ChuckE Law - Community Lawyering in Miami

I worked at an early voting polling place in Fort Lauderdale this weekend. I saw the best and the worst of American politics. The worst - the Republican Florida legislature had limited early voting to a total of eight hours during the entire weekend. Broward County decided to keep their polls open for five hours on Saturday and three on Sunday. Since the Legislature also limited the weekdays to 10 o’clock to 6 o’clock, these weekend sessions are the only non-working days for many working people. The lines were enormous. Even though the polling place closed at three o’clock on Saturday, it wasn’t until almost five o’clock that the last voter voted. On Sunday, the voting continued for almost three hours after the line closed. I understand the lines at early voting places in African American neighborhoods were voting for more than four hours after closing. The hold up was not the voting itself. It was the laborious process the state legislature set up to verify voting status,...

Coalition to Chicago Housing Authority: Let people live in public housing near Bucktown by Matt Field Oct 23, 2008 Chicago news story reports that while foreclosures are mounting and $750 billion goes to Wall Street, good public housing sits empty. Residents of the Lathrop Homes, a North Side public housing development, say the Chicago Housing Authority has stalled too long and that it’s time to fill empty units with people who need housing. A coalition of residents and community groups said that half of the 600 vacancies at the 925-unit development should be filled. They say the housing crisis has put many families in danger of losing their homes and that those families could be good, rent-paying tenants of Lathrop. “This is a terrible waste of housing,” said John McDermott of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, an organizer of the rally. “Six hundred units mothballed and a plan that they will continue being mothballed.” Why is it empty? Because the Housing Authority claim...

On this Thursday, October 16, 2008 the City Commission will consider the Miami WordCenter Development Agreement. If anyone wonders whether the bursting of the real estate bubble has caused second thoughts among the City of Miami leadership, they need only look at this Development Agreement. The full development agreement is available on the City of Miami Legistar website. The fourteen page agreement covers a huge parcel in downtown Miami and guarantees that the City will not interfere with the zoning of the property, will facilitate all planning permits, and even expand the Development of Regional Impact which currently covers the area. Prohibition on Downzoning. For the duration of this Agreement, the City may adopt new or change land development regulations that purport to apply to the Properties;however, no such new regulations shall be enforceable against the Properties if a DeveloperParty determines in its sole discretion that the new regulation limits or restricts d...

In a post on October 3, 2008 I described the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) rejection of the City of Miami Comprehensive Plan Amendments implementing the Evaluation and Appraisal Report. What does this mean for affordable housing advocates? Quite a lot. First, a little history. The City conducted an Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR) of its Comprehensive Plan in 2005. Several organizations objected to that evaluation because, while the City admitted it was losing affordable housing faster than it was building it, the EAR did virtually nothing to respond to that. Advocates argued that the City plan focused the city housing programs on upper income families and virtually ignored the needs of the lower income families. The City responded that those objections would be dealt with not in the EAR but in the comprehensive plan amendments to follow. After the EAR was approved by the Department of Community Affairs in 2006, the City passed comprehensive plan amendme...

The New York Times ( Full NY Times story) reported today that the Chicago sheriff refused to continue to evict residents in foreclosed properties. Law enforcement officers in Chicago will no longer evict residents from foreclosed properties, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County announced Wednesday. In Miami, hundreds of tenants are being put out when their landlords, who bought the property within the last couple of years, were caught in the bubble burst before they could flip it. Many of the landlords, often shell corporations continue to collect rent while they effectively abandon the property and the tenants. Sheriff Dart said he took the measure because an increasing number of the residents being evicted were renters who might have been dutifully paying their rent, and might have had no knowledge that the owner was behind on the mortgage. . .Sheriff Dart said the families in foreclosed properties were often not notified that they would have to leave, and were not given this gra...

This is a graph of the national debt adjusted for inflation - thanks to U.S. National Debt Clock FAQ by Ed Hall. I downloaded it this morning after listening to a radio show which traced the country's debt orgy back to Reagan. While I am happy to believe that Reagan started it all, I thought I ought to check it out. Sure enough, adjusted for inflation our national debt remained fairly constant, even through the Johnson administration and the Vietnam war. The spiral upwards begin shortly after 1980 and continues unabated until the Clinton administration when it abates and retreats. It then skyrockets over the last eight years. The point of the radio show was that so much of our recent growth was fueled simply by debt, national debt, corporate debt and personal debt. Keeping the interest rate almost at zero fueled the debt accumulation even further - particularly contributing to the real estate price spike. Now that we have reached some debt crisis the entire house of cards collapse...

Miami Today - - Week of September 25, 2008 Miami land-use changes on hold through 2008 By Yudislaidy Fernandez Because the state has "significant concerns" about how Miami has altered its land-use plan, all land-use changes in the city are on hold pending a state review. At least a dozen are waiting. Early 2009 is the soonest the city could consider any of them, city officials say, and zoning changes that require altering land use are also halted. The city commission cannot approve any now, City Manager Pete Hernandez said. Some on today's (9/25) agenda are to be deferred. The Florida Department of Community Affairs objected to parts of the city's proposed amendment to its comprehensive plan, said Ed George, department spokesman, referring to changes the city presented to the state planning agency. The department returned the plan to the city in July, giving it until November to make required changes. Meanwhile, the city can't change land use or accompanying zo...

For years the National Low Income Housing Coalition and others have struggled to get Congress to pass a National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, similar to the Florida Housing Trust Fund, with a dedicated source of revenue. Finally this year they were successful. In fact, so successful that several Congressional leaders were considering providing some of the Bailout bill funding to the Trust Fund as part of the package of reforms to help "Main Street" instead of Wall Street. Unfortunately the right wing attack machine is attempting to use this effort as a smear against ACORN as well as an illegitmate attack against the Trust Fund itself. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued an "alert" which has been picked by right wing bloggers claiming that the Trust Fund will be used to fund ACORN and that ACORN is a dishonest, fraudulent organization. Both of these claims are easily verifiable lies but the smear continues. In fact the Trust fund cannot be used by AC...