Department Of Housing And Urban Development U S

In the six years following the devastating Northridge earthquake, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sold 18 units in a 50-unit condominium complex so badly damaged in the shaker that two private engineering reports called for much of the development to be torn down and rebuilt. Some of the homes in the Nordhoff Townhomes complex were sold to investors, who were hoping to snap up properties at bargain-basement prices.

The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in voter-registration fraud cases. The 83-7 vote came as ACORN , which stands for the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is receiving bad publicity related to surreptitious videos. Two conservative activists posed as a prostitute and her pimp, then released a hidden-camera video in which ACORN employees in Baltimore advised the couple on house-buying and how to account for the woman's income on tax forms.

Low-income residents of Orange County, San Diego and dozens of other U.S. communities will receive higher federal housing subsidies to help keep pace with skyrocketing housing costs, the federal government's housing agency said Tuesday. Officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said they hope the measure will make an additional 1.4 million apartments available to low-income families in areas where fast-rising prices are shutting them out of the rental market.

Providing what officials call "the other piece of the puzzle," a $500,000 grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development will allow a long-unused day care facility at San Fernando Gardens to open. Last fall, the public housing project used a separate HUD grant to launch a joint job training and child care program. The Child Care Network Program gives residents child care through a network of small child care businesses located within the project.

A woman dubbed "Robin HUD" for admitting that she stole millions of dollars from federal housing sales and saying she gave the money to the poor pleaded guilty Monday to federal theft and tax evasion charges. Marilyn Louise Harrell, 46, a former real estate agent from Waldorf, Md., smiled throughout a hearing in U.S. District Court, where she pleaded guilty to charges that she stole money from the Housing and Urban Development Department and lied on her tax returns and to federal officials.

More than a dozen people have been charged recently for their roles in attempts to defraud the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The defendants are responsible for defrauding the agency of about $8 million, U.S. Atty. Debra W. Yang said. In many cases, they allegedly profited from commissions for preparing home loans that were later determined to have been fraudulent.

Brentwood multimillionaire A. Bruce Rozet was having a hard time understanding why so many officials in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were saying such nasty things about him. For nearly 20 years, Rozet's firm has done large amounts of business with HUD. But now, the agency was attacking the company, threatening to foreclose on two large substandard housing projects in California and banning the firm from doing new business with HUD for one year in Oklahoma and Washington.

For the longest time, Deborah Gore Dean wandered through life. She went to college and wandered for eight years, detouring to Ireland, to the drama club, to off-campus jobs and occasionally to class. Neither she nor her professors came away dazzled. She drifted through political campaigns, stumping first for her aunt, Louise Gore, in legislative and gubernatorial races in Maryland, then stepping aboard Ronald Reagan's presidential juggernaut in 1980.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is circulating to lawmakers proposed rules that would force lenders to make more accurate estimates of home mortgage costs, make disclosures easier to understand and reveal payments made to mortgage brokers. The proposal is a toned-down version of changes put forward by HUD in 2002 but dropped two years later because of furious opposition from mortgage brokers and some lawmakers.

Federal regulators have sued Coldwell Banker, Prudential and other real estate giants, contending that their brokers took kickbacks for steering Californians to a company that reports on earthquake and other hazards for homes being sold. Brokers got $25 out of each $100 fee that the company, Property I.D., charged home sellers for creating a report, according to the suit filed Thursday in federal court.