Free Republic

In one of his first actions after surviving an election seeking to oust him from office, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday essentially abolished single-family zoning in California — and green-lighted a series of bills intended to bolster the state’s housing production.By signing Senate Bill 9 into law, Newsom opened the door for the development of up to four residential units on single-family lots across California. The move follows a growing push by local governments to allow multi-family dwellings in more residential neighborhoods. Berkeley voted to eliminate single-family zoning by Dec. 2022, and San Jose is set to consider the issue...

Video - A fake slum was built in Davos at the gathering of the ultra rich so they could experience poverty first hand during a break from their 7-star vacation.

President Obama’s aides went to extraordinary lengths to uncover the identity of a senior official who was using Twitter to make snarky comments about White House staffers. Suspicion gradually centered on Jofi Joseph, the point man on nuclear nonproliferation at the National Security Council. So at a meeting in which everyone was in on the scam an inaccurate but innocuous news tidbit was revealed. When Joseph used his anonymous Twitter handle #natlsecwonk to broadcast the tidbit he was caught and promptly fired. He was not fired for revealing any secrets, but for making disparaging comments about thin-skinned administration players ranging...

How 'bout a little refresher re. Obama political Godfather  and actual (16-count!) convicted felon Tony Rezko...? The Syrian-born Rezko is an infamous Chicago slumlord, fast-food restauranteur, and sleazy political operator who played a key role in the Blagojevich case- as well as the unlikley ascension to power of Barrack Hussein Obama.Obama's longtime ally, friend, and top fundraiser was found guilty of 16/24 counts of felony influence peddling back in June 2008. Of course the story was mostly buried/detached from his bud Barry in the run-up to that year's most unfortunate (for us) presidential election whilst the jury convicted Rezko of wire...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – How would you like to not pay your rent, year after year, and get away with it? A Brooklyn woman has done just that for the past six years. Artist Margaret Maugenest, 60, stopped paying rent for several years, but instead of getting evicted, the state’s highest court said she was justified, CBS 2′s John Slattery reported. “Yeah, I feel very good about that, John. I feel very relieved,” Maugenest told Slattery. Since 1984, Maugenest has lived in a loft — a converted manufacturing building on Nevins Street in Gowanus – with rent of less than...

'We want to build a slum city' say Occupy Bristol protestersThursday, November 17, 2011 Bristol Evening Post WOODEN shacks have sprung up on College Green, where anti-capitalist protesters say they want to create a "slum city". Some shacks already have proper front doors, four walls and even makeshift wardrobes. Campaigners have told the Evening Post they eventually want to replace all tents with shacks and even hope that some will become three storeys high. Occupy Bristol, the UK's biggest tent protest outside London, began 34 days ago when around 200 people turned out to raise concerns about corporate greed and...

As Islamists increasingly look to real estate as a means of planting their flag and forwarding their agenda, it is worth noting the revelations that depict some of America's most prominent Islamist-leaning developers and property managers as agents of urban squalor. An October 23 article in the New York Post reports that the head of the controversial mosque project near Ground Zero "can't take care of a rat-ridden apartment building with just 14 units": Sharif El-Gamal, the main developer behind the mosque, has nearly 400 open violations that he has refused to fix despite a court order. His company owes...

Ridgecrest Terrace, a sprawling, low-income apartment complex in west Oak Cliff, has an infamous history as a crime-infested blight on a hillside. Drug dealers once lined its streets like carnival barkers. Gunfire and assaults were a constant. Housing code inspectors came with police escorts, if they came at all. Twice, the city of Dallas sued to have Ridgecrest declared a public nuisance and closed. Yet federal housing officials have kept the money flowing. Last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sent the owner $1.5 million in stimulus funds – the largest allocation to any subsidized housing project...

Obama’s Real-Estate Bust He did for Illinois taxpayers what shady mortgage lenders have done for the economy... Using his elected office and his clout, Obama helped Tony Rezko and other unscrupulous low-income housing developers obtain millions of dollars in state grants, tax credits, low-interest loans, and regulatory advantages. Taxpayers had no serious chance of recouping these “investments” in Rezko and other developers. And many beneficiaries went one step farther, depriving the public of even the benefits they could have gotten. These developers took government help to build low-income housing, and then let their buildings deteriorate into uninhabitable slums... To date,...

Some facts about Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia: HISTORY: Sadr City was built in the late 1950s by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim to provide housing for Baghdad's largely Shiite urban poor, many of whom had migrated from southern Iraq. It was first named Revolution City and became a stronghold of the Iraq Communist party. It was renamed Saddam City after the late president took power in 1979. After Saddam's ouster in 2003, it became known as Sadr City in honor of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who was killed, probably by...

