Congressman Payne’s domestic and foreign agenda
Homeless in Disneyland
John and Alicia Nash advocate for mental health services
Shaun Donovan rebuilds HUD
HUD’s Inspector General fights fraud
“We need to put the ‘UD’ back in HUD.”
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan
This is a new weekly feature that will provide links to news articles and blogs on issues related to ending homelessness. If you have articles you would like to have listed please send us an email [Email address: rbrown #AT# njaneh.org - replace #AT# with @ ].
Are there are two Donald Paynes? Bob Braun of the Star-Ledger continues his series of profiles of our members of Congress. While he’s acting locally, Payne’s always thinking globally focuses on Congressman Donald Payne who was ranked Very Supportive in the first annual Report Card. According to Bruan’s article “There’s the former city councilman and Essex freeholder entirely committed to domestic issues that affect his district — a district nearly 70 percent minority. And then there’s the expert on foreign affairs who, in one week, lectures the Libyan ambassador, reports on his dinner conversation with the president of the Republic of Georgia, sends warnings to the leader of Sudan, discusses peace in Northern Ireland.” To read the full article click here.
Orange County, California home of Disneyland has seen an surge in the hidden homeless – living doubled up in apartments, in garages or in motels, uncounted in federal homeless data and often receiving little public aid according to The New York Times. “It really hurt me the other day,” one of the homeless men said. “My son came home and asked, ‘Are we homeless’? I didn’t know what to say.” To read the full article click here.
John Forbes Nash Jr., the brash and brilliant winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, and his wife, Alicia are advocating in New Jersey. Their message is as simple as it is urgent: Protect at all costs the community mental health programs that have allowed people like their 49-year-old son John Charles Nash to live outside a hospital and help him lead a more independent and productive life. The article by Susan K. Livio appeared in Sunday’s Star-Ledger. To read the full article click here.
Housing Chief Plans To Shore Up HUD’s Foundation by Brian Naylor was broadcast on NPR on March 13, 2009. At his confirmation hearing in January, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan was told some things about the agency he was in line to run that might have made some nominees run away. HUD is “adrift, mismanaged and ridden by scandal” said one senator. If the government were a family at Thanksgiving dinner, HUD would be “sitting at the kids’ table,” said another. “One of my jobs very clearly is to take a place at the grown-ups’ table for HUD,” said Shaun Donovan, the new HUD Secretary. To read the full story click here. To listen to the story click here.
On Sunday March 15th, NPR reported on The Man Who Follows HUD’s Stimulus Money. Anyone who uses HUD’s stimulus money for fraudulent purposes will have to answer to Lester Davis, deputy assistant inspector general for investigations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.He carries a badge, a gun and knows how to think like a white-collar criminal. For more than two decades, Davis has helped track and retrieve taxpayer money that finds its way into the pockets of frauds and crooks. To read the full story click here. To listen to the story click here.
