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In the Other Press...
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To alleviate the problem of articles from other press sources being reposted on this IMC site, this section allows users to link to articles published elsewhere, and to contribute and read comments on those pieces. [Posting a new item has been removed in this static archive of the site.] |
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News: Globalization : Human Rights |
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VIOLENT EVICTION IN GOIANIA, BRAZIL |
Submitted by: Pete S / 19 Feb 2005
Publisher: Brasil.indymedia.org
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A large military policy operation with 2,500 men has started this morning (February 16) for the eviction of the land occupation Sonho Real (Real Dream) in the city of Goiânia, Brazil. Two people got killed, over 800 people got arrested and several people are wounded (five were very seriously wounded). Among the arrested, two Indymedia volunteers, one from Goiânia and one from Indymedia New York.
The occupation started in may 2004 in an area which has been abandoned for years and quickly gathered 3,000 families. In January, Justice ordered the eviction of the families and since then police have been terrifying the families with death threats and sudden attacks. In February 11, police showed up suddenly and shot gas and concussion bombs and fired rubber bullets against the people. One child got hit by a concussion bomb. On February 15, in another attack, police shot bombs and fired with guns. Two people got hurt. After pressure from social movements and human rights groups, state of Goiás Governor Marconi Perillo committed himself not to send police to evict people in a violent way (you can hear his commitment in this recorded audio. Today's attack and the so far confirmed death of two people showed he did not stick to his words. |
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News: Human Rights |
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Negroponte Draws Criticism South of Border |
Submitted by: TimL / 18 Feb 2005
Publisher: LISA J. ADAMS, Associated Press Writer
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MEXICO CITY - Central American politicians and human rights activists issued stinging criticism Thursday of John Negroponte, nominated to become America's first intelligence director, citing the career diplomat's active backing for the Contra rebels and support for a government involved in human rights abuses.
John Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to Iraq (news - web sites), served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, a time of intense conflict in Central America in which the United States played a central role. The Reagan administration feared that leftist rebels were leading Central American countries toward totalitarian regimes.
Negroponte assisted the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in their attempt to overthrow Nicaragua's left-wing Sandinista government. In the process, activists claim, he ignored human rights abuses by the rebels and their Honduran hosts.
The effort to oust Daniel Ortega's Moscow-leaning Sandinista regime produced a huge scandal in the United States when it was learned the United States secretly sold arms to Iran and used the money to fund the Contra operation.
"What an outrage!" said Bertha Oliva, the coordinator of the Committee for Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras, an independent group representing civilians believed to have vanished while in government custody. "The United States has invented a position to reward someone who was a dangerous person."
In Nicaragua, Tomas Borge, former interior minister for the Sandinista regime and a current leader of the Sandinista opposition party, said Negroponte "is the most efficient and ideal representative for the Bush administration's primitive international security policy."
"He is faithful to Bush's excessive and ultra-right policy in Iraq and other parts of the world," he said.
Borge is the only surviving founder of the Sandinista movement, and was in charge of domestic political control as the Sandinistas battled U.S.-backed opponents.
The new U.S. intelligence chief has denied accusations that his reports to Washington dramatically underplayed human rights problems in Honduras.
During 2001 confirmation hearings for his U.N. ambassadorship — an appointment that was delayed for six months because of the controversy over his tenure in Honduras — Negroponte testified that he did not believe death squads were operating in Honduras.
However, a 1993 Honduran government human rights report said 184 suspected leftists had disappeared in government custody, many of them at the hands of a U.S. trained Honduran army battalion.
"It was obvious that he knew what was happening," said Leo Valladeres, a law professor in Honduras who wrote the report. "They used outlaw methods to kill ... and it is absolutely impossible to believe that a diplomatic mission such as that of the United States was unaware of the situation faced by Honduras and Central America."
In neighboring Guatemala, a U.S.-supported government that was engaged in battle with left-wing rebels trained paramilitary squads that were found later to have committed large-scale civilian massacres.
In El Salvador (news - web sites), U.S.-trained army squads hunted down leftist rebels in offensives fraught with human rights abuses.
Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archives in Washington, said declassified documents on the Iran-Contra scandal also showed that Negroponte was involved in seeking more guns for the Contras — "the role that normally would be reserved for the (CIA (news - web sites)) station chief."
