affordable housing

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz is trying to cut a last minute deal that could bring tens of millions of dollars in new funding to the islands for Native Hawaiian housing. WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to wrap up work for the year, Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz is looking to cut an ambitious deal that could pump tens of millions of dollars of new money into Native Hawaiian housing for at least the next decade.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when coal was still king, the UNC power plant in Chapel Hill generated millions of tons of ash, the byproduct of burning the fuel for energy. Some of that ash had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was 828 Martin Luther King Blvd. on the north side of town. In 1980, the town unknowingly built its police headquarters on that property. But not until 2013 did town officials realize that ash was present.

WASHINGTON — Jon Zang walks his dog several times a day in his mobile home community in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania. It’s quiet, as most of his neighbors are at work. But he often wonders how many more walks he and his bulldog mix, Ladybug, will have down the streets of the place he’s called home for 21 years. “We’re literally sitting on a time bomb that we’re sure is going to go off at some point, but we don’t know when,” Zang said.

“My boss told me if I didn’t come in, I’d get fired.” So spoke a rather grumpy but nonetheless sight-for-sore-eyes Exxon attendant near Manassas, Virginia last Monday night around 10:00 pm as he mercifully allowed my wife Noelle and I to fill our gas tank and use the restrooms. The circumstances of our visit – we had recently taken leave from the excruciating crawl of a snowbound Interstate 95 a couple miles east – made both services essential.

Additional federal funds are helping, but locals fear being swamped as evictions multiply A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month struck down a federal moratorium on evictions, threatening to displace thousands of North Carolina’s K-12 students whose families can no longer pay their rents.

State and national housing experts say the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout underscore the need for a stronger housing safety net. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently released its annual report examining the significant gap between wages and the cost of rental housing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene in new attack on Fauci demands his salary be stripped WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia on Tuesday led a group of House Republicans calling for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, formalizing their intense criticism of his public statements and actions throughout the coronavirus pandemic into legislation.

The red Honda parked on Debee Anderson's lawn saved her and her daughter's life when they fled Hurricane Florence in September 2018. Anderson was picking up medication for her daughter and about to return to her Spring Lake home when a state trooper told her she couldn't, because of river flooding.

A morning in evictions court: 123 cases, residents of 31 households on the verge of homelessness On the brisk Monday morning of March 29, Magistrate William Glascoff in the Forsyth County small claims court handed down one eviction judgment after another. Residents of 31 households lost their homes.

A year ago, hundreds of families were evacuated from a Durham public housing community just as the pandemic hit. The crisis caused some lasting impacts. Freezing rain was coming down, and firefighters were going door to door telling residents of McDougald Terrace that they needed to pack some belongings and go to the office immediately. Carbon monoxide was leaking into the public housing complex in Durham, and they needed to get out.

In HB 1105, General Assembly leadership acknowledges that North Carolina families and communities face enormous hardships, but makes only token gestures to help people survive the COVID-19 pandemic North Carolina can and should allocate the remaining federal COVID-19 relief funds to meet the pre-existing needs that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.