It would be difficult to think of any atmosphere more relaxing than a room warmed by a fireplace or stove. Of course, the physical warmth is equaled by an intangible feeling of peace and rest that comes from the same source. You can have access to all of these benefits when you work with one of the leading suppliers in the field of fireplaces and stoves.
These suppliers are available to handle all of your requests for gas fireplace and stove products, from installation, setup and service, to maintenance and cleaning. You may want to start by visiting the website to learn more about the array of quality products offered. Spend some time looking at the gas fireplaces, and fireplace inserts, that deliver comfort, style, and warmth in a convenient way.
You’ll see items from some of the most well-known, respected manufacturers in the industry. In addition, you can select from wood fireplaces and fireplace inserts, then enjoy the warmth and glow of a wood fire with family members and friends. Perhaps you’d be interested in a special item such as pellet fireplace inserts, the cleanest-burning option using recycled wood pellets.
Excellent Heat Source
Users have discovered that these pellets, when used in a quality insert, can generate heat at a level that rivals the central-heating system in your home. As you browse, you may also want to consider a gas-log set, for the beauty of a traditional wood fireplace without the effort. It’s a great option among gas fireplace and stove products.
When you’ve gathered the information you need, be sure to call and talk to a representative about your specific fireplace or stove needs. They’ll be happy to work with you to find the perfect solution for your home. So, when you need wood stoves, gas stoves, pellet stoves, coal stoves, or any type of quality fireplace installation, get in touch with the experts in gas fireplace and stove products. You’ll be making the smart choice when you visit Trading-post-ct.com. You can also connect them on Facebook for more updates.
We love our kids no matter how annoying and irritating they can be. But we all know that at the end of the day, they still bring us immeasurable joy. But what if your child is somewhat different? What your child displays behavior that is out of the ordinary?
As a parent, it is heartbreaking to know that your child might be special. You are worried for him because he might not survive the real world when he grows up. That is why as early as possible a parent should have the child diagnosed so as to be given a proper treatment early. The parents should be observant on the way their child behaves and if there is something that seems unusual or odd about the child’s behavior, they should consult with their pediatrician. This is not to say that the parents should be paranoid about anything that the child does. Being observant is different from being paranoid.
One of the disorders that parents should concern themselves about is the Asperger syndrome. Asperger syndrome belongs to a group of conditions called autism spectrum disorders. Autism is also included in this spectrum for this group refers to developmental disabilities and other disorders that display similar characteristics.
Symptoms in spectrum disorders, such as Asperger and autism, can appear in different combinations. The degree of severity in every diagnosed patient is different. Let us say that two kids are diagnosed with the same disorder but their skills and abilities will differ. Because of this, they physicians have developed general terms to describe children who have similar behaviors within the spectrum. Some of these terms are “low-functioning,” “high-functioning,” “autistic tendencies,” and “pervasive developmental disorder”. Children who have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome have a lot of symptoms in common with “high-functioning autism”.
However, it is difficult to differentiate Asperger from other behavioral problems and it is not uncommon for them to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD at first before finally diagnosing it as Asperger syndrome. Therefore, it is best to let a health professional evaluate the symptoms.
Minimal social interactions – They have difficulty in fostering or developing friendships but they do not shy away from people unlike those children diagnosed with autism.
Most conversations are about self than others – When a child with Asperger approaches someone, tendency is that child will talk more usually about a certain topic and will voice out his or her personal opinions disregarding the other person.
Repetitive speech – Children with Asperger tend to have scripted or robotic speech.
Does not have “common sense”
Have pdifficulties with math, writing skills or reading
Has obsession with complex topics – Children with Asperger are usually interested in anything that has patterns. They sometimes make a pattern of their own, too. Some are inclined to music
Cognitive abilities – nonverbal cognitive abilities are average to below average but verbal cognitive abilities are mostly average to above average
Behaviors – Children with Asperger will display some odd behaviors or mannerisms. These will be labeled weird by some people
When these signs are present, bring your child to your doctor so he can be diagnosed properly and can be provided with the proper care and guidance.
