Valley Morning Star
Mary Sanchez // December 17, 2009
This one is for those who naively believe that an entity called the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice should be in the business of enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws. Under the late Bush administration, one had reason to doubt. For years, critics blasted the Bush Justice Department for ideologically inspired hiring and firing decisions, unfair treatment of career (read: ideologically unreliable) staff members, and a selective approach to its enforcement responsibilities.
Now a 180-page report prepared for Congress by the Government Accountability Office bears out many of those contentions.
The report, which assessed civil rights enforcement between 2001 and 2007, found big declines from the Clinton years in cases having to do with housing and job discrimination, and with disability rights. Thomas Perez, the new Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, summarized the findings to Congress in testimony this month.
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
Barriers to Affordable Housing
National Center for Policy Analysis
James Franko // December 1, 2009
James Franko // December 1, 2009
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) considers housing affordable if it costs less than 30 percent of a family's income. Yet, according to HUD, 12 million renters and homeowners spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Many of these are low-income individuals or families. But in some areas even middle-income families find the supply of affordable housing limited.
For instance, assuming a family spends no more than 28 percent of its gross income on housing [see Figure I]:
- In the San Francisco metropolitan area, only 26.9 percent of houses sold are affordable to a family with an annual median income of $96,800.
- In greater Chicago, more than two-thirds (67.8 percent) of houses are in the price range of a median income family ($74,600).
- In Indianapolis, almost all homes (94.5 percent) are affordable to the typical family ($68,100).
Since rental prices closely track home prices, these numbers also indicate the general availability of affordable housing.
MOREThe Fight After the Storm - Why hasn’t Galveston rebuilt public housing?
The Texas Observer
Forrest Wilder // November 27, 2009
Forrest Wilder // November 27, 2009
After Hurricane Ike battered Galveston in September 2008, city leaders promised that the island’s poor would be welcomed home. Public housing, they pledged, would be rebuilt within a year or so. But a number of bureaucratic setbacks, as well as a spasm of anti-public housing activism—some of it racially charged—has hindered the rebuilding effort.
More than a year after the storm, local officials confess that residences for displaced families may not be ready for another two to three years, and that’s if everything goes as planned.
The Galveston Housing Authority had planned to not only replace the public housing units lost to the storm, but build additional homes to meet increased need.
MORERevived La. Parish Faces Fight Over Race
National Public Radio
Debbie Elliott // November 19, 2009
Debbie Elliott // November 19, 2009
Slowly, about half the population of St. Bernard Parish has returned to the area since Hurricane Katrina. But with a twist — it's not as white as it used to be, which has sparked a battle over low-income housing and race.
After Katrina, local attorney David Jarrell decided he could help his native St. Bernard Parish rebuild by buying and renovating damaged houses. In a bound notebook with pictures of the dozen or so properties he has refurbished, he singles out one that was "trashed" by the hurricane before he restored it.
"This was the inside — it was wood floors, 10-foot ceilings," he says. "Everything was meticulously designed. But it was still affordable for people, so if anybody was looking to rent, it was just a great little house."
Saturday, December 26, 2009
St. Bernard Parish Council backs off on vote on apartments
The Times-Picayune
Chris Kirkham // November 3, 2009
After pressure from federal housing officials and a pending lawsuit in federal court, the St. Bernard Parish Council on Tuesday officially rescinded an item on this month's special election ballot that would have given voters the chance to permanently ban large apartment complexes in the parish.
The move came on advice from the parish's lawyers, who last month told the council that they believed the potential apartment ban would jeopardize federal financing for recovery projects and hurt the parish's appeals of its ongoing fair housing lawsuit.
The council proposed the voter referendum on future apartment complexes after three defeats in federal court this year over its attempt to block construction of four 72-unit mixed-income apartment buildings in Chalmette. U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan sided with a local fair housing group and a Dallas real estate company on the four apartment complexes, and the parish eventually granted the building permits necessary for the developers, Provident Realty Advisors, to begin construction.
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Chris Kirkham // November 3, 2009
After pressure from federal housing officials and a pending lawsuit in federal court, the St. Bernard Parish Council on Tuesday officially rescinded an item on this month's special election ballot that would have given voters the chance to permanently ban large apartment complexes in the parish.
The move came on advice from the parish's lawyers, who last month told the council that they believed the potential apartment ban would jeopardize federal financing for recovery projects and hurt the parish's appeals of its ongoing fair housing lawsuit.
