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The former BP station on East Post Road in White Plains. Photo by Bill Heltzel The White Plains Housing Authority has sued BP Products North America for allegedly contaminating water and soil at a former gas station near Winbrook Apartments . A toxic plume under the former BP station at 34 E. Post Road, the housing authority claims , has migrated toward an apartment building. The plume allegedly threatens the health of residents and potentially jeopardizes financing for a $350 million plan to replace five buildings. The lawsuit was filed on Aug. 17 in federal court in White Plains. BP did not respond to a voicemail and an email request for comment. Winbrook is the city’s oldest public housing site , comprising five 90- unit structures built in the late 1940s. The apartments are in downtown White Plains on South Lexington Avenue , Fisher Court and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr . Boulevard. The gas station was next to Winbrook’s Building 33, home of about 350 residents. BP owned or o...

"); } if ($(imageDivId).length == 0) { $("#wrapper").after(contentText); } })(jQuery); BREMERTON, Wash. - Crystal Turner stood in the kitchen of her cramped apartment and stared at the cracks in the fake wood flooring beneath her feet. Surrounding her was the home she'd made for herself and her two sons in the past year, since they moved out of her Toyota Camry and into Admiral Manor, a low- rent apartment complex in west Bremerton . There was the single bedroom with two kids' beds on the floor. The living room she'd decorated with signs that said "Hope" and "Love." A dingy bathroom with a leaking toilet that had never been fixed. In this undated photo, Matthew Daigneault pushes his son Aden as he plays outside on the swings of his rental home in West Bremerton , Wash. (Larry Steagall/Kitsap Sun via AP) © 2017 Cox Media Group . Admiral Manor wasn 't the place Turner, a recovering addict, wanted to raise her boys. It was the place...

Every metropolitan area in the nation is racially segregated, and Los Angeles is no exception. We tolerate residential segregation because we’re convinced that it happened informally — because of personal choices and private discrimination. But what cemented our separate neighborhoods is something most of us have forgotten — government’s unconstitutional and systematic insistence on segregated housing in the mid-20th century, establishing patterns that persist to this day. The 2010 census data show that 60% of Los Angeles’s African Americans live in neighborhoods where few whites are present. The exposure of blacks to whites is as minimal as it is in Chicago or Newark; concentrated African American poverty is as common in L.A. as in New York or Pittsburgh. The New Deal created the nation’s first civilian public housing in the 1930s, segregated not only in the South, but nationwide. In his autobiography, the African American poet Langston Hughes recounted his adolescence in Worl...

Megan Mishler has lost her sense of security. Mishler, who has a rare genetic condition called Ehlers -Danlos Syndrome that prevents her from working, was recently forced to move from her apartment just west of Ann Arbor because her landlord is transitioning from affordable housing to market rate. Mishler is not alone; the transition will impact 144 units at the 368- unit Woodchase apartment complex at 1100 Rabbit Run Circle in Scio Township. “This has been extremely, extremely difficult. I was almost paralyzed at first,” Mishler said, referring to when she learned she would have to move. “This just added a whole other layer on top of all the other stuff that I’m already dealing with.” Mishler was told the rent for her one-bedroom apartment would jump from $770 per month to about $1,200 per month at the end of her lease term. The Woodchase apartments in Scio Township were developed in 1998. Katie McLean | The Ann Arbor News   Mishler uses the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Progr...

The same day it voted to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park — a move that white supremacists descended on the city to protest — the City Council did something that got much less publicity. It unanimously approved a $ 4 million spending plan to address racial disparities . Over the next five years, about $2.5 million is to be used to redevelop public housing ; $250,000 will go to expanding a park in a black neighborhood; and $20,000 a year will pay for G.E.D. classes for public housing residents . Photo K. Ian Grandison, a University of Virginia professor, with a map of what the rapidly gentrifying city looked like in the 1920s. Credit Matt Eich for The New York Times Activists call it reparations for the destruction of Vinegar Hill and other black neighborhoods here. “I’m hoping that other elected officials and policy makers from across the country can see it’s not enough to just move a damn statue,” said Wes Bellamy, the vice mayor, who proposed the plan. “I think symbol...

Paul Bass | New Haven Independent Democrat Marcus Paca, left, and incumbent Mayor Toni Harp . Marcus Paca promised that if he becomes mayor, he will fight gentrification, while Mayor Toni Harp argued that the burst of market-rate housing in town doesn’t constitute gentrification. Harp promised to continue New Haven’s “sanctuary city” policies even if President Trump withholds federal grants , while Paca promised to take a closer look at the issue first to avoid losing needed dollars . Those differences between the two Democratic mayoral candidates emerged Sunday afternoon at their first debate, held before a full house in the sanctuary of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue. The event was billed as a “forum,” not a “debate.” But a debate it turned out to be, from the moment the two Democrats began fielding questions from a panel of three local ministers and passionately responded to each other’s positions in a fast-paced, issues-focused back and forth. Two- term incu...