A sucker deal?
The ongoing physical transformation of Orlando's Parramore neighborhood is apparent with City View, a new apartment complex which stands in stark contrast to old buildings along Church Street. Photo from the Orlando Sentinel.Community economic development plans got a black eye with the Supreme Court’s
Kelo v. New London decision a few weeks ago.
Now the
Orlando Weekly scores another solid punch with its look at the efforts to revitalize the long-blighted Parramore neighborhood on Orlando’s west side.
This is a look at a different side of community economic development. People here aren’t shouting in outrage about the government seizing homes and businesses with the power of eminent domain, because that’s not what’s happening. But they’re also not watching -- although they should -- how the city is spending tax dollars in an attempt to rekindle what was once a vibrant African-American community.
The cornerstone of the redevelopment project is a six-story development that will include condos, office space and first-floor retail on the edge of Parramore Heritage Central Park, with its planned lake and green space.
A quarter of the condos will be “affordable,” meaning a buyer must make less than 120 percent of the city’s median income -- $55,100 a year for a family of four. A developer can sell units as “affordable” so long as they are priced at or below about $189,000. (The market-rate condos, overlooking a lake in the middle of a newly revived Parramore, will undoubtedly cost much more.)
The
Weekly scrutinizes a process that has been much less transparent than a government land grab and concludes that it is equally ugly: a land deal conceived behind closed doors, orchestrated in large part by a city official working both sides at once which resulted in city property sold at a loss to an inefficient, top-heavy nonprofit corporation.
Yes, of course, we should be paying attention to how business is done in Parramore -- and in other neighborhoods, too. Is what’s happening in Parramore really much different from the story of Baldwin Park, an upscale community built on the old Navy base, which the city essentially gave away to developers? From all appearances, Baldwin Park is now a beautiful, thriving community.
Read the
Weekly’s article “A Sucker Deal”
here.
See the City of Orlando’s “Pathways for Parramore” presentation
here.
Happy birthday, Medicaid!
Saturday is Medicaid's 40th birthday, and Families USA has produced
an e-card to celebrate the occasion and to draw attention to Medicaid's importance at a time when Congress is contemplating devastating cuts in the program. Check out the card
here.
For more information, see "Medicaid: Four Decades of Success"
here.
"It sounds like a bad 1950s chain-gang movie ..."
Florida must do more to ensure its agricultural industry is no longer balanced on the backs of slave laborers, says
The St. Petersburg Times in its Sunday editorial.
Read the whole editorial
here.
Previous posts
here,
here,
here,
here and
here.
Fatal shootings during illegal eviction are justifiable
The fatal shootings of two armed men who forced their way into a home to evict the tenant have been ruled justifiable self-defense.
The men -- armed with a gun, a knife and a bicycle chain -- were trying to evict Melvin Wilcox from his Jacksonville home but weren’t willing to wait for the police.
“It was not a legal eviction,” said Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi. “You can’t evict someone without a police officer.”
Florida statutes prohibit so-called “self-help” evictions. Read the law
here.
State Attorney Harry Shorstein has formally ruled out filing charges against Wilcox, saying he had the right to use deadly force to defend himself and his home.
Florida legislators expanded the justifiable homicide law last session, but Shorstein said Wilcox’s case would be self-defense even under the old law.
Read The Florida Times-Union stories
here and
here.
Thanks to April Charney of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid for the heads-up.
I guess this might be good news ... but the numbers make my head spin
The state agency that serves the disabled now says it expects a $53 million surplus this year and will be able to cut its waiting list nearly in half.
Just a few days ago, the Agency for Persons with Disabilities forfeited $62 million to the state’s general fund because it didn’t spent the money during the budget year that ended June 30.
The new surplus -- projected for the budget year that began July 1 -- comes from money found in billing errors, an agency spokesman said.
