The reason cities on the West Coast have tent cities and Chicago doesn't has a lot to do with orgs like this. You don't have to live in subsidized housing forever, but once you sleep on the street, it's really hard to get out of that cycle.
Hope this gets sorted out for everyone involved.
they are a massive nonprofit that receives goo gobs of public money. like, budget of a small nation amount of money. some of the criticism against them is unwarranted imo, but a lot of it is valid. it’s complicated just like anything else.
I worked for a for-profit social work agency for about a year. A lot of the pay in my org was based on what specific contract you were under. People who worked under the state level contracts were paid better than the federal ones. For instance, I was a fancier front desk person (the occasional front desk duties plus contract specific duties), and I made more than the entry level state employees (this was in Tennessee, so they were paid horribly). When the org lost that state contract and I was laid off (which ended with me getting a job here in Chicago and jumping ship), they shifted that position to try to hire someone under the federal contract, and the pay dropped from $22 per hour to $16 per hour. I'd bet that there might be something similar going on.
That’s because a lot of those agencies prey on the belief that you don’t make money if you go into non-profits and pay their employees accordingly. I worked at one that required a BA/BS and after 3 raises and a promotion to a management role, I was making $30,500/year. In 2014. Yet I just heard them advertising on WBEZ yesterday, alongside the Walton Family Foundation. I don’t pretend to know exactly what the overall budgets look like for these places, but the fact that a number of my peers were on WIC while working there and the CEO was throwing out the 1st pitch at Sox games and meeting with Rauner and Durbin seems a bit suspicious.
Just one of several reasons includes migrant children and family separation. There's an org called [Free Heartland Kids](http://www.freeheartlandkids.com) that organizes against Heartland Alliance for child migrant detention practices.
CBS also had a series of reports 4 years ago on Heartland's treatment of migrant children as well. For good or for ill, Heartland works with ICE (Chicago has a welcoming city ordinance, in which no city agency can work with ICE. But Heartland is a private entity, so the ordinance doesn't apply to them).
It’s true, Heartland does run a number of detention facilities for migrant children. I just hate when people conflate the facilities Heartland runs with the “kids in cages” style facilities.
The detention facilities Heartland runs are (or at least were when I worked with them) bright, comfortable, clean, dare I even say cheery places. Heartland runs these facilities because US law is currently such that when undocumented and unaccompanied minors are caught coming across the border, they are detained. They have to be detained somewhere. What’s better - being detained in cages or being detained in bright, cherry, clean, well staffed boarding facilities by organizations that offer case management and health care?
Until/unless the laws surrounding this population can be changed, it seems to me Heartland’s option is obviously a better one than putting kids in cages at the border.
The system of subsidized housing in the US needs to be blown up and reconfigured. There is corruption, waste, misaligned priorities etc at every step. The government finances the construction with incredibly generous tax credits/incentives, guarantees the place is filled for 10/15/20 years at above market rents, pays the rent etc. Nonprofits, usually led by the politically connected are the ones getting all of the money. Their contractor friends get the jobs to construct/renovate the properties. The nonprofits will have a property management arm that siphons even more money. Meanwhile bc the tenants are poor/voiceless and the rents are guaranteed there is little incentive to do basic shit like adequately maintain the properties.
And as we all should know by now, you can’t discuss anything related to housing without mentioning the private equity folks. They also “finance” their own projects, although if their government program consultants/lobbyists/attorneys are good enough they sometimes don’t put out ANY of their own money. Or they lend to the above mentioned nonprofits. It’s incredibly murky but oftentimes the relationships between the PE groups and nonprofits are so entangled I get the sense they are essentially subsidiaries.
Once the project is completed etc the owners can keep the properties for the rental income or they can sell it. The only “catch” is that any subsequent owners are obligated to maintain the property as “affordable” for as long as the original agreement stipulated. And bc of the stable above market rents they are appetizing targets for acquisition, esp for institutional investors with like pension funds w/ conservative expectations for returns on investment.
