Hud

Nearly three dozen workers at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office in Baltimore - roughly a third of the agency's workforce in Maryland - are being forced to transfer out of state or take a buyout. The choice, which will affect 32 employees at the agency's South Howard Street field office, comes as part of a national reorganization aimed at saving about $45 million a year. The department is consolidating workers in 50 offices nationwide who facilitate the construction and rehabilitation of multifamily housing into 10 offices, HUD spokesman Jerry Brown said Wednesday.

Nearly three dozen workers at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office in Baltimore - roughly a third of the agency's workforce in Maryland - are being forced to transfer out of state or take a buyout. The choice, which will affect 32 employees at the agency's South Howard Street field office, comes as part of a national reorganization aimed at saving about $45 million a year. The department is consolidating workers in 50 offices nationwide who facilitate the construction and rehabilitation of multifamily housing into 10 offices, HUD spokesman Jerry Brown said Wednesday.

Great Oak Lending Partners, a Timonium broker, is being fined $11,000 for what U.S. officials describe as misleading advertising about Federal Housing Administration mortgages. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees FHA, said this week that its mortgagee review board found several problems with Great Oak Lending's direct-mail ads. In addition to the fine, the company will have to forward its advertising to the FHA for monthly reviews during a six-month probation, HUD said.

A mortgage lender based in Utah has agreed to pay a Baltimore woman $13,000 for denying her a loan because she was pregnant and on maternity leave, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Tuesday. Primary Residential Mortgage Inc., based in Salt Lake City, also agreed to adopt a parental leave policy, to ensure its employees are complying with family status provisions of the Fair Housing Act, which prevents lending discrimination based on other applicant traits including sex, race and religion.

A long-running dispute between the city Housing Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development threatens to shut down the only area organization dedicated to encouraging minority business development in Baltimore.The subject of the dispute is the Council for Equal Business Opportunity, Inc., an independent, non-profit group created in 1967 to help minority-owned businesses secure commercial loans and to provide start-up capital for fledgling businesses through a revolving credit fund.

The number of renters experiencing “worst case” housing needs has increased by almost half since the beginning of the Great Recession, according to a just-released summary of a forthcoming report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2007, there were 5.9 million very low-income households that were designated as having worst-case needs, according to the summary. By 2011, 8.5 million households qualified as worst-case scenarios because their rent burdens were extreme - more than half of their income went to rent, HUD said.

BALTIMOREANS should be relieved the Department of Housing and Urban Development has retroactively absolved city Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III of what appeared to be a clear conflict-of-interest violation. That Mr. Henson didn't consult HUD for a ruling until after the fact, however, is disturbing. It smacks of past criticism of the commissioner's shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach.A company owned by Mr. Henson's sister was subcontracted to do interior decorating in the Lafayette Courts housing development, despite HUD rules barring contracts between housing administrators and companies owned by themselves or members of their immediate family.

Baltimore County Executive Roger B. Hayden, who was endorsed this week by the two activists leading the campaign against the federal Moving to Opportunity subsidized housing program, has charged that HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is "playing politics" with the issue.Mr. Hayden said he had heard that his meeting with Mr. Cisneros to discuss the Moving to Opportunity program won't be scheduled until after the Nov. 8 election, a delay he said is deliberate "stalling."Mr. Hayden said he also still plans court action to block the program, although County Attorney Stanley S. Schapiro said he is not sure when that action will come.

The decision by federal authorities to approve more heavily subsidized low-income housing in Edgewood flies in the face of Harford County's housing policy and the wishes of surrounding communities.But it does reflect the local need for rent-assistance housing and the desire to keep a mixed townhouse development from going belly up and boarded up. Without the conversion of 209 units to Section 8 rent subsidies, the managers of Meadowood Townhouses said they, and a number of their tenants, would face serious financial difficulties.

SUMMIT PARK is an attractive Baltimore County neighborhood where a well-priced house does not usually languish on the market. But one look inside 6716 Old Pimlico Road suggests the three-bedroom rancher is unlikely to sell for its asking price of $150,000. Although the sleek house sits among big, old trees, the interior is a vandalized wreck. Everything of value has been stripped. All the appliances are gone; so is the kitchen sink. Holes in the walls indicate where pipes used to be. Welcome to another HUD-foreclosure house.

