usually explain what you do and why it matters?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah, I guess the elevator pitch is that we support low-income community members and community leaders to be able to achieve the housing stability that they would like to see for themselves and their neighborhood. We do a lot of work at the local level. We also do work at the regional and state level. So while we're a small team of just a few staff members, we do have a mighty, mighty reach. And a lot of it is just centering on what are the policies that are impacting people in housing? How are those policies being enacted? What are the governments doing? And what are the developers or people that are in charge of housing as a housing stock or as an infrastructure? How are they impacting the lives of people? And so we would, of course, fight for safe, sanitary, dignified housing in the neighborhood of your choosing. And that means a lot of different things to people.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah. Was there a moment when this work stopped feeling like a job and started feeling like a calling?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

I think that's an interesting question because there's been multiple moments. I think throughout the time I've been with Texas Housers for almost seven years. And when I was asked to come and join Texas Housers and move to Houston, it was already kind of a calling. The focus of the work is to be at the ground level with the impacted communities, to accompany them in what's happening and the instability that they're dealing with, and what are those solutions that we can talk about together, come up with together that they can enact to be able to support or change the reality for them. So that in and of itself is already a big undertaking. And the way that I say it, like it really takes a certain person to do this job. And so I feel like this calling came from very much before that I was already doing community work in a cultural sense from where I was in Laredo and even something that I had seen from my family. I come from a big family of a lot of women. And these women just showing me that community is a way to live. It's a way to connect with people and really having care for your neighbor, whatever that definition of neighbor is, is just a way of life. So this calling was already just ingrained to me. And I think I just picked up the torch and ran with it. And sometimes, yes, it feels like a job because you go to the meetings, you write the notes, you have to think about the things, you do data assessment and analysis, and you're running through the tasks and the to-dos of everything we try and do. But ultimately, it's rooted in this idea of impacted people, benefiting people, and what is the best quality of housing and quality of life for your neighbors.