Kornbluh also said the documents he cited showed that Negroponte helped clear the way for a secret agreement under which the United States would provide more CIA money to Honduran army generals and additional military and economic aid to the country. In exchange, he said, Honduras agreed to allow the Contras to continue operating on Honduran soil.
Ironically, Kornbluh said, the controversy surrounding Negroponte's past helps qualify him for the job.
"Someone who is a career diplomat ... on paper doesn't seem to have the intelligence background needed," he said. "The fact that he certainly departed from his diplomatic role and was involved in paramilitary operations against Nicaragua ... means he has had a relationship with covert operations in the past."
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Reporters Freddy Cuevas and Filadelfo Aleman contributed to this story from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Managua, Nicaragua. |
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Torture, American Style |
Submitted by: TimL / 16 Feb 2005
Publisher: Bob Herbert, NY Times
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Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes.
Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."
In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."
Any rights Mr. Arar might have thought he had, either as a Canadian citizen or a human being, had been left behind. At times during the trip, Mr. Arar heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of "the Special Removal Unit." He was being taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would be tortured.
The title of Ms. Mayer's article is "Outsourcing Torture." It's a detailed account of the frightening and extremely secretive U.S. program known as "extraordinary rendition."
This is one of the great euphemisms of our time. Extraordinary rendition is the name that's been given to the policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side with contract killings.
Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Jordan are torturing terror suspects at the behest of a nation - the United States - that just went through a national election in which the issue of moral values was supposed to have been decisive. How in the world did we become a country in which gays' getting married is considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.?
As Ms. Mayer pointed out: "Terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East have often been abducted by hooded or masked American agents, then forced onto a Gulfstream V jet, like the one described by Arar. ... Upon arriving in foreign countries, rendered suspects often vanish. Detainees are not provided with lawyers, and many families are not informed of their whereabouts."
Mr. Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.
"Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," Ms. Mayer wrote.
The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.
Barbara Olshansky is the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Mr. Arar in a lawsuit against the U.S. I asked her to describe Mr. Arar's physical and emotional state following his release from custody.
She sounded shaken by the memory. "He's not a big guy," she said. "He had lost more than 40 pounds. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes were sunken. He looked like someone who was kind of dead inside."
Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.
There is a widespread but mistaken notion in the U.S. that everybody seized by the government in its so-called war on terror is in fact somehow connected to terrorist activity. That is just wildly wrong.
Tony Blair knows a little about that sort of thing. Just two days ago the British prime minister formally apologized to 11 people who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for bombings in England by the Irish Republican Army three decades ago.
Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's wrong. And nothing good can come from it. |
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When A Leader Deserts His Men |
Submitted by: TimL / 16 Feb 2005
Publisher: Anthony McIntire, The Blanket
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Andy Sproule, the senior PSNI member running the investigation into the robbery at the Northern Bank, has reported that on the evening of the theft, a couple with a child approached a traffic warden and made it known that two men wearing wigs and carrying baseball bats were in the immediate vicinity of the bank. The information that the traffic warden, in turn, passed on to the police was of the type that would lead only Inspector Clueso to think Halloween revellers were having a lark. This is all the more so since the revelation by Suzanne Breen on RTE's Prime Time that the PSNI were in possession of information that a robbery of a Belfast bank by the Provisional IRA was imminent. By the time the cops arrived, however, the robbers had gone. Along with their substantial haul of notes.
As if things were not bad enough for the PSNI, a diffident Sproule went on to assert that his boss Hugh Orde had made no claim to be in possession of actual evidence but was nevertheless in a position to identify the group behind the heist. Setting aside the debate about where the boundary between intelligence and evidence sits, the PSNI performance both before and after the robbery has left many of the force's advocates jittery. A cloud of suspicion still hangs over the PSNI that its professional and technical prowess was far outmatched by that of the robbers.
Using the type of language that has come to characterise most PSNI pronouncements thus far, even the evidence for the existence of evidence, was evidently not evident when, on the same news report, Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside could be seen angrily gesticulating as he took advantage of parliamentary privilege to name a former republican prisoner as being responsible for the bank heist. Given that the same man was named by the Hennessey Report as being behind the massive 1983 escape from the H-Blocks, and has featured in public discourse in relation to a series of alleged IRA activities, it is all too easy to create the dots and then join them any way you want. Shouting a well-known name is evidence of an ability only to shout a well-known name. It can as easily be the result of guesswork as it is the product of reliable intelligence. The upshot of the blame game is that neither Sproule nor Burnside has firmed up public assumptions about culpability, managing only to reinforce a view already out there of investigators peering into a black hole.