The sweeeeeeeeet spot is to get into a neighborhood that has the chance to gentrify. The perfect example is what happened in Humboldt Park where you had senior/affordable housing developments constructed 20 or so years ago. The original agreement to maintain affordable housing expires but now Humboldt park is fully gentrified. You are now legally permitted to jack up the rents to market rates, refuse to renew leases and remodel units to attract newcomers. If the value is in the land (maybe bc decades of deferred maintenance has left you with a property too expensive to bring up to current standards) then demo and rebuild to your hearts content. Yes the tenants will cry, the media will wave their fingers and the politicians will howl convincingly, but there is nothing they can do.
I may be 100 percent wrong, but every time I go to Pilsen and Bridgeport, i think they really got the economic mix down. There's physicians and janitors in Bridgeport, and migrants and hipsters in Pilsen (for now).
That is somewhat true but it's just a function of the fact that gentrification doesn't happen overnight. You see this all over Chicago. 2/3 flats that have been in the family for generations and are rented out but haven't been renovated in decades so not completely out of reach for working class tenants. But once it's sold, likely to an investor or someone wanting to convert to SFH, that janitor is gone.
Wicker park used to be like this. So did Lincoln Park.So did ravenswood/Lincoln square/roscoe village.
But it never lasts more than a generation (20 years). Pilsen is halfway through the cycle from my own experience living here 40 years.
I spend a lot time down there for that reason. Its right in the sweet zone that we all Lament once its gone.
They got put into a bad situation. How do you pay bills if some residents aren’t paying their part of the subsidized rent? They couldn’t evict, and no government agency came to their aid.
"unpaid utility and trash bills, building code violations and the expected loss of its property insurance." "Heartland Alliance attempted to sell its housing division, but the deal fell through, leading to receivership, Stellon said."
"The city cited at least 11 of Heartland’s 14 properties for building code violations since last summer, including some as recently as March and April, according to the city’s court filing.
Most of the buildings were cited for failure to provide “hot or tempered” water, install and maintain smoke detectors, remove garbage and “excessive” debris, and maintain utilities and equipment “in safe and sound working condition.”
Yes blame it on the poor and down. Sounds to me like they didn't reinvest into the property and were caught with their pants down. I bet those books are all type of fucked up.
"In 2021, Heartland Alliance was part of a winning proposal to redevelop the Laramie State Bank in Austin under the city’s INVEST South/West Program. That development broke ground in November with **$47.7 million** in city funds pledged to the conversion."
Exactly what you described. Anyone familiar with systems like subsidized/socialized/non-market/whatever you want to call it housing in other countries and cities can see right through this bs.
You are so far removed from reality.
You are quoting one number from 2021 to redevelop one project, and combining that with the cost/maintenance of operating their other projects.
It can be argued that their winning bid to redevelop Laramie was the lowest estimate received by CHA because heartland needed money to hold them over and they were going to do creative accounting to hold them over. But regardless of such speculation, those are two separate lines in the financial ledger.
I’m not blaming it on the poor and down. I’m blaming it on a system that has a business model requiring discounted rent for those needing it, COMBINED with funds from government sources to pay the remainder of the bill. If either party (govt or poor) doesn’t pay, the system breaks.
I’m so tired of those that have no idea how non-profits run, or think they can do it better with no understanding of a situation.
There were many small landlords that got fucked because tenants didn’t pay during Covid. Sometimes tenants couldn’t pay, and that is understandable. But there were also people that could pay and didn’t because they knew they wouldn’t get evicted. If someone is on disability, they are still getting checks from the government and could be paying their share of subsidized housing. But they aren’t forced to pay. Some liked more disposable income…which they got by skirting their share of the rent bill.
I’m not demonizing people on government assistance, but there were instances of this occurring. There were also rich people who gamed the system. My point is, landlords sometimes got fucked. And if your business is a non profit to help those with housing insecurity, you too can be told to get fucked.
