Southwest

Austin has been one of the fastest-growing major metro areas in the country for nearly a decade, with a population closing in on 1 million and expected to double before 2040. Along with this growth, rising real estate prices, property taxes, and general cost of living have driven many longtime... Read more

Since the late 1990s, Austin has seen a dramatic rise in housing costs, with affluent young professionals moving into central neighborhoods and pushing established residents to the outskirts or out of the city altogether. This displacement is most dramatic in the same neighborhoods where Black and Latinx residents were previously... Read more

In Austin, city officials are working to address persistent homelessness, experienced by nearly 7,000 people in the city and Travis County each year. Moreover, Black Austinites are disproportionately experiencing homelessness; while making up 8 percent of the general population, they account for 34 percent of the unhoused population. Prioritizing homelessness,... Read more

In Houston, an estimated 725,000 people are food insecure, 500,000 of whom are living in federally designated districts where the closest supermarket is more than a mile away. These districts are found predominantly in the city’s historically underinvested communities, neighborhoods in which economic inequity has endured for generations. Exacerbating these... Read more

While access to wifi and high-speed internet are often taken for granted, in Houston, more than 142,500 households do not have a computer, and over 267,000 households lack broadband internet access. These communities are often historically underinvested and present significant hurdles for residents, preventing them from harnessing the power of... Read more