Texas housers

Confusion reins at Freddie Mac where the quasi-governmental agency cannot bridge the roles of oversight and profiteering. The organization was hit twice by negative news reports this week; one for gagging employees from disclosing dealings and another for failing to provide audit oversight to banks receiving stimulus money.

Meanwhile, FEMA continues to fumble and fret in Galveston. Mobile homes that were painfully slow in being delivered are now difficult to repossess from tenacious occupants. In other news from the island, the housing authority’s plan to rebuild units devastated by Hurricane Ike has drawn fire from housing advocates. This follows a stormy public hearing last week at which NIMBYs stated they wanted no public housing rebuilt.

For a pdf version of the full stories, plus contextual articles in social, environmental and legal areas, contact Bo McCarver at bmccarver@austin.rr.com

Freddie Mac’s Secrecy Pacts Face Court Test

By Edmund Andrews   New York Times October 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — One year after the government took over and bailed out Freddie Mac, the giant mortgage finance company, federal regulators are blocking former employees from revealing information to investors who are suing the company for fraud, lawyers for shareholders say.

The Treasury has propped up Freddie Mac with more than $50 billion in taxpayer money since the company nearly collapsed more than a year ago, and officials warn that the company will probably need additional billions in the months ahead.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia and the Securities and Exchange Commission are already investigating whether the company misled investors about the risks it was taking with securities backed by subprime mortgages and no-document loans.

But in a battle that will surface on Friday in a federal courtroom in New York, the company and its primary government overseer, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, are trying to enforce secrecy agreements that scores of former employees signed as a condition for receiving severance payments when they left the company.

Freddie Mac, Given Oversight of Mortgage Mod Program, Falls Down on Job

By Paul Kiel ProPublica October 22, 2009

Since its March launch, the government’s $50 billion program to prevent foreclosures has been marked by confusion, delays and doubts. A little-noticed conclusion in a government report released on Wednesday reveals that the program’s auditor is no different: Freddie Mac—yes, that Freddie Mac—has been given responsibility for auditing the program. And it turns out, Freddie is stuck at square one.

As ProPublica and others have reported, homeowners have frequently been rejected for loan mods even though they appear to qualify. The Treasury Department tapped Freddie to police just that kind of thing.

Home Prices In August Up Fourth Straight Month

Reuters October 27, 2009

NEW YORK – U.S. home prices in August rose for the fourth straight month, surpassing forecasts and providing the latest sign that the hard-hit housing market is stabilizing after a three-year slump, according a report on Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas rose 1.2 percent in August from July, above the estimate of a 0.7 percent rise found in a Reuters poll. The increase, however, was less than the 1.6 percent seen in July, S&P said.

The composite index of prices in 10 metropolitan areas gained 1.3 percent in August after a 1.7 percent rise the previous month.

The monthly price increases helped the annual rates, with the yearly pace of declines in home prices slowing to a 10.6 percent drop in the 10-city index and a 11.3 percent decrease in the 20-city index.

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices drop 1.2% in S&P index

By Steve Brown   Dallas Morning News October 27, 2009

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices were down 1.2 percent from a year ago in the latest Standard & Poor’s / Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

But the closely-watched measure of local home prices was up in August from July – the sixth consecutive monthly increase. D-FW prices in the index were at the highest point since September 2008, the report released Tuesday shows.

The D-FW area had the smallest year-over-year decline among the 20 major U.S. cities Case-Shiller tracks.

Nationwide, home prices were down an additional 11.3 percent in August from a year ago. But the index showed an increase from July, which was hailed as more indication that home values across the country have bottomed out.

Homebuyer tax credit extension is debated

By Jaime Adame Abilene Reporter October 25, 2009

For David Grasso, the move to Abilene isn’t exactly his choice.

“That’s where the Air Force is putting me,” said Grasso, 29, a captain in the Air Force stationed in South Dakota.

Last week, Grasso was in town shopping for a home. Like many other first-time homebuyers, he’s eligible to receive a tax credit up to $8,000.

If the timing works — the tax credits are set to expire Nov. 30, though there is talk of extending the program — getting the credit would be a “bonus,” Grasso said.

But Grasso said he doesn’t want to use a tax credit to force him into buying a house he doesn’t want, saying “it’s not really going to affect if I buy a house, or even how much I spend on a house.”

Why homeowners stop making payments they can afford

By Monica Hatcher   Miami Herald October 24, 2009

Andres Duque thought he got a real steal when he paid $125,000 for his Little Haiti condo. But four years later, similar units are selling for $35,000 and even less.

And so, faced with the prospect of being underwater on his mortgage — owing more than the unit is worth — for the next 20 years, Duque, 33, made what seemed to him like a rational choice: to cut and run.

He stopped paying the mortgage, basically forcing the lender to take the condo off his hands through foreclosure.

“I was able to pay off all my credit cards,” said Duque, who is biding his time in the condo, waiting until they come and evict him. “In a way, it was the best thing that happened to me because all my income is not being consumed by this freaking monster of a debt.”

Court Deals Blow to Owners of Apartment Complex

By Charles Bagle   New York Times October 22, 2009

The state’s highest court dealt a potentially crippling blow on Thursday to the owners of the sprawling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complexes in Manhattan when it ruled that they improperly began charging market rents on thousands of apartments.

The ruling by the Court of Appeals may leave the current owner, a partnership of Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty, and the former owner, Metropolitan Life, liable for an estimated $200 million in rent overcharges and damages owed to tenants of about 4,000 apartments.

In a 4-to-2 decision, the court said the owners improperly raised rents beyond certain set levels at the complexes while receiving tax breaks from the city for major renovations.

The ruling could affect landlords of as many as 80,000 apartments across the city who may also have improperly raised rents and deregulated apartments while receiving special tax breaks.

But the immediate and most devastating impact was on the Tishman Speyer partnership, which was already facing extreme financial difficulties after paying a record $5.4 billion in 2006 for the properties near the East River. The owners are running out of cash to pay building loans, and analysts have said it is highly likely the partnership will default by December. If the owners are forced to reimburse tenants, analysts say it would only hasten the path to default.

Affordable? U.N. Puts a Questioning Eye on New York’s Housing

By Mike Reicher   New York Times October 23. 2009

Everybody knows New York City is an expensive place to live. But the United Nations wants to know if affordable housing is so tough to come by that it actually violates human rights.

The United Nations has assigned an official, “a special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing,” to check the city’s affordable housing. The rapporteur, Raquel Rolnik, is to tour the city for the next three days with housing advocates and city officials to “hear the voices of those who are suffering on the ground,” she said.

Pedestrian-friendly Miami 21 zoning code approved

Four years after the discussion began, Miami commissioners Thursday adopted an urban-oriented, pedestrian-friendly zoning code.

By Charles Rabin   Miami Herald October 22, 2009

Miami commissioners on Thursday finally passed the city’s most comprehensive zoning code ever — one that promises a healthier city and friendlier walking corridors — after making dozens of tweaks before a City Hall packed with neighborhood groups.

After more than four years of debate and literally hundreds of public meetings, commissioners voted 4-1 Thursday evening to approve the cornerstone of Mayor Manny Diaz’s development plans for Miami.

Poll: Voters want tough land-use law

Ashby high-rise controversy cited for apparent turnaround in public opinion

By Bradley Olson   Houston Chronicle October 19, 2009

More than two-thirds of Houstonians are ready for tighter land-use restrictions in the wake of several high-profile conflicts between developers and neighborhoods in recent years, according to a Houston Chronicle poll.

Out of 601 people surveyed between Oct. 12 and 15, 71 percent said they strongly or somewhat agree that “Houston should enact tougher land use restrictions.”

Housing group alleges bias by town of Sunnyvale

By Ray Leszcynski   Dallas Morning News October 27, 2009

The Inclusive Communities Project, a Dallas fair housing agency, filed court documents against the town of Sunnyvale on Monday, citing a failure to live up to a 2005 agreement and discriminatory practices the plaintiffs say date to the town’s incorporation.

The action marks the latest salvo by plaintiffs in a legal battle that has dragged on for more than 20 years over the right to develop affordable housing in Sunnyvale, a rural enclave of mostly upper-end homes in eastern Dallas County.

Monday’s filing was triggered after the town denied a multifamily development on ICP property, the third low-income housing development attempted unsuccessfully in Sunnyvale since 2008.

