Philadelphia Mayoral Race

The Philadelphia Mayoral Race is in full effect. The mayoral candidates campaigns are reaching a high point with this upcoming May elections. One of the candidates in the upcoming election is Nelson Diaz. Nelson Diaz has a lot of experience dealing with public housing. In the early 1990s Diaz was appointed general counsel for HUD. When crime and drug rates in public housing communities where at an all time high Diaz laid the groundwork for reform for how public housing communities were built and financed. Diaz revolutionized public housing at a time when it looked like it would cease to exist. Diaz proposed that public housing communities could be managed by private developers. This idea provided public housing communities with mixed income rather than only low income. Diaz's idea provided this because private developers could make public housing units and regular market price houses in one community. This made the public housing system more of an entrepreneur system and not so much a complete government funded program. This new reform lead to the demolition to many high rise projects which were highly ineffective in providing adequate housing to residents. These high rise projects were also the most vulnerable to high crime and drug rates.









http://planphilly.com/articles/2015/03/03/at-hud-diaz-opinion-marked-shift-in-public-housing-development  

Harsh Reality

Redlining is the practice of denying or charging more for services such as banking or insurance. Usually redlining targeted minority groups specifically blacks. Redlining began when the National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Association (FHA). Redlining policies where legal at the time and the maps were used by investors to determine which areas to invest in. Blacks could not secure mortgage loans at the time and bankers would not invest in black neighborhoods. These factors led to a large increase in racial residential segregation and inner city decay. White people would leave these areas in a process known as white flight.This redlining crippled the housing market and lowered property values in some areas. This led to an increase in landlord abandonment which left many buildings unoccupied. These abandoned buildings gave safe haven to drug dealing and other illegal activity which caused social problems and a greater decline in investment. Since the areas had no investors they couldn't get redevelopment or updating which further contributed to the decay of these areas. With these areas getting worse the wealth gap continued to widen. There are still many types of redlining that still go on today. Small businesses in blacks communities have difficulty getting loans even after meeting all the necessary criteria. Many redlining policies have been outlawed despite this fact. Investors are forced to use criteria that is less racially biased in nature.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Redlining.html
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1050.html

Housing Choice Vouchers Program

The Housing Choice Vouchers Program is a federally funded program for public housing. The program is in place to provide a good standard of living to low income families, the elderly, and people with disabilities. This program provides a housing subsidy paid for by the federal government for these families to find a private house. In this program residents are not restricted to the public housing communities provided by their Public Housing Authority. If residents find an owner willing to accept the voucher than they can live in any apartment or house of their choice. This program helps these low income families live in a better community or a community with more wealth. HUD has reported, however, that this program is being underfunded. HUD has cited that funding problems for this program make it difficult for the program to be implemented at a high performing and efficient manner. HUD has requested a budget increase for the 2016 fiscal year in order to correctly implement this program. This would be a $490 million increase from the 2015 fiscal year. The main financial problem with this program is covering administrative costs.