The head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, today delivered his starkest warning yet to the government about pressures on his soldiers, describing the defence budget as "unbalanced" and "heavily skewed" in favour of hi-tech, expensive platforms irrelevant to present conflicts such as Afghanistan.
In a clear reference to such projects as plans to deploy expensive US jets on two new large aircraft carriers and buy new Eurofighters for the RAF, he said: "We have an absolute obligation to understand their needs and to provide [British troops] with the tools and training to do their jobs, and not squander our increasingly scarce resources on those things that are not relevant to today's and tomorrow's absolute requirements."
Noting that just 10% of the existing defence equipment programme was being spent on the army, he continued: "History will not judge our decision-making kindly if we duck the difficult decision and just muddle through. We are at the cross-roads."
Dannatt said the armed forces were likely to be engaged in "intervention and stabilisation operations". "We are in an era of persistent conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan are not aberrations, they are signposts to the future. We risk becoming irrelevant if we do not adapt right across the board."
In a speech to the Chatham House thinktank, Dannatt called for a major rethink of Britain's military capabilities – much of which was still the legacy of the cold war. The threat of an attack on Britain by a hostile state had diminished; the danger now was of an "age of upheaval" characterised by a "kaleidoscope of conflict" involving terrorism, insurgency, and piracy.
He said the fight against al-Qaida-inspired extremism was "probably the struggle of our generation – perhaps our thirty years war" and that many of Britain's existing capabilities were of "questionable relevance".
The British were criticised by some in the US for failing to support the Iraqis more effectively when they took control of Basra from the militias after British forces had withdrawn from the city.
"Credibility with the United States is earned by being an ally that can be relied on to state clearly what it will do and then do it effectively.
"Credibility is also linked to the vital currency of reputation and in this respect there is a recognition that our national and military reputation and credibility, unfairly or not, have been called into question at several levels in the eyes of our most important ally as a result of some aspects of the Iraq campaign."
• The Royal Marine killed on Thursday while travelling in a Viking armoured vehicle near Lashkar Gah in Afghanistan was named yesterday as Jason Macki, 21.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Labour MPs who cheat on expenses will be deselected
Any Labour MP found to have made improper expenses claims will be automatically deselected and barred from standing at the next general election as the party desperately tries to overcome the constitutional crisis facing parliament.
The Guardian has learned that the radical proposal is expected to be agreed next week by Labour's national executive, a move that acknowledges the deep anger among voters to the escalating scandal over MPs' claims.
Gordon Brown has also given ministers a Monday night deadline to ensure their expenses claims for the past five years are lodged with the parliamentary authorities and ready for publication.
Any deselection would happen after the parliamentary commissioner for standards had ruled that an MP had been found clearly guilty of improperly claiming.
The prime minister, who is expected to give a major TV interview on Sunday, is to resist a more sweeping grassroots proposal from leftwing NEC members that would compel every sitting Labour MP to go though a fresh selection process so the public can be reassured all candidates are "fit and proper persons" to stand at the election. Labour officials met and said such a move would be unfair.
In another rollercoaster day which saw the first ministerial casualty of the affair and signs of simmering public anger, Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service announced they were setting up a joint panel to consider multiple allegations that MPs have broken the law in their expenses claims. The police said they were acting because they had received so many complaints from the public.
In other key developments:
• A second Labour backbencher, David Chaytor, was forced to concede tonight that he had claimed £13,000 in expenses to cover mortgage interest payments on his London flat after the mortgage had been paid off. Downing Street said Chaytor was likely to be interviewed by Nick Brown, the chief whip, and face suspension from the parliamentary party along with a similar backbench offender Elliot Morley. Chaytor said he had made an unforgivable error and would repay the money.
• Lord Foulkes, a close friend of the Speaker, Michael Martin, gave a broad hint that Martin had decided to resign before the election, saying it was logical for him to do so by then.
• Shahid Malik, the justice minister, was forced to stand down from his post by Brown pending an investigation into whether an allegedly subsidised rental of a home in his Dewsbury constituency represented a breach of the ministerial code. He is the first minister to be disciplined since the allegations started, but last night won the support of his local party.
• William Hague, the Tory deputy leader, revealed he was going to divest himself of the vast bulk of his outside interests, a decision that will put pressure on the other shadow cabinet members.
• David Cameron, battling to keep abreast of public anger over the allegations of sleaze, told his Scottish Tory party that this was a time of "great danger" for democracy in the UK.
• The deputy leader of the house, Chris Bryant, was forced to deny stories that he had flipped his second home.
• The former father of the house, Tam Dalyell, was accused of attempting to charge £18,000 for two bookcases two months before he stood down as an MP in 2005.
The furore surrounding Malik forced Brown to act early yesterday. It was alleged Malik should have declared on the ministerial register that the rent on his constituency home was below the market rate, so making him potentially beholden to the landlord. The prime minister told him to step down after discussions with the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, and the justice secretary, Jack Straw. The true market value of the rent of the home was a matter of dispute, and some ministers said Malik had been made a sacrificial lamb. He said he would return to the government with his head held high.