But it’s not all good news for the disabled, says the director of a Leesburg agency that serves the mentally retarded. “Basically, the bottom line is people currently being served are receiving less services so others may receive some,” said John Askew of SunriseArc. “This is about their cuts, not catching billing errors.”
Read the
Orlando Sentinel story
here.
See previous posts
here and
here.
Are undocumented immigrants trespassing in America?
New Hampshire cops are charging people suspected of being undocumented immigrants with violating the state’s criminal trespassing law.
Jorge Mora Ramirez was the first to be arrested. Back in April, the New Ipswich police chief saw him pulled over along the side of a road with his vehicle’s flashers on, making a cell phone call. (Of course, if he’d kept on driving while talking on the phone -- like most Americans -- he probably would have escaped notice.)
Ramirez, a 21-year-old Mexican who works for a roofing company, admitted he was in the country illegally. When immigration officials declined to pick him up, the police chief arrested Ramirez for criminal trespass.
New Hampshire law says “a person is guilty of criminal trespass if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place.” A violation carries a maximum fine of $1,000, but no jail time.
The trial started last week, but was postponed because the judge has been asked to hear similar cases. Since Ramirez’ arrest, at least 10 more people have been arrested on trespassing charges.
Ramirez’ attorneys argued that the case should be dismissed because local police don’t have the authority to enforce federal immigration law.
Judge L. Phillips Runyon III questioned whether he had the authority to determine if a person is in the country illegally. “Is it really my role?” he said, adding that he knows nothing about immigration law.
Some New Hampshire lawmakers are drafting a bill that would give local police the authority to charge illegal aliens with criminal trespass, regardless of what happens in the Ramirez case. “We want to codify this into black-leather law,” state Rep. Andrew Renzullo was quoted by the Associated Press and the Union Leader. (Is that really the right quote? All the JD-impaired folks out there know the term is “black-letter.”)
Read articles in
The New Hampshire Union Leader here and the Conco
rd Monitor here and
The Boston Globe here.
$62 million was lost!
With thousands of disabled Floridians waiting for services, $62 million intended for their care has been lost.
The unspent money could have gotten nearly 2,300 people off the waiting list, which now totals over 14,000 people with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, autism, Down’s syndrome and other disabilities. The state pays an average of $27,045 for each person’s care.
The Agency for Persons with Disabilities didn’t anticipate the $62 million surplus, so it was forfeited to a general state fund when the state’s budget year ended June 30.
An agency spokesman said the surplus came mostly from an effort to correct billing mistakes by providers of services such as physical therapy.
The providers say the surplus proves that the agency has been “overzealous” in its cost-cutting measures. They question whether the agency is being a good steward of money for those in need.
Read the Orlando Sentinel story
here.
See previous post
here.
Votes cast by homeless people do count!
A challenge to the votes of homeless people was thrown out of court in Racine, Wisconsin.
After losing an April election by three votes, the incumbent alderman questioned the legitimacy of 15 votes cast by homeless people from a shelter program that rotates among seven different locations.
State law requires a person spend at least 10 consecutive days in the place they claim is their residency to be able to vote. Nevertheless, the Wisconsin Elections Board’s policy provides: "Homeless individuals may designate a fixed location for their residence for voting purposes if it is an identifiable location in the state of Wisconsin which could conceivably serve as a temporary residence."
"Here, no Contested Voter slept for ten consecutive nights prior to the election at the St. Paul Baptist Church," the judge wrote in her decision. "If sleeping in the same place were required, petitioners could never establish a residence because they rotated their place of sleeping among the [shelter] sites. If that were required, they would lose their most important franchise as citizens - the right to vote."
Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article
here and the Racine Journal Times article
here.
Previous posts
here and
here.
Modern-day "slave farms" in Florida
Florida's farm labor camps -- described as "modern-day slave operations" -- were the subject of a report on National Public Radio's Morning Edition yesterday.
