Program areas at Texas Appleseed
Child policy center - in 2019, the Texas Appleseed child policy center was created to provide and support a monitoring project related to the placement by the Texas department of family protective services (dfps) of children in management conservatorship.
Disaster relief/fair housing - Texas Appleseed works to ensure that federal infrastructure and housing funding goes to historically neglected and needy communities.
Education justice - since 2007, Texas Appleseed has produced first of its kind research and policy work on the link between school discipline programs, dropout rates, ticketing in schools, and school police. In 2021, this work was expanded to be directed towards achieving equal educational opportunities for all young texans.
Youth justice - Texas Appleseed is working to answer the question of how can Texas work to prevent youth from becoming homeless and are sharing their findings with youth experiencing homelessness and the agencies that serve them. Texas Appleseed is also crafting policy solutions that help homeless youth find stable housing, and ultimately, change the circumstances that cause youth to be homeless in the first place. This project has also taken on work to reform the Texas juvenile justice system, working to move it from a punitive approach towards community-based services that focus on rehabilitation and serving the needs of distressed youth.
Fair financial access - Texas Appleseed seeks fair financial services for low-income families by fighting the abuses of the payday and auto title lending industry in Texas, working towards fair debt collection procedures and access to short term loans at fair rates.
Criminal justice - Texas Appleseed is working to see that low-income and indigent defendants are not penalized by the criminal justice system solely due to an inability to pay.
Homeless youth - homelessness is one of the threads that runs through many of Texas Appleseed's projects, including juvenile and criminal justice reform, foster care reform, and dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.
Other program expenses.