March 19th TOD!! Come one, come all!

***Celebrate the start of your Spring Break with us!***


Where: Heartland Cafe 7000 N. Glenwood Ave. one block North of Red Line Morse Stop

When: Friday, March 19th, 8-10pm, after the 6pm March General Assembly meeting in CUPPA Hall basement lounge

Why: Enjoy great food and drinks on the ***heated patio*** of the Heartland Cafe (one of TimeOut Chicago's Essential Restaurants in Chicago) and relax with your fellow MUPPs!



***Support a local restaurant whose owners are interested in urban planning, TOD, and creating a "green stop on the Red Line."***

Hope to see all of you there!

Farming to save Detroit?

To get you excited about our upcoming UPPSA field trip during spring break, here is an article from CNN about Detroit's possible turnaround....

Can farming save Detroit?

By David Whitford, editor at largeDecember 29, 2009: 11:37 AM ET

DETROIT (Fortune) -- John Hantz is a wealthy money manager who lives in an older enclave of Detroit where all the houses are grand and not all of them are falling apart. Once a star stockbroker at American Express, he left 13 years ago to found his own firm. Today Hantz Financial Services has 20 offices in Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia, more than 500 employees, and $1.3 billion in assets under management.

Twice divorced, Hantz, 48, lives alone in clubby, paneled splendor, surrounded by early-American landscapes on the walls, an autograph collection that veers from Detroit icons such as Ty Cobb and Henry Ford to Baron von Richthofen and Mussolini, and a set of Ayn Rand first editions.

Green acreage Fortune asked artist Bryan Christie to imagine how Detroit's thousands of abandoned residential acres might be transformed into cutting-edge, city-style farms (see illustration above): Solar panels and windmills power vertical growing systems that are efficient, attractive, and tourist-friendly. Greenhouses allow crops to grow year-round. And new development sprouts on the periphery.

Stockbroker John Hantz is scouting empty acres in Detroit and says he'll start planting in the spring.

With a net worth of more than $100 million, he's one of the richest men left in Detroit -- one of the very few in his demographic who stayed put when others were fleeing to Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills. Not long ago, while commuting, he stumbled on a big idea that might help save his dying city.

Every weekday Hantz pulls his Volvo SUV out of the gated driveway of his compound and drives half an hour to his office in Southfield, a northern suburb on the far side of Eight Mile Road. His route takes him through a desolate, postindustrial cityscape -- the kind of scene that is shockingly common in Detroit.

Along the way he passes vacant buildings, abandoned homes, and a whole lot of empty land. In some stretches he sees more pheasants than people. "Every year I tell myself it's going to get better," says Hantz, bright-eyed, with smooth cheeks and a little boy's carefully combed haircut, "and every year it doesn't."

Then one day about a year and a half ago, Hantz had a revelation. "We need scarcity," he thought to himself as he drove past block after unoccupied block. "We can't create opportunities, but we can create scarcity." And that, he says one afternoon in his living room between puffs on an expensive cigar, "is how I got onto this idea of the farm."

Yes, a farm. A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and -- most important of all -- stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He'll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit's east side. "Out of the gates," he says, "it'll be the largest urban farm in the world."

This is possibly not as crazy as it sounds. Granted, the notion of devoting valuable city land to agriculture would be unfathomable in New York, London, or Tokyo. But Detroit is a special case. The city that was once the fourth largest in the country and served as a symbol of America's industrial might has lately assumed a new role: North American poster child for the global phenomenon of shrinking postindustrial cities.

Nearly 2 million people used to live in Detroit. Fewer than 900,000 remain. Even if, unlikely as it seems, the auto industry were to rebound dramatically and the U.S. economy were to come roaring back tomorrow, no one -- not even the proudest civic boosters -- imagines that the worst is over. "Detroit will probably be a city of 700,000 people when it's all said and done," says Doug Rothwell, CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan. "The big challenge is, What do you do with a population of 700,000 in a geography that can accommodate three times that much?"

0:00 /2:56What Detroit start-ups need

Whatever the answer is, whenever it comes, it won't be predicated on a return to past glory. "We have to be realistic," says George Jackson, CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC). "This is not about trying to re-create something. We're not a world-class city."

