Tools
Mutual-aid board
Official desks first. Then known local recovery groups with a public site. We do not list a Facebook group we cannot verify tonight.
Home / Tools / Mutual-aid board
No invented group chats.
Neighborhood threads help until they send you to a closed gym. Confirm beds, boil-water, and debris on an official page. If someone asks for a wire, a gift card, or your Social to “get you on a list,” stop.
Status, maps, and claim portals change by the hour. Open the org site. Do not trust a screenshot from last night.
- Ready Harris Harris County OEM notices, alerts, and shelter posts. Recheck before you drive.
- 211 Texas Shelter, food, utility, and recovery referrals. Dial 211 if the sites lag.
- Red Cross open-shelter finder VERIFY LIVE only. Open or closed changes the same day. Harvey-era shelter names are not this finder.
- Red Cross Texas Gulf Coast Local chapter. Call 1-800-RED-CROSS and ask them to confirm.
- Houston OEM City of Houston Office of Emergency Management. The older houstonemergency.org host returned an error on 2026-09-21. Recheck during an event. Not a shelter address.
- Harris County shelter status dashboard Check the timestamp. A green pin from this morning can be full by lunch.
- West Street Recovery research Northeast Houston lessons on why aid misses people and why local navigators matter.
- West Street: barriers to Harvey repair aid Resident-led view of paperwork, landlords, and long-term repair gaps.
- Disaster Distress Helpline 1-800-985-5990. 24/7. Spanish available.
- DisasterAssistance.gov Apply when a declaration covers your county. Aid generally cannot duplicate insurance.
How to use this without getting played
- 211 can route food, shelter, and utility help when the websites lag. Dial 211.
- West Street Recovery publishes research and long-term repair context for northeast Houston. They are not a city shelter desk.
- Red Cross finder is for open shelters, not for a 2017 memory of NRG.
- If you are offering help (boats, meals, muck-out), go through a named org or a block you actually know. Random “send Zelle” posts are how people get robbed after a flood.
Do this next Mutual-aid articles · Shelters hub · Conditions-changed signup