The Housing Crisis On The Ground

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Well, I was also going to ask you how your background shaped the way you understand community and housing, but you already answered that perfectly. So I think that it sounds like it did quite a bit. And I think, especially being a Laredo native, now living in Houston, I having lived in Houston myself for a year, I know about the housing situation down there also. I'm curious, when people hear housing crisis, it can probably feel really abstract, right? They don't know what it means, or they maybe have different things in their mind, different visuals. What does that crisis actually look like on the ground?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Yeah, and to kind of put it into a type of perspective, a lot of the work that Texas Housers does is data-driven. We look at the numbers, we do the research, we try and put it in a way that's palatable for people or accessible to people because a lot of this is also over my head. And so you really have to sit and understand what the problem is and what is the root cause of the problem to be able to find policies or any type of activities and programs that really address the need. And so at the state level, Texas wide, we have a majority homeowner households. We have about 63% households that are homeowners, and that's 37% are renters. From all of our households across the state of Texas, 30% of them make about 50% area median income. That means that they are within an average or below in that poverty level. In the city of Houston, 100% area median income, a household of four would have to make$101,000 to be at the average. And so the majority of us are living below that average. And that's some of the scarcity or the instability we think about. The other thing is that most of our households are severely cost burdened or just generally cost burdened. So that is a definition that HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, makes. And so to be cost burdened is to put at least 30% of your income into your housing needs, be it rent, mortgage, escrow, taxes, utilities, you name it, all of it that encompasses housing is part of that equation. So if you're paying more than 30% of your income, you're already cost burdened. Unfortunately, throughout the landscape of Texas, 57% of homeowners are severely cost burdened. That means that they're putting 50% of their income into their housing. And on the renter side, it's 60% of renters are severely cost burdened. So when we talk about housing crisis, we're talking about this housing instability. And often we see that people are not stewards of their own housing in the sense that a renter has to wait for their landlord to pay attention to their housing or to fix their housing. A lot of it is aging inventory. In the city of Houston, a lot of our apartments or homes were built in the 70s, the 60s, the 30s. So now they're over a hundred years old. Some of them have lead and asbestos, and remediating all of that is difficult. We also know that the coast is disaster prone. And so even if you are able to keep up with capital improvements, you're still dealing with the disasters and the impacts of disasters. So there's a lot of different issues that come into what happens at the neighborhood or household level that create this housing instability. And so thinking of that crisis is what is a person living through to be able to live safely and have a dignified place to live? That means free of mold, free of pests, that means in a neighborhood that they choose whether that's close to work, close to school, close to businesses, free from pollution. And so all these compounding issues go into what is a crisis at a household level. We also know that interest rates and the buying and selling of properties comes and goes, mortgage rates are rising. We know that the aging population, in and of itself, the elderly people that are leaving income, are now at a very fixed income. So that creates instability in housing. And so, how are we supporting these homeowners that are now becoming renters that don't have enough money? And so we think about the cost of labor supplies and regulations for the people that are building housing. And so offsetting all of these things is so difficult. And really, it becomes a compounding issue that creates that crisis. And maybe we're not in crisis now, but one little thing after another, eventually, what is that thing that straight breaks the camel's back, that final straw or the thing that gets over the levee? And now we're just dumping all this water into this space. And I mean, my brain goes there because of disasters. But when the levee breaks, what happens? And how do we create that security or something to be able to assess when there is an impending crisis because everything is just incremental?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yeah. You know, and you mentioned people wanting to also just be in the location or neighborhoods that work for them or make sense for them, regardless of the reason. It reminded me maybe a year or two ago in Dallas when the city proposed this quote-unquote solution for housing a lot of the unhoused here in DFW. But then people found out that the solution was moving them to places that were being built about 45 minutes to an hour outside of the city. And so the city thought they were doing a great job and they were putting a band-aid on something, but a lot of activists and of course the unhoused themselves were like, this is not a solution. You're taking us away from our communities, our families, our jobs, how we're going to be able to support our families. And it was just such a huge miss, I think, on the city's part that it was so blindingly obvious to everyone else. And I think for me, it also just goes back to treating people with dignity. I think that they probably saw, like, well, they need houses, we're giving them houses, but they also deserve dignity and choices in where they live and the communities they're part of. And I think that is speaking exactly to what you're talking about. And I also imagine, too, that the sort of influx of people from out of state moving into Texas has probably had a huge impact on the work you guys are doing and the people who are suffering.

Four Rights To Housing

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Yeah, definitely. We need to be able to build for the existing community and for the incoming community. And like you said, there's this influx of people coming into the state. While I already lived in Texas, I did move to Houston. And so I showed up and said, Where am I supposed to live? What am I supposed to do? I don't know the landscape. And so helping people find that, navigate that landscape is important. The other thing is definitely thinking about those rights and the choice that people should have. Texas housers about a decade ago worked with community members in the city of Houston through a group called the Fair Housing and Neighborhood Rights. And so we created what are the four rights to housing. And those are the right to choose what neighborhood you live in, the right to stay in your existing neighborhood, the right to equal treatment by the government, and the right to have a say in how your government treats you, uses money to support and invest in your neighborhoods. So those are all the things that we think about community-centered work. And like you're suggesting, we need to really think about the needs and the accessibility of the people that are going to use and benefit from this, and not just think about what is financially possible based on what the developers need or what the city thinks is the best thing for this issue.

Misconceptions About Low-Income Renters

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Exactly. You focus heavily, I know, on the lowest income communities. What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about who is most impacted by housing insecurity?

