TMO receiving the Garnett F. Coleman Health Equity Award from Harris Health

After nearly three years of organizing, The Metopolitan Organization (TMO) leaders are celebrating a major victory for access to life-saving healthcare. The Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to acquire 8.9 acres in Hermann Park to expand Ben Taub Hospital and address dangerous overcrowding at one of Houston’s most critical trauma centers.

TMO recognizes the County Commissioners for their vote to help meet the increasing demand for inpatient care in Harris County.

This win follows sustained organizing by TMO leaders, including securing nearly 2,200 petition signatures in support of the expansion online and in person at congregations throughout Harris County. Leaders educated their communities, held a press conference, delivered public testimony, and conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations and meetings with county commissioners to move the project forward.

The Metropolitan Organization of Houston (TMO) is mobilizing communities across Harris County to win what voters already approved: a critical expansion of Ben Taub Hospital that would add 100 new patient rooms and relieve dangerous overcrowding at one of Houston’s most essential emergency care facilities.

Responding to pressure from The Metropolitan Organization (TMO), the City of Houston has issued demolition orders for two long-vacant buildings, one of which is a strip mall that has been abandoned for over 30 years.

Over a year after Hurricane Beryl and a derecho windstorm made thousands of homes uninhabitable, TMO (The Metropolitan Organization) leaders and allies persuaded the City of Houston to boost funding for home repair from zero to $100 Million, using federal disaster recovery dollars. 

TMO leaders and others in their communities have been detained and deported while at work, after dropping their children off at school, and upon calling the police for help after experiencing domestic violence. In response, TMO organized more than 15 'Know Your Rights' workshops across Houston with 1,500 community members.

In the closing weeks of the 2025 legislative session, over 100 Texas IAF leaders mobilized once again to stop a corporate tax giveaway that would have slashed wages and cost Texas schools hundreds of millions in lost revenue.

House Bill 105, filed quietly in the final days for bill filing, would have gutted key wage and job creation standards in the JETI (Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation) program. JETI replaced the failed Chapter 313 program in 2023, effectively cutting it in half.

If passed, HB 105 would have created a new class of “Priority Projects” for companies investing $750 million or more, allowing them to:

• Avoid proving their tax breaks were a “compelling factor” in choosing Texas,
• Sidestep any requirement to create new jobs,
• Lower wage standards from 110% of the average industry wage for that type of manufacturing facility to 110% of the average county manufacturing wage, which includes many low wage manufacturing jobs, often tens of thousands of dollars less.

On May 31st, nearly 90 leaders from Northeast Houston gathered for Homestead Reimagined—a community meeting at New Hope Baptist Church, organized by TMO leaders. The event focused on redeveloping a former Kmart shopping center off Homestead Road, which has remained abandoned for the past 30 years.

Pope Francis meeting with Rabbi David Lyon. He and Bishop John Ogletree (photo below) are leaders with TMO and wrote this article.

[Originally published in Houston Chronicle]

Last year, Pope Francis met with a group of 15 or so Houston community organizers and leaders in his private residence. It was the third time he’d met with us, members of The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) of Houston and colleagues from the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). This time, he counseled us not to lose the ability to laugh.

It is with great sadness that we learned the news this Easter Monday morning about the death of Pope Francis.

Over the past three years, we, as representatives of The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) and our sister organizations of the Industrial Areas Foundation, were privileged to meet him three times in his Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, each an encounter of 90 minutes or more. 

It felt extraordinary that the successor to St. Peter would carve out such time to meet with a group of community organizers and leaders in the midst of a schedule that included preparing for grueling international travel, receiving visits from foreign leaders, and hosting the global synods. Not to mention issuing numerous apostolic letters and encyclicals.  

On February 2nd, nearly 120 TMO leaders from St. James Episcopal, St. Mary of the Purification Catholic, Pilgrim UCC, Good Hope Baptist, Friends of Columbia Tap, and several other local groups gathered at St. James Episcopal Church for a community event celebrating both the history and future of the Columbia Tap Trail— the historic four-mile walking and biking trail that stretches through the heart of Third Ward.