Free Republic

A Brooklyn city councilwoman wants to know why “blocs” of Asians are living in two Fort Greene housing projects — and suggested it would be “beneficial” to assign housing by ethnic group. “How is it that one specific ethnic group has had the opportunity to move into a development in large numbers?” Laurie Cumbo, who is black, said at a council hearing on public housing Thursday

"....................Last year an anti-public housing slate of candidates won election to dominate the City Council, leading to a confrontation with federal and state officials that resulted in badly needed federal disaster funds being withheld from the city. The city relented and the issue appeared to be resolved. The Galveston Open Government Project said it filed the lawsuit because it failed over the last two years to persuade the City Council and the Housing Authority to halt efforts to rebuild public housing. The lawsuit filed by the Open Government Project and three former public housing residents accuses federal, city and state...

The Second Amendment Foundation has won a permanent injunction against the Warren County, Ill. Housing Authority’s ban on the possession of firearms by residents or guests.The case was filed more than a year ago in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Rock Island Division. Ronald G. Winbigler, a resident of Costello Terrace in Monmouth, is a physically disabled former police officer who wanted to keep a handgun in his residence for personal protection.SAF filed the lawsuit on his behalf, and they were represented by attorney David Sigale, who noted, “People do not lose their Second Amendment rights...

Judging by some of the recent coverage, Thatcher’s enemies have successfully spread a series of damaging myths about her. Many of these sound plausible, and are even accepted by some of her supporters, but few stand up to proper scrutiny. Take the myth that Thatcher was deeply unpopular. The truth is that she won 43.9 percent of the vote in 1979, 42.4 percent in 1983 and 42.2 percent in 1987—landslide results of which contemporary politicians can only dream. … It has also become fashionable to blame one of her greatest triumphs—the sale of council homes to tenants—for today’s horrendous housing...

Albany Chelsey Morales said police confined her to an apartment. Thurston Gross said police threatened to arrest him for trespassing as he tried to get to his own home. What happened at Ida J. Yarbrough Homes Thursday during a police training exercise was unacceptable, said residents and community advocates at a lively meeting of the Arbor Hill Neighborhood Association on Monday night at the Arbor Hill/West Hill Library. Albany Police Department's SWAT team conducted a hostage rescue drill in a vacant apartment at the public housing complex, just a few yards away from occupied homes.

On Tuesday, President Obama and the first lady used the State of the Union spotlight to pay tribute to an innocent teenage girl shot and killed by Chicago gang thugs. On Friday, Obama will travel to the Windy City to decry violence and crusade for more gun laws in the town with the strictest gun laws and bloodiest gun-related death tolls in America. Does the White House really want to open up a national conversation about the state of Chicago? OK, let's talk. Obama, his wife, his campaign strategists, his closest cronies and his biggest bundlers all hail from Chicago....

WRENTHAM — Just a week after the nation celebrated its birthday, residents of the Garden Lane public housing complex are being told they can no longer display their patriotism by hanging U.S. flags outside their homes. Tenants of the complex, operated near the center of town by the Wrentham Housing Authority, were notified of the new policy through a letter taped to their doors sometime Wednesday afternoon. The letter, which is unsigned but is on housing authority letterhead, says the move was made after a tenant repeatedly complained to the state Department of Housing and Community Development over the July...

York, PA - When Blaine Bosserman was searching for an apartment, he stayed with his mother until he could find a building that allowed smoking. And when he settled upon a high rise in the 400 block of East King Street owned by York's housing authority, Bosserman, 45, made sure there were no conditions in the lease that would prevent him from lighting up inside. But a proposed ban on smoking in the York Housing Authority's 1,068 units countywide could soon force Bosserman to extinguish his cigarettes. Pending approval of the authority's board and the U.S. Department of Housing and...

Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim. The victim's friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car. Attackers came after her, pulling her hair, punching her head and causing a bloody scratch to the surface of her eye. She called 911. A recording told her all lines were busy. She called again. Busy. On her third try, she got through and, hysterical, could scream only their location. Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton. It happened four blocks from where they work, here at The...