About the Author: Brent McNutt enjoys writing for Uniformhaven.com which sells
Featured articles are selected by the community to represent the best of Wikinews. See the Featured Article Candidates page for nominations and discussions of candidate articles for this page. Or, subscribe to the RSS feed!
Stardust is a NASA space capsule that collected samples from comet 81P/Wild (also known as “Wild 2) in deep space and landed back on Earth on January 15, 2006. It was decided that a collaborative online review process would be used to “discover” the microscopically small samples the capsule collected. The project is called Stardust@home. Unlike distributed computing projects like SETI@home, Stardust@home relies entirely on human intelligence.
Andrew Westphal is the director of Stardust@home. Wikinews interviewed him for May’s Interview of the Month (IOTM) on May 18, 2006. As always, the interview was conducted on IRC, with multiple people asking questions.
Some may not know exactly what Stardust or Stardust@home is. Can you explain more about it for us?
Artist’s rendering of Spacecraft StardustImage: NASA.
Stardust is a NASA Discovery mission that was launched in 1999. It is really two missions in one. The primary science goal of the mission was to collect a sample from a known primitive solar-system body, a comet called Wild 2 (pronounced “Vilt-two” — the discoverer was German, I believe). This is the first [US]] “sample return” mission since Apollo, and the first ever from beyond the moon. This gives a little context. By “sample return” of course I mean a mission that brings back extraterrestrial material. I should have said above that this is the first “solid” sample return mission — Genesis brought back a sample from the Sun almost two years ago, but Stardust is also bringing back the first solid samples from the local interstellar medium — basically this is a sample of the Galaxy. This is absolutely unprecedented, and we’re obviously incredibly excited. I should mention parenthetically that there is a fantastic launch video — taken from the POV of the rocket on the JPL Stardust website — highly recommended — best I’ve ever seen — all the way from the launch pad, too. Basically interplanetary trajectory. Absolutely great.
Is the video available to the public?
Yes [see below]. OK, I digress. The first challenge that we have before can do any kind of analysis of these interstellar dust particles is simply to find them. This is a big challenge because they are very small (order of micron in size) and are somewhere (we don’t know where) on a HUGE collector— at least on the scale of the particle size — about a tenth of a square meter. So…
We’re right now using an automated microscope that we developed several years ago for nuclear astrophysics work to scan the collector in the Cosmic Dust Lab in Building 31 at Johnson Space Center. This is the ARES group that handles returned samples (Moon Rocks, Genesis chips, Meteorites, and Interplanetary Dust Particles collected by U2 in the stratosphere). The microscope collects stacks of digital images of the aerogel collectors in the array. These images are sent to us — we compress them and convert them into a format appropriate for Stardust@home.
Stardust@home is a highly distributed project using a “Virtual Microscope” that is written in html and javascript and runs on most browsers — no downloads are required. Using the Virtual Microscope volunteers can search over the collector for the tracks of the interstellar dust particles.
Aerogel slice removed with an ultrasonic blade, showing particle tracks.Image: NASA.
How many samples do you anticipate being found during the course of the project?
Great question. The short answer is that we don’t know. The long answer is a bit more complicated. Here’s what we know. The Galileo and Ulysses spacecraft carried dust detectors onboard that Eberhard Gruen and his colleagues used to first detect and them measure the flux of interstellar dust particles streaming into the solar system. (This is a kind of “wind” of interstellar dust, caused by the fact that our solar system is moving with respect to the local interstellar medium.) Markus Landgraf has estimated the number of interstellar dust particles that should have been captured by Stardust during two periods of the “cruise” phase of the interplanetary orbit in which the spacecraft was moving with this wind. He estimated that there should be around 45 particles, but this number is very uncertain — I wouldn’t be surprised if it is quite different from that. That was the long answer! One thing that I should say…is that like all research, the outcome of what we are doing is highly uncertain. There is a wonderful quote attributed to Einstein — “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called “research”, would it?”
