We noted yesterday the United States Department of Justice brought suit alleging the City of New Berlin, Wisconsin had violated the Fair Housing Act by denying a developer permission to build a mixed senior, family development financed with Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). I just read the Justice Department’s compliant in the case. The same [...]
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I woke last night to the sound of thunder
June 23, 2011
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As other parts of the state literally burn and the Governor calls on Texans to implement a critical part of his disaster response program, prayer for rain, here in the Valley rain clouds are rolling in. As I’ve been writing this post, the lights in my downtown Edinburg office have gone out, interrupting my work. The city streets flood terribly with even ordinary rainstorms like today’s, but colonias have it much worse.
Read more State Rep Riddle says she wants no low-income housing in her district
June 14, 2011
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To appreciate the fair housing problem in Texas just watch this video. Back in February, at a hearing on the budget for the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA), Texas State Representative Debbie Riddle, House District 150, which comprises much of northwest Harris County (51% Anglo. per capita income $25,272, 28% renters), asked Mike [...]
Read more Galveston housing authority director resigns
June 13, 2011
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The Galveston County Daily News is reporting Galveston Housing Authority Executive Director Harish Krishnarao resigned effective immediately during an executive session of the housing authority’s board of directors. Krishnarao has come under criticism for the slow process of the planning process for rebuilding 569 public housing units demolished by the housing authority after Hurricane Ike. [...]
Read more Video of Houston Disaster Recovery Town Hall
June 2, 2011
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Last week we highlighted a town hall on Disaster Single Family Home Repair in Houston, hosted by the Texas Organizing Project. Mayor Annise Parker spoke at that event, as did Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. We’ve put video of their comments up at Youtube so you can watch them from the comforts of your own chair: [...]
Read more Hurricane Disaster Spending–an opportunity to repair homes *and* create jobs in affected communities
May 27, 2011
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Texas Low Income Housing Information Service is working with residents in Galveston, Houston and the Valley to make sure that under-employed and unemployed Texans get as much work as possible from the Hurricane Recovery dollars. Section 3 says that when HUD dollars are spent on housing or infrastructure projects and low-income people in the affected [...]
Read more Houston Town Hall on Disaster Single Family Home Repair
May 26, 2011
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On Saturday, May 21, 2011, Texas Organizing Project (TOP) along with other supporting organizations spearheaded a record attendance Town Hall meeting to address the City of Houston’s lack of attention to Single Family Home Repair due to Hurricane Ike. Over 300 attendants packed Jerusalem Baptist Church to receive information about the ongoing slow progress of [...]
Read more John Henneberger Testimony at TDHCA Board Meeting on Disaster Recovery Housing Programs
May 9, 2011
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John Henneberger, a Co-Director of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, spoke at the May 5, 2011 board meeting of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) regarding the status of and proposed changes to the Hurricane Ike Disaster Recovery Housing Programs in Houston and Galveston. Youtube videos of selections of his [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 4-12-2011
April 12, 2011
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Tuesday Report, April 12, 2011 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service “Things are going to get worse before they get better” seems to be the mantra of economists following the US housing industry. The Obama Administration’s efforts to jump-start new mortgages and salvage troubled ones have largely failed. Republicans are now calling [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 4-8-2011
April 8, 2011
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Tuesday Report, April 5, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service New mortgage rules that make banks accountable for lending risks are shaking up the housing industry. The heady days of bundling bad mortgages and selling them off to naïve companies are gone. Meanwhile, lending companies are having to accept short sales [...]
Read moreDallas Housing Vouchers – Extreme Need and Error
April 7, 2011
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Yesterday The Dallas Housing Authority opened its waiting list for its Housing Choice Voucher program for the first time in five years. These vouchers are also known as “Section 8″ vouchers. The Dallas Morning News reports that the Dallas Housing Authority received over 13,000 applications in a single day– –and lost them all. The Dallas [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 3-15-2011
March 15, 2011
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Tuesday Report, March 15, 2011 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service The horror stories of screwed homeowners continue to surface as Congress prepares to stifle any relief programs. The cuts are now extended to veteran’s with a proposal to cut housing vouchers by 10,000 annually. In Fort Bend, NIMBYs protest an affordable [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 2-15-2011
February 15, 2011
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Tuesday Report, February 15, 2011 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service Ike damage remains, and as part of its proposal to revamp Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Obama Administration plans to get out of the business of creating new homeowners. The practice of financing marginal loans has contributed to major federal [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 2-1-2011
February 1, 2011
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Tuesday Report, Feb. 1, 2011 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service The Congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission issued its report that echoes earlier analyses: shaky loans and a “gold rush” mentality in the housing market sparked the recession. Finger-pointing, indifference and ineptitude emerge from the collage of testimonies by bank executives. The [...]
Read moreTwo Reports from the HUD OIG on Texas Entities
January 31, 2011
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HUD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released two audit reports on Texas entities last week. One report covered $503 million of the Katrina, Rita, and Wilma disaster recovery funds that flowed through TDHCA’s CDBG program, while the other report covered $725,546 in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act) [...]
