#where i am its mostly supported by gov initiatives and funding

[mybeautifulboy]

found under a beijing opera performance

i feel a sense of impending doom

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

Dr. James Peter Warbasse opined in the journal Co-operation, “Once the people of New York City lived in their own houses, but those days have gone. … The houses are owned by landlords who conduct them, not for the purpose of domiciling the people in health and comfort, but for the single purpose of making money out of tenants.” That was in 1919.

A century later, things have gone from bad to worse. A quarter of U.S. households pay more than half their income in rent. In New York City, homelessness has hit record levels.

Most activists can reel off a list of demands to address the housing crisis: rent control, community land trusts, affordable housing development. But one of the most effective strategies has been forgotten. A century ago, the labor movement in New York City planned and executed a bluntly practical solution to the problem of housing: Build it.

Today, more than 100,000 New Yorkers live in apartments built by the labor movement between 1926 and 1974, mostly through an organization called the United Housing Foundation. Roughly 40,000 still-affordable cooperative housing units—Amalgamated Houses, Concourse Village and Co-op City in the Bronx; Penn South in the heart of Manhattan; 1199 Plaza in East Harlem; Rochdale Village and Electchester in Queens; Amalgamated Warbasse in Brooklyn—stand as monuments to what an organized working class can achieve. This housing provides a bulwark against gentrification and a blueprint for ending the housing crisis. Let’s look at how it all got started, how it came to an end and what it would take for labor to build again.

RADICAL BEGINNINGS

The story begins in 1916 in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, where immigrant workers from Finland found themselves overcharged for subpar housing. Members of the Brooklyn Finnish Socialist Club figured out they could build higher quality housing for less than it would cost to rent from a landlord. Sixteen families came together to form the Finnish Home Building Association. Their first construction project was financed by equity contributions of $500 each from six families, “comrade loans” totaling $12,000 from neighborhood residents and a $25,000 bank loan.

The first building, named Alku (Finnish for “beginning”), was completed that year. Within a decade, there were almost 30 Finnish-owned co-op buildings in Sunset Park, with carrying costs (a monthly maintenance fee paid by each household) around half the rent of similar apartments in privately owned buildings. Members were forbidden from selling their units at a profit to ensure lasting affordability. In a pattern that would be repeated for decades to come, the housing co-ops became part of a local co-op ecosystem that included a restaurant, bakery and grocery store.

This model of affordable housing cooperative was so new that state law had no legal classification for it until the 1920s. Alku soon inspired a wave of limited-equity cooperative development by other radical worker organizations.

In 1925, a Yiddish Communist group called United Workers began planning a housing cooperative in the Bronx. They raised money through bond sales advertised in the radical Yiddish daily Morgen Freiheit (“Freedom Tomorrow”) and were able to buy an empty tract of land next to Bronx Park. Tenants were recruited from the general public. The United Workers Cooperative Colony, known as “The Coops” (rhymes with “soups”), opened in 1927 and rapidly added a second building for a total of 2,000 residents. The neo-Tudor garden apartment building, encircling a central courtyard, was an escape from the suffocating windowlessness of Lower East Side tenements—and it was affordable. It was as much a political project as an economic one, with a 20,000-volume library, regular cultural and political programming, and involvement in the broader community through a network of co-op businesses, political support for local tenants and workers, and attempts at racial integration.

The Coops inspired other Jewish left organizations to launch similar projects, turning the Bronx into a hub for experiments in working class cooperative housing. The Arbeiter Ring (Workmen’s Circle) launched Shalom Aleichem houses across the park, followed by the Farband Houses, built by the Yidisher Natsyonaler Arbeter Farband (Jewish National Workers Alliance). And soon, a more powerful backer would help the co-op movement scale up across the city: labor unions.

HOUSE OF LABOR

The bulk of the 40,000+ units of limited-equity cooperative housing sponsored by the labor movement in New York City originated with an immigrant garment worker-turned-union organizer named Abraham Kazan.