Morley, the former minister suspended from the parliamentary Labour party on Thursday, said he might quit as the MP for Scunthorpe over the issue. He said: "What matters to me is the view of my local people and my local party. I need to talk this through with them."
Similar signs of a grassroots rebellion were emerging in the Tory party, with two-thirds of those polled on the Conservative Home website urging the Tory MP Andrew Mackay, to quit over his expenses
The Guardian has learned that the radical proposal is expected to be agreed next week by Labour's national executive, a move that acknowledges the deep anger among voters to the escalating scandal over MPs' claims.
Gordon Brown has also given ministers a Monday night deadline to ensure their expenses claims for the past five years are lodged with the parliamentary authorities and ready for publication.
Any deselection would happen after the parliamentary commissioner for standards had ruled that an MP had been found clearly guilty of improperly claiming.
The prime minister, who is expected to give a major TV interview on Sunday, is to resist a more sweeping grassroots proposal from leftwing NEC members that would compel every sitting Labour MP to go though a fresh selection process so the public can be reassured all candidates are "fit and proper persons" to stand at the election. Labour officials met and said such a move would be unfair.
In another rollercoaster day which saw the first ministerial casualty of the affair and signs of simmering public anger, Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service announced they were setting up a joint panel to consider multiple allegations that MPs have broken the law in their expenses claims. The police said they were acting because they had received so many complaints from the public.
In other key developments:
• A second Labour backbencher, David Chaytor, was forced to concede tonight that he had claimed £13,000 in expenses to cover mortgage interest payments on his London flat after the mortgage had been paid off. Downing Street said Chaytor was likely to be interviewed by Nick Brown, the chief whip, and face suspension from the parliamentary party along with a similar backbench offender Elliot Morley. Chaytor said he had made an unforgivable error and would repay the money.
• Lord Foulkes, a close friend of the Speaker, Michael Martin, gave a broad hint that Martin had decided to resign before the election, saying it was logical for him to do so by then.
• Shahid Malik, the justice minister, was forced to stand down from his post by Brown pending an investigation into whether an allegedly subsidised rental of a home in his Dewsbury constituency represented a breach of the ministerial code. He is the first minister to be disciplined since the allegations started, but last night won the support of his local party.
• William Hague, the Tory deputy leader, revealed he was going to divest himself of the vast bulk of his outside interests, a decision that will put pressure on the other shadow cabinet members.
• David Cameron, battling to keep abreast of public anger over the allegations of sleaze, told his Scottish Tory party that this was a time of "great danger" for democracy in the UK.
• The deputy leader of the house, Chris Bryant, was forced to deny stories that he had flipped his second home.
• The former father of the house, Tam Dalyell, was accused of attempting to charge £18,000 for two bookcases two months before he stood down as an MP in 2005.
The furore surrounding Malik forced Brown to act early yesterday. It was alleged Malik should have declared on the ministerial register that the rent on his constituency home was below the market rate, so making him potentially beholden to the landlord. The prime minister told him to step down after discussions with the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, and the justice secretary, Jack Straw. The true market value of the rent of the home was a matter of dispute, and some ministers said Malik had been made a sacrificial lamb. He said he would return to the government with his head held high.
Morley, the former minister suspended from the parliamentary Labour party on Thursday, said he might quit as the MP for Scunthorpe over the issue. He said: "What matters to me is the view of my local people and my local party. I need to talk this through with them."
Similar signs of a grassroots rebellion were emerging in the Tory party, with two-thirds of those polled on the Conservative Home website urging the Tory MP Andrew Mackay, to quit over his expenses
China builds first sex theme park
China is building what is billed as its first sex theme park, aimed at improving both the sex education and the sex life of its visitors.
Due to open in Chongqing in October, Love Land will include displays of giant genitalia, naked bodies and an exhibition on the history of sex.
The park will also offer sex technique workshops and safe-sex methods.
Among the attractions is a giant rotating statue of the lower part of a nearly naked woman.
"Sex is a taboo subject in China but people really need to have more access to information about it," the park's manager, Lu Xiaoqing told the China Daily state newspaper.
"We are building the park for the good of the public. I have found that the majority of people support my idea, but I have to pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty."
He was inspired to build the park after a visit to South Korea's popular sex theme park in Jeju.
Critics say Love Land is a vulgar concept, and that the Chinese people are not ready to talk publicly about sex.
"These things are too exposed," Liu Daiwei, a Chongqing policewoman, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
"I will feel uncomfortable to look at them when other people are around."
Due to open in Chongqing in October, Love Land will include displays of giant genitalia, naked bodies and an exhibition on the history of sex.
The park will also offer sex technique workshops and safe-sex methods.
Among the attractions is a giant rotating statue of the lower part of a nearly naked woman.
"Sex is a taboo subject in China but people really need to have more access to information about it," the park's manager, Lu Xiaoqing told the China Daily state newspaper.
"We are building the park for the good of the public. I have found that the majority of people support my idea, but I have to pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty."
He was inspired to build the park after a visit to South Korea's popular sex theme park in Jeju.
Critics say Love Land is a vulgar concept, and that the Chinese people are not ready to talk publicly about sex.
"These things are too exposed," Liu Daiwei, a Chongqing policewoman, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
"I will feel uncomfortable to look at them when other people are around."