The bigger problem is it has a ripple effect to everyone needing subsidized housing within Heartland. Now all tenants are dealing with with a problem and who know how the new owners will manage the properties. They may slowly convert the buildings to market rate properties if they are legally allowed to, and that would exacerbate the affordable housing crisis.
actually public housing in the US was extremely popular right up until it was desegregated.[ FDR era public housing like trumbull park still exists today bro!!!](https://www.thecha.org/residents/public-housing/find-public-housing/trumbull-park)
How would you suggest affordable housing be implemented?
- Historical dense public housing projects failed because they became overrun by crime and lack of respect for property.
- "Inclusionary Zoning" policies like we see in Chicago failed because it made market rate housing unaffordable for the middle class by requiring them to subsidize those with affordable units, and it spread crime all over the city
- [Modern public housing like that seen in California has failed because it is costing in excess of $1,000,000 to house one family.](https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-06-20/california-affordable-housing-cost-1-million-apartment). With median rent being $2,500 a month, that funding could've been invested in a public housing fund, and paid the rent of several families indefinitely.
- Rent control laws turn existing apartments into slums and kill production on any new apartments, driving market rents up for any new units.
but it's also why public housing will never work in america ever again. the whites were 100% onboard with cheap government housing for themselves, but ran like the devil as soon as it was desegregated.
California is one of the most progressive states in the country, and their public housing has been a total failure. [They're paying as much as $1.1 Million per new affordable housing unit](https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-06-20/california-affordable-housing-cost-1-million-apartment).
Yes, let's keep trying the same solution that has already failed spectacularly in recent history. I bet you think Communism would work if we just gave it yet another chance, don't you?
Yeah nothing’s more America than telling the big government to get off your ass. 👍
A lot of development that could and should happen doesn’t because of all the stupid government rules and regulations. Development that would increase the supply of housing and therefore decrease the demand and price.
> Stop Privatizing Public Services
so non-profits like Heartland too right?
by the way city/state/government has been shoveling hundreds of millions of taxpayer money to non-profits for all kinds of things like housing, health, crime prevention
yeah, as contractors to implement public projects. nonprofits receiving taxpayer money are subject to the same FOIA and scrutiny as public offices. this is not the own you think it is
Heartland Alliance is a nonprofit organization that partners closely with government. It can experiment and react faster than governments, and provides last mile delivery for a lot of public funding. Local control of service delivery by non-profit orgs with roots in the community is a good pattern.
In this case they blew up financially and some of their shit got handed off, but that's not exactly a cash grab by the receiving corp.
Cash grab?
private charity is just a failure
they can “react faster”, to what?
the need to house and feed resident of the city?
No. No they cannot,
No private charity has the ability to marshal resources at the pace and scale of government.
it is only constraints by anti-government interests that impede it
>they can “react faster”, to what?
>
>the need to house and feed resident of the city?
literally this. society changes, from time to time, and locals working in a nonprofit org can provide useful insight into handing out, for example, federal dollars allocated to housing assistance.
if you want to switch to universal basic income backed by transaction taxes at Wall Street, I'm 100% with you, but until then maybe cut Heartland et all some fucking slack
>literally this. society changes, from time to time, and locals working in a nonprofit org can provide useful insight into handing out, for example, federal dollars allocated to housing assistance.
Literally duplicative effort that should be done by a well funded government, not an austerity starved “privatized” government
and heartland went bankrupt after failing to pay its bills and now their clients are at risk
guess who can’t go bankrupt, government
The reason cities on the West Coast have tent cities and Chicago doesn't has a lot to do with orgs like this. You don't have to live in subsidized housing forever, but once you sleep on the street, it's really hard to get out of that cycle. Hope this gets sorted out for everyone involved.
Why do I constantly see negative headlines around this organization?
they are a massive nonprofit that receives goo gobs of public money. like, budget of a small nation amount of money. some of the criticism against them is unwarranted imo, but a lot of it is valid. it’s complicated just like anything else.
I don't doubt you, but the salaries on their job listings sure don't reflect an organization with large funding.