How big would the samples be?
We expect that the particles will be of order a micron in size. (A millionth of a meter.) When people are searching using the virtual microscope, they will be looking not for the particles, but for the tracks that the particles make, which are much larger — several microns in diameter. Just yesterday we switched over to a new site which has a demo of the VM (virtual microscope) I invite you to check it out. The tracks in the demo are from submicron carbonyl iron particles that were shot into aerogel using a particle accelerator modified to accelerate dust particles to very high speeds, to simulate the interstellar dust impacts that we’re looking for.
And that’s on the main Stardust@home website [see below]?
Yes.
How long will the project take to complete?
Partly the answer depends on what you mean by “the project”. The search will take several months. The bottleneck, we expect (but don’t really know yet) is in the scanning — we can only scan about one tile per day and there are 130 tiles in the collector…. These particles will be quite diverse, so we’re hoping that we’ll continue to have lots of volunteers collaborating with us on this after the initial discoveries. It may be that the 50th particle that we find will be the real Rosetta stone that turns out to be critical to our understanding of interstellar dust. So we really want to find them all! Enlarging the idea of the project a little, beyond the search, though is to actually analyze these particles. That’s the whole point, obviously!
And this is the huge advantage with this kind of a mission — a “sample return” mission.
Most missions rather do things quite differently… you have to build an instrument to make a measurement and that instrument design gets locked in several years before launch practically guaranteeing that it will be obsolete by the time you launch. Here exactly the opposite is true. Several of the instruments that are now being used to analyze the cometary dust did not exist when the mission was launched. Further, some instruments (e.g., synchrotrons) are the size of shopping malls — you don’t have a hope of flying these in space. So we can and will study these samples for many years. AND we have to preserve some of these dust particles for our grandchildren to analyze with their hyper-quark-gluon plasma microscopes (or whatever)!
When do you anticipate the project to start?
We’re really frustrated with the delays that we’ve been having. Some of it has to do with learning how to deal with the aerogel collectors, which are rougher and more fractured than we expected. The good news is that they are pretty clean — there is very little of the dust that you see on our training images — these were deliberately left out in the lab to collect dust so that we could give people experience with the worst case we could think of. In learning how to do the scanning of the actual flight aerogel, we uncovered a couple of bugs in our scanning software — which forced us to go back and rescan. Part of the other reason for the delay was that we had to learn how to handle the collector — it would cost $200M to replace it if something happened to it, so we had to develop procedures to deal with it, and add several new safety features to the Cosmic Dust Lab. This all took time. Finally, we’re distracted because we also have many responsibilities for the cometary analysis, which has a deadline of August 15 for finishing analysis. The IS project has no such deadline, so at times we had to delay the IS (interstellar, sorry) in order to focus on the cometary work. We are very grateful to everyone for their patience on this — I mean that very sincerely.
And rest assured that we’re just as frustrated!
I know there will be a “test” that participants will have to take before they can examine the “real thing”. What will that test consist of?
The test will look very similar to the training images that you can look at now. But.. there will of course be no annotation to tell you where the tracks are!
Why did NASA decide to take the route of distributed computing? Will they do this again?
I wouldn’t say that NASA decided to do this — the idea for Stardust@home originated here at U. C. Berkeley. Part of the idea of course came…
If I understand correctly it isn’t distributed computing, but distributed eyeballing?
…from the SETI@home people who are just down the hall from us. But as Brian just pointed out. this is not really distributed computing like SETI@home the computers are just platforms for the VM and it is human eyes and brains who are doing the real work which makes it fun (IMHO).
That said… There have been quite a few people who have expressed interested in developing automated algorithms for searching. Just because WE don’t know how to write such an algorithm doesn’t mean nobody does. We’re delighted at this and are happy to help make it happen
Isn’t there a catch 22 that the data you’re going to collect would be a prerequisite to automating the process?
