June 02, 2016 

City News Service 

 

At least 2,200 homeless people in the Los Angeles area are unable to find apartments to rent even though they’ve received federal rent vouchers, it was reported this week.

 

With more than 35,000 people sleeping on sidewalks and in alleys, underpasses and riverbeds, the city and county are leaning on rent subsidies for private landlords to bring quick relief to homeless people while elected officials struggle to fund a $1.87 billion construction program, the Los Angeles Times reported.

 

But in the last two years, rents have soared far above baseline federal voucher caps — $1,150 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,500 for two-bedroom units. And with the county's rental vacancy rate at a scant 2.7 percent, voucher holders are tripping over one another in fruitless apartment hunts lasting months, according to the newspaper.

 

The city and county are trying to lure more landlords into taking vouchers with financial incentives to sweeten the deal. The city has set aside $5 million, and the county $3 million, to cover security deposits and first and last month’s rent, set up damage funds and pay initial water and power bills for formerly homeless voucher holders, The Times reported.

 

Some local governments also pay for $1,000 holding fees to tide over landlords while inspections and approvals are underway. And a new program in Santa Monica offers a $5,000 signing bonus to landlords who rent to voucher holders. But some landlords fear formerly homeless tenants will cause trouble or fall behind on rent, The times reported.

 

The federal government is also stepping in to ease the voucher housing shortage, The Times reported. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs covers move-in costs for veterans, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to set rent caps by ZIP Code instead of metropolitan area, bringing allowable lease payments more in line “with reality,” spokesman Ed Cabrera told the newspaper.

May 26, 2016 

By Stacy M. Brown 

NNPA News Wire Contributing Writer 

 

Russell Simmons is just starting to regain a little normalcy in his life.

 

He’s back at yoga and the hip-hop and business mogul is even able to run some errands without worrying about whether a disgruntled RushCard holder might verbally attack him or worse.

 

Simmons never hung his head despite mounting – if unfair – criticism that rocked the music impresario when his innovative pre-paid RushCard experienced a computer glitch last fall that prevented hundreds of thousands of card holders from accessing their money.

 

“I took full responsibility. It’s my card and I made sure to reach out to card holders personally and I reached into my own pocket to help people with their rent, their medicine or whatever emergency that may have come up,” Simmons said.

 

“All I knew how to do was to make good on it and try to make the people that were damaged whole again,” he said.

 

Simmons has done even more and he continues his push to have the underbanked and the underserved benefit.

 

“My mission is to eventually see that when someone pays their rent on time, pays their light bill on time, that these things go on their credit reports,” Simmons said. “It should be and if I can’t get regulators and the credit bureaus to do it, then I will have to start my own credit bureau.”

 

If that sounds like a bit of a stretch, Simmons points to his starting the RushCard as proof that real change can happen. “I was first, no one else did this until I came out with my card,” he said, noting that he’s not only the face of RushCard, but along with his American Express and other items in his wallet is his own RushCard that he regularly uses.

 

“Look, we were the ones who invented this and what I don’t like is when people refer to us as a celebrity company,” Simmons said. “All of what American Express is doing, all of what Chase Manhattan did, we did first. We’re a virtual bank. The other thing is that we didn’t build this company to make money when we started and, really, I didn’t think it would become a business but it did and I go to work every day to try and improve the service we provide.”

 

Simmons said his fight for credit building is an uphill battle, but it’s a battle that can be won.

 

It’s as much part of his life as yoga, he said.

 

“You pay rent every month for eight years on a RushCard, why can’t you get a mortgage? I think that’s a travesty. I think a lot of the big companies like MasterCard, the Visas, the others that do the processing and infrastructure work; a lot of us could come together and force them to accept this information on credit reports of the world,” Simmons said.

 

As Simmons pushes for changes in policies in the credit industry, he’s leaving the door open for starting his own credit reporting agency.

 

In the aftermath of the much-publicized computer glitch – which Simmons still refers to as a “tsunami” – the business leader provided free service to card holders for five months, sacrificing all of his company’s profits to do so. He also reached a more than $20 million settlement from a class action lawsuit filed against RushCard, because of the glitch.

 

“I’m glad to do it. I had put aside $25 million,” Simmons said, noting that the card isn’t just for communities that have been forgotten and underserved by banks. “There’s no reason why small businesses can’t use a Rush Business Card. We just added a feature, just now where if you lose your card, you can turn your card off instantly through an app. Then you can turn it back on.”

 

Simmons continued: “This card should be for affluent people as well as underserved community members and it should be the wave of the future for millennials. This is the bank for millennials and the growth rate for our company is 70 percent millennials, when it used to be single mothers. Millennials who don’t like banks are coming in our direction and we haven’t even begun the branding exercise to speak to them.”

 

Simmons said that he didn’t mind paying the $20 million settlement.

 

“I don’t mind paying the $20 million. I don’t mind that that was our cost. I am going to spend a lot more money than that in the community, in my peacekeeping programs, in RUSH and art education,” he said.

 

Simmons said so much more will soon be announced and he’s confident that RushCard holders and others will be pleased.

 

“We are going to be in the community in a way that we’ve never been,” Simmons said.

May 19, 2016 

Associated Press 

Militant attacks on oil installations and the threat of a nationwide strike drove Nigeria's petroleum production and its naira currency to new lows Tuesday.

 

The naira fell to 350 to the dollar on the parallel market, against an official rate of 199, amid reports and denials that President Muhammadu Buhari's government plans an imminent devaluation, bowing to demands of the International Monetary Fund in exchange for soft loans.

 

Nigeria's oil output dropped to 1.4 million barrels a day, Oil Minister Ibe Kachikwu said Monday, endangering a budget based on production of 2.2 million barrels. The slump means Angola is now Africa's biggest oil producer, with a steady production of nearly 1.8 million barrels daily, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

 

Nigeria's National Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress, which say they represent 6.5 million workers, and some civic organizations called for a strike Wednesday to protest a 70 percent increase in gasoline prices, prompted by the removal of a government subsidy on gas and shortages of foreign currency. Nigeria is dependent on imports with oil accounting for 70 percent of government revenue.

 

The crisis is dividing labor leaders on religious and ethnic lines. Those from the mainly Muslim north, like Buhari, are against the strike while Christians who dominate the oil-producing south are urging citizens to "Occupy Nigeria!"

 

Unions representing oil and electricity workers, as well as pilots, rejected the strike call even before the National Industrial Court issued a restraining order Tuesday pending a hearing on the justice minister's request for the court to rule whether the strike is legal.

 

"I don't want people to be subjected to hardship," Judge Babatunde Adejumo said. "There will be scarcity of food, people may die, students will engage in all sorts of activities."

 

Massive protests forced the previous government to shelve plans to do away with a fuel subsidy in 2012, when oil cost more than $100 a barrel. Today it is around $40, a price raised in part by Nigerian cuts in output.

 

Prices of food and electrical goods have doubled while tens of thousands of workers have not been paid in months. Many angry Nigerians say the government could not have chosen a worse time to drop the fuel subsidy, though shortages forced people to pay double the fixed price anyway.

 

Despite the country's wealth, some 70 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations.

 

Buhari took over a year ago from President Goodluck Jonathan, whose government is accused of looting billions of dollars from state coffers.

 

Militants in the Niger Delta have resumed attacks and forced oil majors to evacuate some workers. There are reports that the new group Niger Delta Avengers is sponsored by politicians in the south, where Jonathan is from, to sabotage Buhari. The president has deployed thousands of troops to the area, where the Avengers are demanding a greater share of oil wealth and protesting cuts to a 2009 amnesty program that paid 30,000 militants to guard installations they once attacked.