But as ridiculous as the meanderings of those determined to pin the rap on the Provisionals at times seem, they pale in comparison to the absurdity displayed by those seeking to deflect barrages of fingerpointing away from Sinn Fein's alter ego. There is more heavy lifting to be done in defending than accusing on this one. Finding anyone who thinks the job was not the work of the Provisionals is as challenging a task for journalists as locating those responsible for pulling it off is for detectives.
In their denials of Provisional IRA involvement Sinn Fein have exuded the demeanour of men with forked tongues managing to protrude through every cheek. Martin McGuinness at one point took to calling the robbers criminals. No doubt he would insist on this to the family of Bobby Sands if they were to ask him if the IRA were involved.
Perhaps more than anything else this displays the cynical opportunism of Sinn Fein. In 1976 republican prisoners began a protest within the H-Blocks of Long Kesh to refute a British government lie - that IRA activities were criminal. Five years later ten republican volunteers died defying the lie. A major consideration in those young volunteers readily giving up their lives was to create space for people like Martin McGuinness, understood by those hunger strikers to be their chief of staff at the time, to publicly proclaim in defiance of the British state that IRA (and INLA) actions were political in motivation.
The hunger strike was the most intense moment in the history of the Provisional IRA. It has assumed the status of sacred. Those of us involved in the blanket protest still shake with emotion when the memory of ten men dead visits our consciousness. When we approach their graves we do so with the respect reserved for hallowed ground. To see Martin McGuinness, who went on to gain so much from their deaths, virtually spit on their sacrifices and demean their agony by employing the term criminal to describe what few could possibly deny is an IRA operation, is more galling than having to listen to Margaret Thatcher in the days before Bobby Sands died pontificate 'a crime is a crime is a crime.'
Thatcher and the Tory government could not make criminals of the IRA. McGuinness and the Sinn Fein leadership most certainly did. |
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News: Environment |
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U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings |
Submitted by: petrinavegan (at ) yahoo.com / 16 Feb 2005
Publisher: Los Angeles Times
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More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds.
By Julie Cart
Times Staff Writer
February 10, 2005
More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter
official findings to lessen protections for plants and
animals, a survey released Wednesday says.
The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had
a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the
Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility.
A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish
and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which
animals and plants should be placed on the endangered
species list and designating areas where such species
need to be protected.
More than half of the biologists and other researchers
who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in
which commercial interests, including timber, grazing,
development and energy companies, had applied political
pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed
harmful to their business.
Bush administration officials, including Craig Manson,
an assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the
Fish and Wildlife Service, have been critical of the
1973 Endangered Species Act, contending that its
implementation has imposed hardships on developers and
others while failing to restore healthy populations of
wildlife.
Along with Republican leaders in Congress, the
administration is pushing to revamp the act. The
president's proposed budget calls for a $3-million
reduction in funding of Fish and Wildlife's endangered
species programs.
"The pressure to alter scientific reports for political
reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife
offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the
Union of Concerned Scientists.
Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife
Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey,
except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't
so."
The two groups that circulated the survey also made
available memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that
instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even
if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency
employees could not use work time to respond to outside
surveys.
Fish and Wildlife scientists in 90 national offices were
asked 42 questions and given space to respond in essay
form in the mail-in survey sent in November.
One scientist working in the Pacific region, which
includes California, wrote: "I have been through the
reversal of two listing decisions due to political
pressure. Science was ignored — and worse, manipulated,
to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing
decisions."
More than 20% of survey responders reported they had
been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter
technical information."
However, 69% said they had never been given such a
directive. And, although more than half of the
respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings
to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they
had never been required to do so.
Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after
20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not
surprised by the survey results, saying she had been
ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.
"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all
the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably
say you really can't trust the science coming out of the
agency."
A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey:
"It is one thing for the department to dismiss our
recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under
veiled threat of removal) to say something that is
counter to our best professional judgment."
