Envy Apartment

Morningside Park, a Kushner Companies- owned housing complex , in Middle River, Maryland (Philip Montgomery for The New York Times) Maryland’s two U.S. senators and four of its U.S. House representatives , all Democrats, sent a letter today to the large real- estate company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump ’s son-in-law and senior adviser, demanding information about the company’s management of 17 apartment complexes it owns in the state. The letter to Kushner Companies came in response to a May 23 article co-published by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine investigating management practices at the rental complexes, most of which are in the suburbs of Baltimore, as well as an article this week in The Baltimore Sun that revealed additional details . The original story described the highly aggressive legal tactics that Kushner Companies has used to pursue tenants who owed back rent or had left their leases early — even tenants who left the complexes...

If true, the allegations against Lorena Loren, the former director of the St. Clair Housing Commission , are disturbing on a number of levels. Federal investigators allege Loren embezzled more than $300,000 from the housing commission between 2008 and 2016, when she retired. Most heartbreaking is that the money that Loren allegedly misdirected into her own pockets and those of some of her family members was meant to help low income people afford decent housing . Stealing from poor people is a special kind of despicable. Stealing from low- income families to buy a range of goods worth $165,000 and ranging from beauty supplies to alcoholic beverages, which investigators say Loren did with a housing commission credit card , is lower than despicable. Beside abusing the credit card, investigators say Loren abused Section 8 housing vouchers to pay herself and family members rent for apartments and tenants that didn’t exist and to pay themselves to live in their own dwellings. What bot...