Local Nightmare Could Shift to National Level: According to the Associated Press, the Transition Team of President-Elect Obama has picked or is considering an array of Washington insiders and outsiders, including some Republicans, for Cabinet and other top positions, according to Democratic and transition officials.
Unfortunately, Dr. Rene Glover, CEO of Atlanta Housing Authority and Mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin are on the short list for the position of HUD Secretary. The Task Force for the Homeless, along with many representatives of organizations serving and advocating for those living in poverty (both housed and un-housed), have expressed strong objections to either of the the considerations.
Messages to top advisors of Obama's Transition Team have been sent to alert those making these critically important decisions. We want it to be clear that though Dr. Glover has become nationally known for her creative approach to community redevelopment, the road to her successes have been paved with a lack of transparency, lies, broken promises, racial and economic discrimination, fraudulent claims and more.
Amenity rich, mixed income developments have been represented as an urban panacea and a monument to the expertise of Renee Glover. This transformation, however, comes at the expense of the poor families in the Atlanta area. Discrimination complaints have been filed against the housing authority in addition to documentation to support that the Housing Authority forged signatures, altered minutes of tenant meetings and then included in HUD applications, as well as, other blatant violations of the law and HUD regulations.
Atlanta Housing Authority Employees Come Forward: Whistle blowers that formerly worked for the Atlanta Housing Authority have come forward to substantiate claims that AHA evicted tenants for their inability to pay utilities while withholding utility allowance money that AHA received from HUD. This is only one of many violations that have come to light from former AHA employees.
Tenants and local advocates appealing for relief from unlawful and discriminatory practices of the Atlanta Housing found support from the City Council. City Council Members passed a bills seeking to ensure the City Council had to approve demolition applications sent to HUD and ask for the demolitions in three communities be postponed.
We have extensive documentation of these instances and many others. Legal battles are still in progress. Steps have been taken to determine where to send the extensive evidence that has been gathered to be sure that final decisions are not made without all of the information relative to this issue. We feel a sense of urgency in getting it to the right place these decisions are, of necessity, going to have to be made soon.
Mayor Franklin Complicit in Railroading Demolitions & Vetoing City Council Demands for Transparency & Responsibility: It has come to light that Mayor Shirley Franklin had signed off on five demolitions applications in 2007 without Council approval, consent, or awareness. HUD requires consultation with all relevant local government officials.
Mayor Franklin assisted AHA by vetoing the bills that demanded AHA accountability (though the veto was overridden by City Council) and hired high priced attorneys to fight any opposition to the joint campaign of the Mayors Office and AHA for the speedy demolitions of the remaining 3,000 units of Atlanta's Public Housing.
“We are suffering the largest shortage of low-income housing and her answer is to become the first city in the nation to destroy ALL public housing and replace it with "housing choice vouchers" and mixed-income developments.” Anita Beaty, our executive director, points out in her comments to a Washington Post article announcing the candidates for HUD Secretary.
“That sounds nice,” Ms. Beaty continued, “but when you consider that the mixed-income communities only house a small percentage of the residents of public housing it makes you wonder where are the residents going to go? Well, prior to demolition of the units, they clear the books by evicting 60-70 percent of the residents for all types of violations, some as petty as dirty dishes in the sink, and others have their partial rent payments returned and are evicted for non-payment. Then the remaining residents are promised "Housing Choice Vouchers" that will cover the remainder of your rent after the resident pays 30% of their income. Well these vouchers are only good for one year, and we have seen reports in the real estate market that this is a great way for landowners to survive until our famed "Beltline" is developed and land values skyrocket. This is going to create a large population of people experiencing homelessness. And as the Mayor has demonstrated her strategy of sweeping the homeless out into the suburbs, and into the overpopulated jails, it's a little like getting Dracula to guard the blood bank.”
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POLITICO:
PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS SPECULATE HUD PICK
By: Victoria McGrane - December 8, 2008 05:38 PM EST
Public interest groups have long decried the neglected state of the Housing and Urban Development Department. Now, they’re anxiously awaiting President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for HUD secretary — and many aren’t that happy with some of the prospects.
During the campaign, Obama gave them reason to hope he’d elevate what has often been a second-tier agency to take a larger role in resolving the housing crisis. “I am committed to appointing a secretary, deputy and assistant secretaries who are committed to HUD’s mission and capable of executing it,” he told HUD employees in a letter to their union in October.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Atlanta Housing Authority Director Renee Glover have both received a fair amount of buzz as possible HUD secretaries.
