Residents of Philadelphia Housing Authority Earn Over $100,000

[From article]

The Philadelphia Housing Authority has a 10 year waiting list with roughly 100,000 people on it, according to officials.
But while low income and homeless families wait, the NBC10 Investigators found some families were allowed to live in PHA properties while earning six figures.
Officials say 181 families living in PHA housing earn more than they’re allowed to. The Department of Housing and Urban Development refers to them as "over income."
“I believe that they’re serving an important purpose,” PHA president Kelvin Jeremiah said. “I believe that the fact that they’ve achieved some level of success while being in PHA, I want to be able to encourage that.”
[. . .]
Pennsylvania has 750 over income families living in public housing according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. New Jersey has 755. Nation-wide there are 25,226.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/investigations/Philadelphia-Housing-Authority-Over-Income-Families--353277881.html

Some Families Living in Philly Public Housing Earn Over $100K
By Mitch Blacher
NBC News Philadelphia PA
Published at 6:59 PM EST on Nov 24, 2015

Virginia City Accused Of Racism

[From article]
African-Americans wanted Obama for president because he looked like them, and they got him. Not once, but twice. Now those in Lawrenceville, Virginia will find out what it feels like to be labeled a racist by this administration.

http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/hud_plays_the_race_card_in_lawrenceville.html

October 2, 2014
HUD Plays the Race Card in Lawrenceville
By M. Catharine Evans

HUD Official Admits Theft of $843,000

[From article]
Former Housing and Urban Development loan specialist Brian Thompson pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing $843,000 of taxpayer money in a wire fraud scheme.
Thompson was responsible for selling properties acquired by the government after borrowers defaulted on their HUD-guaranteed mortgages. Specialists like Thompson were tasked with ensuring the sale of these properties at the best possible price to reimburse the government for taxpayer funds made to mortgage lenders for insured loans. Instead, he funneled portions of the proceeds into bank accounts he controlled, netting himself $843,000 in the process.
Thompson scheme went undetected for nearly a year. To conceal his fraud, he fabricated settlement documents with false sales prices and even buyer names.
By serious prison time, Machen means between 33 and 41 months in prison, which Thompson got through a plea agreement. The maximum sentence for his crime — technically wire fraud — is 20 years. He also has to pay back all the money to the federal government, and, according to the Department of Justice release, “is subject to a forfeiture money judgment in the amount of $645,700.”
[. . .]
Thompson is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 7, 2015

http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/03/hud-official-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-843000-in-taxpayer-funds/

HUD Official Pleads Guilty To Stealing $843,000 In Taxpayer Funds
7:47 AM 10/03/2014
TRISTYN BLOOM

Bronx Was Worse Off Than Detroit, and Turned Around Its Decline

[From article]
The South Bronx has become much safer—to an extent barely imaginable a generation ago. In 2013, the 41st precinct suffered just two murders, compared with more than 100 each year during its Fort Apache days.
[. . .]
In 1985, under Mayor Ed Koch, New York launched a major housing initiative that would spend $5 billion on renovations and new construction, with the South Bronx being a prime location for the investment.
[. . .]
The area’s 40.2 percent poverty rate is only slightly better than Detroit’s 41.5 percent. And 60 percent of households with related children are headed by single mothers, a figure that hasn’t budged in 30 years. Sixty percent of South Bronx residents are on Medicaid. Though the teen pregnancy rate has declined, drug addiction remains entrenched.
[. . .]
Detroit may not have hit rock bottom yet
[. . .]
The most important lesson that Detroit can derive from the South Bronx’s experience is that things can get better. Many despaired over the South Bronx’s future during the 1970s out of conviction that New York City was ungovernable. How could a city incapable of preventing 14-year-olds from defacing subway cars be expected to revive a neighborhood resembling post-World War II Berlin? But the skeptics were wrong, as more effective government—as opposed to simply less or more—proved central to New York’s epic crime decline and many other municipal improvements.

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/eon0930se.html

Stephen Eide

Lessons from a Catastrophe

The South Bronx came back—can Detroit?