Gang fools Mexico prison guards
An armed gang disguised as police has broken into a jail in northern Mexico and freed more than 50 prisoners.
A convoy of at least 15 vehicles arrived at the prison with gang members all apparently disguised as federal police officers.
Once inside, the prison authorities were persuaded that an inspection was under way and guards were overpowered.
A manhunt is underway for the fugitives - believed to be linked to the powerful drug smuggling Gulf cartel.
Army troops as well as local and federal police have begun a search and set up roadblocks near the prison facility in Zacatecas and neighbouring states.
President Felipe Calderon has declared war on the illegal narcotic organisation in Mexico, deploying 40,000 troops to fight the cartels.
In some regions instances of beheadings and attacks on police have become commonplace, with the deaths of 6,000 people last year alone blamed on illegal narcotics.
But progress in the war against the cartels has been limited by the fact that in the face of well armed and well financed drug cartels, this country's law and order institutions have proved weak and easily corruptible, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City says.
A convoy of at least 15 vehicles arrived at the prison with gang members all apparently disguised as federal police officers.
Once inside, the prison authorities were persuaded that an inspection was under way and guards were overpowered.
A manhunt is underway for the fugitives - believed to be linked to the powerful drug smuggling Gulf cartel.
Army troops as well as local and federal police have begun a search and set up roadblocks near the prison facility in Zacatecas and neighbouring states.
President Felipe Calderon has declared war on the illegal narcotic organisation in Mexico, deploying 40,000 troops to fight the cartels.
In some regions instances of beheadings and attacks on police have become commonplace, with the deaths of 6,000 people last year alone blamed on illegal narcotics.
But progress in the war against the cartels has been limited by the fact that in the face of well armed and well financed drug cartels, this country's law and order institutions have proved weak and easily corruptible, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City says.
Sri Lanka army 'defeats rebels'
The Sri Lankan president has declared a military victory over the Tamil Tigers after 26 years of bloody civil war.
Speaking on a visit to Jordan, Mahinda Rajapakse said he would return home to a nation totally free from the "barbaric acts" of the rebel group.
However, senior officials told the BBC fighting rages on in a tiny area of the north-east where the Tigers' leadership is said to be cornered.
More than 70,000 people have died in the bitter war for a Tamil homeland.
See a map of the conflict region
The last weeks of the war have been marked by a growing chorus of international concern over the fate of Tamil civilians caught up in the intense fighting.
Sri Lanka's military spokesman, Brig Udaya Nanayakkara, says 25,000 civilians have made it out of the conflict zone in the past 72 hours, 11,800 of them on Saturday alone.
However, more remain inside the small area where the Tamil Tigers may be preparing for a fight to the death.
The UN and Western governments have called on Sri Lanka to exercise restraint in its pursuit of a military victory over the Tigers.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has become the latest leader to speak out on the issue, declaring on Saturday that there would be "consequences" if Sri Lanka did not work to ensure an orderly end to the conflict.
'Humanitarian operation'
Speaking in Jordan, Mr Rajapakse said: "My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily.
"I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE," he added
But the BBC's Charles Haviland, in the capital, Colombo, says a senior government spokesman in Jordan with the president could not confirm that fighting had ended in the north-east.
There are now concerns that the Tamil Tiger leadership is preparing for a last stand, our correspondent says.
The Tigers' leadership has said repeatedly that they will not surrender, and are thought to be keeping thousands of civilians as human shields.
There have also been reports that the Tigers are preparing a mass suicide in the face of a military defeat.
A UN spokesman, Gordon Weiss, told Associated Press the organisation still had "grave fears" for the safety of an estimated 30,000 to 80,000 people still inside the combat zone.
Earlier, Sri Lanka's defence secretary told the BBC that the army was closing in on the remaining fighters for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the full name for the Tamil Tigers).
"We have restricted the LTTE to one square kilometre-like area, so we will mop up and seize the rest of the LTTE cadres and the leadership," Gotabhaya Rajapakse said.
He said the army did not know exactly where to find rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran, but expressed confidence he would be tracked down.
"If he has not committed suicide then he should be there," Mr Rajapakse said.
Prabhakaran began the fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the early 1970s, progressing into a violent civil war in 1983.
Tigers landlocked
The capture of the Tigers' last remaining stretch of coastline earlier on Saturday was hailed as a decisive breakthrough by Sri Lanka's army.
Few images exist of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
For the first time ever the rebels do not have sea access, and the army is "progressing" to clear remaining rebel-held land, Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Speaking after the president's statement, he said military action in the north-east was ongoing, also branding it a "rescue, humanitarian operation".
The Tigers once boasted a deadly and much-feared naval strike capability, often using boats to launch lethal attacks during the long years of their guerrilla campaign.
State TV showed images of explosions and plumes of smoke rising from close to the coastline, as well as images of celebrating troops in coastal areas.
The army said the scenes proved that the Tigers were blowing up their own caches of ammunition, but there is no independent confirmation of that claim.
Speaking on a visit to Jordan, Mahinda Rajapakse said he would return home to a nation totally free from the "barbaric acts" of the rebel group.