There are no apartments and no Section 8 residents in Sunnyvale, where the average home has a market value of $274,081.

“This was an opportunity to see if they would do the right thing,” said Betsy Julian, ICP president.

Plaintiff’s attorney Mike Daniel, who has been working to add such housing to Sunnyvale since 1985, said he does not know how long it will take to get a ruling or even which judge will hear the case.

Advocacy groups oppose public housing plan

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News October 22, 2009

GALVESTON — The leaders of two of the island’s social advocacy groups oppose the Galveston Housing Authority’s latest plan to rebuild 569 public housing units.

Both David Miller, president of the Galveston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Leon Phillips, president of the Galveston Coalition for Justice, want the housing authority to rebuild all of the housing demolished after Hurricane Ike on the four properties the agency owns north of Broadway.

Harish Krishnarao, housing authority executive director, on Monday recommended rebuilding 340 apartments, row houses and duplexes on the old public housing sites and scattering 229 throughout other island neighborhoods.

2nd chance to weigh in on GHA plan

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News October 27, 2009

GALVESTON — Galveston Housing Authority officials Thursday will hold the second of four public meetings on a proposed rebuilding plan.

Last week, Executive Director Harish Krishnarao announced his recommendation to build 340 town houses and apartments on the sites of four public housing developments demolished after Hurricane Ike. Krishnarao wants to scatter another 229 housing units across the island.

The housing authority board of commissioners voted unanimously earlier this year to rebuild all 569 public housing units lost to the storm. That decision was part of an agreement with advocacy group Lone Star Legal Aid, which threatened to file an injunction against any rebuilding plans that decreased the number of public housing units on the island.

FEMA mobile home residents face evictions

By T.J. Aulds and Rhiannon Meyers   Galveston County Daily News October 25, 2009

Before Hurricane Ike, Sidney Lampman rented the first floor of her sister’s two-story house on West Hunter Drive in Old Bayou Vista. The hurricane flooded the house and, even though Lampman rented the property, rather than owned it, the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave her a mobile home while she looked for a new place to live.

This month, the agency sent Lampman a letter telling her she must move out of the mobile home because there are plenty of apartments and rental houses in the area.

FEMA mobile homes for sale – well, sort of

By T.J. Aulds   Galveston County Daily News October 25, 2009

Frank Kaplan hopes to be out of his government-issued mobile home and back into his own house in Galveston in time for Christmas.

As he nears that goal, he’s had plenty of offers to buy the mobile home, including one from guys who want to put it on a deer lease.

Marty Rogers and his wife, Barbara Davis, who are living in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mobile home park in High Island, would like to buy their mobile home and put it on the lot where their house stood in Gilchrist before Ike washed it away. At a community meeting in San Leon last week, about six people who live in FEMA trailers said they want to buy their mobile homes.

Charities recruit officials to find Ike victims

By Rhiannon Meyers   Galveston County Daily News October 27, 2009

Charities armed with federal dollars to help hurricane victims find help Monday recruited Galveston County mayors, constables, firefighters and postmasters to help them track down people still living in hurricane-damaged homes.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency gave Recovery for Ike Survivors Enterprise, operated by Lutheran Social Services, $24.3 million to hire case managers from six local charities. The case management program is a first for FEMA. Case managers are charged with finding people who need help repairing or rebuilding their houses, buying new appliances, paying their rent or seeking treatment for mental or physical health problems.

But officials with those charities said they’ve had trouble finding hurricane victims who’ve slipped through the cracks.

More funds could go toward winterizing homes

By Tracey Idell Hamilton   San Antonio Express-News October 27, 2009

Under pressure from a group representing many of the city’s poorer neighborhoods, CPS Energy officials agreed Monday to consider adding millions more dollars to the utility’s weatherization program.

COPS/Metro Alliance says CPS promised to shift $25 million from its $900 million conservation program to more weatherization. But others at the meeting, hosted by Mayor Julián Castro, dispute that, saying the parties agreed to no firm figure and that CPS still needed to crunch the numbers.

Making that shift in the Save for Tomorrow Energy Plan could jeopardize CPS’ goal of saving 771 megawatts of power by 2020, utility officials say, because other parts of the plan have a bigger conservation payoff. Saving those megawatts represents a large power plant CPS would not have to build, reducing carbon emissions, along with demand.

For better or worse, redevelopment is changing Fort Worth’s oldest neighborhood

By Alex Branch   Fort Worth Star-Telegram October 25, 2009

FORT WORTH — John Ledbetter bought his two-story colonial-style home on Samuels Avenue in 1965, back when black Angus cattle could be seen from the bluff, grazing near the shadows of the Fort Worth skyline.

Large Victorian homes and smaller cottages filled the city’s oldest neighborhood, perched just northeast of downtown. Residents walked to the small Courthouse Market for groceries.

Steeped in tradition, some Samuels Avenue homes dated back to the 1870s and were treasured, remaining in families for generations.

Even later, as many homes fell into disrepair and were marked with graffiti, and as gangs clashed in the 1990s, families resisted the urge to leave.

“It was kind of like our little secret back here,” Ledbetter said. “Homes were hardly ever for sale. You’d watch children grow up next door and then watch them raise their own kids there. Change was not something you saw a lot of.”

But today, few Fort Worth neighborhoods are changing as dramatically. Upscale town homes, condominiums and apartments have risen along the south end of the bluff where old or dilapidated houses and buildings once stood.

Veteran Fort Worth firefighter fights to take control of his life after becoming homeless

By Alex Branch   Fort Worth Star-Telegram October 27, 2009

http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1712793.html?storylink=omni_popular

FORT WORTH — From his bunk in the Salvation Army homeless shelter, Greg LaRue can hear the wailing sirens of fire trucks as they roar down East Lancaster Drive.

For most homeless people, it is background noise. Another fire. Another person sick. Another person injured.

But to LaRue, the sound is a stabbing reminder of the life he had, the career he cherished and the challenges he must overcome.

For 17 years, LaRue was a proud Fort Worth firefighter. Among the ranks known as the city’s bravest, a man who ran into burning buildings, aided wreck victims and pulled people from floodwaters.

He often rode an engine along East Lancaster, paying little attention to homeless people along the away.

“I had my dream job,” he said.

But his life unraveled about two years ago. Drug addiction, fueled in part by marital problems, took his home, his car and his career. Finally, he says, it took his dignity.

Vet was given shelter but goes back to tent

By Vincent Davis   San Antonio Express-News October 25, 2009

Patrick Owens had found a way out of being homeless, and for four months, he grappled with it.

Taken in by a neighboring couple, the bearded, pony-tailed 60-year-old Vietnam veteran had hot showers and a roof over his head after a decade of living outdoors, most recently in a tent in the Cibolo Creek basin in Schertz.

Last summer, Owens got an attorney to file for Social Security disability benefits. The agency agreed he was entitled to them but required a “third-party payee” to manage his finances after determining he needed help looking after the money.

But Owens has gone back to living in a tent. The third-party payee red tape was too much for him.

Seeking to provide mortgages to a huge wait-list of first-time homeowners refused by private banks, the Obama Administration has initiated a program in hope of jump-starting the faltering housing industry. Meanwhile, analysts note that the big banks are profiting while mortgage defaults skyrocket, thanks to federal bailouts.

The GAO has examined FEMA’s performance and released recommendations that include having the agency engage in actual construction in storm-devastated areas.

In Galveston, a full-blown NIMBY protest has erupted as the housing authority unveils plans to replace units destroyed by Hurricane Ike.

For a pdf version of the full stories, plus contextual articles in social, environmental and legal areas, contact Bo McCarver at bmccarver@austin.rr.com

InU.S. launches aid for state, local housing agencies

Reuters Oct 19, 2009

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Monday launched a new program to help state and local housing finance agencies provide hundreds of thousands of affordable mortgages and further stabilize the depressed U.S. housing market.

The program, described as temporary by the Treasury, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will use government-sponsored mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide temporary financing for housing finance agencies hurt by gridlock in the credit markets.

The move is the latest attempt by the Obama administration to prop up the faltering U.S. housing market, by restarting a source of financing for first-time and low-income homebuyers that has all but dried up.

Foreclosures Force Ex-Homeowners To Turn to Shelters

By Peter Goodman   New York Times October 18, 2009

CLEVELAND — The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom.

The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car.