If not world class, then what? A regional financial center? That's already Chicago, and to a lesser extent Minneapolis. A biotech hub? Boston and San Diego are way out in front. Some think Detroit has a future in TV and movies, but Hollywood is skeptical. ("Best incentives in the country," one producer says. "Worst crew.") How about high tech and green manufacturing? Possibly, given the engineering and manufacturing talent that remains.

But still there's the problem of what to do with the city's enormous amount of abandoned land, conservatively estimated at 40 square miles in a sprawling metropolis whose 139-square-mile footprint is easily bigger than San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. If you let it revert to nature, you abandon all hope of productive use. If you turn it over to parks and recreation, you add costs to an overburdened city government that can't afford to teach its children, police its streets, or maintain the infrastructure it already has.

Faced with those facts, a growing number of policymakers and urban planners have begun to endorse farming as a solution. Former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, a private equity firm that invests in urban development, is familiar with Detroit's land problem. He says he's in favor of "other uses that engage human beings in their maintenance, such as urban agriculture." After studying the city's options at the request of civic leaders, the American Institute of Architects came to this conclusion in a recent report: "Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale."

In that sense, Detroit might actually be ahead of the curve. When Alex Krieger, chairman of the department of urban planning and design at Harvard, imagines what the settled world might look like half a century from now, he sees "a checkerboard pattern" with "more densely urbanized areas, and areas preserved for various purposes such as farming.

The notion of a walled city, a contained city -- that's an 18th-century idea." And where will the new ideas for the 21st century emerge? From older, decaying cities, Krieger believes, such as New Orleans, St. Louis, Cleveland, Newark, and especially Detroit -- cities that have become, at least in part, "kind of empty containers."

This is a lot to hang on Hantz. Most of what he knows about agriculture he's picked up over the past 18 months from the experts he's consulting at Michigan State and the Kellogg Foundation. Then there's the fact that many of his fellow citizens are openly rooting against him. Since word leaked of his scheme last spring, he has been criticized by community activists, who call the plan a land grab. Opponents have also raised questions about the run-ins he's had with regulators at Hantz Financial.

But Detroit is nothing if not desperate for new ideas, and Hantz has had no trouble getting his heard. "It all sounds very exciting," says the DEGC's Jackson, whose agency is working on assembling a package of incentives for Hantz, including free city land. "We hope it works."

Detroit's civic history is notable for repeated failed attempts to revitalize its core. Over the past three decades leaders have embraced a series of downtown redevelopment plans that promised to save the city.

The massive Renaissance Center office and retail complex, built in the 1970s, mostly served to suck tenants out of other downtown buildings. (Today 48 of those buildings stand empty.) Three new casinos (one already bankrupt) and two new sports arenas (one for the NFL's dreadful Lions, the other for MLB's Tigers) have restored, on some nights, a little spark to downtown Detroit but have inspired little in the way of peripheral development. Downtown is still eerily underpopulated, the tax base is still crumbling, and people are still leaving. The jobless rate in the city is 27%.

Nothing yet tried in Detroit even begins to address the fundamental issue of emptiness -- empty factories, empty office buildings, empty houses, and above all, empty lots. Rampant arson, culminating in the annual frenzy of Devil's Night, is partly to blame. But there has also been a lot of officially sanctioned demolition in Detroit. As white residents fled to the suburbs over the decades, houses in the decaying neighborhoods they left behind were often bulldozed.

Abandonment is an infrastructure problem, when you consider the cost of maintaining far-flung roads and sewer systems; it's a city services problem, when you think about the inefficiencies of collecting trash and fighting crime in sparsely populated neighborhoods; and it's a real estate problem. Houses in Detroit are selling for an average of $15,000.

That sounds like a buying opportunity, and in fact Detroit looks pretty good right now to a young artist or entrepreneur who can't afford anyplace else -- but not yet to an investor. The smart money sees no point in buying as long as fresh inventory keeps flooding the market. "In the target sites we have," says Hantz, "we [reevaluate] every two weeks."

As Hantz began thinking about ways to absorb some of that inventory, what he imagined, he says, was a glacier: one broad, continuous swath of farmland, growing acre by acre, year by year, until it had overrun enough territory to raise the scarcity alarm and impel other investors to act. Rick Foster, an executive at the Kellogg Foundation whom Hantz sought out for advice, nudged him gently in a different direction.