30 September 2014

Harvard-Cambridge Youth Shelter Gets $50,000 Taxpayer HUD Grant

Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church, Cambridge, MA

$50,000 in taxpayer funds per year to house homeless youth (undefined). Does that mean that parents of these "youth" know where their children are and do not care? Are any of these children listed as missing with police searching for them? The spending other people's money bureaucracy celebrates. Are any of these "youth" unaccompanied Honduran or Guatemalan children who may be up to 35 years old as in the Lynn Public Schools?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/9/17/youth-homeless-shelter-grant/

Youth Homeless Shelter Initiative Secures Funding
By SONALI Y. SALGADO and CAROLINE T. ZHANG

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
September 17, 2014

FEMA Seeks Repayment of Benefits From NY-NJ Hurricane Victims

[From article]
FEMA isn’t the only government agency trying to recover Sandy-related funding.
Last spring, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development urged officials in New Jersey and New York to step up their scrutiny of hundreds of millions of dollars in other federal rebuilding grants.
New Jersey’s Department of Consumer Affairs says it has asked 51 homeowners to return a combined $940,000 — a number that probably will rise as the state looks at more cases.

http://nypost.com/2014/09/11/fema-demands-sandy-victims-repay-5-8m-in-aid/

FEMA demands Sandy victims repay $5.8M in aid
By Associated Press
New York Post
September 11, 2014 | 1:47pm

Harvard Spin Doctors in Action

Harvard University is a great institution even though it may have lost its way from its founding as a training school for minsters. Their spokespersons  have a standard response whenever someone wants Harvard to honor its obligations, its promises, it contracts. 

“Harvard’s buildings are intended to support its core mission of teaching, learning and research, and that involves maintaining living space for students and faculty, labs and research facilities, classrooms and library spaces, as well as space for administrative and support services,” a spokesperson from Harvard said in a prepared statement. 

No one can doubt that is true. Harvard's mission is as stated, focused on education and support for education. However in previous activities when Harvard was advancing its core mission of education and support thereof, they encountered some law or ordinance. In order to be allowed to ignore the laws and/or the ordinances, Harvard offered a concession, a trade. "We will give you this consideration if you let us violate that law or ordinance." In City government it is often called a variance. They can vary from the rules of the ordinance without penalty. Previously Harvard made many promises at hearings before various city boards and commissions. After a few years pass the people who attended those meetings are dead, moved or no longer attend the meetings. Harvard representatives also change. They seldom are aware of the past. If they know of it they do not include it in their discussions. 

As in this case they pretend that anything outside of their core mission is a burden and unjustified obligation imposed on them by uncaring selfish members of the dreaded "community" (the term Harvard has for those awful people who have no Harvard affiliation).

When the earlier promise, consideration given in trade for a variance, becomes inconvenient, Harvard just changes the focus to make it appear as if they are the offended party, the victim of outsider avarice. This is an example. 

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x930803810/Cambridge-residents-councilors-wary-of-Harvard-s-plan-for-senior-housing#axzz2Lhs1JKut

Cambridge residents, councilors wary of Harvard’s plan for senior housing
By Erin Baldassari ebaldassari (at) wickedlocal.com
Cambridge Chronicle
Posted Feb 22, 2013 @ 11:49 AM

Do All Housing Authorities Need Scrutiny?

Is this the only Housing Authority where there are abuses, fraud and waste of taxpayer funds? (Hillary Chabot, "Michael McLaughlin plea could hurt Tim Murray," Boston herald, February 16, 2013) Considering who appoints these people it is a wonder that no one is scrutinizing these wasteful agencies to see how much more money is being misappropriated. If this guy was able to pay himself an outrageous salary without the board knowing what stops others from doing the same thing? 

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/02/michael_mclaughlin_plea_could_hurt_tim_murray

Michael McLaughlin plea could hurt Tim Murray
February 16, 2013
By Hillary Chabot
Boston Herald

HUD Deceives Public

[From article]
"To add insult to injury, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan said this week, "We are focused on the process early, to keep people in their homes, rather than focusing late, when it is much less likely that people will be able to stay in their homes." There is really no great way to interpret this statement.
It's like walking into a 9 a.m. meeting at 10:30 and proclaiming you are "early." It doesn't exactly pass the giggle test."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/mbs_marts_need_to_move_fannie_freddie_rp3WfwydGVBuButznCb22H

MBS marts need to move Fannie, Freddie
By JONATHON M. TRUGMAN
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:59 AM, October 24, 2010
Posted: 11:01 PM, October 23, 2010