But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

41 people in 4 states charged in mortgage fraud

Associated Press Oct. 15, 2009

NEW YORK — A mortgage fraud crackdown announced today resulted in the arrests of dozens of people, including six lawyers, seven loan officers and three mortgage brokers in four states.

Thirty-one people were arrested in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina. They were among 41 people charged with engaging in mortgage fraud scams that defrauded lenders out of more than $64 million in home mortgage loans.

Of the 10 other defendants, one was expected to surrender later today, four were previously charged and five remained at large.

Foreclosures rise. Big banks show profits. How can that be?

The bailouts helped the banks, but they’re also benefiting from improvements in the housing market and overall economy.

By Mark Trumbull   Christian Science Monitor   October 15, 2009

It’s an anomaly of the great credit bust. Big banks in the US are reporting profits even as their borrowers are going into foreclosure at a record pace.

The stark disconnect came into the spotlight Thursday. The number of foreclosure filings rose 5 percent in the third quarter to a record level, RealtyTrac reported. The firm says foreclosure-related actions occurred on 1 in every 136 US housing units during the quarter.

Meanwhile Citigroup, a banking behemoth that has received massive federal support during the financial crisis, reported net income for the quarter of $101 million.

Is Foreclosure Relief Failing?

By Andy Kroll   Mother Jones Octoer 14, 2009

Is the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure relief program succeeding? Absolutely, according to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who last Thursday trumpeted the news that 500,000 mortgages had been modified—on a trial basis—under the Home Affordable Modification Program, a month ahead of the administration’s November 1 benchmark for reaching this goal. A day later, however, the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) reached a far different conclusion when it released its own evaluation of the Treasury Department’s foreclosure prevention efforts. According to the financial watchdog, the efficacy of HAMP is very much in doubt, and the program may wind up doing little to assuage the growing foreclosure mess.

Tarrant foreclosure filings up 35 percent from a year ago, but down from October

By Sandra Baker   Fort Worth Star-Telegram October 15, 2009

A high number of Tarrant County homeowners risk losing their residences to foreclosure in November as postings in the Metroplex inched toward an annual record, the Foreclosure Listing Service said Thursday.

For the Nov. 3 auction, 1,814 postings were filed in Tarrant County, up 35 percent from November 2008, but down 8 percent from October, figures show.

Home sales drop again

Wichita Falls Record-News October 18, 2009

Existing-home sales here, along with sales volume, dropped again in September, according to the monthly report from the Wichita Falls Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service, which likely is the result of consumer sentiment, broker Danny Steed said.

“The September local MLS home sale numbers, although down somewhat from last month and last September (’08), are probably indicative of local consumer sentiment more than anything else. We are still showing a very stable housing market when it comes to balanced inventory of affordable homes, extremely low interest rates and properties holding their values. September even showed an average home sales price increase of 6 percent over August, and an increase of 15 percent over September last year,” Steed explained.

Developers’ bust proves a boon for land trusts

By Peter Fimrite   San Francisco Chronicle October 19, 2009

Smartsville, Yuba County — The frog eluded the grasp of Erik Vink, who scrambled after it along the rocky shore of the Yuba River where chinook salmon were thrashing around in the riffles.

It was a joyous day for the boyish Vink, the project manager for the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land, as he recently toured the 595 acres of oak woodlands and 2 miles of river in the Sierra foothills that he and his colleagues had just agreed to purchase and forever preserve.

The chaparral-covered land 15 miles outside of Marysville had been slated to be bulldozed for homes. But the bottom dropped out of the economy and the plan to build homes was yanked, allowing the trust to swoop in with a $4 million offer that was quickly accepted.

Report: FEMA must have role in post-storm housing recovery

By Mike Smith   Beaumont Enterprise October 18, 2009

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials might want to enter the construction business to speed up the post-disaster housing recovery process in stricken areas, a federal report concludes.

The recommendation is one of a set of suggestions made in a report by the U.S. General Accountability Office that examines FEMA’s response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

The GAO is an arm of the federal government that investigates public spending.

Some Ike victims facing eviction

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News October 18, 2009

GALVESTON — About 20 Galveston County residents are facing evictions because the Galveston Housing Authority failed to pay their October rent.

Some people in the Disaster Housing Assistance Program blame problems on overworked case managers who lose important paperwork and provide incorrect information.

Housing authority officials don’t deny that some people have been kicked out of the program by mistake, but they said 20 problems among 2,900 cases is not an excessive number. All mistakes are being corrected, and rent will be paid retroactively for anyone who legitimately qualifies for the program, officials said.

Galveston Housing Authority unveils new public housing plan

By Leigh Jones   Galveston Daily News October 20, 2009

GALVESTON — Galveston Housing Authority officials on Monday unveiled plans to replace 569 public housing units torn down on four sites after Hurricane Ike with 340 new apartments, town houses and patio homes.

The other 229 units needed to replace what was lost could be scattered through the rest of the island’s urban core, housing authority Executive Director Harish Krishnarao said.

The scattered site recommendation is a shift from Krishnarao’s initial plan to rebuild all units on the now-vacant sites at Oleander Homes, Palm Terrace, Cedar Terrace and Magnolia Homes. The housing authority board decided to demolish all four developments after they flooded during Ike, which made landfall last year.

Meeting on housing plan ends in shouting match

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News October 20, 2009

GALVESTON — The public meeting hosted by the Galveston Housing Authority on Monday ended in a shouting match between people who support the plan to rebuild 569 public housing units and those who oppose it.

Encouraging poor people to live in Galveston is a bad idea, opponents of the plan, who were mostly white, said. But without public housing, the island’s nurses, teachers aids and service industry workers will have nowhere to live, supporters of the plan, who were mostly African-American, said.

Regulator rejects windstorm insurance rate increase

Beaumont Enterprise October 19, 2009

State insurance regulators cut coastal homeowners a break by rejecting a request from Texas Windstorm Insurance Association to hike rates 10 percent, the Houston Chronicle reported online.

The association, which insures thousands of policyholders who can’t find coverage in the private market, asked permission to increase rates for homeowners and businesses. The state-backed insurer must seek approval before it can boost rates 5 percent or more.

In an order denying the increase, Insurance Commissioner Mike Geeslin noted that the rate should reflect how lawmakers revamped the association’s funding this year by allowing it to issue securities to raise funds, the Chronicle reported.

Wimberley asks for attorney general’s opinion on water protection powers

Opinion could have implications across Hill Country.

By Asher Price   Austin American-Statesman October 18, 2009

An upcoming opinion by the state attorney general on whether Wimberley can regulate development in areas outside its city limits could have implications across the Hill Country.

The City Council wants to enact construction rules in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction — an area outside the city but subject to some city rules — to limit pollution from oil washing off driveways or from fertilizer washing off yards, among other things. The rules could require setbacks from waterways, detention ponds to capture pollutants or silt fences to prevent construction materials or eroding soils from washing into streams.

Texas AG files lawsuit against four people selling residential lots without water, sewage facilities

By Stephanie Sanchez   El Paso Times October 15, 2009

El PASO — Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today that he has filed a lawsuit against four people for allegedly selling residential lots on the far West Side without water and sewage facilities.

The lawsuit identified the defendants as Homero R. Galindo, Rosella A Galindo, Nahum Prieto and Rosella Prieto. They are accused of dividing an eight-acre plat into four lots and selling them without obtaining approval from El Paso County Commissioners Court. The approval process would ensured the lots had water and sewage facilities.

Montrose? Planned?

Houston Chronicle October 9, 2009

We were surprised that the American Planning Association recently named Montrose one of its “10 Great Neighborhoods” for 2009. Montrose is a great place. But does it, as the association writes, “highlight the roles that planners and planning play in creating communities of lasting value”?

We think that planning helped make Montrose what it is. But much of what’s great about that funky urban neighborhood had nothing to do with planning — and in fact, arose in spite of it.

It may surprise you to hear that Montrose was planned. Not publicly, by city officials of course: Houston’s not that kind of town. But in the 1910s and ’20s, private developers made many important decisions, such as laying out a pedestrian-friendly street grid, that gave the neighborhood good bones.

As New York Adds Housing for Poor, Market Subtracts It

By Manny Fernandez   New York Times October 14, 2009

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is closing in on a milestone: building or preserving 165,000 apartments and homes for low-, moderate- and middle-income families, the goal of a $7.5 billion housing plan he announced in 2002 and expanded in 2005.

