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Assemblyman Wants HUD Official Fired
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 31, 2007
State Assemblyman Keith Wright, D-Harlem, is calling for Sean Moss to be fired as Department of Housing and Urban Development Regional Director after Moss proposed that the New York City Housing Authority sell public housing in affluent areas in order to finance public housing in cheaper neighborhoods.
Moss made the statements last Tuesday at a forum on the future of the NYCHA, which currently has a $200 million annual deficit due to federal budget cutbacks. “It may displace some people, and that is a concern,” Moss said, according to the New York Daily News. “That is not necessarily a bad thing if you can create more housing with that. Instead of having 300 units [in a project], maybe there is a way to increase that if they are able to ... sell those assets so that you can create more housing.”
In a letter to U.S. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, Wright called the plan “at least elitist and at worst segregationist.”
“Creating new neighborhoods of entirely lower income residents is neither the solution to the affordable housing crisis nor is it the solution to abject poverty,” Wright wrote. “Such a plan is just not right for the City of New York and will, in practice, simply worsen our preexisting problems.”
“If one was to take these comments at face value, one would assume that Mr. Moss does not feel that public housing residents have the right to live in upper class neighborhoods and that they should be moved into areas where people of similar economic status already reside,” he wrote.
Moss did not return calls for comment.
Wright noted that over 14,000 people in his district live in public housing. “To privatize just one building in our community would be entirely destructive to both our culture and our neighborhood,” he wrote.
Laura Schreiber can be reached at laura.schreiber@columbiaspectator.com.
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"You have some nerve to say that we deserve to live in a . . . excuse my french, fucked up neighborhood."
You should be kicked out of Columbia for being such a filthy racist pig.
How dare you call less affluent areas 'fucked up neighborhood[s]'? What's wrong with them? They're 'fucked up' because the people there aren't as wealthy? Because many of them are people of color?
"Your attack on public housing residents is actullay an attack on people of color and we have been disinfranchised for long enouch."
It's pathetic that you're pretending to defend people of color. You are attacking people of color when you claim that there is something 'wrong' with less affluent neighborhoods.
Sean Moss isn't the racist here. He's just trying to create more housing for people who need it - and obviously you can create more housing if you put it in a less expensive area. Unless you're a racist, you wouldn't think anything is wrong with living in a less affluent area.
God, I love CU.....these people have been living here for decades when they weren't luxury nabes....unless you clowns think the world was born yesterday and rich folk were displaced for the pj's.....these people do consume tax money...more than they earn but.....btw.....does anyone know if merill lynch chose half a billion to move to mid-town....a billion to stay downtown.....or 1.2 billion to move to jersey city?
stick to the books and theories kids.....absolutely NOBODY is a laissez fairy or libertarian in the real world....that's stuff is for professors, think tanks, radio show filler, early morning turkey shoots with ak-47's and ron paulistas with their 1% showings.....there are numerous ways in which those who are poor are money burdens.....but so are the sick (sorry grandma, why i the world would anyone need to cover your expensive butt?)...public schools?...what a siv....
let's look at places that don't or can't protect the weak...(india, africa, china, haiti...thrid world)....any of those sound like shangri-la?....or how about brazil and mexico, where the rich are escorted by teams of bodyguards to islands of safety because their own countrymen would skin them alive if they got lost?..... places that don't take care of their poor minimally are savage societies, not ones to emmulate......plus who wants to live in a place where everyone is just like them? that's not what made nyc great.....enclaves like that are like.....well....COLUMBIA
Can't even tell what your point is...if you have one. Learn how to write.
Wow. Taxpayer's Dime. Maybe I missed something, but it is my understanding that public housing residents pay taxes aswell. You have some nerve to say that we deserve to live in a . . . excuse my french, fucked up neighborhood. Your attack on public housing residents is actullay an attack on people of color and we have been disinfranchised for long enouch. If you think that we are going to sit on our asses and let you talk that bullshit, you are sadly mistaking. As for Mr. Moss' comment, just let him try to pass his agenda. We are building a strong army to fight this war on housing and Mr. Moss is likely to be a Casualty. BY casuality I am referring to the lost of his job and not is life.
