The Core Blog

May 29, 2023, marked the end of the regular 88th Texas Legislative Session. Texas Appleseed’s Fair Financial Services Project, grounded in building and supporting financial wellbeing for Texans, had a robust legislative agenda. Among our priority items, we worked to promote data privacy protections, enhance debt collection rights for victims of financial abuse, and address predatory lending. We faced some setbacks but had many successes and made important progress across all of our policy priorities

After the devastating storms of the 2022 hurricane season, many disaster survivors in Puerto Rico and Florida were unable to access much-needed assistance through FEMA. During our ongoing analysis of FEMA’s Individual and Households Program (IHP) assistance data 1 on Hurricanes Fiona and Ian, only a small proportion of Puerto Rican applicants received Housing Assistance, and thousands of applications in both Florida and Puerto Rico were rejected for failure to verify homeownership. Housing Assistance is

HB 3827 deals with tech-enabled wage advance products that are marketed as “earned wage access.” Though these new wage-advance products are presented as “earned wage access,” only some are actually based on earned wages. Some models are structured to operate in partnership with employers and collect advances through payroll deduction. But, a large part of the market is based on a “direct-to-consumer” model, offered directly to individuals without involving the employer. These companies give advances

This is the first of a three-part blog series on higher education in Texas prisons. Stay tuned for the second and third parts in the next few weeks! The state of higher education in prisons in Texas and across the nation will enter a new phase in July. For the first time in nearly three decades, incarcerated people will be eligible to receive Pell Grants to finance their pursuit of a postsecondary degree or workforce

Julia (her name is changed to protect her privacy), from Grand Prairie, Texas, reached out to Texas Appleseed for help in the summer of 2022. She shared, “I have lost almost everything up to this point. I'm left with nothing but my narrative and hope. It has been precisely three years since my escape. What is still true, though, is that his real identity destroyed mine. Not only that, realistically his credit worthiness has become

Advances in digital technologies have allowed consumer behavior to be incessantly monitored through the mass collection, sharing, and selling of our personal information. Texas has several data privacy laws that provide some degree of accountability for data collection and use, but there is no comprehensive law that protects the right to privacy. In 2019, The Privacy Protection Advisory Council was created to advise the state legislature on current privacy laws. In the Council’s 2020 report

Most Americans can agree that keeping our communities safe is of the utmost importance. However, we live in a society that aims to protect communities of privilege, and our current carceral system only ensures recurring cycles of crime and violence. It could not be clearer that our criminal justice system is failing us all, yet research and data continue to be ignored, and little to no change is occuring. Some people who continue to commit

As we enter the 88th legislative session, Texas Appleseed will be focused on encouraging the Texas Legislature to adequately support public school students. Texas Appleseed aims to focus our legislative priorities on issues of educational inequity and imbalances that have existed for years but exacerbated by the pandemic and recent school shootings. Texas Appleseed’s goal is to utilize our connections with community organizations, schools, teachers and students to cultivate a policy perspective that fosters safe

This upcoming legislative session, Texas legislators will be faced with the ever-present question — what are you going to do about crime? For those who have never been impacted by the criminal justice system, this question commonly stems from a place of fear — fueled by every violent incident that makes headlines and every policymaker who chooses to make it a point of non-negotiation on their platforms. Then there is the flip side of this

Administrative burden can present itself at every turn after a disaster — from waiting months to receive a home buyout to filling out arduous home repair applications. At all levels of government, these burdens prevent disaster survivors from swiftly receiving the aid that they need. In our new article, In the Aftermath of the Storm: Administrative Burden in Disaster Recovery, Luke Shaefer and I describe how administrative burden and other factors delayed disaster recovery in

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for long-term care facilities in Texas and nationwide. Existing medical vulnerabilities, living in close quarters and experiencing a lack of effectively managed infection control protocols made residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities particularly susceptible to the virus. Long-term care residents comprise approximately 15% of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States, according to CDC data.(1) Additionally, facility staff members were also vulnerable and contracted the virus at

Navigating layers of bureaucracy is a near-universal experience for Americans interacting with the government. Simple tasks like getting a driver’s license or voting can become all-day ordeals, and enrolling in public assistance or insurance programs can drag into weeks and months. It is tempting to chalk these inconveniences up to the inherent nature of bureaucracy, but in reality, many burdens, either by accident or on purpose, disproportionately harm marginalized people. How, then, can recognizing and