It has already financed the creation or preservation of 94,000 units, including 72,000 for low-income households, city officials say.

But those efforts have been overwhelmed by a far larger number — the 200,000 apartments affordable to low-income renters that New York City has lost during the mayor’s tenure.

The shrinking supply of these apartments, highlighted by researchers at New York University, illustrates not only the increasing strain that housing costs have had on this city of renters, but also the limits of the mayor’s success in providing the city’s poor with reasonable places to live. While the mayor’s plan has put thousands of low-income families in new or rehabilitated buildings and helped stabilize neighborhoods, it has been nearly drowned out by the twin waves of gentrification and rent deregulation.

Full story at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/nyregion/15housing.html?_r=1&hp

Having exhausted the over-sold mortgage ruse, predators now set their sights on reverse mortgages and the elderly. As the scams spread, consumer advocacy groups press for tighter rules with the usually sandbagging by the banking industry.

In Galveston, homeowners still wait for the city and county to set up programs to spend $90 million to rebuild and repair houses damaged last year.

For a pdf version of the full stories, plus contextual articles in social, environmental and legal areas, contact Bo McCarver at bmccarver@austin.rr.com

Obama declares small victory in war on home foreclosures

Half a million at-risk homeowners now are less likely to default, thanks to HAMP, the Obama administration’s foreclosure-relief program.

By Mark Trumbull Christian Science Monitor October 8, 2009

The Obama administration announced Thursday that its foreclosure-relief program reached a key milestone sooner than expected.

Call it a small victory in what could be a long war on foreclosure. Federal policies are helping to ease strains in the US housing market, but the challenges remain formidable.

Consider Thursday’s news: Half a million at-risk homeowners have had their mortgages modified since this spring, making them less likely to default, the Treasury Department said. That’s ahead of target, since the agency’s aim had been for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) to hit that mark by the beginning of November.

Foreclosures mark pace of enduring U.S. housing crisis

By Tom Brown   Reuters October 8, 2009

MIAMI – Every 13 seconds in America, there is another foreclosure filing.

That’s the rhythm of a crisis that threatens to choke off hopes for a recovery in the U.S. housing market as it destroys hundreds of billions of dollars in property values a year.

There are more than 6,600 home foreclosure filings per day, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Durham, North Carolina. With nearly two million already this year, the flood of foreclosures shows no sign of abating any time soon.

Reverse mortgages ripe for abuse, consumer group says

By Tony Pugh   McClatchy Newspapers October 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — Consumer advocates say a growing number of older homeowners and a new crop of eager lenders could steer the reverse mortgage industry down the same financial course that toppled the subprime mortgage market and left taxpayers footing the bill.

In order to avoid a repeat occurrence, a new report by the National Consumer Law Center urges Congress to enact new consumer protections to curb shady marketing tactics, deceptive advertising and other potential abuses in the popular reverse mortgage program.

Some of the problems include television advertisements that market the loans as a “government benefit” and financial incentives for loan processors known as “yield spread premiums.”

“These are financial kickbacks that make loans more profitable for lenders and loan brokers, but more expensive for borrowers,” Tara Twomey, the NCLC attorney who authored the report, said Tuesday.

Dallas-Fort Worth new home sales drop 34% in 3Q

By Steve Brown   Dallas Morning News October 7, 2009

New-home sales in the Dallas-Fort Worth area continued to fall in the third quarter – even with the help of tax incentives that brought out more buyers.

Home sales by builders dropped by almost 34 percent in the quarter compared to year-earlier numbers, housing analyst Residential Strategies said Wednesday. The 4,163 new-home sales number was virtually unchanged from the previous quarter.

Reclaiming Pioneer Square Alleyways for Community Gatherings

By Julia Levitt   Northwest Hub October 7, 2009

What can a downtown alley be used for? More than you think—and a group in Pioneer Square has been working to prove it. The network of businesses connected to the historic Nord building, located near First Avenue and Main Street, has created a vibrant and charming social space in an unlikely locale: the alleyway behind their offices.

Todd Vogel of the International Sustainability Institute bought two floors of the Nord in 2007, and began using it for his own office space as well as renting space to a number of for-profit and non-profit tenants. When he moved in, he began doing small things to clean up the adjoining alley, wanting to send a signal to others to respect the space.

HISD plan offends neighborhood

District wants to take over 11 properties to expand elementary

By Jennifer Radcliffe   Houston Chronicle   October 11, 2009

The Houston ISD is forcing Fifth Ward residents out of their homes for a school expansion that wasn’t vetted by the neighborhood, community leaders said Sunday.

The school district is threatening to use eminent domain to acquire 11 properties near Dogan Elementary School without offering the homeowners fair purchase prices or any details about why their land is needed, Council member Jarvis Johnson said.

Austinites fear for future of neighborhood plans

By Patrick Brendel   Community Impact October 9, 2009

As the City of Austin embarks upon the formation of a new comprehensive plan to replace the 1979 Austin Tomorrow Plan, neighborhood association leaders fear that meticulously crafted neighborhood plans—that exist as amendments to the 1979 plan—will be swept away, along with years of collaborative effort among Austin residents and the city.

Each neighborhood plan involves about two years of meetings among residents and city staff, Austin Neighborhoods Council President Cory Walton said. The plans are citizens’ prescriptions for the zoning of individual plats of land and are intended not to be overridden by the city (or developers) without residents’ approval.

County looks to purchase 500-plus Ike homes

By T.J. Aulds Galveston County Daily News October 10, 2009

County commissioners are expected within the next month to decide whether to push ahead with buyouts of about 560 homes or properties — mostly on the Bolivar Peninsula — that were destroyed or severely damaged by Hurricane Ike.

More than 1,200 homeowners applied for the county’s buyout program.

The homes included in the Phase 1 buyout proposal are within a 300-foot buffer zone from the shore.

Rebuilding grant delays frustrating homeowners

By T.J. Aulds Galveston County Daily News October 11, 2009

Nona Trussle attended a recent Hurricane Ike recovery meeting sponsored by Galveston County hoping to hear details of the $99 million program aimed at repairing and rebuilding houses.

No details were available, and all she heard from officials was “be patient, and it’s a long, complicated process.”

In February, the Houston-Galveston Area Council announced Galveston County would receive $165 million in federal community block development grant money, while the city of Galveston was awarded $267 million. About 60 percent of that money is to be set aside to help homeowners like Trussle.

To date, not one single dollar has been spent. In fact, the city of Galveston and the county are just in the early stages of getting their housing programs up and running.

Federally funded Ike case managers step up efforts

By T.J. Aulds and Rhiannon Meyers Galveston County Daily News October 11, 2009

Case managers charged with finding and helping Hurricane Ike victims are stepping up their outreach efforts.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which has received federal dollars to help hurricane victims find help, has launched a door-to-door campaign to find “those hidden cases,” such as Manuel Chavez Jr., of Kemah, and Mark Holland, of Clear Lake Shores, who risk losing their homes if they don’t repair them soon.

“We know there are people who need help, we just don’t know where they are,” Harold Fattig, of Catholic Charities, said.

Catholic Charities is among a handful of area charitable organizations that received funding from Recovery for Ike Survivors Enterprise, called RISE, to pay case managers to canvass the county and find people who need help.

Hunt for Housing: More low-income renters looking for assistance

By Jeremy Roebuck   McAllen Monitor October 11, 2009

McALLEN — With no job, five young mouths to feed and an income earned by his wife that barely breaks $19,000 a year, Chris Valle still considers himself lucky.

He has a place his family can afford to call home.

But for more and more of the Rio Grande Valley’s low-income renters, the basic need is falling out of reach. According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates, more than half of Hidalgo County’s renters spend more than one-third of their income on housing — the benchmark by which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determines affordability.

Longtime ‘mayor’ of homeless village under I-45 in Dallas moves into new townhome

By Kim Horner   Dallas Morning News October 7, 2009

Mack Choice may have stepped down as the “mayor,” but he moved up in the world.

Choice, who has lived in a cardboard box under a Dallas bridge for 15 years, moved into his own townhome Wednesday, thanks to the kindness of a local charitable organization.

David Timothy, who runs the SoupMobile, a nonprofit that serves food on the streets, handed Choice the keys to his new home about noon.

Choice was so overwhelmed and thankful that he wept openly.

Faces of Homelessness

Another Downtown attempt to find answers

By Marc Salov   Austin Chronicle October 9, 2009

First, the good news.

