According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), City Limits' reporting on both stories was among the best examples in 2011 of reporting that was able to "skillfully bring home to us the critical issues that affect justice and safety in our nation.”
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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March/April 2012
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Jarrett Murphy
City Limits
Helen Zelon
Johann Hamilton
Neil deMause
City Limits Criminal Justice Reporting Honored
According to city data, 30 percent of New York City's homeless shelter entrants have been incarcerated. According to a Justice Department survey, in 2008 and 2009 Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan had the highest inmate-reported rate of staff sexual abuse of any prison or jail in the country that participated in the research.
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Workforce and Labor, Justice, Housing Policy, Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates, Corrections
Report Sees Renters' Crisis
In the idealized version of the world that exists on an economics professor's chalkboard, financial systems save themselves from disaster. Like a heated-up athlete breaking into a cooling sweat, the economy is supposed to self-correct.
So when a housing market collapse kicked America into recession four years ago, it was reasonable to hope that one benefit of the slowdown would be to reduce housing costs for low-income people, who had struggled to keep up with rising rents during the boom.
Related topic categories: Housing and Development, Housing Policy, Affordable Housing
As NYCHA Seeks Flexibility, Tenant Advocates Concerned
New York's public housing authority is hoping to enroll in a national program that will provide it with budgetary flexibility. But advocates for the authority's half-million residents are pressing for assurances that the move will not threaten tenants' rights.
At his agency's annual City Council budget hearing, New York City Housing Authority Chairman John Rhea said that, outside of New York and Los Angeles, virtually every large public housing entity in the country has adopted the Moving to Work program.
Related topic categories: Housing and Development, Housing Policy, Affordable Housing, Public Housing (Last Stand)
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
More Poor People=More Crime? Not Necessarily, Says Report
When City Limits visited New Orleans three years after the federal levee failure that followed Hurricane Katrina, the Crescent City faced the question of whether and how to bring more of its evacuated low-income residents back—and where to put them.
A civic association leader in the traditionally white Lakeview district told us that his neighborhood was not a suitable place for low-income housing. “People want to be around people who are in the same economic category,” he said. “You want someone who’s going to maintain their property the same way you maintain your property, after we’ve made the investment we’ve made.”
Related topic categories: Housing and Development, The Economy, Housing Policy, Poverty
NYC Groups Ask Feds To Scold Bank
Six New York advocacy groups are asking the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to rate JPMorgan Chase as "less than satisfactory" in its upcoming exam under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).
CRA aims to reduce redlining—the denial of fair financial services to people in a certain neighborhood—and to meet the credit needs of citizens in low and moderate-income neighborhoods, according to the OCC website.
In conducting CRA examinations, the OCC invites outside comment regarding the bank's service. This month, the New York-based groups Community Voices Heard, Good Jobs New York, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP), New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), South Brooklyn Legal Services and Staten Island Legal Services jointly filed a comment letter outlining the practices of Chase that they deem harmful to low and moderate income citizens in New York City.
These Read More»
Related topic categories: Advocacy, Real Estate, Race and Ethnicity, Neighborhoods, Housing and Development, The Economy, Justice, Housing Policy
AIDS Program Cuts Stir Protest
Members of several organizations from all over the city met outside of City Hall on Monday morning to rally against the proposed cuts to meals and housing for New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS. Armed with protest signs, they spoke out against Mayor Bloomberg's plan to cut what they say amounts to almost $ 1 million from meal services, and an additional $5 million in funding for supportive housing.
One potential casualty of the proposed cuts is the Momentum Project, a volunteer-run organization that has been helping people with AIDS and HIV since 1985. Donnell Tillman-Basket, director of client services at Momentum, said that if the organization does wind up closing, the results would be disastrous.
Related topic categories: Homelessness, AIDS, Housing Policy, Michael Bloomberg, Budget