Jingle-bang! Santa's chopper shot up over slumTue Dec 18, 2007 10:33am EST RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Not even Santa Claus is safe as the violent Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro celebrates the Christmas season. Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter, police said Tuesday. "They thought it was a police operation and started shooting. Luckily, nobody was hurt," a police official said. The helicopter had to return to its base after the attack. Two bullet holes were found in its...

Patricia Wright's girlhood home in San Francisco's Western Addition and most of the houses on her block were bulldozed in the 1960s by the Redevelopment Agency. In the name of urban renewal, longtime residents -- mostly poor and African American -- were sent packing, and many never came back. For Wright, who is now 52 and lives in the Bayview home to which she relocated as a child, the resentment still runs deep. "I have no trust in them whatsoever," she said. "When I hear the words 'redevelopment' and 'urban renewal,' I think it really means urban removal." Those painful...

CZECH supermodel Helena Houdova took a break from the catwalk to visit communist Cuba and was arrested for taking photographs in a slum, she said today. The former Miss Czech Republic 1999 runs a foundation in New York that supports disadvantaged children in nine countries, and she wanted to see what she could do to help in Cuba. But on Monday, Cuban security police detained Houdova and her travel companion, Czech psychologist Mariana Kroftova, while they were taking photographs in the poor Havana neighbourhood of Arroyo Naranjo. The two women were held overnight in police custody and not allowed to...

Three weeks ago, Carrie, my brother (Steven), and I headed to Manhattan's west side to climb the High Line, an elevated rail line above 10th Avenue (mostly). The current High Line is a remnant of a much larger elevated freight rail system, and it has been out of use since 1980. The trackbed provides a glimpse of what New York would look like if it were abandoned and turned over to nature. The High Line starts at 33d Street and 12th Avenue near the MTA's Hudson Yards and runs to Gansevoort Street and Washington Avenue in the Meatpacking District. I...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A U.N. report condemned Zimbabwe's government for destroying urban slums in a "disastrous venture" that has left 700,000 people without homes or jobs, and demanded that those responsible be punished, according to excerpts obtained late Thursday. The report, to be released Friday morning, said a further 2.4 million people have been affected in varying degrees by the countrywide campaign in which thousands of shantytowns, ramshackle markets and makeshift homes have been demolished. Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, has been "carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," said the report's...

School Police Officer Shot And Killed In Newark NEWARK, N.J. -- A school police officer in Newark was killed Monday and another injured in a shootout that also left the suspected gunman wounded, police said. Slideshow: Police Officers Shot In Newark The more seriously wounded officer, Duane Reeves, 35 (pictured), was shot in the head and was declared dead at 5:25 p.m.; the other officer, Akia Scott, 26, was shot in the hand, said Capt. Derek Glenn, spokesman for the Newark Police Department. The alleged gunman was in serious condition, Glenn said. The shootings happened about 2 p.m. on the...

Links not updated yet, this was just announced on 97.1 Talk FM. The Chief of Police and his assistant/deputy are in FBI Custody. There is to be a press confrence at 2:30 to announce the details. All indications is that this is in regard to an investigation into Voter Fraud that began immediately after the November presidential election.

Hadash MK Ahmed Tibi's car broke down in his hometown of Taiba a few years back. Calling the tow company, Tibi was shocked to hear they did not give service to the northern Israeli-Arab town, because, they said, it was too dangerous. Tibi's feeling of helplessness hasn't changed and, if anything, "It has spread to more and more people within Taiba," the Arab MK said Thursday. With 33,000 inhabitants, Taiba sits along the seam line in northern Israel and, with its rundown, crime-ridden, sewage-filled streets, looks more like a Palestinian refugee camp than a modern Israeli city. In contrast, quite...

A series of truces agreed on last month, encompassing Mr Sadr's stronghold in al-Thoura, Baghdad's eastern slum, as well as the Shia holy cities and other towns further south, are still holding. His own home turf in the capital has been more peaceful than it has been for months. Former fighters are now being paid to collect rubbish, plant trees, direct traffic and help the Iraqi police. The new government has promised to pay for a new sewage system so that the slum detritus will no longer flow past Baghdad's grimmest tenements. Outside the city, the clergy behind Mr...

Rats could have been cause of Sars outbreak Latest research into the spread of the virus at a Hong Kong apartment complex overturns previous ideas. Ien Cheng reports Published: August 24 2003 18:24 | Last Updated: August 24 2003 18:24 The World Health Organisation is studying new research that points to rattus rattus - the common black rat - as a key agent in the massive spread of Sars at Amoy Gardens, the Hong Kong apartment complex where 329 people contracted the deadly virus earlier this year. The research by Dr Stephen Ng, published this month in The Lancet, the...