Depending on where in Austin you live, the entertainment district’s ongoing woes – among them a slaphappy, punch-drunk summer that just barely missed doing the Berkowitz shuffle and enough radiant heat to make last month’s filming of local action auteur Robert Rodri­guez’s hyperviolent Machete both look and feel like a viva la raza!-themed remake of Do the Right Thing – appear considerably less intractable than they did when we first took a look at Downtown crime earlier in the year (“Crime and the City Solution,” Music, June 26).

Make no mistake, it’s still a smart idea to keep a can of Mace or pepper spray in your purse, pocket, or high-stylin’ D&G messenger bag when you’re out and about Downtown. Despite a visible uptick in Austin Police Depart­ment bicycle officers and both marked and unmarked patrol cars in the area bordered by Congress Avenue and I-35, 11th Street and Cesar Chavez – and a string of arrests – the situation persistently teeters between friendly, albeit drunken, Sixth Street chaos on a good night and outright assaults (or worse) on a bad one.

The bank doesn’t want your mortgage: with more profit to be made at less risk in other ventures, banks are increasingly rejecting mortgage applicants. The reasons are often miniscule but data show a clear racial bias against people of color.

In Dallas, jurors have found former mayor pro tem Don Hall guilty of taking kickback from housing contractors.

For a pdf version of the full stories, plus contextual articles in economic, environmental and legal issues, contact Bo McCarver at bmccarver@austin.rr.com

Report: 1 in 3 loan applications denied

By Alan Zibel   Builder September 30, 2009

WASHINGTON – Nearly one in three borrowers who applied for a mortgage last year was denied as lenders kept their standards tight as the mortgage crisis accelerated, the government reported Wednesday.

In its annual look at mortgage practices among lending institutions, Federal Reserve said the denial rate for all home loans was about 32 percent last year – about the same as in 2007, but up from 29 percent in 2006. The denial rates for blacks and Hispanics were more than twice as high as the rate for white borrowers.

Frustrated Homeowners Turn to Media, Courts

By Alexandra Andrews   ProPublica October 1, 2009

Qualified homeowners are being routinely denied loan modifications through the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable plan, but they have little recourse to correct the mistaken denials, housing advocates say. In the absence of an effective appeals process, some borrowers have improvised their own solutions: They turn to journalists or congressmen – or take Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to court.

According to the government’s latest public figures, less than 12 percent, or roughly 360,000, of the borrowers projected to pass the program’s initial eligibility test had received loan modifications by the end of August, about five months in. The process of reviewing those borrowers for final qualification has been “pretty haphazard,” according to Geoff Walsh of the National Consumer Law Center.

“People are wrongly denied all the time. Every day,” said Irwin Trauss, supervising attorney at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. “The lenders are generally applying the criteria incorrectly.”

Firms are getting billions, but homeowners still in trouble

By Chris Adams   McClatchy Newspapers October 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The federal government is engaged in a massive mortgage modification program that’s on track to send billions in tax dollars to many of the very companies that judges or regulators have cited in recent years for abusive mortgage practices.

The firms, called mortgage servicers, have been cited for badgering, manipulating or lying to their customers; sticking them with bogus fees, or improperly foreclosing on them.

Mortgage servicers are the middlemen between homeowners and the investors that hold their mortgages, collecting homeowners’ checks and disbursing payments for the mortgages, property tax and insurance. They’re a necessary player for any modification.

The reliance on such companies points to an ironic paradox for federal regulators: Cleaning up the nation’s financial crisis often rewards the firms that helped create the mess. Those Wall Street banks and mortgage servicing companies argue that they’re best positioned to repair the damage they’ve helped cause. In the case of the mortgage program, the firms getting the taxpayers’ money are, after all, the firms that control the troubled mortgages.

Days of using homes as wealth generators is over, experts say

By Peter Y. Hong   Los Angeles Times   October 3, 2009

For generations of Americans, a home was seen not simply as a dwelling, but as an engine of personal wealth. That view was promoted by the homebuilding and real estate sales industries as well as the U.S. government, which subsidized home loans and provided tax deductions for mortgage interest.

There have been booms and busts along the way, but from the second half of the last century through the start of this one, nothing derailed the real estate locomotive on its uphill climb. The train stalled here and there and rolled back now and then, but each time it roared back up and got homeowners to the mountaintop.

Now, however, the worst housing crash since the Great Depression might mean that a home purchase perhaps ought to be considered with the same warning issued to investors in securities: Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Dallas-Fort Worth apartment demand improves

By Steve Brown   Dallas Morning News October 5, 2009

Third-quarter demand improved for Dallas-Fort Worth apartments after months of declines. But the increase in net leasing wasn’t enough to keep rents and occupancy levels from falling.

Overall apartment occupancy in the D-FW area dipped below 90 percent for the first time, according to statistics released Monday by apartment analyst MPF Research Inc.

And a steady stream of new apartment openings pushed Dallas-area rents down by more than 4 percent in the quarter.

The best news in the new apartment data is that net leasing rose by 2,770 units – the first such increase in four quarters.

Agency faults reinsurance purchases

Consumers needlessly pay extra, office says

By Purva Patel   Houston Chronicle October 4, 2009

Texas homeowners covered by the state’s three largest home insurers could save an average of 8 to 14 percent a year on premiums if they didn’t bear the cost of coverage that companies buy for themselves, a state consumer agency says.

Allstate, State Farm and Farmers all buy policies, known as reinsurance, to help pay claims after a major disaster and say what they spend is necessary. They usually pass on part of that cost to policyholders.

“But they don’t need it,” said Deeia Beck, head of the Office of Insurance Counsel, which represents consumers before regulators. “Some smaller companies that only sell in Texas or are highly concentrated on the coast might need it, but for the larger diversified companies, it doesn’t make sense.”

A Modern Answer to the Commune

By Penelope Green   New York Times September 30, 2009

JOHANNA BRONK wants to make communal vegetarian meals and keep chickens. Mariel Berger hopes for social, artistic and political collaborations. Harmony Hazard is into hula hooping, book groups and anarchism.

Oh, to be a young city-dweller in search of a house share. Finding a roommate has never been easy, but for some, the endeavor has lately assumed all the urgency, emotion and extreme specificity of shopping for a life partner.

Last month, just in time for leases to turn over, the housing portion of Craigslist, the uber-community bulletin board and road map to the 20-something’s psyche, featured dozens of impassioned tone poems, vivid personal biographies and ideological wish lists.

Are the plans to build a green, sustainable building of tomorrow smack in the heart of downtown Dallas some pipedream or a reality?

By Robert Wilonsky   Dallas Observer October 2, 2008

Imagine, if you will, a utopia smack in the heart of downtown Dallas. In this green, sustainable building of tomorrow, you might roll out of bed, take a shower and find your runoff water feeding vegetation growing on the roof and walls, upon which you’ll feast later that night. Or maybe you’ll move downtown and become a cattle rancher several stories above the concrete jungle. Or perhaps you’ll grab a bite in the slow-food café downstairs after knocking off your shift working the counter in the holistic pharmacy next door.

Solar panels heat and light your home, and the high-tech and the natural mesh seamlessly in a Logan’s-Run-to-a-kibbutz kind of way. It’s a place so inviting, so self-contained that there’s really not much reason to ever leave home.

The possibilities, say the three architectural firms competing to design this future world, are endless—so much so they can’t really pin down what life in their buildings would be like, which is precisely what makes it so hard to believe one will ever exist. But if local affordable housing advocates Brent Brown and John Greenan have their way—and they insist they will—this world of tomorrow might be a lot closer than you think.

Housing Battle Reveals Post-Katrina Tensions

By Campbell Robertson   New York Times October 3, 2009

CHALMETTE, La. — The parish of St. Bernard, a quiet, insular suburb just east of New Orleans, has in the end agreed to allow housing for low-income families.

But even though it is only a few hundred apartment units, it had to be ordered by a federal judge. The parish has fought desperately to prevent such housing and an influx of renters, at one point even approving a law that prohibited homeowners from renting to anyone other than a blood relative, before it was challenged and repealed.

The battle over low-income housing has been one of the most bitter that anyone in the middle-class, mostly white parish can remember, one that has stoked issues the region has been grappling with since Hurricane Katrina: anger at the federal government and long-simmering class and racial tensions.

It also reflects widespread anxiety about just how drastically the area changed after the floodwaters receded.

