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Waters Blasts Carson’s HUD Nomination

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Waters Blasts Carson’s HUD Nomination

WASHINGTON —  Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Committee on Financial Services, issued the following statement after President-elect Trump announced he will nominate Dr. Ben Carson to serve as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD):

Congresswoman Maxine Waters

“Dr. Carson’s nomination to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is frightening. He may be a brain surgeon but he is not qualified to run HUD. Donald Trump knows this. During the Republican primary, he called him a liar, pathological and even violent. Dr. Carson himself has said he is not qualified to lead a federal agency. Now we are expected to forget these disqualifying statements by both of them and entrust Dr. Carson with overseeing HUD, which has a budget of $47 billion.

 

“Millions of Americans rely on HUD assistance to help them access safe, decent and affordable housing. And they are not all in the inner cities; they are in rural and suburban areas as well. HUD provides critical investments in these areas to spur economic development and house the most vulnerable. This is no easy task. The rural and urban Americans who benefit from HUD programs deserve a strong, qualified leader at the helm of this important agency. Dr. Carson is not this person. We know it, Donald Trump knows it, and yes, even Dr. Carson knows it.”

Ben Carson is totally unqualified to be HUD secretary

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Ben Carson is totally unqualified to be HUD secretary
Issac Bailey

By Issac Bailey

Issac Bailey has been a journalist in South Carolina for two decades and was most recently the primary columnist for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. He was a 2014 Harvard University Nieman fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @ijbailey. The views expressed are his own. (CNN)

It’s fitting that President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Ben Carson as his nominee for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. One man uniquely unqualified for the job he is about to undertake wants another one in a similar position, each with the ability to cause great harm to the most vulnerable Americans because of his over-inflated sense of self.

Carson is a brilliant, pioneering neurosurgeon who backed Trump after he gave up on his own bid to become president and rose to national political prominence by challenging President Barack Obama during the National Prayer Breakfast, instantly earning credibility from the far right. But he has no government experience and never managed anything close to the size of HUD, an agency that has a $47 billion budget and helps 5 million low-income families.

What’s more is that he seems convinced that government is the problem and largely incapable of helping the already-vulnerable without hurting them even more.

“These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse,” he wrote in an op-ed in June 2015. “There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens, but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous.”

He seemed not to fully understand the programs he was criticizing. He talked down the use of busing to integrate schools without realizing that the controversial program was found to be one of the most effective tools in closing the achievement gap between black students and white students. He ignores the incredible progress government programs have made in curbing poverty. More than half of black Americans lived in poverty in the years before the war on poverty began; that number has been cut by half. And in 2015, the Census Bureau recorded the largest annual drop in the poverty rate since 1968.

Yes, the government has done awful things in too many cases detrimental to the principles upon which the United States was founded, including slavery, the Tuskegee experiment and even housing programs that fueled segregation and pockets of blight in large cities.

But it makes little sense to hire a man who doesn’t really believe government can be a force for good to head an important government agency. His prominence in conservative circles rose during that National Prayer Breakfast when he challenged Obama and heavily criticized the Affordable Care Act, which has helped 20 million Americans attain health insurance, among many other benefits.

Carson is convinced that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is the key to success, not what he deems government handouts, even though he and his mother once benefited from government help. They relied upon food stamps and other benefits such as free glasses from school, things he considers handouts when they are given to others, a necessary evil when his family had to rely upon them.

I, too, grew up in poverty and on food stamps and know that personal perseverance and excellence only take you so far. Outside intervention — like good housing policy — is also necessary.

Carson’s spokesman, Armstrong Williams, had suggested he had lived in public housing, giving him insight into HUD’s mission. But he later said Carson hadn’t lived in such units. It doesn’t matter if he had or not. Living in a public apartment complex does not make you qualified to be in the president’s Cabinet.

What makes this pick perhaps more frightening than having Steve Bannon as a top adviser in the White House is that it affects the most vulnerable among us, those who usually don’t have a lot of political capital and often can be easily scapegoated and vilified by those hostile to programs for the poor.

It will be even easier for Carson to cut and mismanage the programs of his department and blame those who he’s been tasked with helping because he was born into poverty and overcame a bevy of obstacles. His is an inspiring story. Yet too often in recent years, he has applied it improperly to broad social challenges, using it as a cudgel against the needy, akin to NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson failing at coaching because he couldn’t understand that not everyone he tried to teach had been gifted with his unique set of God-given talents.

