Free Republic

Mayor Eric Adams’ medical team is ramping up a program to bolster wellness in public housing by recruiting “health coaches” to work with residents inside the city’s major public housing projects. The Health Department is accepting bids to fund the expansion of the Health Advocacy Partnership program in the New York City Housing Authority-run Marcy Houses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Butler Houses in the Morrisania neighborhood of The Bronx and the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens. The program offers tenants screening and workshops to help them better control chronic diseases such as asthma, hypertension, diabetes, and...

No New York pedestrian would disagree with Eric Adam’s characterization of the city’s ubiquitous sidewalk sheds at stalled construction sites as “ugly little green boxes.” But his targeting of private buildings owners with $10,000 a month fines for scaffolding that stays up for more than 90 days without building repairs proceeding also suggests selective prosecution.

There’s always something new to report on New York’s housing follies. The accepted housing paradigm here in blue-model New York is that elite public policy geniuses with access to infinite taxpayer funds will create housing solutions to provide perfect housing fairness and justice to all. Somehow, they keep falling short. Nowhere is this more evident that with the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA. NYCHA is the ultimate socialist-model low income housing provider, by far the largest such housing authority in the country. It owns and manages about 180,000 apartments in what are known as The Projects, home to...

Aug 26 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a ban on smoking in federally subsidized public housing. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) properly enacted a 2016 rule requiring state and local public housing agencies to ban cigarettes, cigars and pipes inside housing units and indoor common areas, and outside within 25 feet of those spaces. Six tenants and a smokers' rights group, the New York City Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment ("NYC Clash"), challenged the ban, known as the Smoke Free Rule. They said it improperly invaded...

Did you think you would ever see the day when you would have residents of New York City public housing speaking (on video) at the Republican National Committee, thanking the Republican administration of President Donald Trump for protecting them from the harm done to them by the city's Democrat mayor?

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Friday introduced a bill banning the use of facial recognition technology in public housing, mirroring legislation proposed in the House in July. The No Biometric Barriers to Housing Act would block the tech from being installed in housing units that receive funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). “Using facial recognition technology in public housing without fully understanding its flaws and privacy implications seriously harms our most vulnerable communities,” Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate, said in a statement. “Facial recognition technology has been repeatedly shown to be incomplete and inaccurate, regularly targeting...

Kansas City officials, using a new housing inspection law, have moved residents out of a troubled Northland apartment building where they found roaches, severe plumbing problems and other dangerous health violations, the Health Department announced in a news conference Wednesday. In the building, city officials and elected leaders said they saw caved-in ceilings, mold and damp carpets. During their visit Friday, they walked through human excrement in an apartment where sewage had backed up into the toilet, sinks and bathtub. “Disgusting is the best way I can tell you what I saw,” Councilman Dan Fowler, who represents the area, said...

Once again, a traditional symbol has become a target of those who attack private property rights and the American way of life. In this case, the symbol is the lawn – those closely-cropped grassy areas that surround most single-family homes. The basis for the attack is very typically environmentalism and racism. The messenger is an article in The New York Times. Its title is unassuming enough – “The Great American Lawn: How the Dream was Manufactured.” The vehicle is an embedded seven-minute film, produced by David Botti. The Attack The film’s first minute summarizes the environmental concerns: More water is...

Housing shortages are plunging New York City and Los Angeles into crisis. Affordable rents are scarce. Families are doubling up. Shelters are jam-packed. And over 100,000 people are sleeping sprawled on the streets of these two cities. The waitlist for public housing is over four years long in LA and staggering 10 years in New York. These lists would be even longer if public officials hadn't closed them to any new applicants. Nationwide, an estimated 32,000 public households are being taken up by illegal immigrants. It's a powerful reason why the Trump administration is giving illegals 18 months to get...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a new rule Friday to make people seeking housing assistance have to prove their legal status, in a move that could oust thousands of illegal immigrants. Secretary Ben Carson said the rule would bring policy into compliance with the law, which generally tries to restrict public benefits to citizens and legal residents. “There is an affordable housing crisis in this country, and we need to make certain our scarce public resources help those who are legally entitled to it,” Mr. Carson said. When the Washington Times broke the news of the rule...