Housing authority facing renewed opposition

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News September 30, 2009

GALVESTON — Galveston Housing Authority officials are planning a series of informal meetings for island residents to ask questions and voice concerns about the agency’s plan to rebuild the four public housing developments demolished after Hurricane Ike.

Harish Krishnarao, the agency’s executive director, suggested the meetings after several residents started asking questions about the housing authority’s housing choice voucher program and the island’s largest neighborhood association adopted a resolution questioning the rebuilding plans.

Study fans worries at port

By Laura Elder   Galveston County Daily News October 3, 2009

GALVESTON — A county decision to spend $80,000 in Hurricane Ike recovery money to study redevelopment of the island’s downtown has raised ire and eyebrows, even among some who voted for the measure.

“I’m having second thoughts,” said County Commissioner Ken Clark, who on Wednesday voted with four others to approve using federal Community Development Block Grant money to help pay for a study commissioned by the Historic Downtown Strand Seaport Partnership, which represents businesses and merchants.

Contaminated housing authority land’s fate uncertain

By Denise Malan   Corpus Christi Caller-Times October 3, 2009

CORPUS CHRISTI — The artist’s rendering of D.N. Leathers Townhomes still sits in the office of Corpus Christi Housing Authority CEO Richard Franco.

It wasn’t going to be a typical public housing project. The tan, two-story townhomes with red roofs were supposed to house residents of varying incomes.

“The whole idea of that was to change the stigma of low-rent (housing),” said Elmer Wilson, chairman of the housing authority’s board of commissioners.

But in the process of planning the 130-unit project, the housing authority received a shock: Required environmental assessments found petroleum and lead contamination that rendered the land unusable.

Housing authority restricts, delays access to public information

Lawyer: Board’s meeting “one of the clearest and most profound violations I’ve ever heard of”

By Denise Malan   Corpus Christi Caller-Times October 3, 2009

CORPUS CHRISTI — The Corpus Christi Housing Authority board of commissioners discussed the defunct D.N. Leathers Townhomes project at its meeting Tuesday — but the public wasn’t privy to that conversation or notified beforehand that the housing project would be discussed.

The board’s agenda included an executive session, to be conducted behind closed doors. But no issues for discussion were listed under the executive session, as would be required by the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Don Hill plans to appeal in Dallas City Hall corruption case

By Jason Trahan   Dallas Morning News October 5, 2009

Former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and four others were found guilty on major charges in the Dallas City Hall public corruption case.

Hill was found guilty on seven charges, including bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery. He was found not guilty on money laundering. D’Angelo Lee, who was Hill’s appointee to the Dallas Plan Commission, was found guilty on seven counts and he was not entrapped.

Proposed panhandling ban Downtown

Groups want council to change ordinance

By Shannon Wolfson   KXAN Sept. 29, 2009

AUSTIN – Several Downtown business and residential groups are asking the Austin city council to ban panhandling Downtown. The current ordinance only bans panhandling Downtown at night.

“I’m panhandled every day Downtown. I’m panhandled aggressively Downtown,” said Bill Brice, with the Downtown Austin Alliance.

The DAA, along with several Downtown churches and even the ARCH, support a Downtown ban. They have proposed a ban to the Austin city council which would prohibit any panhandling from 11th Street to the West Frontage road of I-35 and Cesar Chavez to San Antonio.

Partnership proposes day shelter for homeless

By Nick Cenegy   Galveston County Daily News October 5, 2009

GALVESTON — Each morning the men and women set out on their migration across the island, toting beaten plastic shopping bags or ratty rucksacks containing their possessions.

Some take a morning meal at the Salvation Army, 2228 Broadway. Others seek sustenance elsewhere. But between breakfast and dinner, when the doors of the shelters are closed, police say some of the homeless fall asleep in residents’ yards, urinate in public and commit petty crimes. As the sunshine intensifies, the men and women with no place to go set off down 23rd Street or other thoroughfares to seek out the haunts and crags of the island and wait out the day. Some beg for money off tourists. Some just cross the street and wait for the Salvation Army to reopen.

The homeless long have been at odds with businesses and homeowners, but after Hurricane Ike, with social programs only partially reinstituted, the problem is more obvious, Mike Winburn, executive director of the Gulf Coast Center, said. The center is the designated mental health authority for Galveston and Brazoria counties.

But a new partnership between police and the Gulf Coast Center may yield a day shelter for the homeless.

Thousands of Gulf Coast poor driven inland by Hurricanes Katrina and Ike have not returned; many choose not to and many simply can’t. While their stories vary widely, a common thread is that federal and state assistance is inadequate to help the most vulnerable.

In Texas, only about 40 percent of $428 million in federal emergency funds allocated in 2007 for Hurricane Rita recovery has been spent by the state.

For a pdf version of the full stories, plus contextual articles in social, legal and environmental areas, contact Bo McCarver at bmccarver@austin.rr.com

Who Owns Your Mortgage? “Produce The Note” Movement Helps Stall Foreclosures

Huffington Post September 23, 2009

Modern-day home mortgages have been so sliced and diced by rapacious financiers that some homeowners are successfully delaying — or even blocking — foreclosures through the simple tactic of demanding that banks produce the original mortgage note, which amazingly enough is often not so easy for them to do.

As the foreclosure rate continues to set new highs, a little-noticed legal provision that requires bankers, if challenged, to prove they hold the original mortgage documents before getting possession has spawned a minor homeowner rebellion, alternately called “produce the note” or “show me the note“. For homeowners trying desperately to keep their homes, the tactic is one way to buy some time — and maybe even get the upper hand on the lender.

Full story at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/whos-got-the-mortgage-pro_n_294169.html

Austin area foreclosure postings jump

Austin American-Statesman September 22, 2009

Central Texas foreclosure postings for the Oct. 6 auction hit their highest level since early in this decade.

Foreclosure Listing Service Inc. said 1,481 properties were posted, 72 percent higher than for the October 2008 auction.

Postings were up 79 percent in Travis County, 66 percent in Williamson, 80 percent in Hays and 39 percent in Bastrop.

For the year to date, almost 11,600 properties in Central Texas — most of them homes – have been posted for foreclosure, 58 percent higher than in the same period of 2008, said George Roddy Sr., president of Foreclosure Listing Service.

Existing-Home Sales Unexpectedly Fall

By Bob Willis   Bloomberg Press September 24, 2009

Sales of existing U.S. homes unexpectedly fell last month for the first time since March, signaling the housing recovery will be slow to gain speed.

Purchases dropped 2.7 percent in August to a 5.1 million annual rate, the second-highest level in the last 23 months, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. The median price dropped 12.5 percent from August 2008. A government report showed unemployment claims declined.

Vacant Homes Give Habitat a Leg Up

Famed for building homes for the poor from scratch, Habitat for Humanity sees a silver lining to thousands of foreclosed homes available for a pittance.

By: Pam Kelley   Miller-McCune Online Magazine September 25, 2009

Shanta Brown, a nursing assistant in Charlotte, N.C., walked through her soon-to-be home in August, pointing out favorite features — the living room’s vaulted ceiling, two full baths and new black countertops she chose for durability.

In a few minutes, Brown would stand outside the front door and cut a ribbon, dedicating the first house in Habitat for Humanity Charlotte’s ambitious new effort to rehab homes in neighborhoods decimated by foreclosures.

Across the country, Habitat chapters are doing the same — buying vacant, foreclosed-on homes at rock-bottom prices. For most, that’s a big departure from their longstanding model of using volunteer labor to build affordable housing from the ground up.

Chronically Displaced in NOLA

Four years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the disaster continues.

By Fatima Shaik   In These Times September 25, 2009

On July 26, about 50 people lined up to testify before a United Nations advisory committee in the cafeteria of McDonogh 42, a New Orleans elementary school. Though there had been only a small notice in the New Orleans Times-Picayune calling for public input, about 300 Hurricane Katrina survivors turned up to tell the UN-HABITAT advisors about the difficulties they still face returning to their ancestral homes even four years after the disaster.

According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC), about a quarter of the city’s pre-Katrina population—more than 175,000 people—has not returned.

Though many of their neighbors have given up and left town, the group gathered at McDonogh wants to remain in New Orleans because their families have lived here, as one person says, “since before the United States.”

Many displaced islanders not coming back

By Rhiannon Meyers   Galveston County Daily News September 28, 2009

Annette Cooper is not coming home.

