Housing

Tax The Rich To House The Poor

August 2, 2017 NLIHC, www.popularresistance.org Create! Affordable Housing, Housing, Poverty, Taxes

By the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Washington, DC - The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released the “Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction: How Tax Reform Can Help End Homelessness and Housing Poverty” report today calling for Congress and the Trump administration to use mortgage interest deduction (MID) reform to end homelessness and housing poverty in America. The report identifies solutions to the homelessness and affordable housing crisis in America that would incur no additional cost to the federal government, those proposed by the NLIHC-led United for Homes (UFH) campaign. The report and UFH campaign call for modest reforms to the mortgage interest deduction (MID)—a $70 billion tax write-off that primarily benefits higher income households—and for reinvesting the billions in savings in affordable housing for the lowest income families with the greatest needs.

California Statewide Coalition Housing Now Confronts Housing Crisis

August 1, 2017 Deepa Varma, www.sfexaminer.com Resist! California, Crisis, Housing

By Deepa Varma for The Examiner - California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation when the cost of housing is taken into account. Since 2005, more than 2.5 million Californians have been forced to leave the state in search of an affordable home. Unfortunately, the prevailing supply and demand — “just build” — mantra put forward by opinion leaders is diverting state government from the hard truth that the market has not responded to the demand of California families for affordable homes — not luxury and market-rate homes. We are told a big lie, that the solution to our housing crisis is to get government out of the way and leave it to the free market to let affordable housing magically “trickle down” to lower-income households. The truth, though, is developers build to make a profit, not to provide a social need. Luxury housing doesn’t trickle down, at least not at a scale to bring down rents in a meaningful way. Meanwhile, there are new players in the game, changing the parameters of the problem: the rise of Wall Street’s new rental empire. In recent years, real estate speculators have been taking rent-controlled homes in San Francisco off the market and harassing long-time tenants because Costa Hawkins lets them raise the rents when old tenants move out.

National Housing Crisis Becomes Focus Of Protest

July 28, 2017 Owen Silverman Andrews, www.medium.com Resist! Baltimore, Housing, Public Housing

By Owen Silverman Andrews for Medium - Turning out in force despite the sweltering July heat in East Baltimore, residents of Douglass Homes public housing gathered at the Orleans Branch Library to speak out against foul play and deteriorating conditions. “We are demanding an election,” said Baltimore City Resident Advisory Board (RAB) Delegate Rev. Annie Chambers. “This is the first action, where we’re deciding how we’re gonna push back.” Rev. Chambers, second from left, reads from restrictive new regulations approved by the RAB. Rev. Chambers of the Green Party, who was elected to the citywide advisory body for public housing on March 30, decried her opponent’s foul play in her own election, as well as the appointment by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City of the traditionally elected Douglass Homes Tenants Council President position, and the generally deteriorating conditions families are being subjected to. Douglass Homes residents “haven’t gotten any tenant participation funds, we don’t have any playgrounds, or programs. We’ve missed out on so much by not having a duly elected Tenant Council,” she added as she convened the group of approximately 40 public housing residents and supporters in the Library’s meeting room.

How A Federal Program Is Destroying Public Housing

July 16, 2017 Taya Graham, www.therealnews.com Educate! Elections, Housing, Poverty, Privatization

By Taya Graham for The Real News. Taya Graham: If there's a single issue that illustrates Baltimore's economic divide, it's housing. While developers continue to reap generous tax breaks to build luxury apartments downtown, other neighborhoods suffer from neglect. In fact, when Under Armour billionaire Kevin Plank received $600 million in tax breaks to build Port Covington, he also won an exemption from the city's affordable housing law. It's this dichotomy between rich and poor, the haves and the have not, which the city has failed to address, a lack of balance even more profound in our public housing, which is literally falling apart, which is why we have assembled this panel of people to talk about how to solve this entrenched inequity. Jeff Singer is the former executive director of Health Care for the Homeless and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Lucky Crosby is a former housing employee who was a key whistleblower about the deplorable conditions of public housing. Reverend Annie Chambers was the first Green Party candidate to win a city-wide election to the Citizen Advisory Board of Douglas Homes, a city-run housings facility.

