News Roundup

  • New Federal Rules Quicken Disbursement of Rental Assistant
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    Last Friday, the US Department of the Treasury released rules to aid localities with the distribution of the $46.5 billion in emergency rental relief. The rules simplify the application process, expand legal aid to tenants, and require programs to demonstrate the most vulnerable tenants are receiving the aid. The Biden administration hopes the new rules will help localities that have experienced obstacles and have been slow to act. The issuance comes two days after a federal judge in the District of Columbia struck down the nationwide eviction moratorium.  

  • Evanston Will Offer Reparations through Housing
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    Evanston, Illinois, wants to address its legacy of racist housing policies by providing 16 housing grants worth $25,000 to eligible Black residents for down payments, repairs, or existing mortgages. The city intends for the grants to be a form of reparations and hopes they will increase Black homeownership rates, property values, and restore its Black population. But some Black residents are skeptical. “The bank continues to be the largest beneficiary and perpetrator of housing discrimination. It really lays under the guise of a narrative that poor and/or African American people don’t know how to manage their money. Therefore, when the government gives them money, there are lots of parameters on how they can use it,” said alderwoman Cicely Fleming. 

  • Las Vegas Initiative Provides Alternative to Policing Homelessness
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    The nonprofit Vegas Stronger seeks to reduce homelessness in Las Vegas by addressing substance abuse and mental health head on. Since the nonprofit’s launch in October, the Metro Police Department and residents have called on them to provide people experiencing homelessness with accommodations and clinical services instead of sending them to jail. “We’re really just trying to address the issues of homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse before it hits the criminal justice system. We want to help them before they even get into the system, before jail, before court, before anything,” said Dede Parker, a specialty court administrator for Clark County Courts. 

  • Plans to Provide Long-Awaited Playground Stalled
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    In Ivy City, the newly gentrified neighborhood in Northeast Washington, DC, kids use a slab of pavement as a playground. For years, residents have been asking the city to convert a closed school lot into a community center. Now, mayor Muriel Bowser and lawmakers are debating funding the project by developing market-rate housing. DC council member Kenyan R. McDuffie worries about how the new housing would affect current residents. “Rising housing prices are contributing to displacement, and it is making DC increasingly unaffordable and unlivable for people of color. This is the case in almost every corner of the city—especially, though, in communities that have a rich history and culture like Ivy City,” he said.