That was the conclusion that we came to early on — that we would need some sort of training set to be able to train an algorithm. Of course you have to train people too, but we’re hoping (we’ll see!) that people are more flexible in recognizing things that they’ve never seen before and pointing them out. Our experience is that people who have never seen a track in aerogel can learn to recognize them very quickly, even against a big background of cracks, dust and other sources of confusion… Coming back to the original question — although NASA didn’t originate the idea, they are very generously supporting this project. It wouldn’t have happened without NASA’s financial support (and of course access to the Stardust collector). Did that answer the question?
Will a project like this be done again?
I don’t know… There are only a few projects for which this approach makes sense… In fact, I frankly haven’t run across another at least in Space Science. But I am totally open to the idea of it. I am not in favor of just doing it as “make-work” — that is just artificially taking this approach when another approach would make more sense.
How did the idea come up to do this kind of project?
Really desperation. When we first thought about this we assumed that we would use some sort of automated image recognition technique. We asked some experts around here in CS and the conclusion was that the problem was somewhere between trivial and impossible, and we wouldn’t know until we had some real examples to work with. So we talked with Dan Wertheimer and Dave Anderson (literally down the hall from us) about the idea of a distributed project, and they were quite encouraging. Dave proposed the VM machinery, and Josh Von Korff, a physics grad student, implemented it. (Beautifully, I think. I take no credit!)
I got to meet one of the stardust directors in March during the Texas Aerospace Scholars program at JSC. She talked about searching for meteors in Antarctica, one that were unblemished by Earth conditions. Is that our best chance of finding new information on comets and asteroids? Or will more Stardust programs be our best solution?
That’s a really good question. Much will depend on what we learn during this official “Preliminary Examination” period for the cometary analysis. Aerogel capture is pretty darn good, but it’s not perfect and things are altered during capture in ways that we’re still understanding. I think that much also depends on what question you’re asking. For example, some of the most important science is done by measuring the relative abundances of isotopes in samples, and these are not affected (at least not much) by capture into aerogel.
Also, she talked about how some of the agencies that they gave samples to had lost or destroyed 2-3 samples while trying to analyze them. That one, in fact, had been statically charged, and stuck to the side of the microscope lens and they spent over an hour looking for it. Is that really our biggest danger? Giving out samples as a show of good faith, and not letting NASA example all samples collected?
These will be the first measurements, probably, that we’ll make on the interstellar dust There is always a risk of loss. Fortunately for the cometary samples there is quite a lot there, so it’s not a disaster. NASA has some analytical capabilities, particularly at JSC, but the vast majority of the analytical capability in the community is not at NASA but is at universities, government labs and other institutions all over the world. I should also point out that practically every analytical technique is destructive at some level. (There are a few exceptions, but not many.) The problem with meteorites is that except in a very few cases, we don’t know where they specifically came from. So having a sample that we know for sure is from the comet is golden!
I am currently working on my Bachelor’s in computer science, with a minor in astronomy. Do you see successes of programs like Stardust to open up more private space exploration positions for people such as myself. Even though I’m not in the typical “space” fields of education?
Can you elaborate on your question a little — I’m not sure that I understand…
Well, while at JSC I learned that they mostly want Engineers, and a few science grads, and I worry that my computer science degree with not be very valuable, as the NASA rep told me only 1% of the applicants for their work study program are CS majors. I’m just curious as to your thoughts on if CS majors will be more in demand now that projects like Stardust and the Mars missions have been great successes? Have you seen a trend towards more private businesses moving in that direction, especially with President Bush’s statement of Man on the Moon in 2015?
That’s a good question. I am personally not very optimistic about the direction that NASA is going. Despite recent successes, including but not limited to Stardust, science at NASA is being decimated.
I made a joke with some people at the TAS event that one day SpaceShipOne will be sent up to save stranded ISS astronauts. It makes me wonder what kind of private redundancy the US government is taking for future missions.