Two days after Hurricane Ike struck Galveston, the island native grabbed a handful of clothes from her flooded apartment, walked 20 blocks to Ball High School and hopped a bus for San Antonio.

She’s never been back to salvage her possessions. She never returned for a last look at her apartment before the Galveston Housing Authority tore it down.

“I don’t want to set foot on that ground,” Cooper, 53, said.

After Hurricane Ike damaged thousands of houses in Galveston, Cooper and scores of other islanders still live in Central Texas, where buses left them a year ago.

Housing agency says it’s Rita aid pace picking up

By Kelley Shannon   Associated Press September 24, 2009

AUSTIN — Hundreds of southeast Texans displaced by Hurricane Rita four years ago are still waiting for new federally funded homes to be built while a state agency tries to spend the housing construction money it has a little faster.

Those waiting residents are living with relatives or in trailers, rental property or their dilapidated, blue-tarped houses damaged when the storm struck Sept. 24, 2005. Hurricane Ike further wrecked the region on Sept. 13 last year.

So far, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has spent only 38.5 percent of a $428 million federal allotment that arrived in 2007, agency executive director Michael Gerber confirmed this week.

SAHA, city awarded stimulus funds

By Guillermo Garcia   San Antonio Express-News September 28, 2009

Some 5,000 senior and disabled public-housing residents will benefit from improvements paid for with a $5.3 million federal stimulus grant awarded to the San Antonio Housing Authority on Monday.

“Fourteen separate facilities will see infrastructure improvements,” SAHA president and CEO Lourdes Castro Ramirez said at an afternoon press conference.

Upscale Riverside development a test case for lakeside high-rises

Houston developer offers to pony up for affordable housing – but is it enough?

By Marty Toohey   Austin American-Statesman September 24, 2009

As part of a special zoning agreement, a developer who wants to build an upscale East Riverside Drive apartment complex has offered almost $4 million for low-income housing in Austin. But as the City Council prepares for a possible vote today on the plan, a last-minute question has emerged: Is $4 million enough?

Grayco Partners says it’s giving the city a generous contribution to offset the loss of 600 relatively low-cost units, in addition to enhancing public waterfront access and numerous other concessions.

A defense against development

East Austinites strive to protect neighborhood from UT expansion

By Hudson Lockett   Daily Texan September 23, 2009

Seventeen years after the end of a land battle with UT, residents of a small East Austin community remain wary of the University’s plans for expansion along their western border.

Residents of Blackland, a community of 38 homes just east of UFCU Disch-Falk Field, began a round of meetings Sept. 12 with city entities.

Panhandlers for God

Not all street solicitors are created equal – some owe their souls to the company church

By Jordan Smith   Austin Chronicle September 24, 2009

Local radio talk-show host Charlie Hodge was driving to work one morning in late 2007 when he first encountered the Austin Restor­ation Ministries.

Hodge is one-third of the three-man, four-hour KLBJ-FM Dudley & Bob Morning Show and returns to the station for an hourlong midday chat with listeners on The Charlie Hodge Half-Time Show. Just before Christmas, a few weeks after he started hosting the noontime program, he was waiting at a red light at Rundberg and I-35, brainstorming a catchy intro for that day’s show. He wasn’t paying much attention to what was around him: just sitting, listening to the radio, staring at the red light, and thinking.

Herman: A safe place for homeless alcoholics to do their drinking?

By Ken Herman   Austin American-Statesman September 23, 2009

The head of an Austin organization working on homelessness included this caveat when she sent me her group’s thought-provoking new study on homelessness and alcoholism:

“These concepts, unfortunately, could easily end up as fodder for those interested in ’shock-jock’ type of reporting,” Helen Varty, executive director of Front Steps, said in her e-mail. “That is the last thing that citizens of Austin need.”

The report is titled “Solutions for Homeless Chronic Alcoholics in Austin.” It was produced by ECHO (Ending Community Homelessness Coalition) with financial support from Front Steps, which manages the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless.

U.S. seeing more female homeless veterans

By Thom Patterson   CNN September 28, 2009

When Iraq war veteran Angela Peacock is in the shower, she sometimes closes her eyes and can’t help reliving the day in Baghdad in 2003 that pushed her closer to the edge.

While pulling security detail for an Army convoy stuck in gridlocked traffic, Peacock’s vehicle came alongside a van full of Iraqi men who “began shouting that they were going to kill us,” she said.

One man in the vehicle was particularly threatening. “I can remember his eyes looking at me,” she said. “I put my finger on the trigger and aimed my weapon at the guy, and my driver is screaming at me to stop.”

“I was really close to shooting at them, but I didn’t.”

Now back home in Missouri, Peacock, 30, is unemployed — living in a friend’s home in North St. Louis County without a lease and paying minimal rent.

Homeless Ga. Sex Offenders Directed to Woods

Associated Press September 28, 2009

MARIETTA, Ga. — A small group of homeless sex offenders have been ordered to move from a makeshift camp in a densely wooded area behind a suburban office park.

The sex offenders had been directed to the camp by probation officers. The officers said it was a location of last resort for the sex offenders who are barred from living in many areas by one of the nation’s toughest sex offender policies.

Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren said the decision to make the sex offenders move was made by the Georgia Department of Transportation — the owner of the property.

Warren said he did not know where the sex offenders would go next.

The annual American Community Survey has been released and shows the pervasive effects of the recession. The meltdown of the housing industry and dramatic shifts in immigration patterns spark the data in the annual census.

Housing authorities in Corpus Christi and Galveston are in hot water this week: Corpus Christi’s agency failed to disclose complete information concerning contamination at one of it’s proposed projects and the Galveston HA released a call for Section 8 applications for victims of Hurricanes Rita and Ike. Some islanders worry that funds are being steered away from Galveston residents.

For a pdf version of the full articles, plus contextual stories in social, environmental and legal areas, contact Bo McCarver at bmccarver@austin.rr.com

Census Data Show Recession-Driven Changes

By Sam Roberts   New York Times September 21, 2009

A smaller share of Americans married, drove to work alone, owned their own home or moved to a new residence last year than the year before.

More lived in overcrowded housing. Property values declined. And fewer immigrants arrived, which meant that for the first time since the beginning of the decade, the total number of foreign-born people in the country did not grow.

Those were among the findings released Monday in the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, a wealth of data comparing the nation’s profile in 2008 with that of 2007.

Several experts, including Mark Mather, associate vice president for domestic programs at the Population Reference Bureau, said a number of the changes could be attributed to the national recession, which began at the end of 2007. The result is an early statistical snapshot of the economic downturn and the housing bust.

Housing, jobless data point to a fragile recovery

Associated Press September 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — Housing construction rose in August and the number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment aid fell unexpectedly last week, adding to signs the recession has ended.

Still, the reports suggested a slow and fragile economic recovery. In part, that’s because the increased housing starts were due solely to a surge in construction of apartment buildings – while the much larger single-family homes sector fell for the first time in six months. And jobless claims remain far above the levels associated with a healthy economy.

Even as the housing industry begins to recover from its worst downturn in decades, a glut of unsold homes and record levels of home foreclosures are weighing on the industry.

Construction of single-family homes and apartments rose 1.5 percent to an annual rate of 598,000 units, the highest level since November, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was slightly lower than the 600,000-unit pace economists had expected. And it remains more than 70 percent below the peak rate hit in 2006.

Homeowners who ’strategically default’ on loans a growing problem

By Kenneth Harney   Los Angeles Times September 20, 2009

A study shows that people who abruptly and intentionally abandon their mortgages often have high credit scores, in stark contrast with most financially distressed borrowers

Reporting from Washington – Who is more likely to walk away from a house and a mortgage — a person with super-prime credit scores or someone with lower scores?

Research using a massive sample of 24 million individual credit files has found that homeowners with high scores when they apply for a loan are 50% more likely to “strategically default” — abruptly and intentionally pull the plug and abandon the mortgage — compared with lower-scoring borrowers.

To qualify for homebuyers credit for first-timers, act quickly

Some 1.4 million Americans have tapped the special tax credit, part of the stimulus spending. But time is running out on the program – unless Congress renews it.

By Mark Trumbull Christian Science Monitor September 18, 2009

This year 1.4 million Americans have tapped a special tax credit for home buyers. Is there still time to take grab this $8,000 benefit?