The issues Carson will be tasked with solving or managing are exceedingly complex and pose challenges even for those fully qualified and committed. Imagine if Trump had tried to make him Treasury secretary, placing him in charge of programs directly affecting the richest rather than the most vulnerable among us. There would be major pushback, and the nomination would be scuttled. If we really believe the poor are as deserving as the rich to be represented well in Washington, the same thing should happen with this potential appointment.

Flateau Elected CB3 Chair as Wright Heads To Albany

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Flateau Elected CB3 Chair as Wright Heads To Albany

Community Board 3 last night elected Richard Flateau as their new chair replacing Tremaine Wright, who was recently elected to the State Assembly and will take office next month.

Richard Flateau

Flateau is the owner of Flateau Realty Corp., which has been operating since 2007 and provides commercial and residential real estate options in the Bed-Stuy and central Brooklyn areas. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics and then attended New York University’s Stern School of Business where he earned a Master’s in Business Administration.

Flateau is a native of Bed-Suy and most recently served as the economic development chair for the board.

“I hope to serve the board and honor the trust they put in me,” said Flateau, who was hesitant to state any specific agenda going into the new year. “I probably will just take a little bit of time to watch and observe what is going on in the different committees. I don’t want to make any grand announcement at this point in terms of major changes community wise.”

Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright

Wright, who is replacing retiring Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, thanked the community board for the opportunity to serve as its’ chair.

“I know they [CB3] will continue to do good work and I am excited to go forward and work for them in Albany,” she said.

The board elections were reserved for the end of the night in which the 37 present members each voted for their candidate. The two candidates running for chair were Flateau and Kimberly Hill. After taking some time to tally the votes, Flateau was elected as the new chair starting in 2017.

Other positions voted upon last night were also 1st Vice Chairperson, 2nd Vice Chairperson, Treasurer, Executive Secretary which were won by and Oma Holloway, Nelson Stop, Cynthia  Doris Pinn, Stacey Ruffin, respectively.

Other items on the agenda at the meeting were the application by Riverside Developers USA Inc., in regards to the rezoning of property at Flushing Ave and Franklin Avenue from a manufacturing to a residential property.

The application was denied by the board by a tally of 17 Nays, 18 Yes and 2 Abstentions. The controversial housing project became one of the stronger items on the agenda for the night with many community leaders and members feeling that the housing project will exclude the neighborhood it is trying to serve with it’s affordable housing requirements.

“Regarding our votes tonight, I think it’s a reflection of our community. Every community board voted against the MIH plan [Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Plan] when it was first proposed and I think that the discomfort and discontent amongst our community members as well as our board members that came under those guidelines was reflected in the vote today,” said Wright.

The MIH plan, according to the New York City Council, is a tool used by the Department of City Planning and Housing Preservation and Development that requires developers to include affordable housing in areas that are rezoned to allow for more housing development. The goal of this plan is to create more affordable housing in new housing development so that local community members aren’t being displaced or out-priced by incoming residents.

 

Community Board 3 Holds Last Monthly Meeting of The Year

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Community Board 3, which serves the Bedford-Stuyvesant community, met for the final monthly meeting at Restoration Plaza last night, Monday, December 5th. Most recently, the chair of the board, Tremaine Wright, was elected to the New York State Assembly for the 56th District of Brooklyn in September. Wright has served on the board for over a decade and was elected chairperson back in 2013.

Agenda Items

Items on the agenda for the night included a letter of support for the Riverside Developers USA, Inc., in regards to an application for an amendment of the Zoning Map to change a M1-2 District to an R7A District for property on Flushing Avenue and Franklin Avenue. This is not the first time Riverside has presented their project to the board, but the fifth time as they work their way through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which will eventually go on to the Brooklyn Borough President that will need approval by the City Planning Commission and the City Council. The presentation of the most up-to-date site renderings, including changes made by suggestion of the board, were made by Richard Lobel, the lawyer representing Riverside and project architect Nick Labears.

The sites are currently zoned for manufacturing (Flushing Ave.) and commercial/residential (Franklin Ave) to mixed use.

The first site at Flushing Ave. between Kent and Franklin will be a 8-story building with commercial units on the bottom floor and parking off-site. The building will have roughly 168 units with around 50 of the units going to affordable housing. While the Franklin Avenue property will have around 128 units, 40 of them will be going to affordable housing.

