See: Memorializing Menino
Yeah, those were good times already missed.
It wasn't until after he left the Globe looked under the rock of his administration:
"Boston census finds 3.8 percent increase in homelessness" by Wesley Lowery | Globe staff, January 31, 2014
The number of men, women, and children living in shelters or on the streets in Boston continues to increase, growing 3.8 percent in 2013 over the previous year, according to an annual city tally....
“It’s a statewide crisis,” even as were are told how great the economy is after five years of alleged recovery.
While the raw number of homeless people in Boston continues to increase year after year, city officials stress that very few of the city’s homeless adults, just 2.5 percent, are living on the street because of the bitter cold temperatures....
And the advocates are “glad” for the life-threatening deep freeze that some people are still enduring outside.
The census is conducted by a team of hundreds of volunteers who fan out across the city to locate and chronicle the homeless, as well as to offer them food, shelter, and medical assistance.
“The census gives us a good sense of where we stand around the issue of homelessness in the city of Boston,” said Sheila Dillon, who is Boston’s chief of housing and director of the Department of Neighborhood Development. “We’ve been working on ending homelessness in Boston for a very long time, and it remains a pressing problem.
Amidst all the splendor and wealth of the city and country that can only be viewed as failure and an immense scandal.
For the second consecutive year, the city recorded an increase in the number of homeless adults who are enrolled in substance abuse treatment programs and living in recovery homes.
Who can really blame them for substance abuse? Do I live in misery sober or with a buzz? Not much of a choice if you ask me.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh “has stressed that we have to do a better job here because, unfortunately, right now it’s feeling like a vicious cycle,” said Barbara Ferrer, Boston’s public health director. “It’s really hard to stay sober if you’re cycling from a treatment program back to a shelter. With the mayor’s leadership, we’re really anxious to move forward.”
It's your turn now.
Walsh, who took the reins from Thomas M. Menino in January, made his personal struggle with alcohol a major part of his campaign and has spoken often about the need to provide more support for addiction treatment resources....
Walsh has vowed to make reducing the number of homeless people living in Boston. He plans to visit a city-run shelter at Long Island Friday as he continues his tour of shelters and other facilities that serve the homeless.
The Walsh administration has said it will push a three-pronged approach to addressing homelessness: increasing access to affordable housing; expanding drug and alcohol rehabilitation; and asking other municipalities in the region to address their own homelessness problems, which have spilled over into Boston.
Census-takers found that 36 percent of Boston’s homeless people were living in another city when they first became homeless. “Boston is sheltering not only our own homeless adults, but there is also a regional demand,” said Jim Greene, director of emergency shelters for the Boston Public Health Commission, who has helped oversee the annual census for the past 25 years.
Because it is a sanctuary city for illegals, too.
While city officials say there is no silver bullet to addressing homelessness, they believe that by keeping more people in their homes, providing additional housing options, and pushing a regional approach to shelters, they can significantly cut into the Boston numbers.
Never seems to be when its the poor and public's concern. When it's wealth and special intere$ts, $olutions and actions are offered up and enacted right away!
“We’re going to focus on really reducing the amount of evictions; it’s where the city can really have a major impact on the number of homeless,” Dillon said. “We don’t want families and kids to enter this system.”
Families and kids already have through the thousands of fraudulent foreclosures. Where were you?
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Related: Homeless Haven of Boston
Maybe he could reach into his BRA and get you a loan:
"Should Boston have bailed out the Bay State Banner?; In 2009, the city made $200,000 in loans to save the troubled newspaper. Four years and only one payment later, was it the right thing to do?" by Edward Mason | Globe Correspondent, January 12, 2014
Over the years, Melvin B. Miller plowed thousands of dollars of his own money into the Bay State Banner to shore up the weekly newspaper he founded and owned. But by the summer of 2009, the longtime voice of Boston’s African-American community was on the brink of failure.
Then, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, in the midst of a contentious reelection campaign, threw a lifeline to the Banner, engineering a pair of loans totaling $200,000 from an arm of the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Some four years later, Menino has completed his fifth and final term, and left office. But the Banner has made only one payment on the loans, which, with interest, have ballooned past $280,000, according to documents obtained by the Globe through the state’s public records law. Those documents also show that the paper continued to lose money in subsequent years even as its debt to Miller, from earlier loans he provided to the paper, shrank by more than $200,000.
This while he lagged on affordable housing!
This history has not only spurred concerns from a city financial watchdog about how the Banner loan was made and administered, but also raises the broader question of under what circumstances taxpayer money should be risked to support private enterprises. At the same time, it shows that the economic forces battering daily newspapers across the country are also squeezing weekly and community publications.
It's the lies and propaganda that did it. Made it necessary for people like me to be here.
The Banner lost more than $400,000 between 2009 and 2012 before returning to profitability last year, when it earned about $40,000, according to financial records. Miller, meanwhile, has put a second home in New Hampshire up for sale to pay back the city.
This is the leading voice of the African-American community in Boston?
Miller did not respond to repeated interview requests, and, when finally reached, hung up on a reporter.
Oh, they don't like that!
The Boston Loan Development Corp., the BRA affiliate that made the loans, said its decision was based on sound financial analysis and it has protected taxpayers’ investment. But the Boston Finance Commission, the city’s fiscal watchdog, has called for an audit of the process that approved the loans.