The report includes interviews of homeless men recruited from shelters and soup kitchens. Lured by promises of work, they hop into vans, only to find themselves in fenced farm camps, forced into debt by their bosses and sometimes paid with drugs instead of money.
Listen to the report
here or read a transcript
here.
Previous posts
here,
here,
here and
here.
Driven to spend: Pumping dollars out of our households and communities
The upward spiral of housing costs is in the news just about every day, and nearly everyone is complaining about rising gasoline costs. But for most of us, those are separate topics, and we need to put them together to understand the full impact on families and communities.
When expenditures on housing and transportation are combined, Tampa and Miami are the least affordable of the 28 major metropolitan statistical areas tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the Tampa area, 57.7% of household expenditures go to housing and transportation costs; in Miami, the rate is 57.5%.
When transportation costs are taken into account, several of the places with the highest median home values -- San Francisco, Boston and New York -- aren’t the most expensive places to live. It’s no coincidence that those three metro areas have extensive transit systems.
The overlooked cost of transportation has a magnified impact on lower-income households (not poverty-level families, but those earning less than the median $52,273) -- and a ripple effect on our communities and their futures.
When a family with a limited budget spends more on gas, there’s less to spend on food, household goods and other purchases that benefit the local economy. Would spending less on a short-term need like transportation allow households to spend more on better long-term investments, like their family’s education and their own retirement?
Money spent in grocery stores, restaurants and, yes, local transit systems stays in the local economy. When a household spends money on gasoline, it mostly leaves, in large part to other countries from which we import our oil.
Florida’s loss from increasing gasoline prices was the second-largest in the nation, behind only California. Statewide, Florida lost more than $3.2 billion. In Tampa, the average household lost $228; in Miami, the loss was $265.
As gas prices rise, limited transportation choices drain more and more dollars from regional and state economies, resources that would otherwise be available to bolster household incomes and support regional economic development. Yet discussions on transportation policy go forward as though the cost of living doesn’t matter.
Read the whole report by the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the Surface Transportation Policy Project
here.
Another city tries to pay its way out of the obligation to provide affordable housing
Another upscale city has stumbled over the idea of paying a less-affluent town to fulfill its affordable-housing obligation. See previous posts
here and
here.
This time, it’s Mission Viejo, California, where property values run high and land is scarce. The city has been reprimanded by the state for giving short shrift to low-cost housing.
A city planning commissioner suggested that Mission Viejo find another community to shoulder its low-cost housing responsibility, writing in an e-mail that it would be a “real coup to jettison our redevelopment housing burden.”
To Mission Viejo’s credit, the suggestion never gained traction at City Hall. But the debate continues on whether the city is doing enough to create affordable housing.
Read the Los Angeles Times story
here.
Thanks!
Thanks to
Interstate4Jamming for the link. There's always interesting stuff posted there.
Is it time to apologize for a history of racial terrorism?
A Ku Klux Klan parade in Brooksville in 1922 drew more than 1,000 spectators -- in a county with fewer than 5,000 residents. Photo from the Florida State Archives.Hernando County had the highest per capita rate of violence against blacks in the United States, according to a study of recorded lynchings.
Seven lynchings were reported in the county between 1900 and 1931; many of them involved armed mobs of white men snatching accused blacks from the hands of the authorities. Other acts of racial terrorism also were reported, including the castration of a black farmer who had just bought a brand-new Ford.
None of the killers were prosecuted. All of the victims were young black men who had violated a symbol of white power or were alleged to have done so.
Hernando’s per capita lynching rate was calculated to be nearly 10 times the overall rate in Florida, which was second only to Mississippi, and more than twice the rate in Levy County, site of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre. The calculations are based on a survey of racial violence by Tuskegee University.
The explanation for the vicious racism in Hernando may be, historians say, that it was an isolated county populated mostly by poor farmers who viewed blacks as an economic threat and ruled by a sheriff who seemed to foster the Wild West atmosphere that was partly to blame for Florida’s generally high rate of racial violence.
