NYT: U.S. Plans New, Deep Cuts in Housing Aid

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/nyregion/08housing.html

April 8, 2005

U.S. Plans New, Deep Cuts in Housing Aid

By DAVID W. CHEN

The New York City Housing Authority could lose up to $166 million, or almost a quarter of its annual federal subsidy for operating costs, under a new cost-cutting proposal by the Bush administration that could force dozens of housing agencies nationwide to fire maintenance workers, reduce services or close buildings.

If the changes sought by the administration take effect, they will result in one of the biggest cuts since Washington first began subsidizing housing: as much as $480 million, or 14 percent, of the $3.4 billion federal budget for day-to-day operations, including labor, maintenance, insurance and utilities, at the nation's 3,100 housing authorities. Housing authorities in New York State would be among the hardest hit, under a new formula that works against older urban areas.

"I've never seen anything this devastating occur in public housing," said Stephanie W. Cowart, executive director of the Niagara Falls Housing Authority, which would lose nearly half of its $3.6 million subsidy, according to an analysis of spending data by two housing authority trade groups.

The proposed changes, several officials of housing authorities said, represented a turnabout from an agreement they believed they had made with the Housing and Urban Development Department last June. The administration has for several years advocated a new formula that would redistribute billions of housing dollars toward rural and southern areas and away from older urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Officials in those urban areas had negotiated a compromise they believed would minimize the cuts to their programs.

But last month, while Congress was in recess, the housing department began circulating a new proposal on Capitol Hill for far deeper cuts that bore little resemblance to that agreement, according to housing advocates and Congressional aides.

-snip-

You have GOTTA LOVE that 'compassionate conservatism' .....

What greedy and heartless fucks ....

"The administration has for several years advocated a new formula that would redistribute billions of housing dollars toward rural and southern areas and away from older urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest."

I wonder what punishments will come up next.

Bush is well on his way to turning this country into a third world nation. He claims to be a Christian. What did Jesus instruct as to how we are to treat the least amongst us.

His legacy will be how he bankrupted a nation, did away with safeguards for the poor, did away with the middle class, and made the wealthy powerful and prosperous beyond what they could imagine.

Anyone else think this is to shore up their 2006 strategy in the South?

Fuck these bastards. Every, every little thing that they do is to screw the poor and the middle class.

They hate us and everything America stands for since the 1940's (RFK era). Today, the religous-freaks were talking about a New Constitution, while bases their bigotry of our entire country on the original constitution and our poor founding fathers.

They make me sick! I dare any of them to come up to me and spin they're crap my way. Wicked they are.

public housing if prisons are private.

The social impact of this will be terrible.

It is all in the plan. Reward the gun industry while punishing the poorest Americans.

When joining the military is the ONLY job option out of abject poverty, we can declare "Mission Accomplished."

This is so wrong. I sure hope the rest of the world pays attention to what is happening in the USA. It's apparent that we, as a nation, have forgotten the lessons of the 1930s.

it may be life under a bridge somewhere, but hey...

...in front of its building in DC because it nested there.

When do Bush's draconian cuts go into effect? Homelessness, crime and hunger are going to skyrocket like nothing we've seen in our lifetimes.

It so aptly describes the bushites attitude towards those less fortunate than they.

and neo-cons have not done one constructive thing about helping this country's citizens, unless they are already wealthy and powerful. For a man who claims, as he does at every possible opportunity, that he is a Christian this is one of most hypocritical things I can think of.

We listen to them, beating their chests, proclaiming their own piety, these sanctimonious phonies, and they do none of the things the Jesus told his followers to do. They have created poverty, ignorance, and immense suffering, not just to people from Iraq or Afghanistan, but to our own people.

I can only imagine the grinding down of the human spirit resulting from lost jobs, aid programs being cut, no homes, no food, no hope. The homeless are not all mentally disturbed, although I would imagine that after trying to survive in this country under "compassionate conservatives", some of them slip into different forms of illnesses.

Children are homeless, elderly people, sick people, a whole cross section of the middle and poor class Americans who have had even the little bit they managed to scrape by on is snatched away and stuffed into the pockets of men who are sitting on enormous piles of money.

I don't believe in wishing harm to others, but I do pray that each of them is given the reward they deserve, according to how they have treated others. I am not able to mete out their rewards, or punishments, but I do pray that if there is a supreme Deity, they are repaid with what they have done to others.