With Less Crime, Closed Dutch Prisons Are Instead Being Used To House Refugees

June 27, 2017 Brianna Acuesta, www.trueactivist.com Create! Housing, Netherlands, Prisons, Refugees

By Brianna Acuesta for True Activist - It might be hard to imagine a world where prisons actually close because of a reduction in prisoners if you live in the U.S., but in many countries abroad this is not such a rare occasion. In the United States, the existence of private prisons that churn out a profit means that the prison-industrial complex focuses less on helping inmates stay out of trouble and more on how the inmates can benefit prison owners. In the Netherlands, however, crime has been rapidly decreasing for the last decade and 19 of the nearly 60 prisons have since closed. Some prisons even took in inmates from Belgium and Norway just to keep up their locations. While this may have resulted in a loss of jobs, it means that less people are being incarcerated, which is always a positive in any country. On top of fewer prisoners and less crime, the government in the Netherlands found a way to repurpose the closed prisons: they now house refugees in there.

Are You Unable To Afford Decent Housing?

June 19, 2017 Ijeoma Oluo, www.theguardian.com Educate! Affordable Housing, Housing, New Economy

By Ijeoma Oluo for The Guardian - The affordable housing crisis is becoming inescapable. We have now reached the point where a minimum-wage worker can only afford to live in about a dozen counties in the entire nation. Even those with college degrees and wages above minimum wage struggle. This problem doesn’t just impact countless poor Americans any more. Now it hits middle class families, too. For many, it’s outrageous that this crisis is no longer is confined to the bottom of the income ladder. ‘What do you mean that someone earning $20 an hour in LA wouldn’t be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment?’ gasp those in the middle class. When it was in the news that you’d have to earn $24 an hour in order to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle, where I live, I finally saw community members talking more seriously about housing density and rent controls. But for those of us who have been locked into a housing crisis for generations because of race, gender, class or disability, we are left wondering why so many are just now paying attention to an issue that has already destroyed countless lives.

Cuomoville Three Day Camp-Out Begins At Cuomo NYC Office

June 14, 2017 Staff for Metropolitan Council on Housing, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Andrew Cuomo, Housing, Rent control

By Staff for Metropolitan Council on Housing. We are camping out in front of Governor Cuomo's office to demand that he stop siding with real estate developers and start standing with New Yorkers! For too long Governor Cuomo has been selling out tenants. He's given a $2.4 billion tax break to developers so they can pretend to build affordable housing while in reality they kick out low and middle-income New Yorkers, who are predominantly people of color. Governor Cuomo's housing agenda isn't helping tenants, it's hurting us... and we've had ENOUGH. Its time to press the Governor to stand with us. If you can join us for any part of the three day camp-out and actions listed above, contact ava@metcouncilonhousing.org, or RSVP on Facebook

Co-Ops Lead By Putting Communities In Charge Of New Housing Projects

June 14, 2017 Anca Voinea, www.thenews.coop Create! Cooperatives, Housing, New Economy, Switzerland

By Anca Voinea for Coop News - Co-operatives, community land trusts and other housing models are coming together to help communities design their own homes and neighbourhoods. The new concept – known as a platform for social production of habitat (SPH) – means locals are involved in projects, so they meet their own specifications rather than those set by the private market. Based in Switzerland, the project began when a group of community-led housing practitioners met to discuss the formation of a global network to increase visibility of the model and support local efforts through peer exchange, workshops, solidarity finance and campaigns, and a regional awards program linked to the World Habitat Award. The partners are the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF), Co-operative Housing International, Grounded Solutions Network, Habitat International Coalition, Slum Dwellers International, and UrbaMonde. UrbanMonde co-ordinates activities bringing together the six housing groups from different regions around the world. They focus on helping them to share practices and experiences.

Trump’s Plan To Gut HUD Threatens Very Survival Of America’s Poor

March 13, 2017 Sarah Lazare, www.alternet.org Educate! Donald Trump, Housing, Poverty

By Sarah Lazare for AlterNet - Rosemary Holmes has lived in Newark's Terrell Holmes for the better part of six decades. She, like many others in the building, has raised children in its courtyards and hallways, and forged a tight-knit community of friends and neighbors. At the age of 68, she has been forced to band with other tenants to fight local efforts to shutter the facility. Now, as the Trump administration weighs plans to gut the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she has a new battle on her hands. “Any time they move a person to someplace they don't want to live, it's imprisonment,” she told AlterNet over the phone. “I am a human being, and I deserve to live where I want to live. Us, the ones who really want to be here...