However, senior officials told the BBC fighting rages on in a tiny area of the north-east where the Tigers' leadership is said to be cornered.
More than 70,000 people have died in the bitter war for a Tamil homeland.
See a map of the conflict region
The last weeks of the war have been marked by a growing chorus of international concern over the fate of Tamil civilians caught up in the intense fighting.
Sri Lanka's military spokesman, Brig Udaya Nanayakkara, says 25,000 civilians have made it out of the conflict zone in the past 72 hours, 11,800 of them on Saturday alone.
However, more remain inside the small area where the Tamil Tigers may be preparing for a fight to the death.
The UN and Western governments have called on Sri Lanka to exercise restraint in its pursuit of a military victory over the Tigers.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has become the latest leader to speak out on the issue, declaring on Saturday that there would be "consequences" if Sri Lanka did not work to ensure an orderly end to the conflict.
'Humanitarian operation'
Speaking in Jordan, Mr Rajapakse said: "My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily.
"I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE," he added
But the BBC's Charles Haviland, in the capital, Colombo, says a senior government spokesman in Jordan with the president could not confirm that fighting had ended in the north-east.
There are now concerns that the Tamil Tiger leadership is preparing for a last stand, our correspondent says.
The Tigers' leadership has said repeatedly that they will not surrender, and are thought to be keeping thousands of civilians as human shields.
There have also been reports that the Tigers are preparing a mass suicide in the face of a military defeat.
A UN spokesman, Gordon Weiss, told Associated Press the organisation still had "grave fears" for the safety of an estimated 30,000 to 80,000 people still inside the combat zone.
Earlier, Sri Lanka's defence secretary told the BBC that the army was closing in on the remaining fighters for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the full name for the Tamil Tigers).
"We have restricted the LTTE to one square kilometre-like area, so we will mop up and seize the rest of the LTTE cadres and the leadership," Gotabhaya Rajapakse said.
He said the army did not know exactly where to find rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran, but expressed confidence he would be tracked down.
"If he has not committed suicide then he should be there," Mr Rajapakse said.
Prabhakaran began the fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the early 1970s, progressing into a violent civil war in 1983.
Tigers landlocked
The capture of the Tigers' last remaining stretch of coastline earlier on Saturday was hailed as a decisive breakthrough by Sri Lanka's army.
Few images exist of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
For the first time ever the rebels do not have sea access, and the army is "progressing" to clear remaining rebel-held land, Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Speaking after the president's statement, he said military action in the north-east was ongoing, also branding it a "rescue, humanitarian operation".
The Tigers once boasted a deadly and much-feared naval strike capability, often using boats to launch lethal attacks during the long years of their guerrilla campaign.
State TV showed images of explosions and plumes of smoke rising from close to the coastline, as well as images of celebrating troops in coastal areas.
The army said the scenes proved that the Tigers were blowing up their own caches of ammunition, but there is no independent confirmation of that claim.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Not a Good Time to Be Middle-Aged
IN this recession, it is better to be old. Being young has some advantages, too.
But being in the middle of the spectrum — in your 30s or 40s — seems to be the worst place to be.
The Pew Research Center released a poll of Americans this week that found people over 65 were generally suffering less from the recession. Fewer of them reported being forced to cut back on household expenses or said they had trouble meeting rent or mortgage obligations.
“The most vivid finding to emerge from this survey is that older Americans — most of whom have already retired and downsized their lifestyles — have been far better insulated from the current storm than those who need to worry about keeping their jobs and building up diminished retirement accounts,” wrote Rich Morin and Paul Taylor of Pew Research.
The elderly benefit from a greater safety net than do other Americans. Many are collecting pensions, and Social Security and Medicare are available. Just 7 percent of those over 65 reported problems in obtaining or paying for health care, a third the proportion of younger adults.
The collapse in stock prices last year also caused less damage to those over 65. The poll found that 23 percent of elderly Americans reported losing at least 20 percent of their investments last year, well below those further from retirement.
Those over 65 presumably had more conservative investments, which fared better.
The proportion of those 18 to 29 who reported large losses was even smaller, at 15 percent. It appears that many of them lost little because they had little in the way of investments to lose.
Older Americans have also been less affected by rising unemployment. Fewer of them are working, of course, but the number of people over 65 with jobs has risen by 3.9 percent since November 2007, when the total number of people with jobs hit a peak. Since then, the younger the worker, the more likely he or she was to lose a job.
This recession differs from recent ones in that regard. While the youngest workers have always been the most vulnerable, those over 65 fared worse than those in middle age in the three previous recessions — in the early years of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the beginning of the current decade.
A rise in the number of people over 65 with jobs may not be good news, of course, since it could indicate that some retired people were being forced back into the labor market by declines in their investments. But at least many of them were able to find jobs.
The Pew poll found that the recession was having its deepest immediate impact on those in the “threshold generation,” ages 50 to 64. They were most likely to have suffered significant investment losses, and three-quarters of them said the recession would make it harder for them to afford retirement, a greater percentage than of either older or younger Americans.
But if that generation does end up working longer, workers in their 30s and 40s could find themselves facing more competition for jobs and promotions. Even if the recession does end this year, as the more optimistic economists forecast, the effects of it could be felt for years to come.
