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Miami-based Florida Quadel Consulting filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice Monday to inform Florida officials that it plans to lay off 64 workers in South Florida. The current operations of the company, at 7400 Corporate Center Drive in Miami, will be restructured with the opening of a new service center on Feb. 1, according to the notice. --snip-- Florida Quadel Consulting is part of Washington, D.C.-based Quadel Consulting Corp. Quadel provides consulting on public housing, housing choice vouchers, HUD-subsidized multifamily and tax credit programs.

The city’s Civil Rights Commission has pushed to bring attention to housing discrimination based on how a tenant pays rent, including low-income tenants who qualify for and use Section 8 housing vouchers to help pay for housing. At the commission’s Fair Housing Conference here on Thursday, the regional fair-housing director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took time to emphasize the value of the sometimes maligned “Section 8″ housing vouchers to both extremely low-income households and to the overall economy. Betty Bottiger, who works in HUD’s regional office in Kansas City, Kan., noted that the agency’s “housing...

Here's an odd side effect of South Florida's foreclosure crisis: Some immense homes with pools and three-car garages in gated communities are being rented out to unlikely tenants — poor people paying with Section 8 aid. Among the properties are homes with up to 4,500 square feet of space in private communities with guardhouses and regal names such as "Monarch Lakes" and "Bellagio at Vizcaya." Some of the owners are teetering on foreclosure and gambling they can earn enough money from the federal housing vouchers to stave off the banks. Others bought the properties cheap in foreclosure auctions and want...

A small Connecticut town is being sued for allegedly discriminating against minorities in an effort to keep its black population "so low that it does not register above zero percent," according to a federal complaint. The town of Winchester "systematically and unlawfully" works to keep out African-American families by denying access to federal housing vouchers known as Section 8, according to a lawsuit brought by the Connecticut Fair Housing Center and plaintiff Crystal Carter. "We are challenging a pattern of denying minorities fair access to housing," said Greg Kirschner, staff attorney for the Connecticut Fair Housing Center . Carter, a...

LANCASTER (CBS) — A Southland mayor on Monday condemned a recent decision by Los Angeles County officials to allow probationers and parolees to have access to taxpayer-subsidized Section 8 housing ahead of seniors and the disabled. City of Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris leveled sharp criticism at the approval by the Board of Supervisors’ 4-1 vote on April 3 that he said unfairly disadvantaged those families who have been waiting to receiving housing benefits. “I am absolutely appalled and disgusted that the Board of Supervisors would allow felons to cut the line for Section 8 housing benefits,” said Parris. “People...

A monument to honor the Fair Housing movement and the historic struggles against discrimination in housing has taken a step forward in possibly getting its place in the nation’s capital

A federal judge once again has declared St. Bernard Parish in contempt and subject to monetary damages because it has "doggedly attempted to preserve the pre-Katrina demographics" of its parish by intentionally discriminating against African Americans. U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan this week ruled the parish's continuing attempts to prevent the four Provident Realty Advisors apartments in Chalmette violates the federal Fair Housing Act. Berrigan has referred the decision on amount of damages, reasonable attorneys' fees and costs to a magistrate judge. For six years, St. Bernard has remained in the spotlight over housing restrictions that violate federal civil rights...

To ensure that low-income minorities get taxpayer-subsidized housing Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a nationwide discrimination probe that, ironically, is focusing on an area where the overwhelming number of public housing residents are Latino and black.The investigations are being conducted by the DOJ’s bloated civil rights division, which is headed by a renowned illegal immigration advocate (Thomas Perez) who once served as president of a taxpayer-funded group (Casa de Maryland) dedicated to helping illegal aliens. A former Maryland Labor Secretary, Perez has made a number of controversial moves at the DOJ to protect illegal immigrants and minorities in...

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 400 points today, and many market experts predicting more volatility ahead, some advisers are recommending their clients put some of their cash to another use: To buy that house or summer home at the shore. Getty ImagesPotential homebuyers certainly have plenty of incentives: Home prices are still way down in many parts of the country, and mortgage rates are nearing their all-time lows. Consider: The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell 1 basis point this week, to 4.45 percent — just a few basis points above the record low hit in October...