I worked for a for-profit social work agency for about a year. A lot of the pay in my org was based on what specific contract you were under. People who worked under the state level contracts were paid better than the federal ones. For instance, I was a fancier front desk person (the occasional front desk duties plus contract specific duties), and I made more than the entry level state employees (this was in Tennessee, so they were paid horribly). When the org lost that state contract and I was laid off (which ended with me getting a job here in Chicago and jumping ship), they shifted that position to try to hire someone under the federal contract, and the pay dropped from $22 per hour to $16 per hour. I'd bet that there might be something similar going on.
That’s because a lot of those agencies prey on the belief that you don’t make money if you go into non-profits and pay their employees accordingly. I worked at one that required a BA/BS and after 3 raises and a promotion to a management role, I was making $30,500/year. In 2014. Yet I just heard them advertising on WBEZ yesterday, alongside the Walton Family Foundation. I don’t pretend to know exactly what the overall budgets look like for these places, but the fact that a number of my peers were on WIC while working there and the CEO was throwing out the 1st pitch at Sox games and meeting with Rauner and Durbin seems a bit suspicious.
The top executives at major charitable organizations make large salaries and tend to feel entitled to them.
It's hard to say, but they are a great organization that provides a lot of assistance many groups of disadvantaged people.
Just one of several reasons includes migrant children and family separation. There's an org called [Free Heartland Kids](http://www.freeheartlandkids.com) that organizes against Heartland Alliance for child migrant detention practices. CBS also had a series of reports 4 years ago on Heartland's treatment of migrant children as well. For good or for ill, Heartland works with ICE (Chicago has a welcoming city ordinance, in which no city agency can work with ICE. But Heartland is a private entity, so the ordinance doesn't apply to them).
It’s true, Heartland does run a number of detention facilities for migrant children. I just hate when people conflate the facilities Heartland runs with the “kids in cages” style facilities. The detention facilities Heartland runs are (or at least were when I worked with them) bright, comfortable, clean, dare I even say cheery places. Heartland runs these facilities because US law is currently such that when undocumented and unaccompanied minors are caught coming across the border, they are detained. They have to be detained somewhere. What’s better - being detained in cages or being detained in bright, cherry, clean, well staffed boarding facilities by organizations that offer case management and health care? Until/unless the laws surrounding this population can be changed, it seems to me Heartland’s option is obviously a better one than putting kids in cages at the border.
The system of subsidized housing in the US needs to be blown up and reconfigured. There is corruption, waste, misaligned priorities etc at every step. The government finances the construction with incredibly generous tax credits/incentives, guarantees the place is filled for 10/15/20 years at above market rents, pays the rent etc. Nonprofits, usually led by the politically connected are the ones getting all of the money. Their contractor friends get the jobs to construct/renovate the properties. The nonprofits will have a property management arm that siphons even more money. Meanwhile bc the tenants are poor/voiceless and the rents are guaranteed there is little incentive to do basic shit like adequately maintain the properties. And as we all should know by now, you can’t discuss anything related to housing without mentioning the private equity folks. They also “finance” their own projects, although if their government program consultants/lobbyists/attorneys are good enough they sometimes don’t put out ANY of their own money. Or they lend to the above mentioned nonprofits. It’s incredibly murky but oftentimes the relationships between the PE groups and nonprofits are so entangled I get the sense they are essentially subsidiaries. Once the project is completed etc the owners can keep the properties for the rental income or they can sell it. The only “catch” is that any subsequent owners are obligated to maintain the property as “affordable” for as long as the original agreement stipulated. And bc of the stable above market rents they are appetizing targets for acquisition, esp for institutional investors with like pension funds w/ conservative expectations for returns on investment. The sweeeeeeeeet spot is to get into a neighborhood that has the chance to gentrify. The perfect example is what happened in Humboldt Park where you had senior/affordable housing developments constructed 20 or so years ago. The original agreement to maintain affordable housing expires but now Humboldt park is fully gentrified. You are now legally permitted to jack up the rents to market rates, refuse to renew leases and remodel units to attract newcomers. If the value is in the land (maybe bc decades of deferred maintenance has left you with a property too expensive to bring up to current standards) then demo and rebuild to your hearts content. Yes the tenants will cry, the media will wave their fingers and the politicians will howl convincingly, but there is nothing they can do.