But being in the middle of the spectrum — in your 30s or 40s — seems to be the worst place to be.
The Pew Research Center released a poll of Americans this week that found people over 65 were generally suffering less from the recession. Fewer of them reported being forced to cut back on household expenses or said they had trouble meeting rent or mortgage obligations.
“The most vivid finding to emerge from this survey is that older Americans — most of whom have already retired and downsized their lifestyles — have been far better insulated from the current storm than those who need to worry about keeping their jobs and building up diminished retirement accounts,” wrote Rich Morin and Paul Taylor of Pew Research.
The elderly benefit from a greater safety net than do other Americans. Many are collecting pensions, and Social Security and Medicare are available. Just 7 percent of those over 65 reported problems in obtaining or paying for health care, a third the proportion of younger adults.
The collapse in stock prices last year also caused less damage to those over 65. The poll found that 23 percent of elderly Americans reported losing at least 20 percent of their investments last year, well below those further from retirement.
Those over 65 presumably had more conservative investments, which fared better.
The proportion of those 18 to 29 who reported large losses was even smaller, at 15 percent. It appears that many of them lost little because they had little in the way of investments to lose.
Older Americans have also been less affected by rising unemployment. Fewer of them are working, of course, but the number of people over 65 with jobs has risen by 3.9 percent since November 2007, when the total number of people with jobs hit a peak. Since then, the younger the worker, the more likely he or she was to lose a job.
This recession differs from recent ones in that regard. While the youngest workers have always been the most vulnerable, those over 65 fared worse than those in middle age in the three previous recessions — in the early years of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the beginning of the current decade.
A rise in the number of people over 65 with jobs may not be good news, of course, since it could indicate that some retired people were being forced back into the labor market by declines in their investments. But at least many of them were able to find jobs.
The Pew poll found that the recession was having its deepest immediate impact on those in the “threshold generation,” ages 50 to 64. They were most likely to have suffered significant investment losses, and three-quarters of them said the recession would make it harder for them to afford retirement, a greater percentage than of either older or younger Americans.
But if that generation does end up working longer, workers in their 30s and 40s could find themselves facing more competition for jobs and promotions. Even if the recession does end this year, as the more optimistic economists forecast, the effects of it could be felt for years to come.
Minorities Hit Hardest by Foreclosures in New York
Turn the corner on 145th Street in Jamaica, Queens, and it is as though a cyclone has wheeled throughOne resident, Lakisha Brown, a hospital worker and mother of two, snatched her house back from foreclosure last month, if only temporarily. “We need to sell fast,” she says. “I’m just trying to save what’s left of my credit.” Across the street in this black middle-class neighborhood, Patrick Nicholas, a surgical technician in blue scrubs, shakes his dreadlocks and shrugs. He rents but is moving out. “The owner got foreclosed and told us to leave,” he says.
Six doors away, past two foreclosed and boarded-up homes, a burly man in a blue union jacket declines to give his name but his problem is evident. A foreclosure notice is pasted to the door of his house. His tone is mournful. “Tough times, man,” he says. “Tough, tough times.”
Late to arrive in the Northeast, the foreclosure crisis has swept through the New York region at an explosive pace in the past two years, destroying billions of dollars in housing wealth, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data.
It now touches every corner of the region, from estates along the Connecticut Gold Coast to the suburban tracts of Long Island, where 6 percent of all mortgages are at least 90 days delinquent, the point at which foreclosure proceedings usually begin.
But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods — where the default rate is at least double the regional average — have a majority of black and Latino homeowners.
And the hardest blows rain down on the backbone of minority neighborhoods: the black middle class. In New York City, for example, black households making more than $68,000 a year are almost five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as are whites of similar — or even lower — incomes.
This holds a special poignancy. Just four or five years ago, black homeownership was rising sharply, after decades in which discriminatory lending and zoning practices discouraged many blacks from buying. Now, as damage ripples outward, black families in foreclosure lose savings and credit, neighbors see the value of their homes decline, and renters are evicted.
That pattern plays out across the nation. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center also shows foreclosure taking the heaviest toll on counties that have black and Latino majorities, with the New York region among the badly hit.
On 145th Street in southeast Queens, just south of Linden Boulevard, attached brick homes with tidy, fenced-in gardens stretch into the distance. Children play tag under blooming oaks. But 8 of these roughly 50 homes face foreclosure; 4 are vacant; 2 have plywood boards nailed over punched-out windows.
“My district feels like ground zero,” said City Councilman James Sanders Jr., an African-American who represents hundreds of blocks in Queens like this one. “In military terms, we are being pillaged.”
Years ago many banks drew red lines on maps around black neighborhoods and refused to lend; more recently, some banks began taking aim at those neighborhoods for the marketing of subprime loans, say consumer advocates.
Black buyers often enter a separate lending universe: A dozen banks and mortgage companies, almost all of which turned big profits making subprime loans, accounted for half the loans given to the region’s black middle-income borrowers in 2005 and 2006, according to The Times’s analysis. The N.A.A.C.P. has filed a class-action suit against many of the nation’s largest banks, charging that such lending practices amount to reverse redlining.
