Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities. The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate-income families at affordable rates.

Gun rights advocates scored a victory Thursday as the House Financial Services Committee adopted an amendment to allow guns in public housing projects. The amendment, by Tom Price , R‑Ga., would bar any housing authority from restricting legal ownership of guns. It was adopted, 38-31, as the committee continued its markup of a housing bill (HR 3045) that the panel is expected to approve next week. “Seniors and other individuals have the right to protect themselves,” said Joe Baca of California, one of 13 Democrats who voted for the amendment. “Those guns would be registered, and those individuals have a...

Obama is already showing mental and emotional fatigue - won't last another term with this weak display of performance. There is no doubt he wouldn't last another term of the presidential spotlight. The democrats will have pay a high price for his lack of 'savvy skills' thus the demise of the party.

The financial meltdown has produced a vast patchwork of foreclosed and abandoned single-family homes across America, accelerating the decades-long migration of our nation's poor from cities to the suburban fringe. In 2005, as rising property values reduced affordable-housing stock in inner-city neighborhoods, suburban poverty, in raw numbers, topped urban poverty for the first time. The trend will continue. By 2025, predicts planning expert Arthur C. Nelson, America will face a market surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (a sixth of an acre or more), attracting millions of low-income residents deeper into suburbia where decay and social and geographic isolation will...

It pays when someone else pays.I initially thought President Obama was going to turn a blind eye and neglect the housing crisis in his porktabulous $787 billion spending bill in favor of doorknobs, STD awareness, hybrid cars and abandoned mine sites. It looks like I couldn't be more wrong ... and it took an article I read at the Indy Mind blog to bring it to my attention. (Thanks a million, Arkady).Nothing apparently gets by President Obama - that is, except the truth, American values and the need to keep terrorists caged. Housing, as it turns out, is a huge...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   California: NRA Victory in San Francisco Lawsuit!   Thursday, January 29, 2009   PUBLIC HOUSING OFFICIALS DROP ILLEGAL BAN ON FIREARMS POSSESSION IN PUBLIC HOUSING An NRA-led coalition of self-defense civil rights groups including the Second Amendment Foundation and the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) has prevailed in a Second Amendment lawsuit challenging a ban on firearm possession in San Francisco public housing residences. “This success is further vindication of the U.S. Supreme Court's Heller ruling upholding the Second Amendment as protecting a fundamental, individual civil right for all law-abiding...

I like most Mexican people, just as I like most Americans. I don’t have prejudice against them, they are God’s children, just like me. So let’s get that out of the way. What I do hate, is illegal activity. I don’t like it when people ignore our laws, and sneak into our country. Yes, yes, we are a country of immigrants, I get that, I love that, I respect that, and encourage that. But, we are not a country of illegal immigrants. Law and order should be followed in all things. What I hate more than illegal immigration, is when...

What part of illegal alien is so difficult to understand? Apparently, there are those who are either too confused, too unwilling or too incapable of understanding the meaning of those simple words. Instead, they'd rather emotionalize any debate on illegal immigration with cries of racism, discrimination and an alleged lack of compassion for our fellow human beings. They choose this course rather than honestly dealing with the established fact we are a nation of laws - laws intended and necessary to preserve civility and order for our common good. I, for one, refuse to be intimidated or influenced by such...

Riverside and San Bernardino counties added more Latino residents between 2000 and 2007 than all but three other U.S. counties, a new analysis of U.S. Census data found. The report, by the nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center, also found that most Latino population growth is now from new births. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was mostly from immigration. That means no matter what happens to the immigration rate, the Latino population of Riverside and San Bernardino counties will continue to grow steadily, reaching a majority within several years, experts say. Riverside County's Hispanic population surged 60 percent between...

A Story County district court judge granted a temporary injunction this week barring the city from complying with a Freedom of Information Act request for the addresses of people participating in Ames' city-run Section 8 subsidized housing program. The writ, authored by Judge Michael Moon and filed Monday, indicates that it appears the information sought by Ames resident Joe Monahan is protected under Iowa law and cannot be released, pending a full hearing into this matter on the legality of the request. No hearing date has yet been set. Monahan said he hadn't received the ruling, yet, but said he...

