As hurricane Rita menaced the Texas coast, ACORN called on Winning Connections to help evacuate disadvantaged seniors from the Houston area. Within hours, we set up an automated message to tell seniors how they could arrange a ride out of the city by calling an ACORN hotline. ACORN’s Houston organizer, Ginny Goldman, commended WC “for getting the calls out so quickly for us.” She added

The staff and I felt much calmer knowing that we had gotten the word out to our members before we evacuated ourselves out of town. The calls really did work. Everyone who called us seems to have gotten a ride out. One ACORN member called in from a senior building where 35 seniors were trying to get out of town and couldn’t get through on the 311 city number after calling for hours and hours. I called the state rep for that district on his cell and he got the Mayor’s Chief of Staff on it right away.

Winning Connections is also helping ACORN assist victims of Katrina to deal with problems concerning insurance and mortgage payments.