“This was not only a problem of regulation on the mortgage front, but also a targeted scourge on minority communities,” said Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in a speech this year at New York University. Roughly 33 percent of the subprime mortgages given out in New York City in 2007, Mr. Donovan said, went to borrowers with credit scores that should have qualified them for conventional prevailing-rate loans.
For anyone taking out a $350,000 mortgage, a difference of three percentage points — a typical spread between conventional and subprime loans — tacks on $272,000 in additional interest over the life of a 30-year loan.
“There’s a huge worry that this will exacerbate historic disparities between the wealth of black and white families,” said Ingrid Ellen, co-director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. Not that white neighborhoods and towns in the New York region stand immune. During the past decade, buyers of all colors scrimped to buy homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
Now mortgage delinquencies are rising sharply even in high-income, predominantly white enclaves, from Nirvana Avenue in Great Neck, N.Y., to Otter Rock Drive on a peninsula off Greenwich, Conn.
In the wealthiest ZIP codes, the median delinquency rate — although much lower than the regional rate, 5.3 percent — more than tripled from March 2005 to March 2008, then doubled again in the year since.
As a whole the region has fared better than stretches of Florida and California, where about one in every five borrowers is at least 90 days behind on payments.
Yet the pain in the New York region is considerable. The delinquency rate in Essex County, N.J., stood at 11 percent in March, more than two percentage points higher than in Genesee County, Mich., home to the battered city of Flint, which stands as a national symbol of this recession.
A World of Damage
Sitting on Long Island close by the Atlantic Ocean — salt air flares the nostrils on many days — Roosevelt is 79 percent black and has suffered grievously from segregation over the years. (Long Island, as measured by school and housing patterns, is among the most racially segregated suburban areas in the nation.) Still, as young black families sought bargains, home ownership rose.
Now subprime loans and a crippled economy have laid many of those families low. Olive M. Thompson, a 45-year-old nursing assistant, lost her $215,000, four-bedroom Cape in January, but not before she drained her 401(k) and declared bankruptcy.
A single mother of four, she recalled arriving in 2003 and seeing a home across the street with a garden so beautiful she fantasized about matching it. That house went into foreclosure.
“Next thing I know, it’s boarded up,” she said.
Foreclosure represents catastrophe on several levels. As families move to cheaper quarters, they often move their children to different schools. A rising number of foreclosures in a neighborhood is a singularly reliable predictor of an increase in violent crime, according to a recent academic study.
All these ills are magnified for black families, whose median net worth is far smaller than that of white families, and far more tied up in housing.
On Bainbridge Street in the predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, 130-year-old brownstone homes loom like grand sailing ships, seemingly impervious to the ravages of time. That solidity is illusory. Looking closer, a visitor can identify homes in jeopardy by the cracked stoops, broken windowsills and tilting chimneys.
Alexia Billiart, 33, who is black, and her husband, who is white, moved a year ago from an expensive neighborhood into a handsome row house in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where they can manage their payments. Across the street, two foreclosed homes have fallen vacant, and a nearby apartment building stands broken and padlocked. At night, young men cluster on the stoops of the vacant homes.
“We figured we’d move here and participate in the rebirth of this block,” said Ms. Billiart, who works for a financial planning firm. “It seems to be going backward; it’s a little scary.”
Several black homeowners along these blocks, including well-paid professionals, confide that they pay strikingly high mortgage rates — 9, 10 or 11 percent annually. How that came to happen is a complicated story.
Over the last decade, many commercial banks, from Wells Fargo to Bank of America to HSBC, acquired subprime lenders that thrived by offering loose lending standards and high interest rates. Court records show that brokers sometimes received bonuses for steering borrowers into high-interest loans laden with extra costs.
Even many blacks and Latinos who say they sought conventional loans ended up with subprime mortgages from these lenders. One reason, many say, was a mistrust of conventional banks.
Colvin Grannum grew up in a black neighborhood in Brooklyn and became president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a nonprofit organization that builds and renovates housing. His father bought several properties in the 1950s and ’60s, often without turning to banks.
“I don’t want to say it’s in the cultural DNA, but a lot of us who are older than 30 have some memory of disappointment or humiliation related to banks,” Mr. Grannum said. “The white guy in the suit with the same income gets a loan and you don’t?”
“So you turn to local brokers, even if they don’t offer the best rates.”
This may help explain an unusual phenomenon: Upper-income black borrowers in the region are more likely to hold subprime mortgages than even blacks with lower incomes, who often benefit from homeownership classes and lending assistance offered by government and nonprofits
The foreclosure storm shows few signs of abating. Scam artists and deed thieves prey on the desperate as complaints flood the offices of local prosecutors. In a church meeting room in the Guyanese neighborhood of Flatlands, Brooklyn, 200 homeowners tell of paying $3,000 or $4,000 to firms to “fix” their mortgage troubles. Often, these firms disappear with the moneyIn southeast Queens, politicians have asked homeowner advocacy groups to set up shop in their offices. “My office is St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes,” Councilman Sanders said.