Don Lindburg, head of the office of giant panda
conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego,
said it was unrealistic to expect federal scientists to
be exempt from politics or pressure.
"I've not stood in the shoes of any of those
scientists," he said. "But it is not difficult for me to
believe that there are pressures from those who are not
happy with conservation objectives, and here I am
referring to development interest and others.
"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious
matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists
working for the service feel they have to do that.
Changing facts to fit the politics — that is a very
unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position
I would just refuse to do it."
The Union of Concerned Scientists and the public
employee group provided copies of the survey and
excerpts from essay-style responses.
One biologist based in California, who responded to the
survey, said in an interview with The Times that the
Fish and Wildlife Service was not interested in adding
any species to the endangered species list.
"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my
experience is that the majority of them are ordered to
reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There
are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said
the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times |
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News: Environment |
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Grass flourishes in warmer Antarctic |
Submitted by: petrinavegan (at ) yahoo.com / 16 Feb 2005
Publisher: The Sunday Times - Britain
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Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
GRASS has become established in Antarctica for the first time, showing the continent is warming to temperatures unseen for 10,000 years.
Scientists have reported that broad areas of grass are now forming turf where there were once ice-sheets and glaciers.
Tufts have previously grown on patches of Antarctica in summer, but the scientists have now observed bigger areas surviving winter and spreading in the summer months. Some fear the change portends a much wider melting of the ice-cap that formed at least 20m years ago.
Pete Convey, an ecologist conducting research with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), said: “Grass has taken a grip. There are very rapid changes going on in the Antarctic’s climate, allowing grass to colonise areas that would once have been far too cold.â€
Convey said many species of wildlife were at serious risk from such rapid change including penguins, seals, cold-water fish and giant sea spiders.
The findings come at a politically sensitive time with Europe and America clashing over the latter’s refusal to sign up to the Kyoto treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The confrontation may worsen with Tony Blair saying he is determined to push the issue up the international agenda when Britain assumes the presidencies of the European Union and the G8 countries next year.
The latest research was carried out on the Antarctic peninsula, which juts northwards towards Cape Horn, and the islands around it. More strongly influenced by changes in sea and air temperatures than the rest of Antarctica, these areas are an excellent place to measure effects of climate change.
Measurements over the past three decades show these are among the fastest-warming places on earth, with winter temperatures already 5C higher than in 1974. Many glaciers and ice-sheets are melting.
Convey said Antarctic hair grass and another species called pearlwort were the only complex plants capable of surviving on the Antarctic mainland. He said: “In the past they were at the limit of their range. They used to appear sporadically with one or a few plants growing in sheltered north-facing areas where birds or the wind dropped the seeds but they never did very well.
“What we are seeing now is dense swards or lawns forming and both plants growing much further south than ever before. It is quite remarkable.â€
Research by Convey and his colleagues suggests one of the main reasons for the change is that the rising temperatures have brought forward the start of the Antarctic spring and delayed the onset of autumn, enabling the grass to produce mature seed which germinates and becomes established.
Antarctica has not always been ice-bound. It once had a temperate climate and was covered in dense vegetation. The Antarctic Peninsula was then joined to South America, creating a continuous land barrier along which warm water flowed southwards from the tropics. This water warmed Antarctica in the same way that the Gulf Stream now warms parts of Britain and northern Europe.
About 30m years ago, however, movements of the Earth’s crust carried South America northwards, cutting off the warm water. It was replaced by the circumpolar current in which extremely cold water flows in a constant circle around Antarctica, keeping it frozen and isolated.
John King, principal investigator for the BAS climate change programme, said: “We have also seen a sharp increase in the Roaring Forties, the powerful westerly winds that prevail around the Antarctic. One theory is that global warming is strengthening these winds.â€
King and his colleagues believe such trends could continue, possibly even raising winter temperatures on the peninsula from their past average of -10C to near freezing. Eventually this could give the peninsula a climate comparable to that of Scandinavia.