Thank you
I hope that I reached aleast one person today.
"Wow. Taxpayer's Dime. Maybe I missed something, but it is my understanding that public housing residents pay taxes aswell."
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As someone else already pointed out, if you're paying one dollar in tax but taking out ten...you are a liability not an asset. Aside from the fact that you arent "owed" anything just because you have a pulse.
"Mr. Moss' comment, just let him try to pass his agenda. We are building a strong army to fight this war on housing and Mr. Moss is likely to be a Casualty."
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If you people spent one tenth the effort in getting a better job, educating yourselves, and bettering yourselves as you do in protesting and creating mobs...you wouldnt have to rely on government handouts in the first place.
Still havent heard a reasonable argument as to why you should be able to live in a nice area off of our hard earned tax dollars. Trust we never will.
11:23 - If you were truly concerned about the well-being of the people living in the projects, you would be advocating mixed income housing instead of the current failed arrangement. Stacking hundreds of poor people on top of each other in a depressing high-rise filled with drugs, gangs and crime is not the answer for anyone involved. Yes, the are some hard-working people who live in the projects, but they too would be better off in a mixed income environment.
With all due respect, someone who receives $10 in government subsidy for every $1 he or she pays in taxes is not exactly a "taxpayer", especially if this is a permanent/lifetime situation, as opposed to a temporary one.
Additionally, what I read from your posting is that you insist that the government use X number of dollars to subsidize your housing in an expensive neighborhood, instead of using the same number of dollars to subsidize not only your housing, but that of another family as well in a different neighborhood. That sounds like a selfish person more than one who cares about making sure everyone has decent housing.
Mark G.
Maybe to start, they should get rid of subsidized parking for people in public housing in areas where "rich" people can't afford to keep a car. When I lived in NY on W96th St, it seemed insane that people in public housing within blocks of me were able to park their cars for almost nothing where they lived because apparently they have a "right" to not only live in an expensive neighborhood but to own and park cars there as well. At a minimum, they should build more housing on top of those parking lots, and make those people people take public transportation like the rest of us who subsidize them.
Mark G. SEAS'94, MBA'00.
The projects are a well-intentioned but failed idea, which is why they are being torn down in other cities and replaced with mixed income housing. Wright's calling for Moss to be fired is a classic example of NYC politicians trying to silence anyone interested in discussing change in a failed system. Status quo rules for NYC politicians.
Public housing has been a disaster from day one-which is exactly why the government wants to keep the program alive. A never-ending tax payer subsidized black hole, sucking in a vortex of dollars earned by people who actually work for a living.
You know..the neighborhood down the street is much nicer than mine. I should demand that the government seized one of those homes and let me live in it. They can pay the price difference of the mortgage. After all, it's my "right" to live wherever I damn well please (as long as someone else pays for it).
I liked this site more when it hadn't been hijacked by an early-rising conservative fucktard.
Oh well. All good things must pass.
Yes, life is much easier when no-one is around to challenge your faulty logic. Gone are the days when you guys can safely sit around the campfire of political correctness, congratulating yourselves on how progreeeeesive and tooooolerant you are. Welcome to reality.
ps-cant refute facts, so resort to "fucktard". First line of defense for college edu-muh-cated lib-rulz.
“If one was to take these comments at face value, one would assume that Mr. Moss does not feel that public housing residents have the right to live in upper class neighborhoods and that they should be moved into areas where people of similar economic status already reside,” he wrote.
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Actually, Mr.Moss would be 100% correct. People do not have a "right" to live wherever they want when it's on the taxpayer's dime. The fact that our paychecks get raped every week (or two weeks) so that bums can live in upscale neighborhoods should make anyone's blood boil.
This is exactly why our worthless government should have never ever been involved in housing in the first place. They screw it up just like they do everything else.
Wright also had the nerve to whine:
“To privatize just one building in our community would be entirely destructive to both our culture and our neighborhood,”
Well Mr Wright, it isnt "your neighborhood"...it's the taxpayer's neighborhood...and we want a return on our "investment". So shut up and put up.
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