Kazan was a true believer. In the 1960s, after he had completed tens of thousands of units of housing, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller told him in passing he would have done well if he had gone into business. Kazan replied, “I am a cooperator, interested only in building the cooperative commonwealth.”

Kazan immigrated to the United States in 1904 at age 15 to escape anti-Semitism in the Ukraine, and was influenced by anarchist ideas and a stint on a proto-Kibbutz in New Jersey. After helping organize a small strike at his job as a garment worker, he eventually went on staff with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and later the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. As a union staffer, he began promoting cooperatives. His first successful project was a consumer co-op business that provided 7,000 union members with sugar and matzo during World War I. He soon began dreaming of building housing.

Gathering rank-and-file garment workers and a handful of low-level union staffers, Kazan incorporated the group as “ACW Corporation,” using the union’s initials “to give the impression we had a Big Brother behind us in this effort”—though they lacked the union’s formal backing.

(A 1957 diagram shows how Amalgamated Houses and other cooperatives govern themselves: one member, one vote.)

It took the possibility of government support for Amalgamated to throw its weight behind co-operative housing. In 1926 New York state passed the Limited Dividend Housing Companies Law, granting condemnation rights and local tax abatements to housing companies that limited profits and restricted rents to affordable levels.

The ACW Corporation drew up plans to develop a 303-unit cooperative in the Bronx. It sold shares to future residents at $500 each (about three months’ pay for a union worker). The union-owned Amalgamated Bank agreed to loan each resident up to 50 percent of the cost of their equity stake, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company provided a $1.2 million mortgage. The Jewish Daily Forward also helped secure financing and provided short-term loans to cover cost overruns.

Ground was broken Thanksgiving Day 1926, and the first residents moved in the following November. By early 1928, the Amalgamated Houses were fully occupied. The cooperators (as co-op residents were called) soon launched a cooperative grocery store, milk delivery service and even a bus service to bring workers to the subway. In the decades that followed, the housing cooperative grew to around 1,500 units. The Great Depression wiped out many New York City cooperatives, but Amalgamated cooperators’ willingness to help support their neighbors—combined with cagey negotiations with creditors—helped them survive the Great Depression. Kazan’s model worked.

Soon more unions followed.In 1949, IBEW Local 3 President Harry Van Arsdale Jr. began planning a cooperative housing development called Electchester in Queens. Union members provided the labor, some paid and some volunteer. Over 17 years, Electchester expanded to 38 buildings with around 2,500 units of housing. Van Arsdale himself lived there. It became a social and cultural hub for the Local, with a bowling alley, auditorium, movie theater, cocktail bar, coffee shop, shopping center, library and a host of clubs and social organizations.

To popularize cooperative development with other unions and carry out projects on a larger scale, Kazan created the United Housing Foundation (UHF) in 1951, a coalition of organizations and individuals that included 19 unions. UHF was to be funded by a modest 1 percent fee on the cost of building each development. To carry out the actual construction work, Kazan created a second organization to act as general contractor, Community Services Inc., which built the housing and provided technical assistance.

The housing units were open to any worker, union or not, so long as they were below a limit on income. Applicants had to show up and wait in line on the day applications were accepted.

As the postwar era progressed, the stars would align for an unprecedented expansion of labor’s cooperatives, boosted by mainstream political support. But the patronage of New York City’s political class came with strings attached.

HOME FRONT

“We have wiped out the sweatshop; we return to wipe out the slum,” intoned ILGWU President David Dubinsky at the groundbreaking ceremony of the East River Houses in 1953, funded in part by his union. The brand-new red- brick towers loomed above the dilapidated low-rise tenements of the Lower East Side. This was where the parents and grandparents of so many New York City unionists had toiled doing garment work. Dubinsky’s generation saw it as their duty to eradicate exploitation from the blocks where they grew up.