OPINION AUGUST 18, 2011 Raising Hell in Subsidized Housing Section 8 rental subsidies have long helped ruin neighborhoods. Obama administration policies are making things worse. BY JAMES BOVARD Section 8 rental subsidies have long been one of the most controversial federal social programs. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Obama administration is making a troubled program worse. In the 1990s, the feds were embarrassed by skyrocketing crime rates in public housing—up to 10 times the national average, according to HUD studies and many newspaper reports. The government’s response was to hand out vouchers to residents of...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Struggling to clear its inventory of foreclosed properties, the Obama administration said Wednesday it’s looking for investor ideas for converting more than 92,000 foreclosed properties owned by the U.S. government into rental units, a sign of the depths to which the U.S. housing market has sunk. “Exploring new options for selling these foreclosed properties will help expand access to affordable rental housing, promote private investment in local housing markets and support neighborhood and home-price stability,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement. The Obama administration is working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator for...

The Obama administration may turn thousands of government-owned foreclosures into rental properties to help boost falling home prices. The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday it is seeking input from investors on how to rent roughly 250,000 homes owned by government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration. All of the homes are foreclosures. The U.S. government rescued the two mortgage giants in September 2008 and has funded them since the financial crisis. Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about half of the nation's mortgages and nearly all new mortgages. Converting the homes into rentals...

The Obama administration will announce plans Wednesday to seek investors' ideas for turning thousands of foreclosed properties owned by government-backed entities into rental homes, according to administration officials. The move is intended to put a floor under declining home prices by creating a way to deal with hundreds of thousands of potential foreclosures in coming years. Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sold a record 100,000 homes during the second quarter. Together with the Federal Housing Administration, the entities owned about 250,000 homes at the end of June, or around half of all unsold, repossessed properties. Another 830,000 homes...

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Resort-style swimming pools with fountains and heated spas, billiards rooms, granite counter tops, ceramic tile, indoor basketball courts, stainless steel appliances -- many Fairfax County taxpayers cannot afford such luxuries. But they are paying for these amenities for use by low-income residents who live in subsidized housing in affluent neighborhoods. "They're a part of our rental program where we subsidize the rents for the individuals in the units, and we end up having to pick up the condo fees," supervisor Pat Herrity told 630 WMAL News. Herrity does not advocate putting low-income residents in "ghetto-style" housing but...

It used to be that, to live in Chatham, you practically had to know someone. As a mother with no husband — despite having a 9-to-5 — my chances of finding a landlord who’d rent me an apartment in one of Chatham’s immaculate three-flats were slim. The landlords there could afford to be picky. Few of them would rent to you just because you told them you were a mom desperate to move to a neighborhood where you didn’t have to worry about gangs and guns. That’s another thing that’s different about Chatham these days. Looking for the new Chatham,...

CHARLOTTE — It was clear that Liza Jackson’s luck had changed when she drove her pearl-white Dodge sedan, the one with the huge pink plastic eyelashes over the headlights, into Pinebrook, an eight-year-old subdivision where residents tend to notice cars with huge pink eyelashes. “There goes the neighborhood,” one homeowner said when she heard that her potential new neighbor had a federal housing voucher known as a Section 8.

In the Spring of 1968 at the Bing Nursery School in Palo Alto California, America came to an end. Within its walls, the elites learned just how cheaply our souls could be had: All it cost was a couple of minutes and one marshmallow per soul on average.

SAN DIEGO – The parents were hard-working owners of a towing business. Their 17-year-old daughter was excited about this weekend's prom and preparing for college. Their 9-year-old girl played with children in the neighborhood. All four were found dead in a backyard swimming pool and a bathtub in what police are calling a murder-suicide, stunning neighbors and friends who said they saw no signs of trouble. Police said one of the four family members committed suicide but declined to say which one. The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office was expected to rule on the causes of death as early...

Green Township is being singled out because federal investigators believe the housing authority blocked new public housing there for at least the past two years. More public housing for the poor is likely headed to Green Township and some other communities as part of a deal to resolve a discrimination complaint against Cincinnati's housing authority.

Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children: Panel to Examine New Report with Latest Data– Tue Mar 29, 7:50 am ET WASHINGTON, March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new Center for Immigration Studies report finds that, 13 years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants with low levels of education and their resulting low incomes – not their legal status or an unwillingness to work. The major welfare programs...