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah, and when we think about low income, it's just access to income in private ways. So people need just a little more support to be able to find that stability. A lot of folks think that, or like those misconceptions are that low-income people don't work, which is not necessarily true. Yes, a lot of people are disabled, and a lot of folks are elderly as well. So they are on a fixed income, be it through that social security or disability assistance. We often see that there are also single-income households that maybe dad works, but mom is at home taking care of the children. And while that is a labor that women take on, it is not a paid labor. So there's no income coming into the house to support financially. And so these one-income households are having to make ends meet to support all of the heads, all of the mouths that are living under that roof. And so we see people having to make ends meet by deciding where they're going to put their money, whether they're cutting down on costs, whether they're not buying a car, or they're not driving as much, or they're having to not pay for medications, or they're actually having to buy less food because food has been one of the bills that we can actually kind of fluctuate. Rent, lights, utilities, a lot of those things don't fluctuate. Medications don't fluctuate. And so households are having to make those decisions. I think another misconception is that a lot of these renters, particularly, or some homeowners, don't care about what happens to their household, and they really do. Sometimes it's a renter issue that the landlords are not making the investments in the capital improvements. Sometimes it's deferred maintenance that people just don't have the accessibility to make those improvements, whether it's financially or knowing the people or having the know-how. And I think the other thing that I'll really focus on is that like systems of oppression are really keep people within that lower income bracket. And these things are cyclical, they're persistent, and they're compounding. So if you're already having to make ends meet for finances, you're already playing within those systems of oppression. You're having to spend more time going to apply for food stamps or going to help your children with other things instead of putting your time, which costs money, into making more income. I think those are some of the misconceptions. I will also say that renters are a big part of our workforce. And just because they're not making that income, because wages have stagnated, because our federal income minimum wage is still at$7.25 an hour, those are the people that are also having to fight for a dignified house. And so in the city of Houston, last year, to make a living wage, to live in a two-bedroom house in the city limits, you had to make$23 the hour. Now you need to make$29 the hour. And so it is inaccessible. Rents are not at a point that are affordable for people. And so when we're trying to talk to developers about the rents, they're saying, well, I can't afford to lower rents, but renters can't afford to pay the rents. And so we're seeing people double up, triple up, we're seeing people live in their cars, and we're seeing people live on the streets. And so it's very difficult to kind of meet the moment when there's so many things compounding and there's just not the housing stock that is dignified for people to live in. So they're either having to pay more that is inaccessible, creating that cost burden that we talked about to be able to have a good place to live, or reduce their livelihood, pay in health, pay in having to live further away and pay for gas or transit, and making those financial investments or health impact investments to be able to have a place that you can't afford. And so we're always bartering in that way. And so these systemic barriers are really what's creating a lot of those misconceptions as well. And I guess I'll just land on people without income. I've worked a lot with unhoused people, and it's not easy to get out of those cycles of just violence. Being unhoused is violent, having to find coping mechanisms to deal with the violence, to deal with the reality of living on the street. It's not easy. And a lot of these people need so much extra care and support to be able to find that stability to get out of it. I feel like one of the things that we hear often from renters that are having housing instability, from people dealing with disaster recovery issues, is they thought they were alone in this crisis. They thought that nobody else was dealing with these problems. And so it's so hard to get out of this issue. And so it's easier to dig your head in the sand and find coping mechanisms. And unfortunately, some of those are drug use, some of those are things that are not good for us. Some of those things are maintaining yourself in a job that is not good for you because it is the only thing that is maintaining and accessible because the job market's not good right now. How are you going to find something that is a better income for you? And so just keeping a status quo, even if it is less than for you and for your health and for your wellness, is all that we can do at some point. And so really breaking through those barriers and those perspectives that we have about what a renter is and what a homeowner that doesn't care about their housing is, because those are the people that really need the most. And they really need to be paid attention to and they need to be listened to, because focusing on that care of a person and a household is really how we break through those systemic barriers and those systems of oppression. And it's incremental how we make that change, just in the way that we incrementally fall into the housing crisis. And so, how do we support people? We're not gonna make massive change when we're helping one person at a time, but by helping one person at a time, we can slowly get to that elevated point. And it becomes each one teach one. I finally find stability. I now have a chance to help someone else with their stability. It is a neighbor helping neighbor mentality. And honestly, when we were talking about things that shaped me in the past, that's how I grew up. I grew up knowing my neighbors, playing with my neighbors. If the lights went out, we had a neighborhood watch, we called each other. What is that cup of sugar that we used to talk about that you'd go ask your neighbor for that you can support each other on? We have to be neighborhood resilient to be able to get out of this crisis at a systemic level.