In returning to wipe out the slum, these prodigal sons found unlikely allies in New York’s ruling class. Slum clearance policies made land available, and in 1955, labor helped pass the Limited-Profit Housing Companies Act, better known as the Mitchell-Lama program. It provided low-interest mortgages and tax abatements for limited- equity cooperatives and affordable rentals. Over 100,000 units of housing would be built under the program. More than half were cooperatives, the majority of which were built by Kazan’s UHF.

Political support was forthcoming in part because labor’s cooperatives fit within the “urban renewal” paradigm charted out by men like Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. In the postwar era, political elites across the U.S. reconfigured cities to force new patterns of mass consumption (car and home ownership) and racial segregation. The federal government provided guarantees for home loans to whites, facilitating white flight. Awash with federal subsidies and tax breaks, Moses and others used their powers under “slum clearance” laws to bulldoze neighborhoods to build highways and high-rise housing. They created a racialized hierarchy of urban housing: public housing for the poor (mostly people of color), cooperative housing for middle-income workers (mostly white), and private-market luxury for the white ruling class.

(Continue Reading)

[freecityradio]

Interview with friend in Tehran on recent protests in Iran

Recently I got the chance to interview a friend in Tehran on the recent wave of protests in Iran, this interview is anonymous due to security concerns expressed by the person interviewed, but I am really happy and honoured to share these reflections anonymously on Free City Radio, thanks for reading. — stefan spirodon.

Q : Recently in Iran there was a series of protests in different places, both in cities & towns, one major focus that came up were economic grievances, could you highlight some of those grievances for an international audience, given that your in Tehran & following the situation / local media ...

A : Well as you may know, Iran is facing a very difficult economic situation at the moment. I think the main economic problem the country is facing at the moment is unemployment. The unemployment rate is really high, and the government has not been able to create enough jobs. But as you may have heard, and funny as it may sound, the protests initially started because of the increase in the price of eggs. Last year Iran was hit with an outbreak of the bird flu virus which required the authorities to kill off millions of chickens. This led egg prices to almost double. But the price of most other goods have actually been controlled by the Rouhani government. Comparing the current situation with the situation before Rouhani took office, the economic indicators show improvement. Iran’s GDP growth has gone up from around -3% to around 6% (although this is in most part due to the increase in Iran’s oil exports), his government has managed to bring down and control inflation from around 40 percent when he took office to around 10 percent. And the increase in the price of foreign currencies has also been somewhat stabilized and has only increased by around 30% in the past 5 years as compared to the over 400% increase during his predecessors 8 year presidency. 

So although the economy has not improved at the pace many were expecting (which is due to many factors including US sanctions, etc.), really the only economic indicator that has not improved (however) has been job creation, where unemployment is around 40 percent at the moment and this is mostly among the young educated population which has created a lot of frustration. But in short, people are frustrated about various issues and the rise in the price of eggs, which was highlighted for the past several months by Rouhani’s opponents and spread across social media and also government controlled media has increased people’s anger. But we have to keep in mind that the initial protests were sponsored by Rouhani’s hardline right wing opponents (and basically encouraged and sponsored by the regime itself to weaken his government). The conservative establishment thought that this will be a controlled protest with the excuse of the rise in prices (which again has to be emphasized have not really been increased on average except for exceptions like eggs) that they can guide and contain and to weaken Rouhani’s government.

Q : The Hassan Rouhani gov. decided to publish the national budget for the first time, this was one of the motivating factors for the protests, could you explain this & why it was important ? 

A: The government didn’t announce that it is publishing the national budget and at least this is not the official narrative. What we do know is that the proposed budget for the coming year has been leaked. And many believe that the government intentionally leaked the budget itself to expose the extreme systematic corruption that exists within the system and many facts that people had always speculated but never really knew for a fact. Such as the fact that many religious, cultural and military and paramilitary organizations get a huge chunk of the budget every year without the government having a say on how this money should be spent. And not only these organizations suck up a huge portion of Iran’s national budget every year, but they even refuse to pay taxes. 