The council proposed the voter referendum on future apartment complexes after three defeats in federal court this year over its attempt to block construction of four 72-unit mixed-income apartment buildings in Chalmette. U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan sided with a local fair housing group and a Dallas real estate company on the four apartment complexes, and the parish eventually granted the building permits necessary for the developers, Provident Realty Advisors, to begin construction.
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Friday, December 25, 2009
How to Solve Homelessness? Try Providing Housing
NextAmericanCity
Akua Nyame-Mensah // October 26, 2009
As the amount of housing foreclosures has jumped, the number of individuals who have found them themselves without appropriate, permanent shelter has increased. In addition to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) decided this summer to tract homelessness in specific regions quarterly. The new report, The Homelessness Pulse Project is meant to help HUD “gain a better understanding of the impact of the current economic crisis on homelessness.” In their 2008 Report to Congress HUD found that “[o]n a single night in January 2008, there were 664,414 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons nationwide. Nearly 6 in 10 people who were homeless at a single point-in-time were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, while 42 percent were unsheltered on the “street” or in other places not meant for human habitation.” The Homeless Cost Study, recently released by The United Way of Great Los Angeles, is another report that finds placing chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing will not only give those without shelter a safe place to live but save metropolitan areas and taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Other recent reports and studies done by organizations share this view. In a 2009 Policy Guide of the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that providing “[a]ffordable housing is the primary solution to ending episodic homelessness” and created a guide about adopting a ‘Housing First approach.’ Other current studies have focused on the cost of homeless individuals on hospitals. An article about studies conducted in Chicago and Seattle “found that hospitals saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by helping to provide… services together with local advocacy groups.”
Akua Nyame-Mensah // October 26, 2009
As the amount of housing foreclosures has jumped, the number of individuals who have found them themselves without appropriate, permanent shelter has increased. In addition to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) decided this summer to tract homelessness in specific regions quarterly. The new report, The Homelessness Pulse Project is meant to help HUD “gain a better understanding of the impact of the current economic crisis on homelessness.” In their 2008 Report to Congress HUD found that “[o]n a single night in January 2008, there were 664,414 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons nationwide. Nearly 6 in 10 people who were homeless at a single point-in-time were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, while 42 percent were unsheltered on the “street” or in other places not meant for human habitation.” The Homeless Cost Study, recently released by The United Way of Great Los Angeles, is another report that finds placing chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing will not only give those without shelter a safe place to live but save metropolitan areas and taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Other recent reports and studies done by organizations share this view. In a 2009 Policy Guide of the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that providing “[a]ffordable housing is the primary solution to ending episodic homelessness” and created a guide about adopting a ‘Housing First approach.’ Other current studies have focused on the cost of homeless individuals on hospitals. An article about studies conducted in Chicago and Seattle “found that hospitals saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by helping to provide… services together with local advocacy groups.”
Housing group alleges bias by town of Sunnyvale
Dallas Morning News
Ray Leszcynski // October 27, 2009
The Inclusive Communities Project, a Dallas fair housing agency, filed court documents against the town of Sunnyvale on Monday, citing a failure to live up to a 2005 agreement and discriminatory practices the plaintiffs say date to the town's incorporation.
The action marks the latest salvo by plaintiffs in a legal battle that has dragged on for more than 20 years over the right to develop affordable housing in Sunnyvale, a rural enclave of mostly upper-end homes in eastern Dallas County.
Monday's filing was triggered after the town denied a multifamily development on ICP property, the third low-income housing development attempted unsuccessfully in Sunnyvale since 2008.
There are no apartments and no Section 8 residents in Sunnyvale, where the average home has a market value of $274,081.
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Ray Leszcynski // October 27, 2009
The Inclusive Communities Project, a Dallas fair housing agency, filed court documents against the town of Sunnyvale on Monday, citing a failure to live up to a 2005 agreement and discriminatory practices the plaintiffs say date to the town's incorporation.
The action marks the latest salvo by plaintiffs in a legal battle that has dragged on for more than 20 years over the right to develop affordable housing in Sunnyvale, a rural enclave of mostly upper-end homes in eastern Dallas County.
Monday's filing was triggered after the town denied a multifamily development on ICP property, the third low-income housing development attempted unsuccessfully in Sunnyvale since 2008.
There are no apartments and no Section 8 residents in Sunnyvale, where the average home has a market value of $274,081.
MORE
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