The County Connection: Seeking a Better Life is Not a Crime

• $22 million for healthcare access investments, including $6 million for targeted focus on prevention of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease that disproportionately impact the Hispanic community.
• $6.4 million for immigration legal services, to help immigrants access legal representation on matters ranging from naturalization to defense against eviction.
• $114 million to make more single and multi-family affordable housing available, to help address our affordable housing crisis.
• $40 million for wastewater investments in East Aldine, a majority-Hispanic community, in areas with high rates of septic system failure.
• $8 million to address food insecurity, including creating new community assets to support the Finca Tres Robles urban farm in the East End.
• $23 million for mental health investments, including new capabilities like offering counseling through the new UH medical school in the East End.
• $20 million for lead abatement and screening, which often impacts majority-Hispanic communities.
• $141 million to make our community safer, including new initiatives like the Teledeputy initiative to reduce law enforcement response times.
• $31.6 million total into apprenticeships and workforce development in fast-growing fields like construction and IT. The majority of the students who have participated in apprenticeship pilot programs so far are students of color.
• $26 million in Early REACH dedicated to innovative child care programming, serving a majority of Hispanic/Latino families. For the first time ever, this investment removes immigration status-based barriers to accessing child care.
• And more!

A video of the discussion with the Vice President is available here. In Harris County, and with the assistance of the Biden-Harris Administration, we will continue investing in our community.

In response to the violence and deaths, the United States Military charged 118 soldiers with disobedience, murder, and mutiny in what became the largest court martial trial in American history. The 118 soldiers faced all-White courts-martial composed of high-ranking military officials, and were all represented by one military officer who was not an attorney. 110 of 118 soldiers were convicted with sentences ranging from several years in prison, to life imprisonment, to death. 13 of the condemned men were secretly hanged without the ability to appeal their convictions as part of the largest mass execution in U.S. history at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Six more soldiers were executed in 1918.

In 2016, the Houston NAACP petitioned for clemency for the soldiers, which was granted this November. On December 5th, Harris County Commissioners Court presented a resolution on behalf of our region formally apologizing to the families of all the soldiers who were killed, beaten, harassed, unfairly convicted, and denied their rights to due process and equal protection under the law while serving our country in Harris County. Harris County Commissioners Court remains committed to standing against the scourge of racism wherever it still exists.

That’s why on December 5th Commissioners Court approved $35 million of federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) for the Supportive, Healthy, Innovative, Nurturing Environments (SHINE) initiative. Through a competitive RFP process, the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), a community development financial institution that provides financial products and services to businesses located in underserved markets, was selected to serve as the SHINE vendor. LIIF will distribute grants (ranging from $5,000 to $900,000) to child care centers for the planning, renovation, repair, and/or expansion of child care facilities, and deliver technical assistance to ensure projects are on time and on budget, resulting in high-quality child care physical infrastructure.

By providing the funding that child care providers need in order to repair and expand their facilities, the SHINE initiative will add at least 3,800 new high-quality child care spaces and retain/create at least 600 jobs by investing into the physical infrastructure of child care facilities. Similar models of funding child care facilities have been effective in other jurisdictions like Philadelphia and San Francisco.

The SHINE initiative builds upon Harris County’s early childhood investments, including the Early REACH child care capacity expansion program, the Early Childhood Impact Fund for sustainable and scalable interventions, the Early Learning Quality Networks for community-driven child care initiatives, the County Connections summer enrichment program, and research efforts such as the RAPID Early Childhood Survey. For more information about the SHINE initiative, please contact the Harris County Director of Early Childhood Initiatives, Santrice Jones, at Santrice.Jones@harriscountytx.gov.

This November, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office partnered with the Santa Maria Hostel – Path to Recovery to provide re-entry support for addiction both before and after female offenders are released from jail. Santa Maria is Texas’ largest multi-site residential and outpatient substance use treatment center. Harris County will continue working to support past offenders in building a successful life for themselves in our community.