One of these very large organizations, is in the hands of Ebrahim Raïssi, President Rounani’s opponent in the previous elections who humiliatingly lost to Rouhani despite having the backing of the conservative establishment and also using very huge amounts of public funding to fund his own campaign which is also illegal under Iran’s constitution. For the first time after the revolution, Rouhani’s government demanded that this organization called Astan Quds Razavi should pay taxes. And this infuriated the head of this organization Ebrahim Raïssi. This all happened several months ago. After this event, the conservative camp started a very coordinated and large scale propaganda campaign especially on social media against the government to take revenge. And all of this culminated in the first protests that we witnessed in Khorasan province and especially the city of Mashhad where Ebrahim Raïssi is in power.

Q : Many of the demonstrations started in the Khorasan region, could you explain why understanding this is important ? 

A: The province of Khorasan is home to the largest religious complex in the world (the shrine of Imam Reza, the 8th Shi'ite Imam) and hosts millions of Iranian and non-Iranian pilgrims every year. This brings with it a very large income for the province. Therefore this province is very important strategically, economically and also symbolically for the regime. And as I mentioned above, there is a fixed cut from the national budget for the foundation that runs and manages the Shrine of Imam Reza called Astan Quds Razavi which is run by president Rouhani’s opponent in the previous elections, Ebrahim Raïssi. This foundation owns many factories and companies and financial institutions (which are all exempt from paying taxes) and pretty much runs the province like a semi-autonomous region within Iran. Ayatollah Alam-al-Hoda, the Imam for the Friday prayers in Khorasan province who is also the father in law of Ebrahim Raïssi wields a lot of power much more than other Friday prayer Imams in other provinces. Many of the laws that apply to other parts of Iran are either disregarded or interpreted in different ways by the authorities in Khorasan province and the authorities are given a free pass to enforce many social restrictions and religious laws that are not so strictly enforced in other parts of the country.

Q : So you were texting about a distinction between the recent protests & the 2009 protests against the re-election of Ahmadinejad, could you highlight two important differences between the protests? 

A : Since it hasn’t been covered yet, it’s important to know that as explained before these recent protests initially started in Khorasan province by hardline conservative elements within the regime (and with the indirect and unofficial support of the regime) with the excuse of poor mismanagement of the economy by Rouhani’s government. 

But then they quickly got out of hand and spread to other parts of the country. But after they spread to other parts of the country they were no longer regime supported protests and were genuinely popular protests by people who had real grievances. And these people were no longer just protesting poor economic management by the government. They were now pointing directly to the regime itself and were voicing their anger towards not only poor economic management, but most importantly wide-scale corruption, social and political restrictions, and wealth and income inequality, among other things. And this time unlike previous protests in Iran, the protests were mostly happening in small rural towns and villages by the economically deprived and marginalized lower class and middle class. 

People who basically have nothing to lose. And that’s why they quickly got very radical and very violent. And there were no leaders or clear goals for these protests and in many cases riots that happened on a very large span in terms of geography in almost every province but usually in fairly small numbers, at most in the couple thousands. Previously most of the movements and protests that happened in Iran after the revolution, such as the 2009 protests, were headed by intellects and / or political and social activists and the educated middle class. And they usually happened in the larger city, mainly Tehran and then gradually spread to other cities and smaller rural areas. This time it was the exact opposite. This time unlike previous protests which happened in the millions and were very peaceful, the protests quickly got very radical and out of hand. But surprisingly the regime did not crack down very hard like it usually does and was very moderate in the way it quelled the protests. It did not even resort to the revolutionary guards which are usually called up to deal with these situations. And even though the protests only lasted about a week and around 20 people were killed (half of which were police officers and government officials) the regime was still going on about how protesters have real grievances and although there are elements which are resorting to violence, the government is responsible for the situation because of its poor economic management. Something the regime and state-run tv had never done in the past.

