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Today's installment of "We're Doomed, We're Doomed!" comes via The New York Times regarding the nomination of Dr. Ben Carson to head up the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Big-city mayors and housing experts are nervous about the idea of a billionaire real estate developer in the White House. Now President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with no housing experience, as his nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development — and high anxiety has set in. As The Times’s Mid-Atlantic bureau chief, I have spent a lot of time in Baltimore, Cleveland and...

The Projects - Colorado Springs style The Colorado Springs Housing Authority owns more than 350+ properties. Observe the City wants to TRIPLE the property taxes of private property owners; while these City-owed rental properties are Tax-Exempt. 16-OCT-2009 El Paso County Parcel 6311110002 From the comments on this story [facade] propped up by the Colorado Springs Gazette http://www.gazette.com/articles/city-63798-government-story.html valueappraiser wrote: wm25burke.... You mentioned multi-family community development.... Here is an example of just one of the city owned residential properties...7220 Austin Bluffs Parkway...80 units in 8 buildings on 4.08 acres. These units were constructed in the year 2000 and purchased new by...

Here's a description of a 2003 bill Obama co-sponsored in the Illinois state senate that would have mandated the construction of new housing projects for the homeless: Synopsis As Introduced Creates the Illinois Housing Initiative Act of 2003. Requires that a task force, composed of all key State agencies with functions related to housing and other experts in housing, develop an annual comprehensive housing plan that prioritizes the development of a range of permanent housing for certain underserved populations, including low-income and homeless persons. Boy, that sounds like a great idea -- housing projects for the homeless. This is exactly...

One of the lessons we have learned in newspaper work is the importance of the long view. It often takes dozens of editorials, written over years, to get a law passed. We thought of that yesterday when we read a headline in the Daily News, "Feds eye bldg. sale at housing projects." The news was that the regional administrator of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, Sean Moss, said the New York City Housing Authority should consider selling some of its buildings in the city's expensive neighborhoods. It's an idea this paper and its columnists have been pushing...

... "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...

Nearly every other day, the Seattle Fire Department responds to an apartment house for chronic street alcoholics to administer emergency medical aid to an ailing resident. The $11.2 million housing project, located at 1811 Eastlake Ave., puts to test a unique concept in housing homeless hard-core alcoholics because residents are allowed to drink in their rooms. The 39 aid calls to the building since it opened in mid-December far exceed what backers of the controversial project anticipated. And that raises questions about whether one of the key theories behind the project — saving taxpayer money by reducing visits by homeless...

MANTES-LA-JOLIE, France - A warning whistle pierces the air, followed by a deafening roar. Two gray housing project towers come crashing down, replaced by a yellow dust cloud that blots out the horizon. Applause, whoops of excitement, and a hint of sadness is heard among the throngs of mainly North and West African residents who have gathered to witness the demolition in this town 30 miles west of Paris. Along with torched cars and Molotov cocktails, France's grim housing projects have come to symbolize the discontent that erupted in recent riots across depressed, mostly immigrant neighborhoods. The violence has awakened...

Housing projects destroyed by Hurricane Katrina will be rebuilt as mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods, with $1.8 billion planned to begin work in Louisiana and Mississippi, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said Wednesday. "Within the next two weeks, we will begin to see results," he said, without giving details. The $1.8 billion is part of President Bush's request for $17.1 billion for long-term recovery along the Gulf of Mexico. "It will be the first of many" allocations, Jackson told reporters after meeting with four City Council members whose districts include housing projects. He said the type of redevelopment was...

  Sly Dones said it happened on the last Thursday in July, after the Feast of St. Ann. While cleaning up around the collection of religious relics he keeps in a shrine in front of the Harrison Gardens public housing complex in Hoboken, he saw the Jesus statue open its right eye. An eye as "blue as the sky itself," says Dones. The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue stands about 3 feet tall, with rosaries draped around the neck. Dones claims it previously had both eyes shut, but now one eye is opened wide, giving the appearance that the...

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...