For all the talk of weaving public housing residents into the fabric of the city, the Chicago Housing Authority's ambitious Plan for Transformation includes this inconvenient fact: When the plan is complete, nearly 1 of every 10 of those families will live more than 100 blocks south of the Loop, tucked amid landfills, industrial parks and a sewage treatment plant. Mayor Richard Daley declared eight years ago that Chicago would end "the failed policies of the past." Yet a Tribune investigation found that the city has pumped hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars into housing complexes that preserve the...

This was not the first thing I wanted to hear this morning, yet perhaps I don't understand the context of President Bush's speech nor his intentions back then. What I heard this morning reminded me of President Johnson's Great Society programs. Again, and hopefully I have misunderstood the background on this. The following is my partial transcription of audio clips aired 7:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. on 790 KABC Talk Radio September 30, 2008. I also found the text of President Bush's 2002 speech and I posted it following my partial transcript of the audio segments. President Bush's 2002...

Under the Section 8 federal housing voucher program, thousands of poor, urban and often African-American residents have left hardscrabble neighborhoods in the nation’s largest cities and resettled in the suburbs. Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes, while other experts discount any direct link. But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration. Social and racial tensions between newcomers and their neighbors have increased, forcing suburban communities like Antioch to re-evaluate their civic identities along with their methods of dealing with the new residents....

Hey girls, want to get skanky? Well, sashay down to your local abuse shelter and get buzzed! No, you don't have to be a real victim of domestic violence. All you need is a convincing story. Last year Hollie Cephas of Monticello, Ark. arrived on the doorstep of the Options shelter to recount her tale of woe: Her husband had beaten her to the point of having two miscarriages, he hid her insulin, and once he even called her a "fat pig." The intake worker at Options had been taught to "always believe the victim," so of course she was...

Even million-dollar housing vouchers bring crime to the suburbs. ___ What if Section 8 housing voucher recipients were given $15 million vouchers, good for use in Malibu or Beverly Hills? The only question would be whether it would take a full five seconds for elite support for this federal housing program—which provides welfare families with a monthly rental check to move from ghettos to more stable working-class neighborhoods—to evaporate. The gorgeous sea-and-mountain community of Topanga Canyon, just south of Malibu, may have gotten a little taste of what such an experiment in serious social engineering might look like. In 2000,...

As a retired college professor I may live in a bubble of comfort, but I realize full well that millions of Americans live in poverty and hopelessness. It is truly unfortunate that every scheme advanced by liberals over the years aimed at helping people out of poverty has failed so miserably. AFDC Welfare has created millions of fatherless children to their detriment and to the great detriment of society as a whole. AFDC should be converted into a temporary emergency program for new recipients. In my last column I discussed the total failure of the Section 8 Housing program, and...

We could write columns for the rest of our lives just enumerating the failures of programs inspired by liberals and liberal philosophy – the Great Society, the destruction of families by Welfare, affirmative action, the destruction of our public education system, forced busing, shutdown of drilling for oil and stopping the building of more nuclear plants, dealing with Islamic terrorists in the criminal justice system, etc., etc. Today I want to focus on liberal programs in the area of housing.

To get to the Old Allen police station in North Memphis, you have to drive all the way to the end of a quiet suburban road until it turns country. Hidden by six acres of woods, the station seems to be the kind of place that might concern itself mainly with lost dogs, or maybe the misuse of hunting licenses. But it isn’t. Not anymore. As Lieutenant Doug Barnes waited for me to arrive one night for a tour of his beat, he had a smoke and listened for shots. He counted eight, none meant for buck. “Nothing unusual for...

.. Falling crime rates have been one of the great American success stories of the past 15 years. ... Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic...

The Antioch Police Department has been named in a federal lawsuit alleging the department's Community Action Team unfairly targets African-American families enrolled in the subsidized-housing program known as Section 8. Filed in U.S. District Court earlier this month by Bay Area Legal Aid — a civil legal service for low-income families — the suit alleges the city and police department are engaged in a "concerted and unlawful campaign to seek evidence which could lead to the termination of participants' Section 8 voucher benefits." Four individuals and a group of Section 8 families are named as plaintiffs. The suit seeks unspecified...

BOCA RATON — A crowd of more than 500 people waiting for hours this morning for housing voucher applications were dispersed by police in riot gear at the Boca Raton Housing Authority when the applications ran out sooner than expected. The action prompted complaints that officers used excessive tactics and housing authority officials were incompetent in their planning. Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal. Hundreds of people, mostly mothers who had spent more than eight hours in line, were forced to leave the property at 2333 W. Glades Road by 30...

