Mais um dia de baixas em Wall Street

18/12/08
NOVA YORK – Principais índices começam o dia em alta, mas terminam em queda. Petróleo cai a preço mais baixo em quatro anos. Ações de energia lideram a queda junto com a General Electric.

Natal com alta na Bolsa de Valores de Nova York

24/12/08

NOVA YORK – Véspera de Natal rompe seqüência de quedas em Wall Street. Setor de varejo segue abalado com as baixas vendas de fim de ano e põem esperanças na próxima estação. www.24horaswallstreet.tv

Ações caem com dados da crise

23/12/08

NOVA YORK – Dados reafirmando a recessão nos Estados Unidos puxam o mercado para baixo. Queda na venda de casas novas foi de 2,9%. www.24horaswallstreet.tv

Bolsa começa a semana com quedas

22/12/08

NOVA YORK – Previsões negativas para Toyota e resultados negativos para a rede de drogarias Wallgreens alimentam o sentimento da recessão. Vendas no fim de semana foram ainda menores do que o esperado.

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Waiting for a home

When Donna Matthews arrived with her two daughters for their first night in a homeless shelter in Jamaica, Queens, she thought she was going to stay there for a couple of weeks. As the days, weeks and months of 2005 went by, she realized she was wrong.

“I was scared, I was homeless, but didn’t want to see it,” she said. It’s been two years now.

Being homeless was a situation that she never thought she would go through. Matthews comes from a middle class family from Manhattan and lived with her parents before getting married in 1991 and moved to her husband’s house in Canarsie, Brooklyn.

But 14 years later, her husband abandoned her and their daughters and sold the house they were living in. As Matthews had stopped working to take care of the children, she had to make her living through welfare.

“I was getting crazy, because in the first year I was in the shelter nobody would hire me,” Matthews said. “I didn’t talk to anybody, I didn’t smile, and I felt like my life was over. I felt like a failure.”

After one year, Matthews was hired as a receptionist in a security company in Brooklyn. But still, she cannot afford to pay rent in New York City. Although the Mayor’s Office claims the homeless population is decreasing, the number of such families had reached an all-time record this year.

In a daily report issued by the city’s Department of Homeless Services, 9,396 families were living in temporary homeless shelters on Nov. 21. There are more than 15,000 children in these families.

When Matthews came to the shelter, she said her daughters were as shocked as her. “They would always ask why we were there,” she said, “ and why we did not live in our house anymore.”

Matthews said it was a difficult situation for them. Theodora, the older daughter, is 13 and didn’t want to tell her friends that she lived in a shelter.

“She couldn’t ask her friends to come and visit,” Matthews said. “She knew she was different and was afraid her classmates would call her a bum,” she said.

When she gets home from school, Theodora takes care of Francesca, who is 5. They get along with the other children in the shelter and usually talk a lot about their situation, which for many is new.

And they seem to be in a group that is growing. According to a report released in July by the advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless, in 2006 the number of homeless families that are new to the shelter system raised 24 percent.

“This dramatic increase in the number of new homeless families is the major cause of the growing population of homeless families,” the report said. “And the increase is, in large part, driven by the growing scarcity of rental housing affordable to low-income New Yorkers.”

The group says that the housing crisis is not a welfare or employment problem. Instead, it is primarily a housing affordability problem. While housing costs skyrocket, wages can’t catch up.

Therefore, families are only able to leave the temporary shelter when they are accepted as part of a housing assistance program. But Coalition for the Homeless says some of the programs offered by the City have too many flaws and keep people from getting their own independence from the government.

One example is the Housing Stability Plus program (HSP). Established in 2004, more than 5,000 formerly homeless families were relocated from shelters using the HSP. The city pays for their rent for one year. After that, they will face a 20 percent cut in the housing supplement.

Furthermore, another problem they face is that, according to the program rules, recipient families have to stay on public assistance, prevented from getting a job to make up the difference of the 20 percent cut.

The advocacy group is trying to change certain rules and ask for more openings for Section 8 vouchers.

Section 8 housing assistance is a federally funded program that provides subsidies for rents to eligible low-income families. Families can select the apartment within a neighborhood of their choice from a landlord willing to participate in the program.

Tenant families pay 30 or 20 percent of the rent, according to their income, and the government pays the rest.

The program was created in 1975, but closed for applications in 1994. Two years ago, it reopened for applications and last May, it closed again. Now, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) reserves Section 8 vouchers for emergency applicants who are referred by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) or those who are classified as intimidated witnesses or victims of domestic violence.

“The waiting list is huge and we don’t have enough money to pay for everyone,” said Howard Marder, NYCHA spokesperson, “that’s why we closed it.”

Donna Matthews applied to the Section 8 voucher in 2005. After two long years on the waiting list, On Oct. 25, 2007, she received a call.

“I got it, I got it! I was so happy I got the voucher, I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Now, Matthews has six months to find a two-bedroom apartment that costs less than $1200 and whose owner is willing to accept Section 8 vouchers. Many landlords don’t participate because they fear rent will go unpaid.

“They think people who need help are lazy and won’t pay their part of the rent,” Matthews said. “And if they have had a program user that was not a good tenant, they tend to think everybody behaves the same way.”

Matthews and her daughters have visited about eight apartments in Brooklyn and Queens. Some were in bad areas where she suspected drug activity. So far, she has found two apartments she liked in Queens and they may be their future home.

But she still has to convince her daughters, who want to live in Canarsie, the same Brooklyn neighborhood where they lived before.

“They want to live close to their friends from before and have the same life that we used to have,” Matthews said. “But I have to tell them that it’s never going to be exactly the same.”

And she hopes to be independent from government help one day.

XXX