Read the
St. Petersburg Times article
here.
By the way, if you're interested in Florida history,
South of the Suwanee is a great blog to keep an eye (or a news feeder) on.
Is this democracy? (Part 2)
A legal challenge to the votes of homeless people will be decided this week.
An incumbent city alderman in Racine, Wis., lost the April election by three votes and then disputed the legitimacy of 14 votes cast by homeless people. He is arguing that 14 voters did not meet the 10-day residency requirement set by state law.
But the Wisconsin Elections Board’s policy provides: "Homeless individuals may designate a fixed location for their residence for voting purposes if it is an identifiable location in the state of Wisconsin which could conceivably serve as a temporary residence."
The incumbent wants the city to throw out 14 random votes – that’s right, random votes. There is, of course, no way to determine which votes were cast by homeless people.
So even if he wins the court ruling, he still could end up losing the election.
Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article
here.
See previous post
here.
Updates on the "modern-day slavery" labor camp
Part I: The camp owner was accused 12 years ago in North Carolina of practices similar to the ones that led to the June 3 raid on the labor camp in East Palatka.
During the 1992 investigation, farmworkers living at the camp outside Newton, N.C., said charges were deducted from their pay for crack cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes and meals. Similar accusations were made in the Florida case.
Read the Associated Press report
here.
Part II: After touring the camp, a state senator said he wants to use the camp as a model for reform of the migrant labor system in Florida.
State Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, said he had visited labor camps with worse conditions the day before. "I went to some places yesterday that were really horrendous," Hill said. "I don’t think Mr. Evans is the big boogeyman that people make him out to be."
He did not say where those camps are or what -- if any -- action would be taken against them.
Read the
Palatka Daily News story
here.
July 11: Just noticed that the Palatka Daily News has begun charging for its archives. And they want $5! The New York Times charges only $3.95.
See previous posts
here,
here,
here and
here.
Some good news about food stamps
Florida is one of the least successful states in delivering food stamps to its vulnerable citizens. Its percentage of eligible persons receiving food stamps is among the worst in the nation. See previous posts
here and
here.
But a new effort has begun which may improve that record. Florida is one of three states selected to launch a program to reduce hunger and increase food security among the elderly and disabled by streamlining the food-stamp application process.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Combined Outreach and Application Process Program -- called SUNCAP in Florida -- simplifies access to food stamps for persons living alone who are applying for or receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
It’s estimated that 112,000 current SSI recipients in Florida are not receiving food stamp benefits.
Why should you care? Each dollar of food stamps that comes into a community is estimated by the USDA to produce nearly two dollars in economic activity.
For more information, go
here and scroll down.
Giving credit where credit is due
Part I: Rep. Katherine Harris of Sarasota was one of only 30 Republicans who voted to increase funding for Section 8 rent-assistance vouchers by $100 million. The vote
here passed an amendment to the HUD budget in the appropriations bill
here.
Part II: The U.S. Justice Department has criticized a New Jersey city for invoking the Patriot Act to defend itself from a lawsuit over kicking homeless people out of its train station.
In legal papers filed in response to a federal lawsuit brought by a homeless man who objected to being told to leave the Summit, N.J., train station, the wealthy New York City suburb said its conduct is protected by the Patriot Act. The city sited a section of the law regarding "attacks and other violence against mass transportation systems."
Read the Newsday story
here.
Take our affordable housing, please!
A Florida city’s efforts to pay other cities to fulfill its affordable-housing obligation is being challenged in federal district court. See previous post
here.
But in Illinois, the state legislature unanimously passed a bill allowing cities to work together to build affordable housing.
Reaction to the “buddy system” is mixed. Some fear that wealthy communities will simply buy their way out, dumping their obligations on less-affluent towns. Others point out that regional cooperation has been used to meet other goals, such as wetlands preservation.
Read the
Chicago Tribune story
here.