Shame And Mental Health In Housing

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah. Well, that really resonates with me because, well, for two reasons. One, I think going back to the beginning of what you said, you mentioned disability being a major reason why people face these issues. And that was my experience growing up. I was raised by my single mom. My brother and I were, and she was disabled. She could not work. I think she had stopped working when I was like in first grade. So most of my life she was not working and was predominantly bedridden. And we lived almost entirely on her disability check, which was extremely small. I think to support the three of us, it was like$24,000 a year. Now, mind you, we lived in a small town in the Ozarks. The cost of living wasn't super high. And we were fortunate that we had been in the same house renting for a long time. So I think her rent was actually quite low. But You mentioned fluctuating costs. There were often times that we wouldn't get to eat, or the AC wouldn't get fixed, or the eat wouldn't work. And it was because my mom would have to choose what to put the money towards. And I think most of my upbringing up until university was exactly like that. And I think speaking of like kids who maybe grow up in housing situations that don't feel stable for whatever reason, that also really molds you as a person. And what not just, I think people probably just assume, like, oh, it'll make you more driven to not experience that, which it did. But I think it really molds your self-worth. I think it molds how you see society for us in our neighborhood. We did know our neighbors, but it was almost like our poverty needed to be a secret, you know. I think there was a lot of shame around it. And so no one was allowed in our house. And that also really shaped, you know, how I think my brother and I viewed ourselves and growing up. And I know for my mom, obviously, as well, a lot of painful, hard decisions had to be made constantly. And I think to your point about like the mental health of people struggling with housing, whether they have it and they're struggling to maintain it or they are unhoused, is I think people just love to point fingers and judge for why someone is lacking something that they have that they consider a basic necessity. And when really there's so much more to it and your mental health really does suffer. I think I watched my mom's depression increase exponentially over the decades because she didn't have these basic necessities and human rights. And even when later we had a lot of government changes with Social Security and disability and access being cut, and she was one of those people, and they radically decreased her disability income. And she ended up getting evicted from her home of over 20 years because she just could not pay the rent. And they had to live out of a hotel for many years. And I think stuff like that, people don't want to talk about it. They don't want to think about it, right? I think they have this one idea of what housing crisis or housing issues looks like, and they don't realize how vast the impact is. How, for example, my brother will forever be changed, right? From having lost his home while in school, trying to hide that from his schoolmates. That's why I personally could never bring myself to judge anyone, housed or unhoused, who copes however they can, whether it's something that people judge or not, because I've been there mentally where you just feel like no one cares about me. And I have no way to survive. I don't know how to do this. What is the point? And I just can't understand why people judge it, but I guess it's easy to when you haven't experienced anything like it.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yeah, exactly. I feel like this idea of like pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like it's that's not it, y'all. No. Um, it's hard. And, you know, as you're talking, I'm just like thinking about all of the people that I've met that have dealt with things like that. And sometimes it's just a ride. Like I was helping a woman that got evicted. She had a mother that had mobility issues and health issues that couldn't really move a 10-year-old and a child in diapers. And when she was kicked out, all I could do was at least lend her my car to be a driver to put all of her stuff in a storage unit. Sometimes they just need a ride to be able to apply for a housing or to apply for a job, because we know that the bus systems are difficult. And because people with privilege don't use these systems, they don't think about how to improve them. And I mean, even systems that are there for support, like very particularly housing or public housing, you have to be income eligible. And once you make just a little more money, they start reducing your assistance significantly. And so people are scared to make more money because they will lose any assistance that they get. And so the systems have actually created those barriers to become self-sufficient. And it's just, it's a lot.

