Take Action Handbook

This is a collection of things you can do to take action!

 

Demand Oversight Hearings on the Financial Sector (October 17, 2008)

Our country is now being over-whelmed by a financial disaster created by a culture of greed in the financial services industry and ignored until too late by the federal financial regulators. We should all be extraordinarily concerned that these same regulatory agencies are making decisions that are reshaping our financial sector without public comment or full oversight.

All of these actions were done under "emergency" guidelines and with little or no regulatory scrutiny by the federal financial regulators. The same regulators that were not watching as our financial system and predatory mortgage lending created the current economic crisis.

Demand that Congress hold hearings to examine these emergency decisions in the light of day.

The real possibility exists that under-served neighborhoods will suffer and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) will be weakened if this process continues and expands as might be expected given the continuing economic crisis. CRA - in its most basic form - simply creates an affirmative obligation that financial institutions meet all communities' credit needs.

In the current secretive Federal Reserve and Treasury Department process, there is no assurance that this is the case and in likelihood it is not.

TAKE ACTION - Please download the form letter below and cut and paste it on your organization's letterhead and fax/mail it to the Offices of Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd. Demand that Congress hold hearings.

Protest Cut to Homeless and Domestic Violence Shelters! (October 10, 2008)

In signing the 2008-09 state budget on September 23, 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger unexpectedly eliminated all $4 million in state funding for emergency shelter operations. At least 119 homeless and domestic violence shelters will be impacted, providing fewer nights of shelter and diminished services.

Schwarzenegger also blue-penciled $761,000 from the Employee Housing Program, which inspects homes provided by farmworkers' employers. And, he eliminated $150 million in tax rebates for low-income senior and disabled renters.

"With rising foreclosures, a recession, and more families with children and seniors becoming homeless, these cuts are truly heartless," said Julie Snyder, Housing California's policy director. "Surely, out of $100 billion plus in expenditures, the governor could have cut items less critical to people's lives than basic shelter."

Overall, the governor blue-penciled $510 million in expenditures in order to increase the budget reserve.

Housing CA is working with the CA Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and others to review our options for restoring the emergency shelter funds in this fiscal year, which runs through June 30, 2009.

TAKE ACTION - Call your senators and assemblymembers to protest the shelter cut and share its impact on your community. Ask your legislators to restore the funding in this fiscal year. Not sure who your representatives are? Find out here. (In the right column, see "Find My District.")

Contact Julie Snyder, (916) 447.0503 x102 or jsnyder@housingca.org