A federal judge has ruled that the East St. Louis Housing Authority’s rule prohibiting public housing tenants from owning a firearm is unconstitutional. The Belleville News-Democrat reported that U.S. District Judge Phil Gilbert ruled that the ban was a violation of residents’ Second Amendment right to own a firearm for lawful purposes. The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association on behalf of a woman who contends that she needed a firearm to protect herself from an abusive ex-husband. The lawsuit on behalf of the woman — identified as N....

New York City’s public housing is literally falling apart. The sprawling network of 176,000 apartment units across the five boroughs needs an estimated $25 billion of repairs, up from $6 billion in 2005. Yet annual federal funding for the nation’s largest public-housing program hasn’t kept pace. Residents of decaying brick towers battle leaking roofs and moldy walls, broken elevators and aging infrastructure. This winter, the housing authority’s ancient boilers gave out, leaving more than 320,000 people without heat or hot water. “When you constantly cut a budget for housing…this kind of crisis is going to emerge,” said Shaun Donovan, a...

Full Title.............................The homes of rich people in Kensington should be SEIZED for Grenfell Tower residents made homeless by fire, says Corbyn....................................The homes of rich people in Kensington could be seized for Grenfell Tower residents made homeless by fire, Jeremy Corbyn said today. Mr Corbyn said the London borough was a ‘tale of two cities’ between a wealthy south and a poor north. He suggested that 'requisitioning' vacant properties would be a solution to the shortage of available accommodation for those displaced. ‘Properties must be found – requisitioned if necessary – in order to make sure that residents do get rehoused...

The move was sought by local East African immigrants. Immigrants traveling for 30 to 90 days could apply for a hardship which will reduce their rent to $75 a month while they are gone. The Star Tribune reported: Public housing residents in Minneapolis will no longer need to pay their normal monthly rent when travel abroad erases their income, a change particularly sought by East African immigrants. The board of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority approved this week reverting to its previous policy of collecting only minimal rent during extended absences. The change takes effect once approved by federal housing...

Uffe Rustan and his two teenage sons live in a public housing project in the Swedish city of Lidingo in Sweden. It seemed they were living the good life of a Swedish family in a socialist country that is highly tolerant and highly leftish. That tolerance and leftism came calling at their home one day in the form of a voicemail from human services. It told Uffe that he and his family were to be evicted in August to make room for a family of Arab refugees. Uffe called and asked why and the caller told him "Because people from...

For rent: brand new one-bed apartments in the shadow of downtown Dallas, a short walk from one of the city's trendiest areas. On-site concierge. Successful applicants will be homeless, mentally ill and possess criminal records. . . . All for a rent of 30% of the tenant's monthly income - whether it is $1,000 or $10. The only requirement? "Be a good tenant," James says. That means no criminal or disruptive behaviour; but no pressure on residents to immediately go sober if they are addicted to alcohol, for example.

Reflections on the release of the HUD watchdog's report on wasteful public housing assistance... The watchdog for the Department of Housing and Urban Development released a report. Some 25,000 families, only about 3% of the system, depending on how you look at it, receive federal housing assistance despite having earnings well above the income limits required to qualify for such subsidies. Major publications on both sides of the argument – such as the Daily Caller on the right and the Washington Post on the left – immediately seized on the issue and rightly blasted it. How dare the government provide...

In New York, there's a family of four that makes half a million dollars a year — and lives in public housing at $1,574 a month. In Los Angeles, one family of five makes $205,000 a year and pays $1,100 in rent for subsidized housing. The family was admitted to the program in 1974 and has been overincome since at least 2011. How can this be?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama is set to announce on Wednesday a pilot project to expand broadband access for people who live in public housing, in his administration's latest push to bridge the "digital divide" between the rich and poor. Working with mayors, internet service providers and other companies and nonprofits, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will make it cheaper and easier for more than 275,000 low-income households with almost 200,000 children to get home internet, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday. Obama is set to speak about the program in Durant, Oklahoma...

Police say an ice cream truck driver in Maryland was gunned down as he was selling treats to children and a suspect has been arrested. Frederick police say 22-year-old Brandon Brown was fatally shot Saturday afternoon at Lucas Village, a subsidized housing complex. Lt. Clark Pennington, a police spokesman, says Brown drove into the community playing music to announce his arrival. He says children were lined up to buy ice cream when Brown stepped out of the truck and was approached by a man who shot him in the chest. Brown died at the scene.