Women’s Leadership In Housing Advocacy

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah, my mom experienced that where her disability check was like not enough to cover when my brother was born all of the now extra needs for having a second child. And she had considered like maybe there's something I can do part-time sitting down. And when she went to the disability office, they were like, nope, because then that A, that proves you're you're not disabled enough to need this service and that, then you'd be making too much. And it was even as a teenager, mind-blowing to me that someone could be told, even if you're forced to work when you are in so much pain because you have to put food on the table for your children, that must mean you're not disabled enough. And to your point, I think this like infrastructure and system is put in place, but it's not human. It doesn't account for the needs of human beings who are trying to survive and feed their children or buy their medication or get the surgery they need, etc. Oh, it's infuriating. You're you're taking me down memory road right now. Let's pivot a little bit. You've shared that women are often at the center of justice work. I agree. What does that look like in housing advocacy specifically?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, you know, I think that like going to community meetings is always fun because the people that show up are the women. And I don't know if it's just like, you know, the woman is the person that's at the house often. The heart of the home. Yes. The person that watches out for your health, for your mental health, your physical health. They make the sopita de fideo when you're sick, things like that. And so, like, they're the ones that are most in tune with needs and with solutions. And so when we have meetings, we like to provide childcare because mom needs to be able to focus, or you know, you can't leave the kids at home if you're gonna come to a meeting. We like to provide food because this might be the only meal that they get. And we need people to be able to think about what we're telling them and not think about what's happening in the tummy. And of course, if the kids are here, we got to give them something to do too. And so we see that they're the ones that kind of come to these meetings because they are, like you said, the heart of the home. They really shape how we think about care and community care, and the the ones that are driving a lot of this movement. We see them take up the mantle, and maybe it is just this strength that we see. You know, often they talk about like the mom trying to save the baby that has the power to lift a car. It's it's that adrenaline and that focus that just women have that I think put us in in key positions and our intuition that really shapes how we were just saying that the care needs to be centered on on the human experience and not just the eligibility and financials and metrics or whatever becomes the very practical sense of things. And so we we just see a lot of women coming to these meetings and the drivers of the voice and the power of the community. Like, I think it's so impactful, and I think it comes back to even my childhood of thinking my mom's a family of nine and they're eight sisters, and just seeing that power, that woman power that really shaped me and told me that we're limitless. We can do anything that we set our mind to or that we push ourselves to do, and finding those people that will do it with us. That's the community strength. And I don't know. It's just I do think it has a lot to do with that sixth sense that women have as well. It's that just knack and that care that we come with.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

I think women are able to see so much more nuance in problems because we experience so much more nuance in our lives from the day we're born. We see a different type of world than our counterparts do. And I think also it just in my experience, women tend to have a stronger ability to have more empathy and compassion for others. I don't know if that's biological, but it's been proven to be true in my life. I think when your heart is so big, whether it's for the just for the people you love or not, I think it allows you to kind of open your eyes and see more of what's going on around you and what's not okay, which I imagine allows us to get so much more fired up wanting to find solutions. And I think a lot of what we just talked about will actually speak to this. But I'm curious if you guys have more data on it in terms of why women, particularly women of color, are some of the most impacted by housing instability.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

I think it goes back to some of those systems of oppression that we were talking about. Women in the workplace often have lower job, lower income jobs. Women are often seen as less than sometimes or less capable sometimes. I have experienced my own type of discrimination. And I guess maybe I look young also and just like, oh, you know, these these people don't know enough to participate in certain spaces. I think that that stigma is part of it. I think it's also in the way that like women have a lot more to carry, including children. And so the men in those instances might not be present, but the woman as the literal carrier of a child is having to then continue that labor of children and maintaining children. And I think that also has created certain limitations and things that women have to deal with more. So we see more women with single parent households, we see more women with single incomes. And I know that like within some of our data, we see that like women of color are the people that are getting most evicted because they are having to deal with a lot of that balance that we were talking about financially as the caretakers. We're often also taking care of our elderly or our parents or grandparents. And so there are a lot more things that women are stacked up against that become a lot of those turmoils. And if they are the head of the household and the single head, it really becomes a lot more difficult. And so we see a lot of more of those households in those lower income brackets and those severely costered costburdened brackets as well.