Crime was worse in neighborhoods where former Chicago Housing Authority residents used vouchers to move into private apartments, a new study found. From 2000 to 2008, violent crime was 21 percent higher in neighborhoods with high concentrations of voucher-holding former CHA residents — when compared to similar neighborhoods without them, the Washington-based Urban Institute found. Property crime also would have been lower without relocated residents in those neighborhoods, the study said. Violent crime dropped about 26 percent across the city over the same time period, according to the Chicago Police Department. The Urban Institute attributed about 1 percent of the...

GALVESTON — More than 1,000 Galveston residents have waited nearly three years for public housing units that open for leasing today. Most of those on the list will have to keep waiting. Only 40 units will be leased immediately, and it may be a year before more are built. The Galveston Housing Authority board has dumped a previous plan and will turn over most of its functions to a private company, further delaying the reconstruction of 569 units torn down because of damage caused by Hurricane Ike in September 2008. ...."We could have put it back exactly the way it...

Education activists are rallying around a homeless woman who may face jail time for enrolling her son in kindergarten under a friend's address. Supporters say the woman's story is yet another dismaying example of inequality in the U.S. education system. Tanya McDowell, a homeless single mother from Bridgeport, is charged with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for signing up her 5-year-old son to attend nearby Norwalk schools under the address of a friend. (Her son went to the school for four months. Her friend has been evicted from public housing for letting McDowell use her address.) McDowell...

A wrecking ball is marking the end of an era this morning at 1230 N. Burling St., otherwise known as Cabrini-Green. The tower there is the last of the housing project's high-rise buildings to be demolished. A Target store may be built on the site, according to published reports. And even though some row houses remain, many consider this the end of Cabrini Green, judged by history as one of the most notorious housing projects in the country. Cabrini-Green survived almost 60 years. Cabrini-Green gained a well-earned reputation for gang crime and almost daily violence. Police officers were gunned down...

HOUSTON - From the exterior of Kennedy Place, it looks like any other upscale apartment complex. Inside you'll find faux granite top counters, a matching refrigerator, stove, dishwasher and an alarm system. Move over to the amenities room and there are flat screens in the lounge area, computer and workout rooms. The only thing different about this apartment complex: it’s public housing . Sheila Johnson has lived at Kennedy Place for that last seven years. She remembers when it used to be a 30-year-old building with lots of crime. But after $11 million in renovations, there are three-story units with...

Notice the bush growing inside the rusty playground equipment, the skeleton of the former slide and all the trash around it. Hundreds of people look at it from their window everyday and keep complaining that they pay taxes and the city is not cleaning. Actually the city is hiring folks to clean the neighborhoods. Meet the tax-dollars at work (or more like the tax-dollars at rest). The city government is always trying to put people to work this is why they hire some uneducated folks to do public service (kind of workfare). The city bought them safety jackets and...

Philadelphia tore down 21. Chicago leveled 79. Baltimore took down 21 as well, and when six of them came down in one day in 1995, it threw a parade. Since the 1990s, public housing high-rise buildings have come tumbling down by the dozens across the country as cities replaced them with smaller suburban-style homes that did not carry the stigma of looming urban despair and poverty.

(English-language translation) Residents of the island's public-housing projects will be able to benefit from a fixed fee for electricity and water services thanks to a new Special Utility-Fee Justice for Public-Housing Projects Law. Governor Luis Fortuño announced that the new statute intends to prevent families who are behind in their [utility] payments from losing their housing according to a federal law that requires eviction for those who are not up to date with payments. The fixed-fee program is voluntary, and it is expected that a one-bedroom housing unit will pay $30 per month [for electricity]. In the meantime, units with...

Sen. Tim Johnson is expected to take the reins of the Senate Banking Committee next year following Chairman Chris Dodd’s decision not to run for re-election, according to sources. A spokeswoman for Johnson confirmed that the South Dakota Democrat is "next in line for the position." "Now that Chairman Dodd has made his future plans known, Sen. Johnson is ready to assume the role," she said. "He is more than up to the task and has the confidence of the Majority Leader and his colleagues on the committee." Johnson is currently the No. 2 Democrat on the Banking Committee, but...

Good video talks about the government being the landlord on those Freddie/Fannie houses.

Based on legislation and case law, the U.S. government's attitude toward increased rights for gun owners has been more favorable in recent years than ever before.In the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for private use. It was the first Supreme Court case in U.S. history to directly address whether the right to keep and bear arms is a right of individuals in addition to a collective right that applies to state-regulated militias.As a result, additional pleas to increase...