The National Low Income Housing Coalition says the president's proposed fiscal year 2013 budget "contains a mix of deep cuts, flat funding, and troublesome policy recommendations" on the housing side. NLIHC singles out proposed reductions to Project-Based Rental Assistance, where the administration proposes to provide less than a full 12 months of funding to some of the public housing agencies that administer the grants.
Check in here to read updates on City Limits' investigations, get in-depth information on stories making headlines, and read news from the five boroughs you won't find anywhere else.
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January/February 2012
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Blog Contributors
Jarrett Murphy
City Limits
Helen Zelon
Johann Hamilton
Neil deMause
Obama Housing Cuts Eyed
President Obama's budget is getting hit for doing harm to housing. But the president's funding request also would restore money to a key urban planning program.
Related topic categories: Government
Closing Schools More Poor, Less White
Compared to their counterparts across the city, the schools targeted by the Bloomberg administration for closure this year have more students of color and more who live in poverty, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The numbers from the Independent Budget Office also show that the 25 schools slated for closure have more students with special education designations than the average school.
Only 1.1 percent of students enrolled in targeted high schools are white versus 13 percent citywide. In lower-grade schools being shut down, 2 percent of kids are white; citywide 15 percent of students in those grades are.
Seven Read More»
Related topic categories: Public Education, Education, eduction policy, Dennis Walcott
Mortgage Woes Linked to Broader Neighborhood Despair
In a city with more than 3.3 million housing units, what does it mean for the rest of us that 3,000 properties went into foreclose in the 3rd quarter of last year, or even that 17,000 or so went into default in all of 2010?
A new report suggests it could mean a great deal: Turns out housing code violations are higher in buildings located close to multi-unit residences that have gone into foreclosure.
The research from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, funded by Enterprise, looks at buildings that are over-mortgaged or have gone into foreclosure.
"Over Read More»
Related topic categories: Housing and Development
Queens Scene: Thompson Backs Convention Center
On election night in 2009, after the first returns were posted showing Bill Thompson narrowly behind Mike Bloomberg, there was an hour or so when the gap between the candidates neither widened nor closed, even as more and more votes were counted. The comptroller was clearly running out of field in which to overtake the mayor. I asked a Thompson staffer when they'd throw in the towel. "We feel like we have a little juice left in southeast Queens," he said. In the end, it wasn't enough, but the staffer was right: While Bloomberg easily bested Thompson in the whole of Queens, the four Assembly districts in the borough's southeast section overwhelmingly preferred the Democrat, some by a four-to-one margin.
Read More»
Related topic categories: Elections, Government
Feds Fall Down on Homeless Women Vets
The Government Accountability Office said women veterans failed to receive housing referrals, usually could not access a shelter that served both women and children, worried about the safety of such shelters and sometimes weren't even aware of the services that do exist.
What's more, the GAO found, VA's existing data on women veterans was spotty, making it hard to "plan services effectively, allocate grants to providers, and track progress toward its overall goal of ending veteran homelessness by 2015.
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Housing and Development
Plan Calls for Longer Shelter Stays
A new report on homelessness in New York calls for some shelter residents to be housed for a year to 18 months, so they can get the time and resources needed to become self-sufficient.
The plan, by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness, says the current shelter system works fairly well for the roughly 50 percent of homeless families who need help only because of a temporary financial emergency.
But the rest of the homeless population, the report says, needs more help. Some 35 percent require a longer housing stay.
Other Read More»
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Housing and Development, Housing Policy
What’s Not to Like About the Cuomo Budget?
For a budget address, Governor Cuomo's speech on Tuesday spent relatively little time on the nuts and bolts of the state's fiscal 2013 spending plan. Seeking to turn a symbolic page from last year's nasty budget fight, the governor argued that closing New York's $2 billion fiscal hole is a simple matter of eliminating waste and cancelling automatic budget increases. The bulk of the gov's talk was about his "reform agenda" of economic development, government streamlining, avoiding future pension obligations and teacher evaluations.
Read More»
Related topic categories: Activism and Volunteerism, NYCHA, Albany, Urban Planning and Policy, Workforce and Labor, Housing and Development, Government, The Economy, Andrew Cuomo, Budget
Hope, Hesitation as Waste-to-Energy Gets New Look
Coverage of Mayor Bloomberg's state of the city address focused, as the speech did, on the mayor's raft of education proposals, with some additional attention to his mentions of police corruption and the minimum wage.
But the mayor's reference to a once-controversial notion—"the possibility of cleanly converting trash into renewable energy"—passed all but unnoticed. Read More»
Related topic categories: Green, Health and Environment, Energy Policy
Cuomo Calls For Easier Food Stamp Access
Echoing a call made by anti-hunger advocates for years, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday argued for the elimination of the requirement that most food stamp applicants be fingerprinted before receiving benefits.
Advocates have long said the requirement was an unnecessary barrier, and in his annual State of the State speech, the governor agreed. "For all of our progress, there are still basic wrongs to right. There is never an excuse for letting any child in New York go
to bed hungry," he told a crowd of legislators, mayors and other dignitaries. "We must increase participation in the food stamp program, remove barriers to participation, and eliminate the stigma associated with this program. And we must stop fingerprinting for food."
Related topic categories: Activism and Volunteerism, Albany, Hunger, Government, Andrew Cuomo, Budget
Following the Story: Nationwide, Firefighter Deaths Drop
This summer City Limits reported on the causes of New York City firefighter fatalities over the past 20 years. A lot of the factors in those local tragedies mirrored threats faced by firefighters everywhere—communication problems, firefighters getting lost, problems with air supply.
The federal government just reported that despite those risks, American firefighters suffered fewer fatalities last year than in the previous 18 years: 81 on-duty firefighters perished in 2011, down from 87 the year before, and the fewest since 1993. To put those numbers in some context, in 1978, 171 U.S. firefighters died on duty. Back in 1945, in New York City alone, 28 firefighters perished.
Related topic categories: Government, FDNY, Firefighter Fatalities