The Emotional Labor Of This Work

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah. You know, we've talked a lot about the women who are facing housing instability, but what's something you wish people knew or better understood about the emotional labor for women working in your space?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

I think that some of that labor comes with just that intuition and that care. You know, I think that if these solutions were easy, somebody would have already done it. And a lot of the things that we do are very hard. So coming to certain spaces with empathy, that compassion is so important, active listening and not just trying to be a driver of solutions and saying, I know best, and this is what we have to do, and running, but bringing people with you. And I think that that's really what women do when they're in these spaces of leadership.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

They really bring this perspective of love, of just focusing on need and I imagine too, you know, we talked about like the nuanced experiences women have and all the different roles they lead in their personal lives, all the different responsibilities they carry. You know, the women like yourself working in this space, you guys aren't immune to those experiences either. So I imagine it really adds another layer or filter to the work you're doing, especially when you're looking at other women who are facing these issues. And I imagine it really kind of compounds on that empathy and desire to help, because you can imagine how having that lived experience as a woman is then so much harder with this housing instability.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yeah, you we're faced with a lot of these issues, and and it's not easy to walk in with a smile every day. It's not easy to sit in a room where people are telling you the worst and being their most vulnerable self, and then having to walk out of that room and carry those stories with you. It is taxing emotionally. It has been a lot of my experience also to sit with these heavy situations, and I think women sometimes are best positioned to be those listeners and their caretakers. Sometimes it's just about listening, sometimes it's about taking action and you know I I sometimes say, you know, I I laugh because if not I'd cry. Yeah. Because I've sat in a lot of those rooms, and sometimes all you can do is listen.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, I obviously don't know all the people who've come to you for help, but I think just imagining back to my experience if we had had someone like you and your organization to go to or community resources to help us, or even just listen because it was such a secret and so shameful for us. I imagine even just that would have made a huge difference in how we saw ourselves. And I think it would have helped at least me carry myself with a little more dignity, knowing that it didn't make me a freak like I thought it did at the time, that actually there are probably just more people than I realize who are experiencing this. And, you know, whether you get thanked all the time by people, I think you should feel very proud of even if it's just listening, because I think a lot of people who are struggling don't have anyone to listen to them. And sometimes that is the help.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

That's right. I mean, a lot of our work is at a systemic level. You know, we try and do things at the city level, at the state level, and when we were really deep in the eviction world that, you know, the pandemic had just started, people were instable, they were losing their jobs, and then rent relief came down, and we were working with the state organization to be able to better improve their rent relief system. Why aren't jurisdictions able to get people in? What are the barriers to entry? And we really had a wonderful working relationship with the staff members at that state agency. And I was really telling people, you know, the work that I'm doing is so people don't have to know my name. So people don't have to have a Julia around to call and show up and give them a ride or go to eviction court with them or call them a lawyer or find a way to figure this out because they will never know that they were in a precarious situation because we were able to intervene before. These people won't need someone to come save them. And so that is part of the job that we do, changing that systemic issue so they don't need to find a Texas housers. But there are those people that, you know, it's signing someone up for benefits, it's giving that ride to the housing authority to submit a paperwork. A lot of my work was in disaster recovery, helping homeowners try to apply for a program to fix or do something to their home. And the moment they get that key is so important because it shows that our progress mattered. And I've been working with these people for five years that they're finally getting into a dignified house. That is what matters. And so whether it's that tiny, tiny piece or the point that they don't even get to know me because we did the work. That's all it's for. Yeah.

Wins That Prove Change Is Possible

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Well, I want to keep you smiling and not crying. So let's piggyback on that. What are some other examples of progress or wins that keep you hopeful when the system especially feels slow or stacked against you?