The Section 8 housing program - is funded by the federal government and administered by local housing authorities across the nation - is supposed to provide a hand up for needy or disabled people to make ends meet. It's not supposed to be permanent and, most of all, it's not supposed to be for people with criminal records, or people who use illegal drugs, or people who invite in unauthorized tenants or people who receive unreported income to cheat the system. Yet, as we've been reporting for the last two years, all these activities are rampant in Section 8 housing....

McCain's love of amnesty will be a key issue. He supported amnesty in 2003 by name, proposed it in 2006 and 2007 without calling it amnesty, and says that anyone who says that he ever supported amnesty is a liar. He has insulted Americans who advocate border security and has cursed at the thought of building a border fence. The presence of Juan Hernandez in the background of the McCain campaign tells us that John McCain is as weak on border security now as he ever was. Dr. Juan Hernandez, a dual citizen of the US and Mexico, and past...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 29 (OneWorld) - U.S. war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq. "The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it," said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. "That's left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like." Iraq Veterans Against the...

Mortgages set up to fail Hub crisis fueled by scams, unprepared buyers By Scott Van Voorhis Monday, October 1, 2007 - Updated 12h ago Many Boston homeowners now facing foreclosure bought their properties less than a year ago, a Herald review found, raising questions as to the legitimacy of many of those sales. About 1,770 Boston residents were handed foreclosure notices by their lender over the past year, a wave of distress that has slammed heavily into the city’s poorer neighborhoods. More than a third of those homeowners received notices just months after buying their homes, statistics compiled by local...

Subsidized housing tenants who say they have been harassed by the Antioch Police Department descended on City Hall on Tuesday night, demanding a change in law enforcement tactics. Carrying signs that read "Stop Harassment" and "We Want Respect," about two dozen Section 8 recipients took part in the protest. Members of Antioch's United Citizens for Better Neighborhoods gathered for a counterdemonstration, protesting eyesore properties and nightmarish neighbors. "This turnout validates that the voice of the people needs to be heard," organizer Darnell Turner said. "The fact the opposition also showed up in large numbers shows they don't care to hear...

The state housing agency’s “deep and systemic failure” to properly oversee the rapidly dwindling supply of subsidized middle-income housing has led to the deterioration of the buildings, an increase in rents and a waste of taxpayer money, according to a report issued yesterday by the state inspector general, Kristine Hamann. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal’s mismanagement and lack of oversight at 80,000 apartments in 189 projects built under the state’s middle-income Mitchell-Lama housing program also led to unqualified applicants getting subsidized apartments at the expense of legitimate tenants, the report said.

LOS ANGELES—Siding with subsidized tenants, a federal judge ruled poor renters getting federal help are protected by Los Angeles rent control laws. U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins said in a tentative ruling Monday that the city's rules apply even though federal rules allow landlords to opt out of the so-called Section 8 program if they want to charge more money. The decision was in response to a Legal Aid Foundation lawsuit filed on behalf of 22 tenants of an Echo Park building whose owners include a University of California, Los Angeles, real estate professor. But the ruling, expected to...

Nearly 100 Antelope Valley households have lost their Section 8 subsidies in the first five months of 2007, a result of intensive local enforcement efforts aimed at identifying recipients who defraud the aid program or break program rules, officials say. Lancaster and Palmdale, with matching contributions from 5th District County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, have spent their own money to hire Section 8 investigators - a move that has netted hundreds of tenants defrauding the system. "We're very happy with our level of enforcement," said Kelly Long, a spokeswoman for Palmdale's Public Safety Office. "We have worked with Section 8...

... "Any rape case is horrible but this takes it to another level, something you can't think of even in your worst dreams," police spokesman Ted White said. According to the police report, a man knocked on the woman's door at about 9 p.m. and told her he had a flat tire. The mother and son, whom police have not identified, went outside and were ambushed by a group of gun-wielding suspects. The victims told police they were forced back into their home and beaten and sexually assaulted. According to authorities, the men raped, sodomized and beat the woman, then...

After scoring poorly on several key indicators, the Section 8 housing program run by Los Angeles County's Housing Authority has received a "troubled" rating from the federal government. The program receives funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which monitors its performance. On a recent HUD assessment, the county's program scored 73 points out of a possible 145 to earn the rating. The county's Section 8 program offers housing vouchers to some 21,000 low-income households, including about 3,000 in the Antelope Valley. The vouchers allow recipients to pay a portion of their monthly income - often about 30%...