Also I forgot to mention that the average age of the protesters was also very young.

Q : I understand that there have been many different workers strikes & protests that have happened over the past year that haven't been as well covered, could you elaborate on this ? Also I am wondering if you could offer a few critiques of the international mainstream media's coverage of the recent protests (BBC / CNN) ? 

A : Yes, there are almost daily protests happening throughout the country in the past year by syndicates and labor unions, workers and government employees demanding they be given their wages and improved working conditions, etc. I think the reason these events have usually been ignored by western mainstream media or at least have not been covered very well is because they do not see the possibility of such actions leading to something that they can show as an existential threat to the stability of the Islamic Republic. But since the chants and slogans in these recent protests became very radical they viewed it as great propaganda material to add fuel to the fire and portray it as a wide-spread mass uprising that could lead to a revolution and the toppling of the regime. 

Interestingly they were interviewing every single opposition group and leader outside of the country, who really had no role in starting or supporting and leading these protests as if they are the ones directing the protesters and were trying to link these protests to Iranians wishing for foreign interference which was not at all the case. But their coverage gave the impression that this is an all-out revolution and that people will not stop at any cost until the regime is overthrown, whereas in reality the numbers were very small (smaller than all the other major protests that have happened in Iran after the revolution) and only a certain group(s) of people were participating in these protests and the majority of Iranians, whether those who support the regime or do not support the regime were not on board with these protests. 

And as I explained above the main reason for this is that the majority of Iranians have chosen gradual reforms over radical change because they have seen how that could end, like other countries in the middle east. And also the protesters did not have a common goal or even a clearly defined goal and did not have the backing and support of the majority of Iranians. Of course none of this is to say that their grievances are not real and should not be heard. But the reality is that it was not a popular uprising from all walks of life, the way mainstream media portrayed them to be.

[deniscollins]

California Approves Statewide Rent Control to Ease Housing Crisis

Nationally, about a quarter of tenants pay more than half their income in rent, If you were a business executive on a advisory committee to the California governor, what would you recommend: (1) let the market determine rental rates, or (2) a rent control policy that limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

California lawmakers approved a statewide rent cap on Wednesday covering millions of tenants, the biggest step yet in a surge of initiatives to address an affordable-housing crunch nationwide.

The bill limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation and offers new barriers to eviction, providing a bit of housing security in a state with the nation’s highest housing prices and a swelling homeless population.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has made tenant protection a priority in his first year in office, led negotiations to strengthen the legislation. He has said he would sign the bill, approved as part of a flurry of activity in the final week of the legislative session.

The measure, affecting an estimated eight million residents of rental homes and apartments, was heavily pushed by tenants’ groups. In an indication of how dire housing problems have become, it also garnered the support of the California Business Roundtable, representing leading employers, and was unopposed by the state’s biggest landlords’ group.

That dynamic reflected a momentous political swing. For a quarter-century, California law has sharply curbed the ability of localities to impose rent control. Now, the state itself has taken that step.

“The housing crisis is reaching every corner of America, where you’re seeing high home prices, high rents, evictions and homelessness that we’re all struggling to grapple with,” said Assemblyman David Chiu, a San Francisco Democrat who was the bill’s author. “Protecting tenants is a critical and obvious component of any strategy to address this.”

A greater share of households nationwide are renting than at any point in a half-century. But only four states — California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York — have localities with some type of rent control, along with the District of Columbia. A coalition of tenants’ organizations, propelled by rising housing costs and fears of displacement, is trying to change that.

In February, Oregon lawmakers became the first to pass statewide rent control, limiting increases to 7 percent annually plus inflation. New York, with Democrats newly in control of the State Legislature, strengthened rent regulations governing almost one million apartments in New York City.

Moves to expand rent control through ballot initiatives or legislation have arisen since 2017 in about a dozen states, including Washington, Colorado and Nevada, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council, an apartment-industry trade group.