A further climate alert is to be raised by Professor Lloyd Peck, Convey’s colleague at BAS. He will deliver a stark warning in the Royal Institution’s annual Christmas lectures on Channel 4 this week. Peck said this weekend: “Climate change in Antarctica is a warning of the globally catastrophic changes that will follow unless we act now.†|
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News: Media |
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Peoples Tribunal Finds Western Media Guilty of Deception |
Submitted by: Jamie Phillips / 16 Feb 2005
Publisher: http://dahrjamailiraq.com
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** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
Media Held Guilty of Deception
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail
*ROME, Feb 14 (IPS) - A peoples tribunal has held much of Western media
guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting of Iraq.*
The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples initiative
seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq made its
pronouncement Sunday after a three- day meeting. The tribunal heard
testimony from independent journalists, media professors, activists, and
member of the European Parliament Michele Santoro.
The Rome session of the WTI followed others in Brussels, London, Mumbai,
New York, Hiroshima-Tokyo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon. The Rome
meeting focused on the media role.
The informal panel of WTI judges accused the United States and the
British governments of impeding journalists in performing their task,
and intentionally producing lies and misinformation.
The panel accused western corporate media of filtering and suppressing
information, and of marginalising and endangering independent
journalists. More journalists were killed in a 14-month period in Iraq
than in the entire Vietnam war.
The tribunal said mainstream media reportage on Iraq also violated
article six of the Nuremberg Tribunal (set up to try Nazi crimes) which
states: "Leaders, organisers, instigators and accomplices participating
in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit
any of the foregoing crimes (crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes
against humanity) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons
in execution of such a plan."
The panel that heard testimonies included Francois Houtart, director of
the Tricontinental Centre in Belgium that has backed several peoples
movements in Latin America, and Dr. Samir Amin, director of the Third
World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. Dr. Haleh Afshar, who teaches politics
and women's studies at the University of York in Britain, and Italian
author and newspaper editor Ernesto Pallotta witnessed the proceedings.
"This is not simply an exercise to denounce the mainstream media for
their bias and incompetence," said Dr. Tony Alessandrini, a human rights
activist who has published several articles on the U.S. colonisation of
Iraq. "These denunciations have been going on for months. Here in Rome,
we must go further.."
Alessandrini, who helped organised the WTI added, "What we are being
asked to consider is not simply media bias, but rather the active
complicity of media in crimes that have been committed and are being
committed on a daily basis against the people in Iraq."
Several experts gave strong testimony. Dr. Peter Philips, director of
'Project Censured' at Sonoma State University in California where he
teaches media censorship provided taped testimony. He said that at no
time since the 1930s has the United States been so close to
"institutionalised totalitarianism", and added, "U.S. society has
become
the least informed, best entertained society in the world."
The WTI Rome session also heard testimony from Dr. David Miller from
Scotland, author of 'Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in
the Attack on Iraq'. "This is about condemning journalistic complicity
of war crimes," said Dr. Miller, who is also co-editor of Spinwatch, a
group that monitors public relations and propaganda.
Miller said the Pentagon "does not recognise the concept of independent
journalists, because they are providers of unfriendly information", and
that mainstream media in the United States and in Britain was "complicit
in furthering the selling of the invasion, and ongoing occupation. All
studies conducted on mainstream media show dominance by government
policies, and wartime coverage of TV news in the UK was generally
sympathetic to the government's case.."
Fernando Suarez, who lost his son Jesus during the invasion of Iraq when
he is said to have stepped on an illegal U.S. cluster bomb, also
testified at the tribunal.
Suarez testified that he was first told by the Pentagon that his son
died from a gunshot to the head, then that he died in an accident, and
then that he had died in 'friendly fire'.
On inspecting his son's body Suarez said he discovered that his son had
died from stepping on a cluster bomb.
"I never had the truth from them," Suarez added. "I found the
truth, and
the truth was very simple. On March 26 the Army dropped 20,000 cluster
bombs in Iraq, but only about 20 percent exploded. The other 80 percent
are in the cities and the schools and acting like mines."
Suarez said: "Bush sent my son because he said Iraq had illegal weapons,
and my son died from an illegal American weapon, and nobody has spoken
about this. The media will not talk about the illegal American weapons."
Several witnesses testified about media disinformation over the siege of
Fallujah. They were presented copies of the award winning documentary
'Weapons of Mass Deception' by journalist and film-maker Danny
Schechter, who is also executive editor of Mediachannel.org, an online
media issues network.