I guess one thing to be a little cautious about is that despite SpaceShipOne’s success, we haven’t had an orbital project that has been successful in that style of private enterprise It would be nice to see that happen. I know that there’s a lot of interest…!
Now I know the answer to this question… but a lot do not… When samples are found, How will they be analyzed? Who gets the credit for finding the samples?
The first person who identifies an interstellar dust particle will be acknowledged on the website (and probably will be much in demand for interviews from the media!), will have the privilege of naming the particle, and will be a co-author on any papers that WE (at UCB) publish on the analysis of the particle. Also, although we are precluded from paying for travel expenses, we will invite those who discover particles AND the top performers to our lab for a hands-on tour.
We have some fun things, including micromachines.
How many people/participants do you expect to have?
About 113,000 have preregistered on our website. Frankly, I don’t have a clue how many will actually volunteer and do a substantial amount of searching. We’ve never done this before, after all!
One last thing I want to say … well, two. First, we are going to special efforts not to do any searching ourselves before we go “live”. It would not be fair to all the volunteers for us to get a jumpstart on the search. All we are doing is looking at a few random views to make sure that the focus and illumination are good. (And we haven’t seen anything — no surprise at all!) Also, the attitude for this should be “Have Fun”. If you’re not having fun doing it, stop and do something else! A good maxim for life in general!
What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.
The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.
Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.
Under Variable rate mortgages, the interest rate varies according to prevalent market conditions. Mortgage lenders in Richmond Hill also offer variable rate mortgages, which come with a fixed rate for several years, and then change to another rate, either variable or fixed, for the remaining period.
One benefit of variable rate mortgages in Richmond Hill is that they feature lower rates and payments during the initial loan term. Please note that, while it is true that a variable rate mortgage provides lower interest rate, it applies only in the short-term. This is a very dangerous position to be in, as you will be stuck with a high payment, further increasing every month, to perhaps a point where you can no longer afford even the monthly payments. Missed payments along with no home equity will strike a blow to your credit rating and you will not qualify for traditional refinancing mortgages and would be risking foreclosure.
Since variable rate mortgages are determined by market indices, they allow you to take advantage of falling rates without having to resort to refinancing in Richmond Hill.
Variable rate mortgage in Richmond Hill offers an inexpensive solution to borrowers who do not intend on staying in one place for a long time or intend to pay off their mortgage or sell their home before the expiry of the fixed rate period.
Borrowers are tempted with the low introductory payments under variable rate mortgages. However, if you are not careful and rely on the wrong mortgage lender in Richmond Hill, this kind of mortgage could turn into a nightmare.
The main reason why borrowers must exercise extra caution is that, after the expiry of the fixed rate period, the interest rate increases to an abysmal amount causing your monthly payments to rise by hundreds of dollars. This can throw you into a hazardous tailspin.
Also, in case of economic meltdown, your property value is likely to crash. In such a scenario, if you had refinanced your property value, using a variable rate mortgage, you will end up owing more than the adjusted value of your home. This is a very dangerous position to be in, as you will be stuck with a high payment, further increasing every month, to perhaps a point where you can no longer afford even the monthly payments. Missed payments along with no home equity will strike a blow to your credit rating and you will not qualify for traditional refinancing mortgages and would be risking foreclosure.
In summary, variable rate mortgages have their fair share of pros and cons. It is important for you to do your research, weigh your decision after a careful analysis and stay tuned in to the market. It is advisable to refinance before the expiry of the fixed rate period or you may be in for more than a rude shock!
For more information, you may contact:
Allegro Mortgages Corp. – Best Broker for All Your Financing Requirements (416) 987-0008
Check out amortgages.ca for information on different refinancing options.
About the Author: Please visit the website Amortgages.ca if you are interested to learn more about mortgage rate Richmond Hill or mortgages Toronto. The website also provides information on mortgage for self employed.