Maybe, but you’d need to act fast – although it’s also possible that Congress will extend this tax break, part of the economic stimulus plan, beyond its Nov. 30 cutoff.

The tax credit is designed to stimulate homebuyer demand during a historic housing slump. On that front, it has helped. Cities across the nation are showing signs of housing-market stabilization.

Now marked down: Dallas mansions

By Steve Brown   Dallas Morning News September 17, 2009

The French-style University Park house has limestone floors, a three-car garage, a swimming pool and guest quarters out back. But what’s likely to catch a buyer’s eye is the sign out front: “New Price.”Now offered at $4.45 million, the 6,788-square-foot mansion has been marked down by close to $1 million since it came on the market last spring.

“It’s one of those listings you are scratching your head,” said agent Joan Eleazer. “You know that the market is bad, but why hasn’t this great house sold?”

With the latest price cut, Eleazer, who works for Briggs Freeman, is finally getting some nibbles from potential buyers.

Rule change makes it harder for homeowners to learn about mineral rights

By Mike Lee   Fort Worth Star-Telegram September 21, 2009

Under a rule change approved by the Texas Department of Insurance, it will be harder for homeowners to know whether they own their mineral rights.

It’s still unclear, though, whether homeowners will get a discount on their title insurance for what critics say amounts to less coverage. The state insurance commissioner, Mike Geeslin, “wants to hear that issue in the future,” said Deputy Insurance Commissioner Robert Carter, who oversees title insurance.

The new rule, adopted Aug. 13, allows title insurance companies to take a “blanket exception” regarding their responsibility to determine whether a landowner owns the mineral rights for a piece of property. That relieves the companies from doing extra title searches and may protect them from legal action.

Site contamination verified

Corpus Christi Housing Authority did not include e-mail message in previous public information request

By Denise Malan   Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 17, 2009

CORPUS CHRISTI — The Corpus Christi Housing Authority withdrew from the D.N. Leathers Townhomes project because the land was contaminated, according to records released Thursday from a state agency.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, responding to a public information request by the Caller-Times, released an e-mail message from the Housing Authority disclosing the reason for abandoning the project. That e-mail was not included in a Housing Authority response to a similar request from the newspaper.

The Housing Authority has declined to answer questions about D.N. Leathers, a 130-unit public housing project near T.C. Ayers Park on the Northside.

Galveston Housing Authority ad causes a stir

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News September 20, 2009

GALVESTON — An advertisement placed by the Galveston Housing Authority in Sunday’s edition of The Daily News did its job attracting attention, but the buzz wasn’t necessarily the kind agency officials were hoping for.

The advertisement urged victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita to apply for the Section 8 program, which provides rental assistance vouchers to low-income families.

Readers questioned why the island’s housing agency was soliciting clients from other areas and whether the funds to pay for the vouchers were coming out of programs that could be helping Galvestonians still trying to recover from Hurricane Ike.

As Galveston Recovers From Hurricane Ike, Some Residents Feel Left Behind

By James McKinley, Jr.   New York Times September 20, 2009

GALVESTON, Tex. — There are many signs that this seaside town has revived a year after Hurricane Ike flooded more than 17,000 homes and businesses. The big resorts are humming again, and on hot days people throng the newly restored beaches. The port is open, and the cruise ships are back. Most of the businesses on the Strand, the island’s historic strip of shops and restaurants, have reopened.

Yet the progress has been slow, and officials say it may be several years before the city fully recovers.

With the debris cleared, the main thoroughfares appear now much as they did before the storm, but on the backstreets, thousands of residents — in particular the poor and elderly who lacked insurance — are still struggling with the lingering effects of the hurricane.

About 20 percent of the 58,000 people who lived in the city before the hurricane have not returned, and one-quarter of the families whose homes were damaged by floods — about 4,000 households — are still unable to live in them.

Panel restates need for development agency

By Leigh Jones   Galveston County Daily News September 17, 2009

GALVESTON — Island leaders have a great opportunity to use federal disaster recovery funds to revitalize the city’s neighborhoods, but they need to form an agency dedicated to that task, a group of real estate and development experts said Wednesday.

The Urban Land Institute presented its analysis of Galveston’s housing challenges and opportunities to a group of about 200 people at the end of a two-day workshop held at the request of the 300-member committee that drafted the city’s long-term recovery plan.

The institute’s volunteer panel urged the city to form a revitalization authority that could buy and sell land and broker deals with developers to create more housing for families that make between $25,000 and $75,000 a year.

Area to get $225M more in Ike funds

By T.J. Aulds   Galveston County Daily News September 17, 2009

Sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease — Or, in the case of federal funds for Hurricane Ike recovery, an additional $225 million.

Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough said Wednesday the governor ordered a change to the formula for distributing the second round of federal community block grant money for housing and infrastructure repairs and improvements.

Gov. Rick Perry’s office confirmed Wednesday that he instructed the Texas Department of Rural Affairs to change its funding formula. The agency’s original plan used a formula based on Ike’s winds, storm surge and flooding.

Council backs zoning request for halfway house

By Gilbert Garcia   San Antonio Express-News September 17, 2009

A highly charged, four-and-a-half hour zoning case ended Thursday with the City Council disregarding the pleas of East Side Councilwoman Ivy Taylor, and approving a local nonprofit’s bid to convert an East Side convent into a halfway house.

Crosspoint Inc. operates five local re-entry facilities for federal and state convicts, and it intends to purchase a historic building on Yucca Street, near Martin Luther King Drive, belonging to the Sisters of the Holy Spirit. The Sisters, who now live in a $10 million facility across from their old convent, have actively supported Crosspoint.

Developing Stories: Goodie Basket Development

The Grayco South Shore PUD proposal

By Katherine Gregor   Austin Chronicle September 17, 2009

Can it be? Austin’s urban design and planning processes actually seem to be working, at least for the South Shore planned unit development. The large mixed-use project proposed by developer Grayco Partners goes to City Council Sept. 24; Grayco is seeking PUD zoning for a 20-acre site between South Lakeshore Boulevard and East Riverside Drive, along a stretch of Lady Bird Lake. As the first test of council’s reasserted power to consider a PUD that trumps Waterfront Overlay Ord­in­ance provisions, the project has been closely watched. While not perfect, it’s darn good, thanks to all who have worked hard on raising Austin’s PUD, waterfront, and urban design standards.

Houston: Texas-Sized Sprawl, No End In Sight

By Steve Inskeep   NPR September 20, 2009

Houston is the latest stop on the Urban Frontier, Morning Edition’s occasional look at how cities change and grow.

Houston is a swiftly growing city; it has added a million residents this decade. No doubt, some of those newcomers drive on Interstate 10, which roars in front of Houston’s own version of Mount Rushmore — giant white busts of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and two founders of modern Texas, Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin.

Since it overlooks the freeway, the spot is known as Mount Rush Hour. And it reminds visitors of a couple of things about Houston: one, that it’s a little quirkier than you might realize; and two, that it is huge.

The Green Case for Cities

By Witold Rybcznski   The Atlantic.com September 16, 2009

No where has the greening message had a bigger impact than in the building industry. Green or sustainable architecture is all the rage—as well it should be, because buildings use a lot of energy. The construction and operation of residential and commercial buildings consume as much as 40 percent of the energy used in the United States today.

The calculation of a building’s total environmental impact must factor in everything from annual energy consumption to how and where building materials are manufactured and the handling of storm water. This requires some sort of rating system, and there are currently more than 40 of them in use around the world. Most, like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which has become the standard in the United States, award points based on a checklist—daylighting, water recycling, solar panels, bicycle racks, and so on.

Losing Touch with the Changing Definition of “Community”

By Owen McShane   newgeography September 20, 2009

Mathew Taunton opens his review of “The Future of Community – Reports of a Death Greatly Exaggerated” (Note 1) with the observation that:

“Community is one of the most powerful words in the language, and perhaps because of this it is frequently misused. A profoundly emotive word, it is also a coercive one, and a key political buzzword in modern times. That community is being eroded in modern Britain is a matter of cross-party consensus, and it is also widely agreed that one of the state’s roles is to devise means of counteracting the decline of communities.”

It is refreshing to see a writer prepared to use ‘community’ and ‘coercive’ in the same sentence. Taunton reminds us that practically all urban architecture now attempts to force social solidarity into existence, and, by definition, condemns those who do not conform for daring to exercise their choice.