A week or so ago, Bank of America announced it would put a hold on its foreclosure proceedings while it reviewed the processes that moved the foreclosure claims past lawyers, whose signatures were required. Other financial institutes followed suit. The decision came in the midst of growing fears that the foreclosures on tens of thousands […]
Foreclosure Assistance To Banks Almost Slips Past Obama Administration
President Obama enacted a ‘pocket veto’ earlier today, blocking a bill coming from Congress (HR3808) that would have sped up the status of numerous foreclosure proceedings. The pitch for the bill was that it would ease interstate commerce by allowing states to expedite each others’ foreclosure confirmations, and thus help clear out the backlog of […]
#Philanthropy: Baltimore’s Long Tradition Of Civic Philanthropy Unbroken By Great Recession
Baltimore likes to call itself the ‘City of Firsts,’ which has given it a proud heritage of innovation, civic uplift, and educational creativity. The city has struggled, like so many others on the eastern seaboard and in the upper midwest, with declining industrialization and population shifts to exurbs and to the Sun Belt. And yet, […]
Spike Lee Follows Up With “If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise”
We finish this week’s focus on the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with much help from Spike Lee’s documentary “If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise,” which recently showed on HBO and is periodically being repeated. The followup finds many of the same people who told of their immediate post-Katrina experiences so see […]
Housing post-Katrina: What FEMA Can’t Do, Brad Pitt and Friends Can
The hurricane was tracked for a week before it made landfall in western Mississippi. We knew it was coming and had ample time to move people out, to board up homes, to store up supplies… Instead, the planning from the federal administration was desultory, and many within New Orleans admitted that they thought they could […]
The Flooding of New Orleans – Five Years On
The print, broadcast, and online media have all weighed in on the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the resultant flooding of over 80% of the city of New Orleans. Most of the reports we have been reading and watching want to tell a story of recovery, and there are many cases of success to […]
#MovieReview: Revisiting Spike Lee’s Documentary “When The Levees Broke”
Five years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Despite the fact that the worst of the storm was east of New Orleans (by about 100 miles), the largest city in the region received the worst damage when the inadequate levee walls were undermined by the storm surge the day after […]
The Currents Of The Gulf Coast Beat On Beautifully, If Barely
This past week marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating effects on the western Gulf Coast states, especially – and most infamously – on the city of New Orleans. Almost 2000 people died as the hurricane crashed into the Mississippi Delta and then overloaded the dilapidated and antiquated levees of The Big […]