Friday, December 28, 2007

Just Wondering

Why does Racine have a Housing Department and a Fair Housing Department?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Possible responses:

a. Oversight is good, especially oversight by duplicate groups on duplicate projects. No one gets away with anything, or maybe everyone gets away with the same things.

b. The Fair Housing Department has a longer, more impressive sounding name so that is where people in the Housing Department look to be promoted.

c. It would be too expensive right now, because of unions, pension, etc. to get rid of one of the departments.

d. The Housing Department is part of the national farm system for the Fair Housing Department - a number of great players have come up from the Housing Department.

e. That many unelected officials who make decisions that affect the taxpayers could not fit into one department.

f. The issue requires more study - consultants will be used instead of the great expense involved in creating a new department.

g. Despite the fact that real estate speculation is expensive, Racine has to find a way to spend all of the excess money it receives in taxes every year.

h. It just is this way – if you don’t like it, register you complaint at the ballot box at a future date way out in the future that no one is worried about.

Caledonication said...

The city of Racine Fair Housing Department provides fair housing (anti-discrimination) investigative and enforcement services from its offices in the City Hall Annex Building. Fair Housing also conducts educational seminars for housing consumers and members of the housing industry, and provides legal referrals through the Lawyer Referral Service. Fair Housing's offices receive funding from local cities and counties and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP).

The mission of the Housing Authority of Racine County (The City of Racine Housing Department) is to be the leader in making excellent affordable housing available for low to moderate-income families in Racine County. Through effective management and responsible stewardship of public funds, we will forge effective partnerships to maximize housing-related social and economic opportunities. We will foremost promote home ownership and also self-sufficiency and urban stability.

The HARC does this through the following programs:
- Housing Choice Voucher (aka. Section 8)
- Family Self-sufficiency (FSS)
- Homeownership
- Elderly Housing
- Handicapped Housing

Sources:
http://www.rcha.org
http://www.cityofracine.org/depts/fair_housing

Obviously, this answer is simply regurgitating the information giving by those two organizations and does not consider any philosophical response you may have been attempting to stimulate.

Caledonication said...

I was just thinking...

Doesn't the air seem just a bit fresher in here today?

Anonymous said...

Much fresher, and not like the air freshener sprayed over a litter box fresher.

"Through effective management and responsible stewardship of public funds, we will forge effective partnerships to maximize housing-related social and economic opportunities."

Wow. How about "juxtaposing incredible moving-forward thinking with limitless government funding resources we will concretize the duality of non-conjectural foci with totality of leveraged self actualization . . ."

What a great life it is to be able to buy and sell your own bullshit.

Denis Navratil said...

To be honest Caledon, I am not sure what I was trying to accomplish with this post. Having a Fair Housing Department and a Housing Department reminds me of my thoughts regarding fair trade products. Does this imply that the other products are unfairly traded? Do we have an unfair housing department? Of course none of this musing should be taken seriously.

But on a serious note, I did contact the Fair Housing Department prior to renting my apartments. I found it troubling that the same agency that could go after you for discrimination was unable to define discrimination. They sent me to a different department that still did not clarify the issue.

Caledonication said...

"the same agency that could go after you for discrimination was unable to define discrimination. They sent me to a different department that still did not clarify the issue."

Ideology notwithstanding, that is ridiculous. I wonder why our tax dollars pay for their access to the interweb?