The Flushing Avenue site is currently home to the Rose Castle Ballroom, which is a frequent favorite of the Jewish communities in the neighborhood. The new development would force them out and could displace them.

Riverside Developers are going to take advantage of the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) requirement which will allow the developers to get additional floor area in exchange for dedicated affordable housing specifically set out for low-income households.

The requirements for the affordable housing units worried community and board members who felt that the conditions to meet the affordable housing requirements are a biased and inaccurate representation of the household incomes for the area surrounding the proposed residential sites. For a studio unit with an AMI at 80% (Adjusted Median Income) is $48,000, rent would be $1,200 for a household of 3 (2 adults, 1 child); at 80% AMI would be $62,000 with rent for a 2-bedroom at $1,500.

The motion was eventually denied by a vote of 18 in favor, 17 not in favor and 2 abstentions, which means the application was given a negative recommendation by the board.

The Riverside Developers will now have to go back and make revisions to their housing project plan and present it again to the community board in a public hearing. The board will have to adopt their plan in order for them to move onto the next step in the ULURP process which is having a review by the Borough President and the Community Board.

There is no limit to the amount of times that you can present to the Community Board but the ULURP process takes an average of a year to complete once all required community and elected offices have approved the application.

Also on the agenda was a letter of support for an Alcohol Beverage Control License by new business Cafe Erzulie, which will be located on Broadway between Stockton and Lewis Avenue. The proposed restaurant and bar will be based on the flavors and culture of Haiti and will be located on the back half of the already-existing business Flowers by Leslie. The two businesses will share a space with customers entering through the flower shop and then passing through to the cafe. The eatery will feature a reasonably priced menu with breakfast and lunch options and cocktails, beer and wine for late night. Most of the menu options were $10 or less and will be open during the week as early as 7am and close at 1am and weekends will be open until 2am.

The flower shop eatery combination will be similar to the Sycamore Bar and Flower Shop in Ditmas Park, which has been successfully operating both businesses for the past couple of years.

The motion was eventually passed with 29 in favor, 2 against and 1 abstention.

Flateau Elected New Chair

After almost three hours, the Community Board was finally able to vote on the new chair to replace Wright. The two candidates up for the position were Richard Flateau, founder and broker at Flateau Realty as well as economic development chair, and Kimberly Hill, current executive secretary.

Newly elected Flateau didn’t have a lot to say about his new position or on his future agenda yet but he did mention that “he hoped to serve and honor the trust the board put in him” and that for now he is “just going to watch and observe what is going on in different committees” before he pushes for any major changes in the community.

Other positions that were also up for election included 1st Vice Chairperson, 2nd Vice Chairperson, Treasurer and Executive Secretary which were won by Oma Holloway, Nelson M. Stoute, Cynthia Doris Pinn and Stacey Ruffin, respectively.

The Lesson from Standing Rock: Organizing and Resistance Can Win

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The Lesson from Standing Rock: Organizing and Resistance Can Win

Indigenous water protectors are showing us how to fight back—and how to live again.

By Naomi Klein at The Nation

Indigenous water protectors and their allies celebrate that the Army Corps
of Engineers has denied an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline on
December 4, 2016. (Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

“I’ve never been so happy doing dishes,” Ivy Longie says, and then she starts laughing. Then crying. And then there is hugging. Then more hugging.

Less than two hours earlier, news came that the Army Corps of Engineers had turned down the permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built under the Missouri River. The company will have to find an alternate route and undergo a lengthy environmental assessment.

Ever since, the network of camps now housing thousands of water protectors has been in the throes of (cautious) celebration and giving thanks, from cheers to processions to round dances. Here, at the family home of Standing Rock Tribal Councilman Cody Two Bears, friends and family members who have been at the center of the struggle are starting to gather for a more private celebration.

Which is why the dishes must be done. And the soup must be cooked. And the Facetime calls must be made to stalwart supporters, from Gasland filmmaker Josh Fox to environmental icon Erin Brockovich. And the Facebook live videos must, of course, be made. Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard—here as part of a delegation of thousands of anti-pipeline veterans—is on her way over. (“Exhilarated,” is how she says she feels when she arrives.) CNN must, of course, be watched, which to the amazement of everyone here gives full credit to the water protectors (while calling them “protesters”).

Read more at The Nation

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