Read moreCentral Texas Hero, Walter Moreau
January 3, 2011
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The Austin American Statesman ran a nice writeup last week of Foundation Communities Executive Director Walter Moreau, declaring him a “Central Texas Hero.” Foundation Communities is the state’s largest nonprofit builder/operator of low income housing. Walter was a recipient of TxLIHIS’ Houser Award in 2004. Check out the story: Walter Moreau: He gets things done, [...]
Read moreHouston TOP Bus Tour
December 28, 2010
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This blog post is by Elizabeth Nowrouz. In late November, Melissa Cha and I traveled to Houston to gain a little perspective into the issues of disaster relief and home repair as they impact the city’s low-income residents. We met with Jayne Junkin of the Texas Organizing Project (TOP), who graciously offered to introduce us [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 11-30-2010 & 12-07-2010
December 9, 2010
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Tuesday Report, November 30, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service Dallas is the latest Texas city to discover a major problem in implementing ambitious plans to house the homeless: where to place them? Finding locations near public transit and jobs – and near neighborhoods willing to accommodate the poor, has also [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 11-24-2010
November 24, 2010
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Tuesday Report, Nov. 23, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service Attorneys general from all 50 states have filed class action suits against major mortgage holders for using sloppy and fraudulent documents to press foreclosures. As national foreclosures rates drop, Texas rises: one in ten mortgage holders are now threatened with foreclosure. [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 11-10-2010
November 10, 2010
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Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service The federal bailout tab for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continues to grow along with unsold inventory of houses. Shares in the mortgage giants continue to drop in value, though not as fast as last year. Plummeting homes sales in North Texas are treated very different [...]
Read moreNIMBYism in Real Time
October 21, 2010
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“Studies show it [NIMBYism] has contributed to projects being clustered in less affluent areas with high concentrations of minorities, such as East Austin, while relatively wealthy and well-organized neighborhoods see few if any such projects.” –Austin American Statesman, 10/16/10 Just a few days after the Austin American Statesman discussion of the general impact of NIMBYism [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 10-19-2010
October 19, 2010
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Tuesday Report, October 19, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service The megabanks resume foreclosures at breakneck speed and gobble up properties as 49 states start investigations into sleazy practices. GMAC, Bank of America and other corporations have not responded to growing criticism and potential lawsuits as their stocks drop. In Texas, [...]
Read more“Neighborhood” letters and Tax Credit Properties
October 18, 2010
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Eric Dexheimer at that Statesman has an extensive article examining neighborhood groups and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program. The article examines groups created by investors for the purpose of writing support letters for developments, as well as how the state’s scoring of neighborhood letter’s impacts the program by giving power to NIMBY interests. [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation, 10-5-2010 & 9-28-10
October 11, 2010
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Tuesday Report, October 5, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service According to new census figures and despite drops in house prices, thirty-seven percent of US households pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income for shelter. The figures emerge among new stories of mortgage mismanagement centered on document generation. In [...]
Read moreLawsuit alleging race discrimination in Texas housing tax credit program clears (another) hurdle
September 30, 2010
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The Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas has ruled that the Inclusive Communities Project has legal standing to continue its lawsuit alleging the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) is guilty of racial discrimination in the operation of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program. Back in 2008, we discussed [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s Weekly News Compilation, 9-1 through 9-21-2010
September 22, 2010
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Tuesday Report, September 21, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service Galveston’s shakers and movers have been informed by TDHCA that if they kill plans to rebuild 569 public housing units swiped out by Hurricane Ike, all the state’s federal recovery funds will be withheld. The notice underscores a legal agreement initiated [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation -7/20/2010
July 20, 2010
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Tuesday Report, July 20, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service The paradigm of unlimited growth is abandoned by Rust Belt cities that now cope with receding populations and “ghost neighborhoods.” City administrators ponder how to support over-extended infrastructures with shrinking tax bases. In Dallas, posh mansions are added to the foreclosure [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation – 7/13/2010
July 14, 2010
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Tuesday Report, July 13, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service This week we learn that the major group defaulting on their mortgages are cleaver rich folks who simply write their negative equity off as tax loses and invest elsewhere. Meanwhile, the middle and lower income mortgage holders struggle to make payments. [...]
Read moreCity of Houston weatherization jobs have not been in low-income communities
July 6, 2010
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The 2009 Recovery Act increased the funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) in Texas by 2500%. This program funds local agencies to provide minor home repairs to low-income Texans. The Recovery Act was intended to create jobs in the communities most impacted by the recession. The Federal Office of Management and Budget, in a [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly news compilation – 7/6/2010
July 6, 2010
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Tuesday Report, July 6, 2010 Special to the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service As the nation’s economy recalibrates from the heady days of the Bush II Administration, housing starts and sales continue to drop while foreclosures rise. In Texas, millions of federal dollars meant to convert foreclosed homes into dwellings for low-income households languish [...]
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- Mitt Romney at private fundraiser: I might eliminate HUD – The Washington Post
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Bo’s housing news clips: Study finds zoning segregates lower-income students in lower-scoring schools.
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Texas LIHTC housing program rocked by second earthquake in two months
- Low-Income Housing Program Compels Building in Poor Texas Areas – NYTimes.com
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Bo’s housing news clips: National home foreclosures and Galveston housing woes are top stories in recent weeks
