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Last week on December 21^st, the longest night of the year, people in over 150 cities across the country gathered to observe National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. The event remembers those who have died without a secure place to live and to recommit to the urgent task of ending the conditions that create homelessness. Stop Homelessness and Reduce Poverty (S.H.A.R.P.), a coalition of service providers and advocates in Baltimore City working to end the injustice of poverty and homelessness, organized the memorial service in Baltimore. During the Memorial Service the names of all 111 people who died homeless in Baltimore this year were read aloud in remembrance. The Baltimore Brew provides video coverage of the event here and the Baltimore Sun features reflections from Memorial attendees here.

The homeless population in the City is trending upward. Since 2005 the homeless population has jumped from 2,943 to 4,088 in 2011 according to the Baltimore City Homelessness Point in Time Census Report. People who are homeless face many challenges including, but not limited to low incomes and barriers to securing employment or disability assistance, affordable housing, and healthcare to manage both acute and chronic conditions.

It is necessary to assist in securing housing as well as supportive services as individuals and families transition out of homelessness. Baltimore’s ten-year plan to end homelessness, The Journey Home, launched in 2008 aims to take on the complexities of getting people off the streets and into permanent housing by addressing the root causes: affordable housing, comprehensive health care, sufficient incomes, and preventive and emergency services. The annual outcome reports issued by Baltimore City demonstrate progress in delivering services to the homeless even as financial resources were scaled back in light of tough economic times.

It will be an uphill battle to reach the program’s goal to end homelessness by 2018, but with the help of businesses, not-for-profits, faith-based organizations and community members we can certainly make a difference. What you will you do this year to help address homelessness?

 Baltimore,MD, Nov. 3, 2011 –  St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Gerard J. Joab as Executive Director, succeeding Vincent P. Quayle, the organization’s founder and long time director.  Joab will assume his duties December 5, 2011.

 ABaltimorenative, Joab served as Executive Director ofNewarkand Jersey City (NJ) Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) for the past seventeen years.  While there, he led that organization’s growth into the area’s leading facilitator and provider of community development and affordable housing financing services.  Previously he served as Executive Director for the Donald Jackson Neighborhood Corporation inNewarkand developed their first 87 units of affordable housing for low-income families. 

 Jane A. Wilson, St. Ambrose Board of Directors Chair said, “We couldn’t be more delighted to have Gerard Joab heading the organization as we move into new territory as only St. Ambrose’s second Executive Director in over 40 years.  Gerard’s broad experience in community development and affordable housing in challenging environments will be invaluable in helping us make a successful transition to new leadership and continue to build St. Ambrose’s record of exceptional service to low income residents of  Baltimore.”

St. Ambrose Housing is Baltimore’s oldest nonprofit housing provider and has served more than 100,000 residents since its founding in 1968.  St. Ambrose offers an innovative and evolving set of services and programs from its offices on the north side ofBaltimore, but serves individuals and families from throughout the metropolitan area. These services range from traditional nonprofit services like rental services, housing development and homeownership counseling to the urgently needed foreclosure prevention program and its innovative homesharing program.

Naturally, we at St. Ambrose have wondered how the Occupy movement relates to the ongoing housing crisis. Contrary to what some have claimed, the housing crisis—which commenced with the rapid depletion of home values, leading to the evaporation of assets tied to these values—is likely the central cause of the financial crisis. While the crisis has accelerated unemployment and stricken a blow to the credit markets, keeping families in their homes should likewise remain a vital concern.

In a rather shocking article (link pasted below) that first appeared in the Baltimore Brew last week, writers Mark Reutter and Fern Shen shed light on a related issue: homelessness. Moreover, it appears that some of the article’s interviewees have taken refuge at Occupy campsites, a sign that this issue, perhaps along with that of housing generally, may be on the movement’s radar.

The article, titled “Homeless advocates vow to sue city over failure to provide housing for women,” discusses the new Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Resource Center, located at 620 Fallsway. According to the article, administrators of the center, as a matter of policy, have routinely been turning away homeless women while accepting their male counterparts, for whom they have more designated beds. These women have been forced to sleep in the Center’s parking lot, and on one occasion, a group of women were given blankets and asked to sleep under a bridge on a rainy day. The writers describe:

“’I saw a pregnant girl lay right here on the concrete with her boyfriend,’ said a middle-aged woman. Just a few days ago, a homeless man added, eight women turned away from the shelter were given blankets and huddled for the night under the Jones Fall Expressway. ‘It could be raining and you’re still sitting out there,’ he said.”

Naturally, the situation has attracted attention from the state’s ACLU, who have threatened to sue on constitutional grounds, claiming that the shelter violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The ACLU has invoked Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s name, asking the mayor to take action and claiming that as a lawyer, she should be aware of the city’s exposure to liability because of the situation.

Amidst this crisis of its own, the authors offer one ray of hope: at least one of the women interviewed has found shelter at the Occupy Baltimore campsite at McKeldin Square. This woman, named Bernadette, told the Brew: “You get respect there and you get a good meal. And I’m much safer than being outside.”
While this woman’s reaction is in no way an accurate reflection of the broader values internalized by Occupy Baltimore, or the movement nationally, it prompts us to wonder the extent to which the protesters think about housing and homelessness, and what effect the movement will have on these issues.

