A Good Program–The General Assembly Can Make It Better:
Janine, a Wilmington resident, was on the brink of homelessness when a first-of-its-kind state program prevented her from losing her housing.
Delaware implemented the Qualified Tenant Advocate program in 2022, which pairs specially trained nonattorneys with low-income residents facing eviction.
Since its inception, it has allowed Janine and thousands of other Delawareans to avoid an eviction on their record, and the stigma that goes along with it.
Janine’s landlord raised her rent in 2024. WHYY News is using her first name to protect her rental history from being associated with an eviction.
She was living in state-subsidized housing, using a voucher from the Delaware State Housing Authority to rent from a private landlord.
The agency approved a rent increase that June, but due to an administrative error, continued to pay the same amount to Janine’s landlord. She pays about 30% of her income toward rent and utilities and the housing authority pays the rest.
Qualified Tenant Advocate Rena Scott said the amount of unpaid back rent built up over about a year as Janine kept insisting to her landlord she was paying her rent, all the while the Delaware State Housing Agency was paying the wrong amount.
“This landlord was particularly egregious, very aggressive in his collection practices,” Scott said. “And the regulations say tenants can’t be held responsible for what a housing authority owes.”
Janine said as the conflict escalated, her landlord demanded she pay about $4,000 to avoid being evicted.
For decades, Justice of the Peace courts permitted landlords to be represented by nonattorneys. But tenants had to be represented by a lawyer, leaving many to try their luck in court alone or simply not go.
A 2020 analysis by the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy and Administration found that 86% of landlords had some kind of representation during an eviction hearing, while just 2% of renters had a lawyer.
Finally, in 2023, the General Assembly passed this bill. Also:
New legislation aimed at preventing evictions was signed into law last month. It allows a tenant who is being ousted for failure to pay rent to get a reprieve if they pay what they owe prior to being evicted.
Here’s the gap, thanks in part to the Trump Administration:
But for tenants across the state who don’t qualify for the right to representation programs, it can be a daunting search for rental assistance, which can be used for back rent and upcoming rent payments. A broader federal emergency rental assistance program ended last fall, which had been providing relief to Delaware families since the pandemic.
“There is no robust state program,” Rhine said. “The nonprofits right now are all facing [a] financial crisis. If you are behind a few thousand dollars in your rent, there is not an organization in the state that’s able to help you to catch up.”
Time for the General Assembly and the Governor to step in.
Not Just An Arch–An Arch-Nemesis:
President Trump said on Sunday his planned 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington would be built to host “large numbers of drones,” snipers and ammunition, as the administration appeared prepared to justify another construction project by citing national security.
Mr. Trump said the arch would be “a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.” The proposal would appear to place an arsenal and military staging ground in the center of the nation’s capital.
“There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post.
The administration has already been rushing to clear the final hurdles of the arch in recent days, brushing aside concerns from architects, historians and veterans who say it could disrupt the historical area between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Now, Mr. Trump appears prepared to return to a familiar playbook he has used to circumvent normal processes and defend some of his more contentious projects in court.
The White House did not immediately answer questions about the sudden need for a giant arch to host drones in a region with a high concentration of military bases and facilities. The Department of Defense declined to provide additional comment beyond Mr. Trump’s social media post.
Utter insanity. Who, if anybody, will rise to stop this?
On Wednesday Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, gave a speech affirming the EU’s willingness to move toward making Canada an “associate member.” Nobody quite knows what that would mean, and it might be mostly symbolic. But it would be a kind of declaration, by both Europe and Canada, of reduced dependence on the United States. And the next day Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minster, strongly endorsed the idea.
Donald Trump predictably, reacted with rage, calling it a “hostile act,” threatening to cut off all trade with Europe.
And nobody cared.
Globally, the most obvious reason nations have stopped fearing Trump is the debacle in Iran. At the start of the Iran war most people imagined that, whatever else one might say about Trump’s America, it had by far the world’s most powerful military. But what we’ve actually seen is one failure after another, as the U.S. military has failed to subdue the Iranian regime, been forced to abandon some of its own bases in the region, and depleted its supplies of munitions. Now America has refused to help Saudi Arabia against the Houthis — perhaps because we no longer have the necessary capabilities.
What about economic power? Trump clearly could do a lot of economic damage to Canada. But the U.S. economy would also suffer from all-out trade war. And while the damage from trade war would be much smaller as a percentage of U.S. GDP than Canadian GDP, Canadians appear to be solidly behind Carney, while Americans, to the extent they even know what is happening, appear by a small plurality to support Canada’s position.
The situation in the U.S. is somewhat less blatant. Businesses — even businesses like the auto industry, which have a lot to lose from trade wars — remain quiet, presumably because the Trump administration retains considerable power to punish them via contracts, regulations and so on. (In many ways Trump has been acting as if he wants to destroy the U.S. auto industry, or at least leave it hopelessly uncompetitive as the world electrifies.) Even in America, however, fear of Trump is palpably fading.
Now, even a massive blue wave in November won’t end Trump’s ability to do immense damage to the nation and world — damage that he may well do out of sheer spite. He is, after all, exactly the kind of person who will feel, not that he failed America, but that America failed him.
More about that in future posts. For now, let’s cautiously celebrate a clear decline in the fear Trump inspires, abroad and at home.
ICE Agent Tries To Commit Murder. Unprovoked, unjustified:
A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and wounded a Venezuelan man on Sunday afternoon in Texas’s capital city, Austin, prompting demonstrations at the scene against the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration campaign.
The man, identified by relatives and his lawyer as 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, was taken to a hospital in Austin in a serious but stable condition, officials said, before being taken into custody. He was shot once in the torso on the city’s north side, Austin’s police chief, Lisa Davis, said at a news conference with the mayor and other city officials.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said it was leading an investigation into the officer involved in the shooting, with the help of the FBI. (By definition, that’s not an investigation, it’s a whitewash.)
Austin police officers were not involved in the operation or the shooting, which occurred after a traffic stop, Davis told reporters. The city’s police arrived on the scene after the shooting and could be seen on bystander video asking the federal officers what had happened and then rushing back to their squad car to get surgical gloves and a medical kit and administering first aid to the man. The federal officers could be heard saying they had called an ambulance, but they did not appear to attempt to give first aid.
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, Garcés Pérez’s lawyer, said her client had arrived in the US two years ago from Venezuela. He was making a delivery for DoorDash when he encountered ICE and was shot, she said. (The ‘worst of the worst’ of DoorDash drivers?)
Kirk Watson, Austin’s Democratic mayor, said at the press conference later that he wanted the city’s police department to be involved in the investigation so it can provide “clear, third-party eyes” in the process. Watson said he did not think it would be appropriate for ICE to conduct an investigation on its own.
What do you want to talk about?