Alessandrini said evidence of active complicity of the mainstream media
in wrongs committed against the people of Iraq, and the wrongs of
deception and incitement, was now overwhelming.
"We work from the understanding that history will recall the crimes
committed against the people of Iraq by the U.S.," he said. "It is our
responsibility to record these crimes in order to ensure these crimes
are never again repeated.â€
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images and text are protected by United States and international copyright
law. |
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News: Social Welfare |
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City tries closing gap in affordable housing efforts |
Submitted by: TimL / 14 Feb 2005
Publisher: Michael Rezendes & Beth Healy, Boston Globe
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February 14, 2005
When Mayor Thomas M. Menino five years ago ordered that housing developers set aside 10 to 15 percent of their units for middle-income families, he built in a loophole, allowing developers to cash out of the set-aside by paying a fee.
But even as the residential real estate market has soared, the cash-out fee of $52,000 per unit remained unchanged, creating an increasingly powerful incentive for developers to cash out rather than pay the much higher cost of mixing affordable units into their plans.
Boston Redevelopment Authority records show more than 20 projects where developers were allowed to pay rather than bear the cost of building affordable units. The result: dozens of affordable units that might have been built but were not.
It is a pattern that has worked to undercut the mayor's frequently stated goal of increasing the supply of affordable housing and promoting mixed-income developments. In addition, the failure to increase the opt-out fee over the last five years directly violated Menino's original order, which called for the fee to be adjusted every year.
Now, after inquiries by the Globe, Menino has directed that the fee be almost doubled, to $97,000 per unit. Menino signed an executive order making the change on Feb. 3.
Mark Maloney, executive director of the BRA, said the agency was holding off on an official announcement until it could gauge the reaction of developers.
''I don't want the mayor to make a significant announcement that's proaffordable housing and have the development community say, 'OK, but we can't develop any more housing because of it,' " Maloney said. ''I don't think that's going to happen, but I haven't done that work yet."
The cash-out fee has generated $5.9 million for the BRA and commitments for an additional $4.4 million, which the agency is using to help increase the supply of affordable rental housing and condominiums. Had the fee been raised earlier, the fund would be richer today.
The failure to increase the fee earlier is a misstep in a program that has yielded 177 units of affordable housing, with another 328 either approved or under construction. The units are reserved for moderate-income families who have been priced out of the Boston market, yet earn too much to qualify for most housing subsidies.
By allowing developers to cash out of the building part of the program, the BRA has lost an opportunity to have more moderate-income housing built. That is because the fee has covered only a fraction of the total subsidies required to build a typical affordable unit. Even the new $97,000 fee is less than the $150,000 in subsidies needed, according to affordable-housing specialists interviewed by the Globe.
Over the last five years, some developers have been allowed to use the cash out option after persuading the BRA that including affordable units in their projects would jeopardize their ability to finance their developments.
For example, Intell Boston Harbor, which is developing a waterfront hotel and luxury condominium complex at 500 Atlantic Ave., was facing a loss of more than $30 million if it had to sell 21 of its 141 planned high-end condominiums at a steep discount to moderate-income families.
As a result, the BRA allowed Intell to exercise the $52,000 cash-out option and pay the agency $1.1 million, rather than include the affordable units in the development.
Maloney said the BRA was willing to accept the cash-out in part because the agency was eager to have a developer build at the site, around ''two hideous vent towers" at the southern end of the Central Artery tunnel.
Brian Fallon, the local development partner on the project, said that if he had been forced to sell 21 units in the required range of about $175,000 to $300,000, instead of for $1.6 million, the average price of the market-rate units, it ''would have made the project unfinanceable."
Maloney said the agency has been careful to not push developers too far by insisting on the inclusion of on-site affordable units. But by failing to adjust the cash-out policy earlier, Menino and the agency may have missed an opportunity to increase Boston's supply of affordable housing at a time when the luxury real estate market is white-hot and some developers appear more willing to accommodate affordable housing requirements.
''As long as that demand is there, fueled by low interest rates, guys like me are going to build a lot of housing," said Byron Gilchrest, president of Gilchrest Associates and the lead developer of a 55-unit North End project with six moderate-income units. ''And if the price is including a certain amount of affordable housing, we're going to do it, because we're still going to make money."