“It certainly looks like the city did everything possible to help this gentleman through a tough time,” said executive director Matthew Cahill. “But this sounds like across the board this is an example of bad business practices and an example of what not to do.”
Founded by Miller in 1965, the Banner claims to reach more than 180,000 people a week through print and Web combined. Malia Lazu, executive director of Future Boston Alliance, a nonprofit civic and economic group, said the paper continues to be relevant and influential with African-Americans. People from the Financial District to Mattapan’s church pews want to be seen on its pages, Lazu said.
“This is a paper that’s read in the black community,” said Lazu.
But the Banner, like newspapers everywhere, has struggled in recent years, hurt by the last recession and technological changes that have transformed reader habits, undermined advertising revenues, and created more competition.
The Banner was barely profitable in the year ending June 2008, according to financial statements submitted in support of the loans. By the time Miller turned to the city for help in the summer of 2009, the Banner was on track to lose more than $170,000 on revenue of about $1.3 million, and had briefly shut its doors.
Miller, 85, has long played a prominent role in Boston. In addition to being the Banner’s editor and publisher, he sits on the boards of OneUnited Bank, one of the largest black-owned banks in the country; MassINC, the Boston think tank; and the Huntington Theater Co. He is a Boston University emeritus trustee and an original commissioner of the Boston Water and Sewer Commission.
Didn't they get a bailout?
Related:
MSM Xmas Gifts: To OneUnited Bank
Foreclosure Was Church's Fault
Time to go shopping with your OneUnited card!
Menino strongly supported the loan, despite criticisms that it could compromise the editorial independence of the Banner as it covered the mayoral election. The paper did not make an endorsement in the race between Menino and City Councilor Michael Flaherty.
“This is about me trying to help a business that is very important to the minority community,” Menino said in a 2009 interview. “I will step up anytime and help any business in trouble in this city. I’m trying to help a business survive. Tell me if that’s wrong.”
I think throwing taxpayer money at any industry is wrong.
The BRA says it did the right thing.
“The loan to The Bay State Banner was made to support an African-American community institution as it weathered a bad economy and transformed itself to meet the new realities of the publishing world,” spokeswoman Melina Schuler said in a statement. “The newspaper is still in operation today.”
The Boston Local Development Corp., created in 1979 to help Boston businesses create and retain jobs, acted quickly to approve the Banner loan. It typically takes the agency 30 to 60 days to approve a loan; the Banner’s loans were approved in 19 days.
Hmmmm! Someone was pushing it!
The loans, which carried a 9 percent interest rate, were described as a bridge to private financing, according to the application prepared by Next Street Financial LLC, the Boston firm retained by the Banner to recruit investors. They were scheduled to be paid off in two years.
But investors Next Street lined up eventually pulled out of the deal, although it is unclear why, according to the BRA. Ronald L. Walker 2d, the Next Street president, declined requests to be interviewed.
Meanwhile, conditions for the newspaper industry remained challenging.
I don't want to hear the endle$$ whining, sorry! They did it to themselves.
The Banner’s advertising revenues fell 17 percent to about $900,000 in 2013 from $1.1 million in 2009.
The Banner did not pay off the loans when they became due in November 2011. The following January, the Boston Local Development Corp. restructured the loans and set monthly payments to about $1,500. The Banner made only the first payment, according to the BRA.
During this period, the Banner cut its obligations to Miller substantially, although it’s unclear how they were reduced. Not long before the Banner sought the city’s help, the paper owed Miller about $369,000, according to financial records. By the summer of 2012, that debt had shrunk by $210,000 to less than $160,000.
The Banner lost another $162,000 in the year ending June 2012. In October of that year, the Boston Loan Development Corp. declared the paper in default.
Miller pledged as collateral his second home in Plainfield, N.H. Built around 1990 on 205 acres, it is an unusual, 5,000-square-foot log home with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. The house, priced at $1.45 million, has been on the market about six months.
The perfect guy to write and publish about poverty in Boston's black community.
The BRA said it expects the home to sell and the loan, plus interest and penalties, to be paid in full. In a Jan. 9 letter — after the Globe began inquiring about the delinquent loan — the authority asked Miller to agree to a plan to pay the interest on the loan until the home is sold.
The Banner’s future is unclear. It regained profitability last year, but only after slashing expenses by more than 25 percent, according to financial records.
Translation: they fired people.
In addition, Miller also appears to be putting his own money into the paper again. The Banner’s debt to Miller increased by about $19,000 last year, records show.
Some analysts suggest the paper could succeed as a Web-only product, which would save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in printing costs.
If you are going to go online why read any e$tabli$hment pre$$? If I'm going to do that I'm going to go read blogs, and often do. That's why this blog is a piece of shit. If I wasn't buying and reading a printed Globe I wouldn't be blogging about it.
But whatever the model, it’s clear the Banner can’t lose money at the rate it did in recent years, said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst the Poynter Institute, a journalism education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
“I don’t think that’s sustainable,” Edmonds said. “The question is, does the publisher want to go on indefinitely putting his money into the paper?”
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Time to get out of town.
Related: Bay State Banner hits Globe in front-page retort
Finally, a newspaper war in Boston.
Also see: Boston Globe publisher Christopher Mayer to step down
Of course, Mayer made out while employees were suffering.
John Henry assumes role of Globe publisher, names CEO
How much money will he put in before cutting his lo$$es?
