A recap of this week’s equity news.

“8,800 Road Home properties to return to private hands, ” - Times Picayune

Actor Wendell Pierce and trumpeter Terence Blanchard have come back to their old neighborhood, Pontchartrain Park, and are poised to take over one of every nine properties there — so they can build and sell affordable homes,
On Monday, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority will vote on an agreement to transfer 114 abandoned and vacant properties to Pierce and Blanchard’s Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corp. It’s a big moment for the star of HBO’s cop drama “The Wire,” the Grammy-winning musician and some of their childhood buddies and fellow investors, who want to return New Orleans’ first middle-class black subdivision to its pre-Katrina glory.

“Homeless numbers ‘alarming’,” - USA Today

More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation.

Local authorities say the number of families seeking help has risen in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington.

“ACORN fights back,” - San Francisco Chronicle

In the midst of the predictable partisan exaggerations, distortions and occasional lies that close election races generate, ACORN has become the focus of an extraordinary amount of attention over our voter-registration program. We submitted nearly 40,000 voter registration applications in San Diego and throughout California, and 1.3 million nationwide. In communities across the country, anxiety about the direction of our country, and more specifically our economy, is driving much of the interest in this year’s presidential election. Voter turnout is expected to be of historic proportions. What is surprising is that these attacks, issued from partisan sources, have become relentless, and wildly exaggerated. We’ve even been accused by some Republicans of causing the global economic crisis.

The truth, plain and simple, is that no illegal votes will be cast as a consequence of ACORN’s voter-registration program. In fact, illegal votes constitute fewer than 1 out of a million votes cast, and no illegal vote has ever been tied to ACORN, in spite of the almost 2 million registrations we submitted in 2004 and 2006. The small percentage of problematic cards that we have submitted to local election boards in 2008 - and that we are required by law to submit, even cards that we can plainly see are invalid - will not result in any illegal voting, contrary to over-the-top partisan claims. The irony in these attacks is that our registration drive and get-out-the-vote program is nonpartisan.

A recap of this week’s equity news

 ”Road Home fix falls short,” - Times-Picayune

As soon as Louisiana homeowners could take stock of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, thousands of them had to turn their attention back to the Road Home program and their ongoing efforts to collect grants to repair damage caused three years ago by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

More than 3,100 Road Home applicants still have active appeals to fret over — and some worry that highly touted reforms to the process carried little impact.

 ”Low-Income Housing: Another Crisis Looming?” - TIME Magazine

Another housing crisis may be looming even as the mortgage meltdown continues and as Americans who once dreamed of home ownership see their properties foreclosed. The Housing Act of 1937, imposed in the wake of the Great Depression, and amended a number of times in the 1970s, is reaching a crossroads — and close to five million Americans who depend on subsidized public housing may soon have to figure out where and how they are going to live.

That’s because under the provisions of Section 8 of the historic law a significant change will be under way in the next few years. As a result, building owners who participate in the program — receiving subsidies from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in exchange for taking in lower-income renters — will be able to opt out of those contracts. And many are thinking of doing just that. America’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, will be severely affected as will many smaller communities.

“Author tracks one man’s quest to fix Harlem,” - USA TODAY

In 1999, Geoffrey Canada, president of a respected non-profit for families in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, embarked on an “outsized and audacious” endeavor. Programs that helped dozens or even hundreds of kids, he’d concluded, weren’t enough. So he traced out a 24-block “children’s zone” and blanketed it with social services: a health clinic, parenting classes, an intensive charter school, after-school tutoring and more. The idea, says author Paul Tough, was to create “a safety net woven so tightly” that kids couldn’t slip through.

Tough, an editor for the New York Times Magazine, spent five years following Canada’s efforts as the zone grew to 97 blocks. USA TODAY spoke with Tough about his new book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (Houghton Mifflin, $26).
 

A recap of the week’s equity news

 ”Report: Road Home falls short,” - The Times-Picayune

Most storm-beleaguered Louisiana homeowners did not receive enough Road Home money to completely rebuild their homes, and limited recovery dollars will only help replace a portion of the state’s damaged rental units, according to a report to be released today.

The group PolicyLink produced the report, called “A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008,” after analyzing three major federally funded housing-recovery programs: the Road Home and the state’s small and large rental-repair programs. Researchers concluded that “enormous obstacles” blocked the recovery for homeowners, most of whom faced shortfalls to rebuild, and renters, who cannot find moderately priced places to rent.

“More families requesting free or reduced lunch,” - USA TODAY

The troubled economy may be prompting more families to turn to federal school nutrition programs that aid poor children, a survey suggests.

For the first time since 2004, a majority of cafeteria operators say the number of children getting free or reduced-price lunches has risen.

“Can NY infrastructure handle floods, intense heat?,”  - Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Flooded subways. Bridges deteriorating in the hot sun. Rising seas nipping at the edges of Manhattan. Those scenarios are up for review by a panel of scientists, government officials and private sector representatives studying how the city’s infrastructure will hold up to climate change.

The Climate Change Adaptation Task Force met Tuesday for the first time as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to address global warming in New York City, which already includes orders to switch the city’s taxi fleet to hybrids by 2012 and to retrofit city buildings to meet greener standards.

The Guardian, the UK’s premier newspaper at covering in-depth issues in the States, today features an insightful piece on the “epic housing crisis” facing New Orleans. The article highlights the startling rental housing statistics researched by Annie Clark and Kalima Rose in the landmark PolicyLink report, “Bringing Louisiana Renters Back Home.” (pdf) The article features quotes from Ms. Clark, as well.

There are few incentives for landlords to renovate their rental properties. The Louisiana Recovery Authority’s “Road Home” program offers incentives for “small rental property owners” but it is not popular with mom-and-pop landlords, according to Annie Clark of progressive policy and research institute PolicyLink.

“A landlord says, ‘Yes I am going to rehabilitate my rental units,’” Clark explained, “but then he or she has to get a bank loan which is then paid back by Road Home. Banks are very hesitant to give loans to people this way.”

Clark added that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has rehabilitated only about 1,500 units of the 4,600 units it has set aside for seniors, the disabled and poor working families in New Orleans. “HUD really has shirked its responsibility in these units,” Clark said.

The full piece is definitely worth a read to get a sense of the depth of the housing crisis still ongoing in New Orleans.