Rental costs across the United States are rising at the fastest rate in decades. Because the COVID-related, federally mandated eviction moratoriums have been lifted, landlords can boot out existing tenants, increase rents and find new occupants. Landlords can reap windfall profits from the new ground rules, but at the expense of the many people who find themselves either homeless or anxious about the possibility of becoming homeless.
In some of the most sought-after destinations, rent has soared faster and higher than the national average. Record high rents, some as high as 40 percent above previous listings, have been seen in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Austin. Recently, prospective Manhattan renters waited more than an hour to view an East Village, 371-square-foot, one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up listed for $2,337.39 a month.
Among those caught up in the dramatic rental price spike are the recently arrived Afghan evacuees. The Department of State’s Reception and Placement Program provides the paroled Afghan evacuees – they don’t have refugee status – with initial resettlement services for up to three months. This includes $2,275 per refugee resettled, with $1,225 of that money going toward food, shelter and clothing. The evacuees are eligible for a long list of affirmative social services programs that include Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income, Head Start, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC). Some Afghan families range in size from 6-11 persons which means they require more expensive and harder-to-find three- or four-bedroom units.
As challenging as finding short-term rentals is, long-term housing is more difficult. Evacuees are, for the most part, unemployed, have no credit history and generally are required to provide the first and last months’ rent in advance as well as a security deposit, an aggregate sum that can total several thousand dollars. In Minneapolis, where rent for a 778-square-foot apartment averages $1,621, Gul Rahim finds himself, his family of 13 and his pregnant wife facing eviction. Rahim doesn’t have a job and, since he doesn’t speak English and is caring for his ill and pregnant wife, can’t look for one either. Of Minneapolis’ 1,200 evacuees, 600 like Rahim are confronting a housing crisis and may soon join the city’s substantial homeless population.
As grave as the affordable housing shortage is for the evacuees, adjusting to U.S. K-12 public schools will present equally weighty problems for their children. Afghanistan has a dual education process that differs significantly from the U.S. In Afghanistan, two parallel systems ongoing at the same time. First, religious education is the responsibility of clerics at mosques, and second, the government provides free academic education at state schools. As for U.S. teachers, helping the Afghans will add to their already-substantial responsibility to instruct other international students. Overcrowded schools are coping with millions of English language learners and will now have to instruct Afghan speakers whose native languages are Dari and Pashto. Teacher time spent on English language learners detracts from the instruction that citizen children should receive, the lack of which harms their quality of education. The greater the number of students in a classroom, the less attention each student can receive from the teacher. This particularly affects students who are struggling and need the extra attention.
The housing emergency that many Afghans are dealing with and the K-12 tribulations that lay ahead are the predictable outcomes of the Biden administration’s hasty, botched withdrawal. Moreover, the open border will create the same set of housing and schooling problems for more than 1 million foreign nationals that have arrived from 150 different countries. They’ll all need places to live and education for their children. The question that Biden and his inner circle never asked is what comes next after millions of illegal aliens and evacuees arrive and need nurturing. If the question were ever asked, no one thought to consider the obvious answer – America has enough affordable housing and education woes without compounding them by importing millions more needy people.
Disobedience sins by falling short, not wanting to submit to a good order of a legitimate authority; servility on the other hand sins by excess, submitting to unfair orders or orders given by an illegitimate authority. The good citizen should know how to disobey civil authority, and the good Catholic how to do the same with ecclesiastical authority, disobeying whenever the authority demands obedience to an iniquitous order.
Normally, I wouldn’t discuss political goings-on in York County, a hundred miles from Swarthmore and Delaware County. After all, what could possibly happen there that is meaningful to us in Delco?
However, at this time a very effective rebellion has taken place in York, and two long-term GOP incumbents have been upset. Both chaired their respective Appropriations Committees and we will discuss Keith Gillespie’s even more surprising loss in an upcoming post.
These losses led York County GOP Chairman Jeff Piccola to resign within minutes of the polls closing.
Wendy Fink
The 94th District consists of 14 towns: Chanceford Township, Delta, East Prospect, Felton, Lower Chanceford Township, Lower Windsor Township, Peach Bottom Township, Red Lion, Stewartstown, Windsor, Windsor Township, Winterstown, Yorkana, and parts of Springettsbury Township. This district had been a GOP stronghold since 1969. Prior to that, seats were apportioned by county.
Representative Stan Saylor was defeated by Wendy Fink, who had 5,408 votes to Saylor’s 4,300. Mike Jones (R-93rd) was one of the most prominent people to support her insurgency. Keep in mind that Saylor served almost three decades in politics and described himself as the “most conservative House Appropriations Chairman in decades”, yet, he was defeated.
“This victory really belongs to the people,” Ms. Fink said. “They came out. They made their voices heard. They demanded change, and I look forward to serving them in any way that I can.”
Piccola had sought to have Mike Jones censured by the party for his endorsement of Wendy Fink. The party, quite rightly, refused to comply.
Wendy Jo Fink, like many state representatives of both stripes, has promised to eliminate school property taxes. If she finds the magic formula to eliminate school property taxes without reducing school funding, we may want her to present her formula in Delco.
Leo Knepper, the political director of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP) said “Just because you have an ‘R’ behind your name doesn’t mean you’re doing the right thing.”
Citizens Alliance for Pennsylvania took some credit for some of these victories. See their website for information.
Let me end with the Democratic perspective. Democratic Appropriations Chairman Matt Bradford (D-70) has said “Compromise has become a dirty word.” He worries that the ideological wing of the Republican Party is growing, while the governing wing is shrinking.”
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Never lose infinite hope William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 7-1-22
Raffi Terzian Beats Establishment Incumbent To Take Chesco GOP Chair — Raffi Terzian overwhelmingly beat incumbent and establishment favorite Gordon Eck to win chairmanship of the Chester County Republican Party, Tuesday (June 28).
It was part of a Republican insurgency sweeping the Philadelphia suburbs as party bosses in Montco and Bucks had to pull all stops to save their jobs.
The success by the Chesco rebels can likely be laid at the brain-dead decision Eck’s faction made in May to accuse Ron Vogel of being a Nazi racist for posting a Downfall parody in 2012 to mock the Pittsburgh Penguins while a college student.
The winning team in Chesco
Vogel won 58-percent of the vote in a straw poll to get the party’s recommendation in the May 17 primary to take on against incumbent Chrissy Houlahan in the 6th District congressional race. The establishment, however, of which Eck is a part, wanted Guy Ciarrocchi. Vogel was smeared, and his name left off the sample ballot and the Chesco GOP website.
Ciarrocchi won the primary.
And the committeepeople remembered.
Winning with Terzian were John Emmons as executive vice chair, Paula Tropiano as vice chair, Norman MacQueen as treasurer, Barbara Spall as financial secretary, Ann Marie Franciscus as secretary, Patricia Milanese as assistant secretary.
Also, let it be known that the Chesco vote, unlike in Bucks, was by secret ballot.
Raffi Terzian Beats Establishment Incumbent To Take Chesco GOP Chair