Zanu-PF, the party of the incumbent Robert Mugabe has said that there should be a recount of the presidential election results to check for possible “errors and miscalculations.” Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), questioned the legality of these actions. They said that recounts are only legal after the original set of results are made available.
The MDC released premature election results last Sunday, which claimed a large victory for their presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai against Robert Mugabe.
MDC leaders said that the unofficial tally, based on one-third of the election returns, shows Tsvangirai with 67% of the vote. The ‘results’ were posted on the doors of polling stations, and then sent to party officials by text messaging. MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti said, “Barring a miracle, Mugabe can’t win.”
Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.
The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.
“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.
“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.
“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.
“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”
The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.
Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”
The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.
“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.
The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:
“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”
Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.
Do you currently have an attached one-car garage that is not big enough to house your vehicles? Maybe you have an attached two-car garage that you want to turn into a living space. Regardless of the scenario, you need to find a builder who exclusively builds structures such as garages, dog houses, animal shelters, and storage facilities. Doing so will make it easier to make improvements to your property.
What Does the Builder Build?
For example, if you contact a contractor who provides buildings such as a two-car garage in Wilmington, DE, you will also want to make sure that he or she can build similar types of structures. You want to make sure that he or she takes great pride in his or her work and that he or she can meet all your structural and building requirements.
That is why the contractor should know how to build more than two-car garage structures. He or she should be able to handle a variety of building tasks so you can upgrade your property with more proficiency. By choosing a custom builder, you will find that you can get the garage you need in a smaller space of time. You can also have the building built with fewer distractions and disruptions.
Customizing Your Garage
That is because a builder of two-car garage buildings knows all about the customization process. He or she will work with you from the start of the project until its completion to make sure that you are fully satisfied. He or she can also offer the same type of service when he or she builds other similar structures. Use this contractor for all your needs along these lines.
Who to Contact Online
If you would like to know more about building a two-car detached garage, contact Greentreestructures.com today online. Take time to review the product and build offerings before you make a final decision. Obtain a free quote by calling the company at any time during regular business hours.
Due to an Oakland housing official’s acts of fraud, 34 poor families face eviction from Lockwood Gardens, by order of the Oakland Housing Authority.
Fear and panic have set in at some of East Oakland’s public housing units, as police agents from the Oakland Housing Authority have been making late-night visits to tenants, and demanding that the families pack up and move within a five-day period.
After refusing to pack up and run, more than 30 families are facing mass eviction by the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) from their public housing units at Lockwood Gardens, a Hope VI Project on 65th Avenue in East Oakland.
The OHA is claiming that at least 34 families currently facing eviction from Lockwood Gardens are unlawful occupants (squatters) who have illegally gained possession of the housing units. OHA officials have served them 30-day, forcible-detainer eviction notices in an effort to remove them.
On April 28, the first three cases out of 34 families facing eviction were headed for Alameda County Superior Court, but the court hearings have been delayed repeatedly as Judge Winifred Smith moves to consolidate all the cases.
In defense of some of the evictees, Oakland’s Eviction Defense Center has teamed up with attorney Bob Salinas, of Sundeen Salinas & Pyle, to file a demurrer seeking dismissal of evictions on behalf of the first three families that were served forcible-detainereviction notices. Lockwood Gardens has 372 units; and it is part of a revitalization project of East Oakland’s public housing properties, and a partial recipient of $26,510,020 in grant funding from the Hope Vl program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The revitalization funds were divided between three public housing projects in 1994 and 1996, and renovations have since taken place to demolish and rebuild the three locations into modern housing units in Oakland’s eastside neighborhoods.
Laura Lane, an attorney with the East Bay Community Law Center, is also representing a number of the families facing eviction at Lockwood Gardens and those cases will head to court at a later date.
Currently, out of the 34 families facing eviction, the Eviction Defense Center (EDC) is representing nine families in court, and the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) is representing 12 families. One family has already been frightened into moving away fromtheir public housing unit by the OHA; no one seems to know if the remaining seven families facing eviction have moved away or are seeking legal representation elsewhere.