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah, yeah. I think that, like, ooh, you know, going to weekly meetings is hard sometimes, but that's where we do the work. Going to the weekly meetings is where we meet our neighbors. And I think you have to start at a social level. You have to build that trust. And so that's definitely just a victory in itself. Getting to know your neighbors and bringing somebody new to the meeting. And we tell people just bring one person, because that's a victory. Having them get engaged, having them know that they're not alone and that there are people that care, that they have a better place to live. I think that like the big wins that we sometimes do in community, you know, at the city level last year, one of the things that we were asking people, and people got engaged and really make a lot of noise because the way that Texas Housers does a lot of work is we're watching these government entities, whether they're administering programs or administering funds that administer programs. And one of the wins that we had last year was the city of Houston got$315 million to repair or respond to the recovery of Hurricane Barrel from 2024. None of that money was going to housing improvements. Even though we know renters were displaced, our housing stock is diminished because of all of the issues that now these apartments or houses have dealt with. Homeowners don't have the money to be able to support. Insurance is way too expensive now. And so, what are we doing with that? And so a lot of this money was going to be put into other things like buying more police vehicles or putting generators, gas generators, in places that might not make as much impact when we're talking about disaster recovery. And so the community said, this is not okay. You cannot divert these funds in a way that doesn't support the community needs because these are disaster recovery funds. They should be recovering disasters, not padding the government's budget in things that you think you need money for. That is not what this money is for. You cannot supplant the dollars. And so they came out and fought for the funding that was supposed to support communities. And the city of Houston answered and put into the budget$100 million of those dollars that we were getting for recovery into housing needs. And so that was a very big win for the community. And they wouldn't have come together if they didn't know that these issues were happening, that this money was coming into the city of Houston. And so Texas Housers essentially just said, are you aware? This is information that you need. And if you are not in agreement with what the city is doing, you should speak up. You have that right to have a say in the way that the government funds your community or disinvests in your community because that's what we're seeing sometimes. And that was a local change. And then at the state level, we can see a lot of that kind of happen. And that's that systemic change that we're talking about. You know, in the 2023 legislature, we saw a lot of bills that were impacting tenants in positive and negative ways. And so we told the community, what do you think about this? And they went. They went to testify and say, we agree that we should have the right to seal evictions if they are dismissed. Unfortunately, the government and the legislatures didn't move on that that they thought was a very good bill. We also went to say we disagree that you should ban the city's right to be able to change their eviction laws. And that the legislatures didn't move forward the ban. And so that was something that the community was able to come and say, we need you to do what's best for the community. In the 25 legislation, we saw a very bad bill. The narrative. Was being switched in a way that was saying it was impacting a very miniature piece of renter folks saying that this was targeting squatters. But what the law was actually doing was upheaving the whole eviction process for all renters in the state of Texas. And so we told renters, what do you think about this? And they said, this is very bad. And so what ended up passing was a very different version because renters and advocates said, Do you know the impact of this? Do you know how you're going to create housing instability and a housing crisis if you pass this bad law? And the legislatures listened and they made amendments to the laws. And so while it passed in a slightly less bad version, we're still having to play that offensive role to say these are things that are going to create a housing crisis. We don't want to be there. And so we're seeing those systemic changes, we're seeing those incremental changes at the neighborhood level and at the local level. Those are the things that we are fighting towards. And so the information that we come with is this is what's happening. This is the status quo, and this is what might change. And these are possible outcomes. You, as a constituent, have your ability to raise your voice and tell your elected officials what you think about the work that they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Yeah, I think all of those examples speak to why it is critical to center community voices versus just consulting them, especially on policy decisions. And it's amazing the work you guys are doing to help educate people on how these policies will impact them. Because I think so much of local, regional, state, national legislation, I feel like they intentionally word it so vague and broad and with all these legal terms, and it's so complicated, and people don't understand how their lives are going to be impacted. And when organizations like yours can break it down and say this is exactly how it will impact you, community voices can really rise up and make sure that their needs are met.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. You know, one of the things that we really see is that light bulb moment. And so we we talk about getting involved or advocating, or women that take up that mantle. It's because they have that moment of this is how it impacts me, or this is how it impacts my neighbor, and I can't stay silent anymore. So, how do we each find that, you know, niche that might speak to us to be able to support ourselves? And, you know, housing is so intersectional. Where you live defines the air you breathe, the water you drink, the educational and income attainability that you might have. And so you could be fighting for food security, but through a lens of housing. And so we talk about every person can be a houser. And there needs to be a houser in every single room thinking about those impacts and how we're qualifying these issues. You know, the government talks about cost-benefit analysis, and it all depends on what's in your equation. If you're just thinking about, well, it's gonna cost me$10 to build a house, I'm not thinking about the environmental issues, I'm not thinking about who's gonna live there, I'm not thinking about any of those things. Well, yeah, then you're gonna say this is feasible or unfeasible. But if you start adding to that equation that human-centered impact or the human side of things, then the equation significantly shifts. And so we need to actually add the human aspect into every single equation when we're talking about government issues, policy work, and housing stability.

