July 2008

  • Employment as Crime Prevention

    With the hottest, often most violent, month of summer still to come, Chicago has logged record numbers of killings of public school students this year, with at least 30 teens gunned down or otherwise murdered since last fall. This mirrors…

  • The Mess In Texas (Houston: We Have a Recycling Problem)

    The New York Times reports that of the nation’s 30 largest cities, Houston, the fourth largest city behind New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, comes in dead last in recycling, turning over a shameful 2.6 percent of its total…

  • Section 8 Is Only One Part of Addressing the Housing Crisis

    Editor’s Note: The following is a response to a comment posted by Rooflines blogger Nandinee Kutty that points to “serious weaknesses” in Section 8 housing, as well as its “failure to serve as a reliable safety net for families in…

  • A Messy Food Fight

    Everyone’s a little tense about groceries lately—eggs up to an average of $2.18 a dozen from $1.45 in 2006, whole milk around $3.87 a gallon, up from $3.20 two years ago. But here in Los Angeles we’ve had our food…

  • Core and Periphery: “Trading Places”?

    In a cover story for the latest issue of The New Republic, Governing Magazine editor Alan Ehrenhalt proclaims that the American city has reinvented itself by becoming the suburbs. Ehrenhalt isn’t talking about the proliferation of strip mall CVS Pharmacy…

  • Buffaloonly Problems

    I was a little premature in celebrating New York’s modest land bank bill, it seems, as it has not yet been signed by the governor. Some sources say he is concerned about the liability to the state of taking ownership…

  • Abolishing HUD, Simplistic Solution to Complex Problems

    A call to eliminate HUD will easily attract many right-wing politicos, and apparently others as well—and it is appealing. That said, while all of us can point to various examples of incompetence, ineffeciency, and corruption at HUD, if the agency…

  • Abolish HUD?

    When faced with a serious and persistent problem, it is often tempting to propose dramatic ideas, like blowing up existing programs and starting from scratch. Occasionally that might be useful, but more often it is simply overzealousness. It is more…

  • Fan & Fred Bill: The Catalyst For a Better Housing Market?

    The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008: approved by the Senate on Saturday should appropriately be called the “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Rescue Bill” because that is what the bill focuses on. It allows the Treasury…

  • Can’t Look Past the Rescue Short Fall

    As Look Past the Bailout Blather notes, there are aspects of American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 that are welcomed. Especially, key is the White House backing off their threatened veto in opposition to the $4 billion…