Serious movement in D.C. – and if I hadn't been there, I would not have believed it. For several months Joan Wire and her daughter have been trying to secure an appointment with a highly effective government official we'll simply call Mr. Washington. Joan Wire is the stalwart wife of Mike Wire. Mike is the storied "man on the bridge," the single most critical eyewitness in the saga of TWA Flight 800, the 747 that was inexplicably blown out of the sky on the night of July 17, 1996. The CIA built its notorious zoom-climb animation around Mike's position on...

A number of college athletes, including several football players at the University of Iowa and other Top 25 schools, are living in apartments set aside for the poorest Americans. The investigation found some of the most successful programs in college athletics have players living in subsidized housing, including Virginia Tech, which has 19 players living in Cambridge Square apartments, a federally-subsidized Section 8 complex in Blacksburg paid for by the government to house needy people. Section 8 refers to federal code that includes subsidized housing. As first brought to light by the Des Moines Register, dozens of full-scholarship Hawkeyes players,...

Residents Protest Apartment Living Conditions Contractors Walk Off Job POSTED: 5:26 pm EDT August 18, 2005 UPDATED: 7:09 pm EDT August 18, 2005 COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Residents of a local apartment complex continued to protest what they say are unsafe and unhealthy conditions, NBC 4's Mike Bowersock reported. Contractors installing heating systems at Woodland Meadows apartments said they walked off the job Thursday morning after being told they won't be paid. They've been working at the complex for about a month and have yet to be paid. Residents have been protesting the living conditions all week. "This is America," said...

LEGISLATION PENDING in Congress that would convert a popular federal rent-assistance program into a fixed grant program has public housing authorities around the country worried - and with good reason. Under the legislation, public housing agencies would be limited by caps in the number of poor people they could help, and unable to move thousands off waiting lists for subsidized housing into affordable apartments. Given the nationwide shortage of affordable housing and other recent funding cuts to federal public housing programs, changes to the rent-assistance program known as Section 8 are sure to worsen the problem and force people to...

Tenants told last October to get jobs or else Starting Friday, the Atlanta Housing Authority will begin evicting tenants who are not working, in school or in a work force training program. The authority, which began notifying residents about the new rule last fall, said it is trying to end concentrated poverty by encouraging public housing tenants to become more self-sufficient. Critics of the new rules, however, fear the plan will create a new generation of homeless people as a result of thousands of evictions. "This is going to mean that you will have so many people on the streets...

Matt Damon and George Clooney come back together for political thriller Matt Damon and George Clooney, who are currently working together on Steven Soder-bergh's Ocean's Eleven sequel - Ocean's Twelve, will reteam for the Stephen Gaghan-helmed political thriller Syriana. In addition, Amanda Peet is in final negotiations to join the project. Set up at Warner Bros., Clooney and Soderbergh's studio-based Section Eight will produce the project with shooting slated to begin during the summer. Gaghan adapted the script, which is loosely based on the Robert Baer non-fiction novel See No Evil: The True Story of a Foot Soldier in the...

WITH 14,000 FAMILIES on a waiting list for a federally funded rent-assistance program, it is unfortunate that the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) allowed portions of its allotted rental vouchers to go unused, triggering a permanent reduction in the total number of vouchers paid for by the federal government this year and in subsequent years. What's worse is that the cut in voucher funding comes at a time when federal support for affordable and public housing programs nationwide is being slashed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The city's working poor and low-income families can hardly...

Calling all ant-capitalists. This is to alert you to a new film – “Capitalism and other Kids’ Stuff” – that has recently been uploaded to the www and can be seen at www.socialist-tv.com , and which argues the anti-capitalist case in simple language.

Federal housing authorities have dramatically underestimated the cost of renting an apartment in Howard County, potentially costing low-income renters hundreds of dollars a month in subsidies, according to local housing officials. The Howard County Housing Commission last month appealed the "Fair Market Rent" schedule the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development set for most of the county for next year. The schedule assesses the cost of renting a typical apartment in Howard County. It is used to determine the size of federal subsidies under HUD's Section 8 program, the main federal housing program for low-income families. Hundreds of families...