Measures were recently introduced in Massachusetts and Florida to allow rent regulation in cities with a housing crunch — like Boston, Miami and Orlando.

Nationally, about a quarter of tenants pay more than half their income in rent, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. And California’s challenges are particularly acute. After an adjustment for housing costs, it has the highest state poverty rate, 18.2 percent, about five percentage points above the national average, according to a Census Bureau report published Tuesday.

Homelessness has come to dominate the state’s political conversation and prompted voters to approve several multibillion-dollar programs to build shelters and subsidized housing with services for people coming off the streets.

Despite those efforts, San Francisco’s homeless population has grown by 17 percent since 2017, while the count in Los Angeles has increased by 16 percent since 2018. Over all, the state accounts for about half of the country’s unsheltered homeless population of roughly 200,000.

That bleak picture — combined with three-hour commutes, cries for teacher housing and the sight of police officers sleeping in cars — is prompting legislators and organizers to propose ever more far-reaching steps.

State Senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, offered a bill that would essentially override local zoning to allow multiple-unit housing around transit stops and in suburbs where single-family homes are considered sacrosanct. The bill was shelved in its final committee hearing this year, but Mr. Wiener has vowed to keep pushing the idea.

Economists from both the left and the right have a well-established aversion to rent control, arguing that such policies ignore the message of rising prices, which is to build more housing. Studies in San Francisco and elsewhere show that price caps often prompt landlords to abandon the rental business by converting their units to owner-occupied homes. And since rent controls typically have no income threshold, they have been faulted for benefiting high-income tenants.

“Rent control is definitely having a moment across the country,” said Jim Lapides, a vice president at the National Multifamily Housing Council, which opposes such restrictions. “But we’re seeing folks turn to really shortsighted policy that will end up making the very problem worse.”

But many of the same studies show that rent-control policies have been effective at shielding tenants from evictions and sudden rent increases, particularly the lower-income and older tenants who are at a high risk of becoming homeless. Also, many of the newer policies — which supporters prefer to call rent caps — are considerably less stringent than those in effect in places like New York and San Francisco for decades.

“Caps on rent increases, like the one proposed in California or the one recently passed in Oregon, are part of a new generation of rent-regulation policies that are trying to thread the needle by offering some form of protection against egregious rent hikes for vulnerable renters without stymieing much-needed new housing construction,” said Elizabeth Kneebone, research director at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California.

Mr. Chiu’s bill is technically an anti-gouging provision, with a 10-year limit, modeled on the typically short-term price caps instituted after disasters like floods and fires. It exempts dwellings less than 15 years old, to avoid discouraging construction, as well as most single-family homes. But it covers tenants of corporations like Invitation Homes, which built nationwide rental portfolios encompassing tens of thousands of properties that had been lost to foreclosure after the housing bust a decade ago.

According to the online real-estate marketplace Zillow, only about 7 percent of the California properties listed last year saw rent increases larger than allowed under the bill. But there could be a big effect in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, where typical rents on apartments not covered by the city’s rent regulations have jumped more than 40 percent since 2016.

By limiting the steepest and most abrupt rent increases, the bill is also likely to reduce the incentive for hedge funds and other investors to buy buildings where they see a prospective payoff in replacing working-class occupants with tenants paying higher rents.

Sandra Zamora, a 27-year-old preschool teacher, lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Menlo Park, Calif., a short drive from Facebook’s expanding headquarters. A year ago, Ms. Zamora’s building got a new owner, and the rent jumped to $1,900 from $1,100, a rise of over 70 percent. Most of her neighbors left. Ms. Zamora stayed, adding a roommate to the 600-square-foot space and taking a weekend job as a barista.

“Having an $800 increase at once was really shocking,” she said. “It just keeps me thinking every month: ‘O.K., when is it going to happen? How much am I going to get increased the next month?’ It’s just a constant worry.”