But both are highly controversial figures in the public housing world.
Glover has led the housing authority to demolish numerous public housing complexes since 1994 to make room for mixed-use developments, with dozens more complexes slated for the wrecking ball.
Critics say her approach — fully supported by Franklin — has displaced residents to the poorest sections of Atlanta and may even violate the Fair Housing Act. A recent study released by Georgia State University warns that Glover’s plans to fully eradicate traditional public housing from the city could lead to homelessness.
“How can Obama appear to support poor people who are in the housing that Glover is demolishing so the developers can buy the land, and even consider her or Franklin, who planned with Glover the whole thing?” asked Anita Beaty, executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.
Supporters of the mayor’s efforts say they have cleaned up dangerous and dilapidated neighborhoods, while displaced residents were given vouchers to rent elsewhere.
But Beaty and other critics say that the housing authority initiative has left the city with almost no affordable housing.
“Glover has privatized the most important asset we have in this city for poor people: public housing,” she said. She said Franklin has no housing policy, other than doing “the will of the developers and the downtown business community.”
Miami Mayor Manny Diaz is another oft-mentioned contender, but he’s also a divisive figure in the housing world and beyond. The Florida AFL-CIO and other activists are publicly objecting to Diaz getting a spot in the Obama administration, the Miami Herald reported last week.
To many, names such Diaz and Franklin sound too much like HUD secretaries of the recent past, when the position was seen as a political reward and a way to meet the “diversity” quota. The current financial crisis and the foreclosure tsunami that lies at the heart of it demand a HUD leader who has career experience in the field, housing and civil rights advocates say.
“It has become very political. It would be very good to have somebody who’s very hands on, who is not totally politically obligated to a whole bunch of folks prior to getting the job,” said John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, speaking generally about the top HUD post.
“It would be great to have a real practitioner who understands from an empirical observation how these things work and having that person at the highest level,” he said, so that the assistant secretaries and the managers below them have a leader who has a grasp of the department’s work, including affordable housing, homelessness and even lending issues.
Names in the mix that housing advocates have more faith in include Nicolas Retsinas, director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies; Bart Harvey, former chief executive of Enterprise Community Investment; and Sister Lillian Murphy, CEO of Mercy Housing, a national nonprofit housing organization.
The Obama transition team has reached out to a wide variety of players in the housing community, industry and advocates alike, keeping an ongoing dialogue on policy, funding and management concerns.
The secretary choice is seen as vital to getting HUD back on track, advocates say.
In the recent past, the department has been sort of Cabinet stepchild, with its staff and resources cut and its mission muddled.
One of President George W. Bush’s HUD chiefs, Alphonso Jackson, a friend who followed him from Texas, had public housing experience but was widely seen by critics as a lackluster leader in Washington. He resigned in April amid multiple controversies.
“The role of HUD had been very much diminished — particularly over the period of the Bush administration,” said Julia Gordon, policy counsel for the Center of Responsible Lending. “HUD should be an agency that takes an absolutely lead role in urban policy and in housing policy nationally, beyond the individual little programs to do this affordable thing there, or this kind of product there. But ... whether it’s neglect or something worse, that role is not one that they’ve stepped into.”
Among its problems, public interest groups say HUD failed to exercise effective enforcement of fair housing and lending laws, and the predatory lending practices that went unchecked contributed to the foreclosure crisis.
Research by the Center for Responsible Lending, for instance, shows that African-American and Latino homeowners were often steered into subprime mortgages with hefty fees when their credit scores in fact qualified them for less expensive prime loans. Now those groups are experiencing some of the highest rates of foreclosure.
“We’re deeply troubled by failure of HUD to live up to statutory mandate, and this is a problem that has persisted now for many, many years,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a leading member of the 220-member National Fair Housing Alliance.
“HUD is an agency with a mission whose focus has largely been lost over the last few years, and it’s really a tragedy.”
That’s a key finding of a six-month investigation into the state of fair housing in America, organized by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund.
The commission, headed by former HUD secretaries Jack Kemp and Henry Cisneros, will release the study and recommendations for HUD’s future at a press conference Tuesday.