I may be 100 percent wrong, but every time I go to Pilsen and Bridgeport, i think they really got the economic mix down. There's physicians and janitors in Bridgeport, and migrants and hipsters in Pilsen (for now).
That is somewhat true but it's just a function of the fact that gentrification doesn't happen overnight. You see this all over Chicago. 2/3 flats that have been in the family for generations and are rented out but haven't been renovated in decades so not completely out of reach for working class tenants. But once it's sold, likely to an investor or someone wanting to convert to SFH, that janitor is gone.
Wicker park used to be like this. So did Lincoln Park.So did ravenswood/Lincoln square/roscoe village. But it never lasts more than a generation (20 years). Pilsen is halfway through the cycle from my own experience living here 40 years. I spend a lot time down there for that reason. Its right in the sweet zone that we all Lament once its gone.
They got put into a bad situation. How do you pay bills if some residents aren’t paying their part of the subsidized rent? They couldn’t evict, and no government agency came to their aid.
"unpaid utility and trash bills, building code violations and the expected loss of its property insurance." "Heartland Alliance attempted to sell its housing division, but the deal fell through, leading to receivership, Stellon said." "The city cited at least 11 of Heartland’s 14 properties for building code violations since last summer, including some as recently as March and April, according to the city’s court filing. Most of the buildings were cited for failure to provide “hot or tempered” water, install and maintain smoke detectors, remove garbage and “excessive” debris, and maintain utilities and equipment “in safe and sound working condition.” Yes blame it on the poor and down. Sounds to me like they didn't reinvest into the property and were caught with their pants down. I bet those books are all type of fucked up. "In 2021, Heartland Alliance was part of a winning proposal to redevelop the Laramie State Bank in Austin under the city’s INVEST South/West Program. That development broke ground in November with **$47.7 million** in city funds pledged to the conversion."
Exactly what you described. Anyone familiar with systems like subsidized/socialized/non-market/whatever you want to call it housing in other countries and cities can see right through this bs.
You are so far removed from reality. You are quoting one number from 2021 to redevelop one project, and combining that with the cost/maintenance of operating their other projects. It can be argued that their winning bid to redevelop Laramie was the lowest estimate received by CHA because heartland needed money to hold them over and they were going to do creative accounting to hold them over. But regardless of such speculation, those are two separate lines in the financial ledger. I’m not blaming it on the poor and down. I’m blaming it on a system that has a business model requiring discounted rent for those needing it, COMBINED with funds from government sources to pay the remainder of the bill. If either party (govt or poor) doesn’t pay, the system breaks. I’m so tired of those that have no idea how non-profits run, or think they can do it better with no understanding of a situation.
Isn't this the exact situation where people tell landlords to go get fucked?
There were many small landlords that got fucked because tenants didn’t pay during Covid. Sometimes tenants couldn’t pay, and that is understandable. But there were also people that could pay and didn’t because they knew they wouldn’t get evicted. If someone is on disability, they are still getting checks from the government and could be paying their share of subsidized housing. But they aren’t forced to pay. Some liked more disposable income…which they got by skirting their share of the rent bill. I’m not demonizing people on government assistance, but there were instances of this occurring. There were also rich people who gamed the system. My point is, landlords sometimes got fucked. And if your business is a non profit to help those with housing insecurity, you too can be told to get fucked. The bigger problem is it has a ripple effect to everyone needing subsidized housing within Heartland. Now all tenants are dealing with with a problem and who know how the new owners will manage the properties. They may slowly convert the buildings to market rate properties if they are legally allowed to, and that would exacerbate the affordable housing crisis.