Even as more states begin to experiment with rent control, it has long existed in places like New York City, which intervened to address a housing shortage post-World War II, and San Francisco, where it was adopted in 1979.

Today it is common in many towns across New Jersey and in several cities in California, including Berkeley and Oakland, although the form differs by jurisdiction. Regulated apartments in New York City are mostly subject to rent caps even after a change in tenants, for example, while rent control in the Bay Area has no such provision.

In New York City, where almost half of the rental stock is regulated, a board determines the maximum rent increases each year; this year it approved a 1.5 percent cap on one-year leases, considerably lower than the limits passed in Oregon and California.

Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator of Housing Justice for All, a coalition of New York tenants that pushed for new rent laws, welcomed the outcome in California.

“Any victory helps to build a groundswell,” she said. “There is a younger generation of people who see themselves as permanent renters, and they’re demanding that our public policy catches up to that economic reality.”

[katiezstorey93]

Trump considers tax credit to channel public money to private Colleges

Critics on the perfect worry such a strategy will raise the federal role in education and stress countries to standardize state tax applications. | AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson

The Trump government is thinking about a first-of-its-kind federal tax credit scholarship program that could station billions of dollars to families from working households to empower their children to attend private schools, including religious schools.

The federal tax credit proposal is just one of several ideas under review from the White House to meet Donald Trump’s campaign promise to encourage the growth of charter schools and vouchers that would permit families of low income to use public money for private school tuition, sources inform POLITICO. During a recent meeting with teachers and parents in the White House, ” Trump said he wants “every single disadvantaged child in the united states, no matter what their background or where they reside, to truly have a choice in where they go to college.”

“The end result is exactly the same — federal tax dollars going to private schools,” said Sasha Pudelski, assistant director for policy and advocacy in AASA, ” The School Superintendents Association, who called the plan “a backdoor voucher.”

“It’s just performed through a more complicated and less direct mechanics,” she said.

While a tax credit may be much more politically palatable than requesting Congress to find or reallocate money to meet Trump’s $20 billion promise to expand private and charter school choices, ” because it is much more palatable, does not mean it tastes great,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, ” the group’s associate executive director.

Critics on the right, meanwhile, stress such a strategy would improve the federal role in education and pressure states to standardize state tax credit applications, many of which currently permit nonprofit groups to prioritize a particular kind of college, such as those of particular religious denominations, for instance.

A federal tax credit scholarship program could be a portion of a bigger tax reform bill and then pass the budget reconciliation procedure with just 51 votes in the Senate. Delays in repealing Obamacare, nevertheless, are complicating Republican strategies to drive tax reform through Congress.

The White House didn’t respond to queries about the tax proposal or its own standing. Details of how the Trump government might structure the strategy stay unknown. But sources near the discussions who weren’t authorized to talk publicly state the program might be capped at an amount as high as $20 billion, and resemble laws initially introduced by Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rep. Todd Rokita of Indiana in 2013, called the Educational Opportunities Act.

That charge, which hasn’t passed either room, could have made a federal tax credit up to $4,500 for individuals as well as $100,000 for businesses that make donations to nonprofit “scholarship-granting associations,” or SGOs. Those businesses would award the capital to low-income students, who might use the money to attend private schools, such as those run by religious groups.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos praised the charge in 2015 when it was reintroduced and she was seat of their college choice advocacy group, American Federation for Children.

“There’s no single domestic problem more pressing than adjusting our nation’s antiquated education program and the Educational Opportunities Act will empower pupils across the nation to have access to quality educational options that are otherwise out of reach,” she said.

Robert Goad, ” Trump’s education policy individual about the White House Domestic Policy Council, is a former aide to Republican Rep. Luke Messer, who co-sponsored the bill along with former executive director of advocacy group, School Choice Indiana.

Goad said earlier this month he is “not able to talk about policy matters”

Seventeen states have similar tax credit scholarship applications and a couple of others, like Kentucky and Texas, are considering bills that this year.