A few step clear of the rubble. Antoinette Coffi, 45, saw an ad on the subway, a photo of a black couple gazing at a gleaming home. She walked into that company’s office two years ago, and six weeks later she, her two children, her mother and cousin had a home in Queens. She ended up with not one but two mortgages, including a variable-rate loan that started at 11 percent.
Last year her work hours were cut and she fell behind. “The stress, oh my God,” she said, her voice thick with the juicy vowels of her native West Africa.
With the help of Changer, an advocacy group, she has kept the house. But her neighbors may not be as lucky. “Everywhere, everyone talks about being put in the street,” she said.
Foreclosure is cutting so deep as to reshape the geography. If enough homes go vacant in Queens and Newark and Roosevelt, a cycle of disinvestment could beckon.
“Some home-owning neighborhoods may turn back to rentals and some might not survive,” said Jay Brinkman, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. “They might end up bulldozed.”
That sounds a touch apocalyptic. The Obama administration has set aside $50 billion to persuade banks to reduce monthly payments to help borrowers avoid foreclosure. Immigrants continue to flock here, and New York City officials have spent tens of billions of dollars since the 1980s to rebuild and shore up hard-pressed neighborhoods.
But few in 1965 would have predicted the South Bronx devastation of 1979. At the very least, tens of thousands of people will lose their homes, their savings and their dreams.
“Rather than helping to narrow the wealth and home ownership gap between black and white,” Mr. Grannum said, “we’ve managed in the last few years to strip a lot of equity out of black neighborhoods.”
Six doors away, past two foreclosed and boarded-up homes, a burly man in a blue union jacket declines to give his name but his problem is evident. A foreclosure notice is pasted to the door of his house. His tone is mournful. “Tough times, man,” he says. “Tough, tough times.”
Late to arrive in the Northeast, the foreclosure crisis has swept through the New York region at an explosive pace in the past two years, destroying billions of dollars in housing wealth, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data.
It now touches every corner of the region, from estates along the Connecticut Gold Coast to the suburban tracts of Long Island, where 6 percent of all mortgages are at least 90 days delinquent, the point at which foreclosure proceedings usually begin.
But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods — where the default rate is at least double the regional average — have a majority of black and Latino homeowners.
And the hardest blows rain down on the backbone of minority neighborhoods: the black middle class. In New York City, for example, black households making more than $68,000 a year are almost five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as are whites of similar — or even lower — incomes.
This holds a special poignancy. Just four or five years ago, black homeownership was rising sharply, after decades in which discriminatory lending and zoning practices discouraged many blacks from buying. Now, as damage ripples outward, black families in foreclosure lose savings and credit, neighbors see the value of their homes decline, and renters are evicted.
That pattern plays out across the nation. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center also shows foreclosure taking the heaviest toll on counties that have black and Latino majorities, with the New York region among the badly hit.
On 145th Street in southeast Queens, just south of Linden Boulevard, attached brick homes with tidy, fenced-in gardens stretch into the distance. Children play tag under blooming oaks. But 8 of these roughly 50 homes face foreclosure; 4 are vacant; 2 have plywood boards nailed over punched-out windows.
“My district feels like ground zero,” said City Councilman James Sanders Jr., an African-American who represents hundreds of blocks in Queens like this one. “In military terms, we are being pillaged.”
Years ago many banks drew red lines on maps around black neighborhoods and refused to lend; more recently, some banks began taking aim at those neighborhoods for the marketing of subprime loans, say consumer advocates.
Black buyers often enter a separate lending universe: A dozen banks and mortgage companies, almost all of which turned big profits making subprime loans, accounted for half the loans given to the region’s black middle-income borrowers in 2005 and 2006, according to The Times’s analysis. The N.A.A.C.P. has filed a class-action suit against many of the nation’s largest banks, charging that such lending practices amount to reverse redlining.
“This was not only a problem of regulation on the mortgage front, but also a targeted scourge on minority communities,” said Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in a speech this year at New York University. Roughly 33 percent of the subprime mortgages given out in New York City in 2007, Mr. Donovan said, went to borrowers with credit scores that should have qualified them for conventional prevailing-rate loans.
For anyone taking out a $350,000 mortgage, a difference of three percentage points — a typical spread between conventional and subprime loans — tacks on $272,000 in additional interest over the life of a 30-year loan.
“There’s a huge worry that this will exacerbate historic disparities between the wealth of black and white families,” said Ingrid Ellen, co-director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. Not that white neighborhoods and towns in the New York region stand immune. During the past decade, buyers of all colors scrimped to buy homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
Now mortgage delinquencies are rising sharply even in high-income, predominantly white enclaves, from Nirvana Avenue in Great Neck, N.Y., to Otter Rock Drive on a peninsula off Greenwich, Conn.
In the wealthiest ZIP codes, the median delinquency rate — although much lower than the regional rate, 5.3 percent — more than tripled from March 2005 to March 2008, then doubled again in the year since.
As a whole the region has fared better than stretches of Florida and California, where about one in every five borrowers is at least 90 days behind on payments.
Yet the pain in the New York region is considerable. The delinquency rate in Essex County, N.J., stood at 11 percent in March, more than two percentage points higher than in Genesee County, Mich., home to the battered city of Flint, which stands as a national symbol of this recession.