PALMDALE - Nine people were arrested Monday as authorities continue to investigate a vast Antelope Valley burglary ring uncovered during a Section 8 housing check in January. Sheriff's deputies served search warrants Monday on five locations around Palmdale and seized more than 150 stolen items, as well as methamphetamine, firearms and a hand grenade, Detective Bill Pickett said. Nine people were arrested and booked on various charges including parole violations, weapons violations, drug infractions or burglary. Detectives believe some or all of the suspects are part of a burglary ring operated by gang members who hit homes throughout the Antelope...

Thousands of residents of subsidized housing in New Jersey got a last-minute Christmas gift this week, after federal officials agreed to a complex arrangement that advances 21 housing authorities $80 million to renovate old buildings.The authorities will repay the money over 20 years, using 30 percent of their annual appropriation for capital maintenance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And they benefited from a joint borrowing operation overseen by the state."It's a good news story for housing authorities for once," said David Gardner, executive director of the Morristown Housing Authority, which helped organize the borrowing effort through...

Judge Orders N.Y. Couple Not to Conceive By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 8, 2004 Filed at 12:14 a.m. ET ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A couple has been ordered not to conceive any more children until the ones they already have are no longer in foster care. A civil liberties advocate said the court ruling unsealed Friday was ``blatantly unconstitutional.'' Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor ruled March 31 that both parents ``should not have yet another child which must be cared for at public expense.'' ``The facts of this case and the reality of parenthood cry out for...

After nine years of not doing so, Los Angeles housing officials plan to begin enforcing a federal rule that will ban thousands of undocumented immigrants from subsidized housing. The change in policy means that thousands of undocumented immigrants who receive housing assistance will lose their monthly subsidy or face higher rents. The regulation, which has existed since 1995, prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving assistance in public housing developments or through Section 8, a federal program that provides help with monthly rents. Since its inception, officials in the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles had applied the regulation only...

Housing Authority Faces Major Cut to Section 8 By MATTHEW ARTZ (05-21-04) The embattled Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) took another body blow this week when it learned that it will lose about $200,000 in federal funding, a 12.5 percent cut. In a letter received by public housing authorities across the country Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), revealed that it was reducing the administrative fees it pays to administer Section 8 housing units. The news is especially tough for the BHA, which has exhausted its reserves in recent years to stay afloat. Although the housing...

<p>Arlington and Montgomery counties are the only local jurisdictions that do not check the immigration status of applicants for local housing subsidies, allowing illegal aliens to receive taxpayer-funded rent assistance.</p> <p>Montgomery County spends about $3.7 million a year on rent assistance for 1,600 households, and Arlington County spends about $2.4 million a year on housing grants for 680 households.</p>

30 low-income rent units cost city $7 million Housing: Buying and fixing up vacant houses to scatter subsidized tenants among middle-class neighborhoods proves expensive. Baltimore officials are spending nearly $7 million to quietly buy and renovate 30 homes in mostly white, middle-class neighborhoods for use as public housing rental units - an effort to comply with a longstanding federal court order. The purchase and renovations, done by a nonprofit housing group and paid for with federal and state funds, average out to $231,583 per house - more than twice last year's average sale price of a city home. Acknowledging that...

TAYLOR, MI – Johnie Heard lives in Section 8, low income, government housing which is owned by the city of Taylor, Michigan. She has lived in the housing development for 10 years, but last year was threatened with eviction from her home for displaying an 8-inch, stop sign-shaped window sign containing the following message: “24 Hr. Prayer Station.” Mathew D. Staver, President and General Counsel of Liberty Counsel, and Erik Stanley, Litigation Counsel for Liberty Counsel, represented Ms. Heard in a lawsuit filed last year claiming violation of her right to free speech, as well as violations of the Fair...

A Michigan woman who sued a government agency after it tried to evict her for posting a sign reading "24 Hr. Prayer Station" in the window of her taxpayer-subsidized apartment has won cash damages and attorney fees just before the case was to go to trial. As WorldNetDaily reported, Johnie Heard was sued last year after she refused to remove the sign from her window. Heard is a resident of low-income Section 8 housing in Taylor, Mich. At the time, other residents were allowed to post secular signs – such as "Santa Stops Here" – but Heard's sign was deemed...

<p>Complete eight hours of volunteer community work a month or be evicted.</p> <p>That's the ultimatum being given to hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, unemployed residents of public housing complexes across the nation and in metro Detroit as part of a new federal law that takes effect Oct. 1.</p>