For Americans who rely on public housing, HUD proposals strike fear, By Erika Beras, August 10, 2018, Marketplace: “Clara Malave, 50, works in the hot and loud laundry room at one of the bayfront hotels in Erie, Pennsylvania, loading linens into massive industrial washers and dryers. At $8.80 an hour, it’s grueling work. But it is work, and she’s grateful for it. Like most of the other workers here, she’s a part-timer whose hours change constantly. She only knows a week out what her schedule will be. She keeps a carefully balanced checkbook and a list of her impending expenses…”
As NYC public housing tenants suffer, a glimmer of hope emerges, By Henry Goldman, August 2, 2018, Bloomberg: “Lolita Miller had it all: mold, vermin, crime, stalled elevators, uncollected trash and winter days without heat or hot water. After almost half a century living in New York’s public housing, she’d come to expect the neglect and squalor in Far Rockaway’s Bayside homes. So did most of the 400,000 residents in projects owned by the money-starved New York City Housing Authority. Yet a federal program changing how rents get paid has allowed developers at Bayside to tap into $560 million in private and government funds…”
A nonprofit got special loans and tax breaks for low-income housing. Dealmakers collected millions in fees. And buildings deteriorated., By Joe Mahr, August 16, 2018, Chicago Tribune: “A newly formed charity came to Chicago pitching state officials on its “model” way to provide low-income housing. The Ohio-based Better Housing Foundation said it would provide safe apartments. It would help tenants get jobs and health care. And it wouldn’t evict ‘solely on the basis that the tenant is unable to pay their rent.’ Starting in early 2016, with little scrutiny, a pair of state agencies helped the nonprofit borrow tens of millions of dollars at lower interest rates and obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax breaks that allowed it to rapidly buy dozens of buildings across the South Side. But a Tribune investigation has found that many residents have been left to live in deteriorating buildings…”
‘I’m somewhere bettering myself’: prison reform unlike any other in America, By David Kidd, August 2018, Governing: “Terry Pullins is on his second tour in the North Dakota prison system. He’s also done time in California. Since he never got farther than the fifth grade, the 40-year-old Pullins has spent nearly as much time behind bars as he did in school. But last December brought the most acute punishment he has ever suffered: Pullins lost his daughter in a car accident. Most inmates in most prisons endure that sort of grief alone. But Pullins is at the Missouri River Correctional Center near Bismarck, N.D. This is a prison designed as much as possible to imitate life on the outside…”
Phone calls from New York City jails will soon be free, By Zoe Greenberg, August 6, 2018, New York Times: “People who end up in jail in New York City will now be able to use the phones there for free, after Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill into law on Monday that will eliminate the charge. The city had been collecting about $5 million per year from calls made by incarcerated people and their families…”
Bail reform bill considered by California legislature, By Marissa Gerchick, Fiona Kelliher and Emily Lemmerman, August 8, 2018, Napa Valley Register: “In late 1987, Sheri Costa drove her three young children from Alameda County to Fresno County to see her husband in jail. He had been arrested more than 30 days earlier in Fresno on charges of drug possession with intent to sell and distribute, and the price of his freedom was set: $100,000…”
As affordable housing crisis grows, HUD sits on the sidelines, By Glenn Thrush, July 27, 2018, New York Times: “The country is in the grips of an escalating housing affordability crisis. Millions of low-income Americans are paying 70 percent or more of their incomes for shelter, while rents continue to rise and construction of affordable rental apartments lags far behind the need. The Trump administration’s main policy response, unveiled this spring by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development: a plan to triple rents for about 712,000 of the poorest tenants receiving federal housing aid and to loosen the cap on rents on 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs nationwide, with the goal of moving longtime tenants out of the system to make way for new ones…”
Afraid of “political repercussions,” HUD delayed action on crumbling public housing in Cairo, By Molly Parker, July 26, 2018, The Southern Illinoisan: “As public housing deteriorated in Illinois’ southernmost city, bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development delayed stepping in because they wanted to avoid ‘political repercussions’ and negative attention, according to a scathing audit released Thursday…”
Under city program, renters-turned-homeowners could become renters again, By Nikita Stewart, July 29, 2018, New York Times: “Robert Mattox was not in the position to own a home. He was raising seven children in 1980 when New York City turned his Harlem building into a cooperative. He was asked if he wanted to buy his three-bedroom apartment. The city began turning deteriorating buildings over to tenants to save their homes and to help the city in the 1970s. The effort was envisioned as a way to improve a neglected housing stock but also give New Yorkers with low and moderate incomes a financial stake in their homes…”