Jennifer Bell of Goldfarb and Lipman is the General Counsel for the Oakland Housing Authority, and is leading the charge in court to evict the 34 families from their housing units in East Oakland.
During an April 24th interview with David Lipsetz, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Oakland Housing Authority, he blamed the tenants for what is occurring and accused all the families of committing fraud to move into public housing. At first, 29 families facedeviction, although that number has slowly risen to 34 as new families are served with eviction notices.
“The OHA has served eviction notices to 29 families at Lockwood Gardens because none of the families applied for, or got onto the waiting list to move into their public housing units,” said Lipsetc. “The tenants worked with a former clerk to gain access to theunits. The OHA does not have any files on the families, and the OHA does not believe that any of the families signed a lease before moving into those units. Forcible detainers are standard procedure for those that have illegally moved into the OHA’s public housing units.”
Lipsetz said that the OHA just recently discovered that the 29 families who are now living in those housing units did not match the names of the clients on the OHA list waiting to move into those units.
“As far as we can tell,” said Lipsetz, “there were no signed leases, no files established for these families, no security deposits have been paid before moving in, and those families got ahead of all the other families on the waiting list to move in.”
Contrary to what Lipsetz stated on behalf of the Oakland Housing Authority, the facts reveal that the families have all signed Leases, Tenant Agreements To Maintain A Drug-Free Environment, Occupant’s Responsibility statements, Lease Compliance forms anda host of other documents before moving in otheir public housing units. Those documents were all counter-signed by a host of clerks and managers working for the OHA. The soon-to-be-evicted tenants’ Billing Summaries, Tenant Leases and Notices have a host of names on them, such as Kim Boyd, an OHA Supervisor; Donald McShane, an OHA Manager; and Alice Ferguson, another OHA Manager.
In addition, as important as it may be that low-income tenants should not jump in line ahead of one another to move into this much-needed subsidized housing, most housing authorities across the nation recently have said the hell with their waiting lists, and allowed Hurricane Katrina’s victims to jump in ahead of all of those already waiting in line for housing.
A web page called “HUD’s Public Housing Program” has a section titled “WHEN WILL I BE NOTIFIED?” HUD’s website states: “If the HA determines that you are eligible, your name will be put on a waiting list, unless the HA is able to assist you immediately.” Theweb page may be found at http://www.hud.gov/renting/phprog.cfm
After discovering that the families facing eviction did indeed sign leases and other documents before moving into Lockwood Gardens, suddenly no one at the OHA would go on record to comment about the signed documents that contradicted the accusations of OHA spokesman David Lipsetz.
The documents clearly reveal that the 34 families facing eviction at Lockwood Gardens have all beenchecked out, and qualified as being eligible to move into those units, regardless of what the OHA may say at this point.
The entire controversy appears to have been triggered by acts of deception and fraud on the part of an official of the Oakland Housing Authority, Carolyn Wilson. “The police have been looking for Carolyn Wilson of the Oakland Housing Authority ever since shedisappeared recently,” said Ms. Kelly, a resident of Lockwood Gardens who prefers to use only her last name for this story.
“I moved into Lockwood Gardens on October 27, and Carolyn Wilson’s name is on my lease,” said Kelly. “I first received a message from the OHA at my mother’s home, telling me that a unit was available at Lockwood Gardens, and I went to their office location on 65thAvenue to fill out the necessary forms to move in. I supplied birth certificates, photo IDs, Social Security numbers, income statements and everything else asked of me to qualify for moving in. There’s no way that I committed fraud by following through witheverything being asked of me by the Housing Authority.”
Kelley said she and her young child were disturbed by an unexpected, late-night arrival of OHA police at her door.
“I am a 41-year-old woman with an 11-year-old child, and I am very frightened by the way the OHA has been treating me,” she said. “I was terrified recently when the OHA Police showed up at my door around 10 p.m. at night, accusing my family of committing fraud to move into this townhouse; and they served me a five-day notice to surrender my home to the OHA, or else.”