Burnout Advice And How To Get Involved

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Yeah. As we wrap up, for women listening who care deeply about justice but feel burned out or powerless, what would you want them to hear? I mean, first you're not alone.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

There are people out there, whether they live down your street or in your neighborhood or in the city. There are people that care. And so find those people, find your tribe, find your party, and start walking with them. I think that's the granular piece, the incremental work that we can do. Of course, we need to take care of ourselves and just ensuring that we are our best self when we show up for others. We each have to give each other grace and give ourselves grace. And knowing that sometimes if you have to take a step back, there will be others to stand up for you. You know, I saw a meme once that said, a choir can sustain a note endlessly because there are so many voices that in the moment that you have to stop to take a breath, there are others sustaining for you. This work is not a sprint, it's a it's a marathon. We can't tire ourselves, we can't burn out because it's endless. And so having that care and having the people that care for you too. You know, in the service world, we're always looking outwards, but knowing that someone else is looking at you too is so important. I have found those people and I'm so grateful for them in Houston because I moved here with nobody, and I have my neighbors and I have my coworkers, and I have all of the collective community that I have met that have not just become my friends, but have become my family. And I think that's the most important piece of the work, just supporting each other and knowing that you're not alone.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

I love that. What if people want to learn more about Texas Housers, they want to get involved, or they just want to follow the work you're doing, how do they find you?

SPEAKER_01 50:10

Yes, so we do have a website, it's Texashousers.org. We are on social media, and there are some things that we're attempting to do to get more people involved. We often have virtual meetings. If there is a topic of concern that you're interested in, we write blogs all the time. If there's any of these things that you're thinking about, we're more than happy to connect and be able to find ways to support you and your community. So, how do you start getting your neighbors involved? And how can we get you that information? It's a lot about knowing your rights and it's about knowing how to support each other, and and that knowledge that each one can teach to each other is something that we can definitely help give to others. And yeah, find us on socials, connect with us, and we're happy to get you in the room.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Yeah, and I imagine, given the name of your organization, you don't have to be located in Houston to support or get support, right? Correct.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

We do think about things across the state. We talk to communities and have connections across the state, even if we don't have housers living in specific cities. But you know, everyone's a houser. If you care about housing, you're a houser. And we need that houser in every room to be able to really fight at the systemic level and change the things to have decent, dignified housing in every corner of our state.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

Yes, I love that. That's a great note to finish on. Everyone, housing is not just about buildings, it's about dignity, safety, and the ability to imagine a future. Julia's work reminds us that when women are supported, communities are stronger. And when communities collaborate, real change becomes possible. Julia, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I know everyone else will too. Thank you so much for having me again. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to Working Girl. If this conversation resonated with you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the episode with someone who cares about building a more just world. You can learn more about today's guests and find additional resources in the show notes. Until next time, stay curious, stay compassionate, and keep doing the work.