Indeed, as far as the housing crisis, the article’s subject, Bernadette, provides a pithy observation, “There are so many vacant houses in Baltimore and so many homeless people. This is what I don’t understand: why can’t we fix these houses for people that need them?”

http://www.baltimorebrew.com/2011/10/26/homeless-advocates-vow-to-sue-city-over-failure-to-provide-housing-for-women/

In the mean time, we encourage readers to take a look at the website of Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N., an advocacy organization whose stated purpose is pasted below.  The website of A.C.T.I.O.N.–an acronym for A Call to Invest In Our Neighborhoods–contains several of excellent resources and news updates.

Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N. (A Call To Invest in Our Neighborhoods) is a grassroots campaign led by a broad, cross-industry coalition of over 290 national, state, and local organizations.

Through Housing Credit advocacy and education, the A.C.T.I.O.N. campaign focuses on ensuring that low-income working  families  throughout the nation have access to decent, safe, affordable rental housing.

As the 112^th Congress considers tax reform and deficit reduction solutions, the campaign has reconvened to revise its strategy in light of the changed political and fiscal environment.  Moving forward, A.C.T.I.O.N. will focus on both protecting and preserving the Housing Credit in whatever deficit reduction or tax reform plan Congress considers, and enacting national consensus proposals to sustain the program’s  effectiveness and efficiency in solving the nation’s affordable rental housing challenges.

American International Group’s lawsuit against Bank of America was widely reported yesterday, as news outlets revealed that the financial firm initiated the suit in an effort to recover more than ten billion dollars in losses resulting from asset-backed securities they purchased from the bank.  According to the New York Times’ financial reporters Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, AIG “claims that Bank of America and its Merrill Lynch and Countrywide financial units misrepresented the quality of the mortgages placed in securities and sold to investors,” say inside sources.

As many of you many now know, BoA has faced intense scrutiny over the last several weeks.  A few weeks back, we covered the controversy clouding the bad loan settlement the bank negotiated with investors, in which BoA managed to secure a tremendously favorable outcome.  Just a few days ago, Morgenson penned a follow up piece documenting New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s decision to challenge the settlement.  Apparently, Schneiderman takes issue with a number of the settlement’s terms, particularly those that preclude private litigants who may have suffered from the bank’s troubled loans from making a further claim.

The settlement has prompted other investors, like AIG, to join in on the litigation against the bank.  As Morgenson and Story’s article points out, BoA has encountered 25 suits related to the financial crisis thus far, many more than any other American bank.  Moreover, the journalists correctly tie this ongoing litigation into a broader theme: the federal government’s inability to successfully prosecute members of the banking industry.

Citing legal scholars and the insiders at the Justice Department, the writers imply that the lack of government intervention may be the result of the higher standard of proof necessary to secure a criminal conviction.  This notion has been buttressed by the fact that federal prosecutors were unable to deliver a conviction against Washington Mutual and Countrywide, two banks that have been involved in Justice Department investigations. These failures, unfortunately, create a situation in which investors must regulate the banks through litigation, which is extraordinarily costly and inefficient for all parties involved.

Whether the suit has any merit is a question in and of itelf—BoA rebuts AIG’s claims by arguing that the securities at issue appeared safe to both parties, and that their decline was the result of an unexpected depression in the housing market.  BoA further contends that “AIG is the very definition of an informed, seasoned investor,” and that they fully assumed the risk in purchasing the bank’s potentially high yield securities.

As we have stated several times, the underlying theme that constitently presents itself throughout the media analysis of BoA’s pre-courtroom saga is the lack of regulation in the securities industry.  While it is unclear as to which industry player has the upper hand here, all bear some fault—BoA for marketing the securities in the first place, AIG for creating a market for them, the ratings agencies for ensuring their legitimacy, and perhaps most of all, the government for failing to regulate.  Had these toxic assets not hit the market in the first place, the transaction and subsequent dispute would never had occurred and the economy may be much better off.  Along with it, our clients, many of whom had mortgages resold to Wall Street banks before the crisis, would have been better off, too.

The network apparently asked mayoral candidates to weigh in on the issue.  From what we can tell, they received at least one response, from Frank Conaway, Sr., pasted below:

We need to conduct triage on our inventory of vacant and blighted properties. Properties that are in viable locations should be fixed if they are city owned, or acquired through condemnation if they are privately owned and repaired for occupancy. In areas where the neighborhoods are on the borderline between viability and failure, we should have a broader strategy to acquire multiple properties and rehab them in groups. We need to acknowledge that there are some houses that are not suitable for rehab. These properties should be razed. No one in Baltimore has wanted to deal with this reality, but the truth is that some areas are beyond repair and need to be redone from the ground up.

Dear Editor:

We read regularly of your columnists’ and letter writers’ accusation that the President’s stimulus program for creating and sustaining jobs is a failure. The St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center has received stimulus money for the past two years to renovate 90 vacant FHA and other foreclosures in good working- and middle-class neighborhoods in Baltimore to preserve them for the next generation of homeowners.  St. Ambrose has spent the money hiring Baltimore lead-paint removers, roofers, electricians, plumbers, painters, dry-wall installers, furnaces, windows and doors, lighting fixtures, toilets, sinks, kitchen and bathroom cabinets , indoor and outdoor handles and locks and their installers, hard-wood floor sanders, masonry repairmen and landscapers.  

I am sure these Baltimore suppliers, hardware stores, contractors and their families thank God for the President’s stimulus program. America’s unemployment problem is certainly real but would be much worse were it not for the stimulus program.

Sincerely,

Vincent P. Quayle