Officer Jerold Coates, a 13-year employee of the OHA Police Department, and Officer Malcolm Williams are involved in the investigation taking place at Lockwood Gardens. According to Ms. Kelly, “Officer Coates told me that Carolyn Wilson was demanding that everyone must pay her $500 to $1,000 to move in, and he wanted to know how much I paid her before moving in. I denied payingMs. Wilson anything extra to move into Lockwood Gardens.”
Kelly added, “From what I am being told by others is that Carolyn Wilson of the OHA skipped town with everyone’s security deposits of $500 to $1,000 for each family involved in the scam, and that the OHA will not receive a subsidy from HUD for the familiesfacing eviction in those units, because the OHA believes that the wrong families are residing in those housing units.”
One of the families that moved into Lockwood Gardens, and is now facing eviction, moved away from another public housing location in Oakland in order to move into the Hope Vl project on 65th Avenue. It takes permission to move from one location to another in public housing, and managers or staff at the OHA had to give their blessings before this family was allowed to relocate to Lockwood Gardens.
Jorge Aguilar, an attorney for the Eviction Defense Center, has his own understanding of what is going on. “An agent of the Oakland Housing Authority defrauded nearly 30 families of the most vulnerable segment of the community,” he said. “They are now trying to cover their wrongful act by evicting those families. The OHA is trying to circumvent Measure EE [Oakland’s Just Cause for eviction measure]. The irony is that the OHA is using forcible detainers to evict, which have traditionally been used to defend tenants fromlandlords using self-help evictions.”
Aguilar recently witnessed the human suffering already caused by the OHA’s eviction threats and rough handling of the families involved. He said, “During a recent interview with one of the families facing eviction, a little boy started crying and stated thatthe police came by and tried to take my bedroom away from me.”
Another Lockwood Gardens tenant named Winou Wakeyo said, “I’m from Jimma, Ethiopa, and I moved into Lockwood Gardens on November 22, 2005. I work 12 hours a day on Sundays for a pastor who told me to come here to find housing, and I did everything the HousingAuthority asked of me before moving in. A big policeman came by recently late at night with a five-day notice telling me that I must surrender my home to the Housing Authority. There were two policemen. It scared me very much, and someone later told me to find a defender to save my housing, and I contacted the Eviction Defense Center for help.
“I do not understand the customs of this country, and I asked my defender what I did wrong, and I was told that someone stole some money. The Housing Authority stopped accepting my rent for April, and about two weeks ago, they suddenly sent back the rent that Ipaid for March, and I do not understand why they are doing this to me.”
Laura Lane, an attorney for the EBCLC, said, “The Oakland Housing Authority seems to be in a complete disarray. The management has failed to adequately screen, train or supervise its employees. But when the employees make mistakes or fail to follow the law, theOakland Housing Authority’s response is to blame the tenants, blame the attorneys, blame the federal government — blame anyone but the Oakland Housing Authority. There is an utter failure to accept personal responsibility.”
After it became apparent that many families were seeking legal help to fight the evictions, a meeting was held on March 20 at the East Bay Community Law Center for the victims of the housing scam. When the tenants started sharing what had occurred to them,most of the families involved suddenly realized that Carolyn Wilson of the OHA had stolen their security deposits, and skipped out of town.
Tenants at Lockwood Gardens believe that there may be another 40 families or more to face eviction, since they learned that OHA police are also investigating other public housing properties in Oakland that may be caught up in the housing scam.
As recently as April 22, OHA police were back at Lockwood Gardens pounding on the tenants’ doors, and demanding to know if the families have moved yet.
“This time the police were not satisfied to know if my family had moved yet,” said Kelly, “but they wanted to know if any of us noticed any other families moving out of here lately. Considering the way they have been treating us, I don’t think we have to tell them anything at this point, and they need to talk to my attorney if they have any further questions.”