It’s uncertain whether a federal program would restrict tax credits to residents and donors in countries that already have their particular tax credit applications having a infrastructure to support people. If that’s the case, it could incentivize countries without such programs to make them.

DeVos has pointed to Florida’s tax credit scholarship program as one of her most important successes. Before being called Trump’s Cabinet, DeVos was about the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a reform group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Collectively, they pushed to the development and growth of tax credit scholarship applications across the nation.

The nonprofit Measure Up For Students, which can help administer Florida’s application, says it’s served more than 97,000 students. The scholarships, for low and middle-income students, are worth almost $6,000 each. Almost 70% of student recipients are either Hispanic or black and more than 1,700 private schools take part in the program.

More than 80 percent of students make use of the scholarships to attend religious schools, with most coming from large, urban districts, a recent state report shows. About a quarter of those participating students are from Miami-Dade County public schools, the fourth-largest college district from the nation.

“A well-designed federal program could, for the very first time, empower low-income parents from blue states — and red nations who have been unwilling — to select a better school for their kids,” said John Kirtley, creator of Measure For Students. Kirtley can be vice chairman of American Federation for Children. “In states with legislatures dominated by the teachers unions, it may be the only possibility they have to be empowered.”

Florida’s program, however, has been beset by legal challenges. And classes representing the nation’s conventional public schools say they’d fight any suggestions to present such programs on the federal level.

The National Coalition for Public Education argues that private schools accepting tuition financed through tax credits aren’t held accountable like public schools, that the advocacy group notes. And countries have been required to take action to compensate for a decrease in earnings. Alabama once put aside $40 million in its budget to absorb the expected loss from the tax credits, Stateline reported.

Vic Smith of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education said Indiana’s tax credit scholarship program, that passed in 2009, was the “gateway drug to [a state laws called] vouchers,” that passed in 2011. Indiana has lost millions in tax revenues because of the state tax credit scholarship alone, ” the Chicago-based Center for Budget and Tax Accountability has reported. Teachers unions and public education advocacy groups in Texas are actively combating a state tax credit proposal.

“Vouchers in any form divert tax money to private schools or homeschoolers and accept it from under-funded public schools, where the vast majority of school kids will continue to be educated,” said Clay Robison, ” a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association. “When I state public schools, I am speaking specifically about Texas, that spends about $2,700 less per child on education each year compared to the national average.”

While promoting college decision has gained political momentum, maybe not all conservatives believe a federal tax is the perfect way to go — mostly because they don’t need to see a bigger federal hand in education.

“I have reservations,” said Lindsey Burke, who leads the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy. “School choice is already moving along swimmingly from the states … We don’t need to over-convolute the tax code and there’s concern that this could acquire overregulated.”

Jason Bedrick, director of policy to the Indiana-based advocacy team EdChoice, worries that states and scholarship-granting organizations might feel pressure to conform to the provisions of a federal tax credit plan.

By way of example, Bedrick said, the bill proposed by Rubio and Rokita could have given federal tax credits just for donations to scholarship-granting associations that don’t “earmark or put aside gifts for scholarships on behalf of any particular pupil, or to some specific faculty or group of schools.” Essentially, donors could receive a federal tax credit only as long as they contribute to SGOs that award funds to all students looking to attend all kinds of schools.

A provision like that could “exclude a wide and diverse selection of SGOs that currently take part in student tax credit applications nationally,” Bedrick said. That’s because the majority of states allow these associations to be “mission-based,” working with schools of a particular religious denomination or educational philosophy like Montessori schools, he said.

“It might be a mistake for conservatives to say, ‘now we have control over the federal government, we’re going to push our thoughts on a nationwide scale,”’ he further added. “There’s going to be a good deal more opposition than they believe.”

Source

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-schools-tax-credit-public-private-235228

from network 8 http://www.creditdebtfoundation.org/trump-considers-tax-credit-to-channel-public-money-to-private-colleges/