When Menino signed his initial executive order five years ago, his goal was to have developers seeking permission to build market-rate housing developments of 10 or more units to include so-called work-force housing. Half of these units would be reserved for moderate-income families earning up to 80 percent of the Boston-area median income, and the other half for families earning from 80 to 120 percent of the Boston-area median income.
The developers were given the choice of making 10 percent of their projects affordable or to build the equivalent of 15 percent of the units in some other part of town. They could also pay the opt-out fee.
Menino created the requirement out of a belief that the city had done a better job promoting housing for the rich and the poor than for middle-income families. His ideal was that new housing developments should include a mix of incomes.
In October 2003, the city policy, known as ''inclusionary development," was toughened, raising the on-site affordable housing obligation to 15 percent of the market-rate units.
Since then, Maloney said, the agency has been more forceful in insisting that developers build affordable units on site. On Dec. 10, 2004, after the Globe's inquiries, Maloney sent a memo to his staff members, reminding them that, ''It is BRA policy that the affordable units should be presumed to be created on site."
Still, he listed eight possible exceptions to that rule, including instances when developers can demonstrate ''financial hardship."
Aaron Gornstein, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association, a nonprofit umbrella group for Massachusetts housing organizations, said the BRA's cash-out fee should be raised to $150,000 for high-end housing developers. That would cover the full cost of public subsidies typically required to build an affordable housing unit beyond the hot downtown, South End, and Fort Point neighborhoods.
Gornstein also said the recent upward spiral in prices of luxury developments has made the requirement for inclusionary development increasingly onerous to developers.
That's because a moderate-income family earning up to 120 percent of the area median income pays an average of about $175,000 to $300,000 for a unit, while the cost of producing the market-rate luxury condominium often exceeds that amount by several hundred thousand dollars.
At the planned Mandarin Oriental hotel-apartment-condominium complex near the Prudential Center, where 50 condominiums will be marketed at prices ranging from $2 million to $12 million, the financial burden of selling the units to moderate-income families would be too steep, the developers argued. So the BRA agreed to allow CWB Boylston to fulfill its affordable housing obligation by providing 10 smaller rental apartments to income-eligible families.
The Mandarin developers, who include Robin Brown, former general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel, estimate that the below-market rents will cost them $6 million to $7 million in forgone revenue over the 40 years that the apartments will remain available to moderate-income families, according to Geri Denterlein, a spokeswoman for the group.
In East Boston, where WinnDevelopment has proposed building a 400-unit luxury condominium development known as Clippership Wharf, the BRA has allowed the developers to fulfill their affordable housing obligation by including 20 moderate-income units on site and paying nearly $1.6 million to another developer that is converting the nearby Maverick Street public housing project into a mixed-income development.
''They improved the neighborhood," Maloney said, explaining the BRA's willingness to approve the arrangement.
Inclusionary zoning has been around since the 1970s and in the past decade has been adopted in a number of cities, including Boston, San Francisco, Denver, Santa Fe, and Cambridge, according to PolicyLink, an Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit research group that tracks the issue.
The Cambridge ordinance, in effect since 1998, contains no cash-out option, said Chris Cotter, the city's housing director.
Some Boston developers say the BRA may have applied Menino's policy and the cash-out option unevenly.
John B. Hynes III, a managing partner of the Gale Co. and developer of the 42-unit Lafayette Lofts, in Chinatown, said the company attempted to buy its way out of a requirement that it include four moderate-income units in the project by paying the agency $450,000, an amount more than double required under the cash-out option.
BRA officials said the cash-out option was not available, Hynes said. The company then offered to build the units off-site, Hynes added, and was again turned aside. ''How come some guys have off-site contributions, and some guys have to stick the units in their project?" Hynes asked. ''That's the million-dollar question."
Maloney said the BRA has discouraged use of the cash-out and off-site options in Chinatown because demand for affordable housing is especially high in the neighborhood.
He also said the agency remains open to arguments by developers who say the burden of including affordable units in their projects is too great, or to developers with alternative plans that may be more attractive.
''The executive order was intentionally crafted to give us the flexibility to make compromises," he said.
Michael Rezendes can be reached at rezendes@globe.com. Beth Healy can be reached at bhealy@globe.com. Walter V. Robinson and Andrea Estes of the Globe staff contributed to this story. |
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