A World of Damage
Sitting on Long Island close by the Atlantic Ocean — salt air flares the nostrils on many days — Roosevelt is 79 percent black and has suffered grievously from segregation over the years. (Long Island, as measured by school and housing patterns, is among the most racially segregated suburban areas in the nation.) Still, as young black families sought bargains, home ownership rose.
Now subprime loans and a crippled economy have laid many of those families low. Olive M. Thompson, a 45-year-old nursing assistant, lost her $215,000, four-bedroom Cape in January, but not before she drained her 401(k) and declared bankruptcy.
A single mother of four, she recalled arriving in 2003 and seeing a home across the street with a garden so beautiful she fantasized about matching it. That house went into foreclosure.
“Next thing I know, it’s boarded up,” she said.
Foreclosure represents catastrophe on several levels. As families move to cheaper quarters, they often move their children to different schools. A rising number of foreclosures in a neighborhood is a singularly reliable predictor of an increase in violent crime, according to a recent academic study.
All these ills are magnified for black families, whose median net worth is far smaller than that of white families, and far more tied up in housing.
On Bainbridge Street in the predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, 130-year-old brownstone homes loom like grand sailing ships, seemingly impervious to the ravages of time. That solidity is illusory. Looking closer, a visitor can identify homes in jeopardy by the cracked stoops, broken windowsills and tilting chimneys.
Alexia Billiart, 33, who is black, and her husband, who is white, moved a year ago from an expensive neighborhood into a handsome row house in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where they can manage their payments. Across the street, two foreclosed homes have fallen vacant, and a nearby apartment building stands broken and padlocked. At night, young men cluster on the stoops of the vacant homes.
“We figured we’d move here and participate in the rebirth of this block,” said Ms. Billiart, who works for a financial planning firm. “It seems to be going backward; it’s a little scary.”
Several black homeowners along these blocks, including well-paid professionals, confide that they pay strikingly high mortgage rates — 9, 10 or 11 percent annually. How that came to happen is a complicated story.
Over the last decade, many commercial banks, from Wells Fargo to Bank of America to HSBC, acquired subprime lenders that thrived by offering loose lending standards and high interest rates. Court records show that brokers sometimes received bonuses for steering borrowers into high-interest loans laden with extra costs.
Even many blacks and Latinos who say they sought conventional loans ended up with subprime mortgages from these lenders. One reason, many say, was a mistrust of conventional banks.
Colvin Grannum grew up in a black neighborhood in Brooklyn and became president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a nonprofit organization that builds and renovates housing. His father bought several properties in the 1950s and ’60s, often without turning to banks.
“I don’t want to say it’s in the cultural DNA, but a lot of us who are older than 30 have some memory of disappointment or humiliation related to banks,” Mr. Grannum said. “The white guy in the suit with the same income gets a loan and you don’t?”
“So you turn to local brokers, even if they don’t offer the best rates.”
This may help explain an unusual phenomenon: Upper-income black borrowers in the region are more likely to hold subprime mortgages than even blacks with lower incomes, who often benefit from homeownership classes and lending assistance offered by government and nonprofits
The foreclosure storm shows few signs of abating. Scam artists and deed thieves prey on the desperate as complaints flood the offices of local prosecutors. In a church meeting room in the Guyanese neighborhood of Flatlands, Brooklyn, 200 homeowners tell of paying $3,000 or $4,000 to firms to “fix” their mortgage troubles. Often, these firms disappear with the moneyIn southeast Queens, politicians have asked homeowner advocacy groups to set up shop in their offices. “My office is St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes,” Councilman Sanders said.
A few step clear of the rubble. Antoinette Coffi, 45, saw an ad on the subway, a photo of a black couple gazing at a gleaming home. She walked into that company’s office two years ago, and six weeks later she, her two children, her mother and cousin had a home in Queens. She ended up with not one but two mortgages, including a variable-rate loan that started at 11 percent.
Last year her work hours were cut and she fell behind. “The stress, oh my God,” she said, her voice thick with the juicy vowels of her native West Africa.
With the help of Changer, an advocacy group, she has kept the house. But her neighbors may not be as lucky. “Everywhere, everyone talks about being put in the street,” she said.
Foreclosure is cutting so deep as to reshape the geography. If enough homes go vacant in Queens and Newark and Roosevelt, a cycle of disinvestment could beckon.
“Some home-owning neighborhoods may turn back to rentals and some might not survive,” said Jay Brinkman, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. “They might end up bulldozed.”
That sounds a touch apocalyptic. The Obama administration has set aside $50 billion to persuade banks to reduce monthly payments to help borrowers avoid foreclosure. Immigrants continue to flock here, and New York City officials have spent tens of billions of dollars since the 1980s to rebuild and shore up hard-pressed neighborhoods.
But few in 1965 would have predicted the South Bronx devastation of 1979. At the very least, tens of thousands of people will lose their homes, their savings and their dreams.
“Rather than helping to narrow the wealth and home ownership gap between black and white,” Mr. Grannum said, “we’ve managed in the last few years to strip a lot of equity out of black neighborhoods.”
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