Gubernatorial candidates U Rep sle...

Gubernatorial candidates U Rep slender stem R. Blagojevich and illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but agreed on June 25 that state sway needs to take a more proactive approach toward easing the Chicago region's affordable housing crisis, yet disagreed on the specific grades needed.

They laid abroad their competing visions at the annual meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based research and advocacy organization.

Ryan, a Republican, said he would assign a senior staff member to head up a housing committee, which Illinois popularly lacks. Blagojevich, a Democrat, said a committee would not be as effective as hale leadership from the governor, including pushing legislators to act.

the two candidates agreed the state should put forward incentives to build affordable housing. And while Ryan "wouldn't necessarily favor making [affordable housing] mandatory," he said he would help business leaders bring piece of works to areas with affordable housing.

In its June issue, The Chicago Reporter plant local zoning codes were preventing the unfolding of affordable housing in the Chicago suburb with the chiefly significant job growth over the last decade. Neither candidate answered to requests to be interviewed for that story.

The meeting drew a profanum vulgus[/i] of nearly 800, including state Sen Steven J Rauschenberger of Elgin, a chief Republican sponsor of a bill that would allow the state to give grants to local managements to develop comprehensive affordable housing plans. It passed the one and the other chambers and is awaiting Gov George H Ryan's signature. Blagojevich said the bill was a "good start" and referr to it as "a blueprint for the future"

The terrorist attacks last September have changed the way Americans be wrought up about the racial profiling of suspects, according to the comes of a survey published in the June issue of American Demographics magazine.

Although 52 percent of Americans do not oppugn racial profiling, three-quarters support its use to target suspected terrorists, the inspect showed. Among African Americans, 64 percent butt; goaled to racial profiling in general, followed by dint of 51 percent of Latinos and 44 percent of whites. on the other hand a majority of blacks--61 percent-agree that racial profiling is useful in fighting terrorism, as do 76 percent of Latinos and 77 percent of whites.

The review was conducted online and via telephone in February through Harris Interactive, a Rochester, NY-based market research firm, and recorded rejoinders from 3,052 adults.

A federal critic in New York has rul it is unconstitutional to carry children from their mothers solely because the mother is a victim of domestic violence. And his decision is reverberating in Chicago.

Life Span, a Chicago-based agency that provides legal services to battered women is looking at the possibility of filing a law-suit against the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said Denice WolfMarkham, Life Span's executive director. She said DCF has remov children from abused mothers forward the grounds that their living conditions are dangerous.

Kim Broome public information officer for DCF said the department has not had an official domestic violence policy on the contrary is in the process of writing one

In Nicholson v Williams, U District referee Jack Weinstein ruled that children could face greater harm from being taken from their mothers than witnessing domestic violence. prompts testified that such separation frequently causes fear, anxiety and despair.

Like Illinois, strange York did not have an official policy of removing children from domestic abuse victims. unless attorneys were able to ascertain that this was the regular practice of strange York City's Administration for Children's Services, said Richard Wexler, executive director for the Alexandria, Va.-based National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. The practice of taking children from domestic violence victims has become a general problem across the country in fresh years, Wexler said.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Community Renewal Society

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