The number of renters experiencing “worst case” housing needs has increased by almost half since the beginning of the Great Recession, according to a just-released summary of a forthcoming report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2007, there were 5.9 million very low-income households that were designated as having worst-case needs, according to the summary. By 2011, 8.5 million households qualified as worst-case scenarios because their rent burdens were extreme - more than half of their income went to rent, HUD said.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Monday that it is instituting a 90-day foreclosure moratorium on Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgages in Maryland areas hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. As part of President Obama's disaster declaration last week, the housing department is implementing foreclosure relief and other assistance for homeowners and low-income renters in 18 Maryland jurisdictions. “Families who may have been forced from their homes need to know that help is available to begin the rebuilding process,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement.

A U.S. District Court judge has approved a settlement in a Baltimore fair housing case dating back to 1995. The case arose when the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland on behalf of public housing residents sued HUD, saying that it demolished old public housing high-rises where mostly African-Americans lived and then moved residents to equally segregated housing and poor conditions in other parts of the city. Under the settlement, HUD will continue a program established in an earlier part of the case that moves families to mixed-income neighborhoods throughout the region.

Steve Carter argued Oct. 11 that low-income housing in Columbia makes little sense ("Low-income housing does not belong in high-cost Columbia," letter). Perhaps Mr. Carter does not realize that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is required to increase affordable housing throughout the Baltimore region, which mirrors the founding goal of Columbia. The case of Thompson vs. HUD filed in January 1995 ended with a partial consent decree. The court determined that HUD violated part of the Fair Housing Act through their failure to affirmatively promote fair housing by not providing affordable housing options in areas of lower poverty.

Hundreds of families living in some of Baltimore's most impoverished neighborhoods will get to move to better conditions under a proposed settlement that could finally resolve a fair housing case dating back to 1995. Attorneys representing current and former public housing residents filed the settlement, which still has to be approved by a judge, in U.S. District Court late Friday. They hope the agreement with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development will finally end more than 70 years of housing segregation that they say the government helped exacerbate.

Even after Jean Thomas lost her job and her husband, Sherman, became ill, she said she never missed paying the rent on the West Baltimore house the couple shares with their daughter and four young grandchildren. Yet after seven years in the rent-subsidized, four-bedroom rowhouse on North Fremont Avenue, the family is bracing to be evicted Tuesday morning. "I won't have a choice but to leave," said Jean Thomas, adding that her family has nowhere to go. "It's hard to find a place if you don't have a job. " Thomas blames the situation on the actions of her two adult sons.

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to seek a ban on a certain type of down payment assistance that has grown sevenfold this decade and contributed to a surge in foreclosures of government-backed mortgages. Nonprofit groups, such as Nehemiah Corp. of America and AmeriDream Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md., provide the down payment help and are then reimbursed by the seller. The programs are "a contributing factor of increased risk in our portfolio" of loans, HUD spokesman Lemar Wooley said in an e-mail.

Maryland's two U.S. senators are urging federal housing officials to stop foreclosure proceedings against a subsidized townhouse complex in Annapolis and to work with residents to address repair issues. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently advised the board of Bywater Mutual Homes Inc. that it was moving to withdraw federal mortgage insurance because the property was in serious disrepair and had failed two annual inspections in a row. The move left many residents of the 232-unit development near Forest Drive fearful they would be displaced.

The National Fair Housing Alliance said Tuesday that it has filed a federal housing discrimination complaint   against Wells Fargo, alleging that the bank is doing a better job maintaining foreclosed homes in white neighborhoods than foreclosures in minority neighborhoods. The alliance said last week that it scored the condition of foreclosed homes in nine regions , including Baltimore, and found disparities based on the racial makeup of neighborhoods. (The Baltimore metro area was an outlier in the alliance's report: Though staffers found differences by neighborhood, the overall scores were basically equally lousy.)

Maryland's attorney general said Friday that the nearly $60 million from the national mortgage settlement that the state controls would be used to help people "victimized by the egregious conduct of the banks," in contrast with some states that intend to use their shares to plug budget holes. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler also said his office is pursuing criminal investigations related to mortgage and foreclosure fraud, though he didn't say whether cases related to the "robo-signing" that prompted the settlement might be filed.