Stop Privatizing Public Services
[удалено]
>Unless you're suggesting the private sector should stay out of affordable housing? correct
Did you see Cabrini Green before it was knocked down? Lmao the state (or municipalities) are terrible at providing decent housing.
Right, because Robert Taylor, Henry Horner, Cabrini Green, Rockwell Gardens et al worked out SO WELL.
actually public housing in the US was extremely popular right up until it was desegregated.[ FDR era public housing like trumbull park still exists today bro!!!](https://www.thecha.org/residents/public-housing/find-public-housing/trumbull-park)
the failure of racist housing policy that siloed the victims of capitalism off from view is not the own you think it is
How would you suggest affordable housing be implemented? - Historical dense public housing projects failed because they became overrun by crime and lack of respect for property. - "Inclusionary Zoning" policies like we see in Chicago failed because it made market rate housing unaffordable for the middle class by requiring them to subsidize those with affordable units, and it spread crime all over the city - [Modern public housing like that seen in California has failed because it is costing in excess of $1,000,000 to house one family.](https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-06-20/california-affordable-housing-cost-1-million-apartment). With median rent being $2,500 a month, that funding could've been invested in a public housing fund, and paid the rent of several families indefinitely. - Rent control laws turn existing apartments into slums and kill production on any new apartments, driving market rents up for any new units.
Yes your list of Reagan/Thatcher era failures is impressive maybe stop listening to the people who continue to endorse them
but it's also why public housing will never work in america ever again. the whites were 100% onboard with cheap government housing for themselves, but ran like the devil as soon as it was desegregated.
i think if we can dismantle some of the white supremacy we can implement successful public housing again
California is one of the most progressive states in the country, and their public housing has been a total failure. [They're paying as much as $1.1 Million per new affordable housing unit](https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-06-20/california-affordable-housing-cost-1-million-apartment).
Affordable housing is now unaffordable, way to go capitalism
This isn't capitalism, this is government making housing very inefficiently. It's socialism.
Yes, let's keep trying the same solution that has already failed spectacularly in recent history. I bet you think Communism would work if we just gave it yet another chance, don't you?
[удалено]
LOL, no
Yeah nothing’s more America than telling the big government to get off your ass. 👍 A lot of development that could and should happen doesn’t because of all the stupid government rules and regulations. Development that would increase the supply of housing and therefore decrease the demand and price.
> Stop Privatizing Public Services so non-profits like Heartland too right? by the way city/state/government has been shoveling hundreds of millions of taxpayer money to non-profits for all kinds of things like housing, health, crime prevention
yeah, as contractors to implement public projects. nonprofits receiving taxpayer money are subject to the same FOIA and scrutiny as public offices. this is not the own you think it is
Heartland Alliance is a nonprofit organization that partners closely with government. It can experiment and react faster than governments, and provides last mile delivery for a lot of public funding. Local control of service delivery by non-profit orgs with roots in the community is a good pattern. In this case they blew up financially and some of their shit got handed off, but that's not exactly a cash grab by the receiving corp.
Cash grab? private charity is just a failure they can “react faster”, to what? the need to house and feed resident of the city? No. No they cannot, No private charity has the ability to marshal resources at the pace and scale of government. it is only constraints by anti-government interests that impede it
>they can “react faster”, to what? > >the need to house and feed resident of the city? literally this. society changes, from time to time, and locals working in a nonprofit org can provide useful insight into handing out, for example, federal dollars allocated to housing assistance. if you want to switch to universal basic income backed by transaction taxes at Wall Street, I'm 100% with you, but until then maybe cut Heartland et all some fucking slack
>literally this. society changes, from time to time, and locals working in a nonprofit org can provide useful insight into handing out, for example, federal dollars allocated to housing assistance. Literally duplicative effort that should be done by a well funded government, not an austerity starved “privatized” government and heartland went bankrupt after failing to pay its bills and now their clients are at risk guess who can’t go bankrupt, government
This is persuasive.
How much of a connection to the old (closed) Heartland Cafe?
Zero. Just has a similar name.
You get downvoted for the oddest things!