The need for major overhaul and mission refining is ever more urgent as the Federal Housing Administration, an agency within HUD that provides mortgage insurance for working-class home buyers, regains a significant share of the mortgage market. The subprime crash and government policies encouraging a greater role for FHA has led FHA’s market share — which has dipped as low as 2 percent of the market in recent years — to reach almost 20 percent, about where it was in its heyday.
The increase has strained FHA’s infrastructure to the breaking point. Moreover, there’s evidence that predatory practices are taking root among FHA lenders. A Nov. 19 BusinessWeek cover story highlighted the movement of predatory subprime lenders into the FHA loan origination business.
Housing advocates are calling for HUD to ban certain practices and cap the total fees that originators can charge on FHA-backed loans so FHA loans don’t become the locus of the next foreclosure crisis.
“It’s absolutely critical that these FHA loans are governed by appropriate standards to ensure that they’re sustainable and to curb, rather than perpetuate, the current problem,” Gordon said.
© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC
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ADVOCATES OPPOSE GLOVER, FRANKLIN FOR HUD SECRETARY/BY MATTHEW CARDINALE,
THE ATLANTA PROGRESSIVE NEWS (December 04, 2008) News Editor
(APN) ATLANTA - Numerous advocates are scrambling to prevent President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Team from nominating either Renee Glover, Director of Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA), or Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, as the next Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Both are part of a short list including a total of five names, according to the Associated Press. The other three candidates under consideration include Nicolas Retsinas, Director of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies; Bart Harvey, former CEO of Enterprise Community Investment; and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz.
Glover received national attention for her controversial plan to demolish public housing in Atlanta around the time of the 1992 Olympics, including communities such as Techwood and East Lake Meadows.
Her mass eviction of residents, demolition of public housing, and replacement of the units with mixed-income housing, became a model for the HOPE VI program begun under the Clinton Administration, under which over 100,000 units were demolished nationwide.
Glover was reportedly considered a possible HUD pick for former Vice President Al Gore when he was the Democratic nominee in 2000.
Today, she is spearheading AHA's effort to demolish all remaining public housing in Atlanta.
Atlanta Progressive News has documented in over 60 news articles over a two year period numerous instances of fraud, fabrication, and secrecy by the Atlanta Housing Authority under Glover's leadership.
As previously reported by APN, AHA fraudulently claimed 96% of their residents would rather move than stay, even though residents were never given an option to stay and were simply asked whether they would like a voucher.
AHA fraudulently told their residents the funding for vouchers would continue in perpetuity, when in fact the funding must be approved each year by US Congress.
AHA fraudulently claimed the buildings were physically obsolete, when architectural reports show some of the buildings were structurally sound with minimal repair issues, but that they were not up to "market standards."
AHA fraudulently told the public and City Council's Community Development and Human Resources Committee that they never promised Council the opportunity to review any demolition applications sent, when that was specified in one of two resolutions by Councilwoman Felicia Moore demanding review, which incorporated promises made voluntarily by AHA.
As previously reported by APN, AHA has fabricated resident association meeting minutes, agenda, and sign-in sheets for the Resident Advisory Board and submitted these to HUD stating they were the organization's minutes, agenda, and sign-in sheets.
As previously reported by APN, AHA refused to allow the public to see the demolition applications and wanted to charge APN about $300 to review documents which HUD requires be made public for review.
AHA's Board of Commissioners essentially makes their decisions in private committee meetings. Their monthly public meetings consist of the Board voting on a consent agenda which has already been discussed and approved privately.
AHA has escorted advocate Terence Courtney out of Palmer House senior highrise, when residents invited him to their association meeting.
AHA interfered with independent researchers from Georgia State University as they interviewed 347 residents about their pre-relocation experiences.
AHA never answered the 82 questions posed by APN regarding their demolition applications.
AHA submitted demolition applications in 2007 and 2008 without showing them to residents or resident leaders, except in the case of those in Felicia Moore's district.
Mayor Shirley Franklin has supported Glover's efforts wholeheartedly.
When APN discovered that Franklin had been signing off on AHA's demolition applications without City Council knowledge in late 2007, Councilwoman Felicia Moore crafted a resolution and ordinance to demand Council input.
Franklin and Glover both dispatched teams of lawyers to argue that the City Council has no authority in the matter, despite the fact HUD invites comment from local elected officials and the City funds AHA redevelopment projects.
In the end, Moore passed two resolutions, overriding a Mayoral veto on one. Despite promises made in the second resolution, AHA never shared 4 demolition applications with CD/HR nor held the promised public hearings nor quarterly CD/HR presentations.
