She had managed to procure 30 boxes of emergency food from Central Texas Food Bank and was urging the city’s emergency operations center to deliver a truckload of water on Friday. In addition to her day job in admissions for the Central Texas Allied Health Institute, she has been working with the nonprofit Community Resilience Trust, which is working to address racial equity issues in Austin. There wasn’t any help coming for Forest Bluff that Vera-Bedolla hadn’t requested herself as a liaison between her community and the city government, or from nonprofits working to administer relief. One neighbor whose pipes froze and burst will have to pay out of pocket for the repairs. She said she was in a better position than her neighbors, many of whom don’t have cars to access food or other supplies, have poorly insulated houses, and are elderly or caring for small children. Unlike some in her neighborhood, Vera-Bedolla’s family never lost power, but their running water shut off, their furnace wasn’t working absent a sufficient supply of propane, and the flame on their gas stove was lower than a candle, making it hard to cook until her parents, who also live in Austin, delivered an electric hot plate on Thursday. The family is down to their last few logs for their fireplace. Roberto cuts what is left of the firewood in front of his home. When the record-breaking winter storm set in on Sunday night, dropping 7.5 inches of snow in parts of the county, it only exacerbated challenges that her community already faced. Her 24-year-old son is reluctant to visit because he’s been pulled over so many times by the Travis County Sheriff’s Department for no stated reason. Many of her neighbors are undocumented immigrants who live paycheck to paycheck and are ineligible for public benefits. Even under normal circumstances, the tap water sometimes runs brown. Her family moved there in 2017 after rising property taxes pushed them out of central Austin, drawn by cheaper real estate and more square footage.īut the nearest major grocery store is more than 10 miles away and there is no public transportation, making it a food desert. Known as Forest Bluff, Vera-Bedolla’s neighborhood is on the east side of Interstate 35, where a vast share of the city’s Black and Hispanic populations reside. “And lots of people don’t speak up because they’re not used to being heard.”

“We continue to be the victims of social injustice, food injustice, systemic racism - all of it,” she said. Gloria Vera-Bedolla, a Latina community organizer and mother of three, feels like her neighborhood near Austin, Texas, has been forgotten in a deep freeze that has plunged the state into a humanitarian crisis.

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