Chicago Renters Back ‘ROOTS’ As Solution To Affordable Housing

October 2, 2016 Chloe Riley, www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org Create! Affordable Housing, Chicago, Housing, renter's rights

By Chloe Riley for Equal Voice for Families. CHICAGO – In Roxanne Smith’s kitchen, a framed excerpt from Barack Obama’s 2008 Grant Park presidential victory speech hangs for all to see. “America, we have come so far,” it reads. “But there is so much more to do.” Smith, 60, has come a long way herself in recent years. In 2013, she faced potential homelessness after the Northwest Side apartment where she lives with her 35-year-old son was foreclosed upon. At the time, the downstairs neighbors in her two-flat apartment complex had accepted a payout and left the building. But Smith, whose son Roget lives with a developmental disability, couldn’t afford to leave. Sitting in the dining room of her two-bedroom apartment, Smith holds tight to a green plastic bag, which was left on her door over a year and a half ago.

Water Shut Off – A Story Of Control And Profit

July 22, 2016 Arno Agman, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Baltimore, health, Housing, Water

By Arno Agman for Popular Resistance. Baltimore, MD - No, it's not a line from a B-series Italian mafia movie from the 80s. It's straight from the entrails of the city of Baltimore. Most people living along the North East corridor don't really ponder on the necessity of water...until it suddenly stops flowing. Then everything changes. Today started well with an early short trip to the gym. At home, we refilled all 8 five-gallon water bottles at the store in the morning, poured water in the four buckets spread around the house for periodic necessities and various cleaning tasks, installed a cut-out, slow dripped, refillable 3 gallon container above the kitchen sink for our dishes, and finally hung our 5 gallon portable camping shower bag in the bathroom. We were then ready to attack the daily events everyone takes for granted. Drinking, cleaning dishes, going to the bathroom... Showering had now entered the line of a luxury items.

How Banks Stole Homes From Most Vulnerable New Yorkers

July 16, 2016 Michelle Chen, www.thenation.com Resist! Banks, Housing, New York (NY)

By Michelle Chen for The Nation - The Great Recession has technically started to recede, but the banks that sparked it have mostly been allowed to walk. Some even prospered in the aftermath. But a jury just hit back against one predatory lender, restoring a little of the confidence in the system that Wall Street stripped away from Brooklyn during the financial crisis.

Public Housing Residents Told To Tear Up Their Gardens

June 12, 2016 Katherine Martinko, www.treehugger.com Educate! Housing, Public Housing

By Katherine Martinko for Treehugger. Residents of public housing units in South Pittsburg, TN are angry. The executive director of the South Pittsburg Housing Authority, Lisa Bradford, recently announced that residents can no longer have gardens in their yards, despite the fact that the residents pay for plants themselves and some have tended their beautiful gardens for many years. Last week the new Resolution 937 took effect: “The South Pittsburg Housing Authority, beginning on June 1, 2016 will impose a new Landscaping Policy for all residents of the South Pittsburg Housing Authority. The new landscaping policy states that ALL landscaping, including gardening, is to be removed from the housing authority property, unless it is planted by the South Pittsburg Housing Authority staff.

San Francisco Becomes First Big US City Requiring Solar Panels On New Buildings

April 22, 2016 Biz Carson, www.businessinsider.com Create! Housing, San Francisco, Solar Energy

By Biz Carson for Business Insider - San Francisco may be known for its fog, but the city wants to turn the sunny days it does get into power for its buildings. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously passed legislation that would require new construction that is shorter than 10 floors to install solar panels or solar water heaters on top of both new residential and commercial buildings.

Activist ‘Squatters’ Take Over Home Near Gray’s Arrest A Year Later

April 14, 2016 Catherine Rentz, www.baltimoresun.com Resist! Baltimore, Freddie Gray, Housing

By Catherine Rentz for The Baltimore Sun - A coalition of activists has claimed a vacant red brick rowhouse at the site of Freddie Gray's arrest, though the city has marked the home for demolition and says it's not the activists' to use. The self-described squatters say they want to use what they call the "Tubman House" — named after the underground railroad organizer Harriet Tubman — as a hub to organize food gardens and giveaways, host community cookouts and orchestrate art and occupational training courses, mainly for residents in and around neighboring Gilmor Homes.

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