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New mobile community center
Mobile restaurants, mobile pet shops and mobile stroke units: Services in Houston are increasingly getting wheels.
Now there is a mobile community center, called “Good to Go.”
It brings the services offered by the nonprofit Neighborhood Centers to more of Houston’s low-income areas.
Oriana Garcia, senior director of community development at Neighborhood Centers, said the nonprofit constantly gets requests from residents of areas where it doesn’t have a presence.
Oriana Garcia (left), senior director of community development at Neighborhood Centers, gives Houston Mayor Annise Parker a tour of the new mobile community center.
“We would love to be in every neighborhood in the city of Houston and Pasadena or La Porte or whatever neighborhood we’re being asked to come into,” she said. “We don’t have the resources to build a community center in every single neighborhood.”
The new mobile community center is a giant repurposed RV equipped with tables, chairs, laptops and television screens. It fits more than 20 people.
For the next few months, the truck will be stationed in East Aldine and help residents there with tax preparation, immigration issues and job training among other services.
Mayor Annise Parker said the concept makes sense in a city like Houston.
“It’s long been a problem in Houston that we are so spread out,” she said. “We’re a horizontal city and it can be overwhelming to people who live here, particularly if there’s a concentration of the needed services.”