Franklin's and Glover's relations with City Council are important because they are a possible indication of how either of them would relate with US Congress.
"Though Dr. Glover has become nationally known for her creative approach to community redevelopment, the road to her successes is paved with a lack of transparency, lies, broken promises, racial and economic discrimination, fraudulent claims and more," Lynne Gee, of the Georgia Task Force for the Homeless, wrote in a letter to Valerie Jarrett of the Transition Team obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.
The Georgia Task Force is opposing the possible nominations of either Franklin or Glover.
"It's a little like getting Dracula to guard the blood bank," Anita Beaty, Executive Director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, wrote in an online comment on the Washington Post website.
"It's absolutely outrageous to have someone who destroys public housing and displaces thousands of people even considered as HUD Secretary. It's absolutely appalling, it's unconscionable," Beaty said.
"Now, if they had a de-housing secretary," Glover's appointment might be appropriate, Beaty said.
"All she knows how to do is privatize public resources and gentrify public housing so it's there for upper income working people," Beaty said.
"Barack... really needs to understand... In my opinion, we'll be under siege," Diane Wright, President of the Resident Advisory Board for public housing resident leaders in Atlanta, said of a possible Glover nomination.
"To get rid of public housing knowing that people need it and to just throw people away, I really don't think she would make a good Secretary of HUD," Wright said.
"People matter," Wright said. "People don't matter to them."
"With what's going on in Atlanta, you mean to tell me, nobody ever took notice?" Wright said. "Nobody took notice that they don't even have enough housing in Atlanta for residents and she's closing down all the public housing?"
"That's sad. They shut down everything to the people. People's voices are not being heard. Secretary of HUD? All right, let's go ahead and we might as well bring in Hitler. I'm more serious than a heart attack," Wright said.
"If she becomes Secretary of HUD... what's the use of even having a HUD? They are gonna have very few public housing in some states, so they're gonna give everybody Section 8 that they don't evict. Man, how more homeless people are we gonna have?" Wright said.
"I remember when Renee [Glover] was trying to get rid of Atlanta Union Mission for men," Alan Harris of the Coalition for the Homeless and Mentally Ill said.
Harris criticizes Glover for "the tearing down of the highrises that have been remodeled... [and] were well-managed, decent housing... with the AJC [Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper] backing when there's a severe shortage of housing anyway."
AJC Editorial Writer "Cynthia Tucker falls over herself discussing Renee Glover's destruction of public housing," Harris said.
"I don't know what kind of director Shirley Franklin would make, she could be a good manager. I would certainly be opposed to Renee Glover," Harris said.
"I'm shocked he [Obama] would consider Renee Glover unless he opposes public housing," Harris said.
Harris did criticize Franklin, however, for spending "$24 million a year when we're not even making a dent in ending homelessness." Franklin created a 10 year plan to end homelessness, but homelessness has risen under Franklin, Harris said.
"Nobody could be worse than Renee Glover. Nobody could do more harm," Harris said.
"I'm quite familiar with Renee's work and I think that would be a huge mistake. She's no friend of affordable housing at all," former Professor Larry Keating of Georgia Tech, who has written a book about race, class, and urban renewal in Atlanta, told APN.
"Of course we've lost 60 years worth of accumulated housing here in Atlanta. I would think that [her nomination] would be tragic for the housing movement, for affordable housing," Keating said.
"During the Olympics, people were forced out of public housing without just compensation, and without due process. There was a substantial loss of public housing," Keating said.
"It wasn't about the housing being decrepit. They had an engineer who found that they were structurally and physically completely rehabable," Keating said.
"The renewal of the development was not driven by the physical condition of the buildings, it was driven by Barney Frank's phrase... they wanted a better class of poor people."
"The participatory requirements of the HOPE VI process, the interests and rights of the residents were trampled upon," Keating said.
One DC-based national affordable housing organization has been opposing the appointment of either Franklin or Miami Mayor Diaz in its meetings with the Transition Team, a source familiar with the matter told Atlanta Progressive News.
The group would have the same concerns about Glover but did not know she was currently under consideration, the source said.
Franklin told the Atlanta Business Chronicle she was not looking to serve in an Obama Administration and predicted she would serve out her Mayoral term.
Franklin told the Chronicle she thought Glover would make a better pick, something housing advocates dispute.
http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0409.html
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