"I think you should make pods," Foster said, meaning not one farm but many. Hantz was taken right away with the concept of creating several pods -- or lakes, as he came to think of them -- each as large as 300 acres, and each surrounded by its own valuable frontage. "What if we had seven lakes in the city?" he wondered. "Would people develop around those lakes?"

To increase the odds that they will, Hantz plans on making his farms both visually stunning and technologically cutting edge. Where there are row crops, Hantz says, they'll be neatly organized, planted in "dead-straight lines -- they may even be in a design." But the plan isn't to make Detroit look like Iowa. "Don't think a farm with tractors," says Hantz. "That's old."

In fact, Hantz's operation will bear little resemblance to a traditional farm. Mike Score, who recently left Michigan State's agricultural extension program to join Hantz Farms as president, has written a business plan that calls for the deployment of the latest in farm technology, from compost-heated greenhouses to hydroponic (water only, no soil) and aeroponic (air only) growing systems designed to maximize productivity in cramped settings.

He's really excited about apples. Hantz Farms will use a trellised system that's compact, highly efficient, and tourist-friendly. It won't be like apple picking in Massachusetts, and that's the point. Score wants visitors to Hantz Farms to see that agriculture is not just something that takes place in the countryside. They will be able to "walk down the row pushing a baby stroller," he promises.

Crop selection will depend on the soil conditions of the plots that Hantz acquires. Experts insist that most of the land is not irretrievably toxic. The majority of the lots now vacant in Detroit were residential, not industrial; the biggest problem is how compacted the soil is. For the most part the farms will focus on high-margin edibles: peaches, berries, plums, nectarines, and exotic greens. Score says that the first crops are likely to be lettuce and heirloom tomatoes.

Hantz says he's willing to put up the entire $30 million investment himself -- all cash, no debt -- and immediately begin hiring locally for full-time positions. But he wants two things first from Jackson at the DEGC: free tax-delinquent land, which he'll combine with his own purchases, he says (he's aiming for an average cost of $3,000 per acre, in line with rural farmland in southern Michigan), and a zoning adjustment that would create a new, lower tax rate for agriculture. There's no deal yet, but neither request strikes Jackson as unattainable. "If we have reasonable due diligence," he says, "I think we'll give it a shot."

Detroit mayor Dave Bing is watching closely. The Pistons Hall of Fame guard turned entrepreneur has had what his spokesman describes as "productive discussions" with Hantz. In a statement to Fortune, Bing says he's "encouraged by the proposals to bring commercial farming back to Detroit. As we look to diversify our economy, commercial farming has some real potential for job growth and rebuilding our tax base."

Hantz, for his part, says he's got three or four locations all picked out ("one of them will pop") and is confident he'll have seeds in the ground "in some sort of demonstration capacity" this spring. "Some things you've got to see in order to believe," he says, waving his cigar. "This is a thing you've got to believe in order to see."

Many have a hard time making that leap. When news of Hantz's ambitious plan broke in the Detroit papers last spring, few people even knew who he was. A little digging turned up a less-than-spotless record at Hantz Financial Services. The firm has paid fines totaling more than $1 million in the past five years, including $675,000 in 2005, without admitting or denying guilt, "for fraud and misrepresentations relating to undisclosed revenue-sharing arrangements, as well as other violations," according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. (Hantz responds, "If we find something that isn't in compliance, we take immediate steps to correct the problem.")

Hantz Farms' first hire, VP Matt Allen, did have an established reputation in Detroit, but it wasn't a good one. Two years ago, while he was press secretary for former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Allen pleaded guilty to domestic violence and obstructing police after his wife called 911. He was sentenced to a year's probation. Hantz says he has known Allen for many years and values his deep knowledge of the city. "He has earned a second chance, and I'm willing to give it to him," he says.

Some of Hantz's biggest skeptics, ironically, are the same people who've been working to transform Detroit into a laboratory for urban farming for years, albeit on a much smaller scale. The nonprofit Detroit Agriculture Network counts nearly 900 urban gardens within the city limits. That's a twofold increase in two years, and it places Detroit at the forefront of a vibrant national movement to grow more food locally and lessen the nation's dependence on Big Ag.

None of those gardens is very big (average size: 0.25 acre), and they don't generate a lot of cash (most don't even try), but otherwise they're great: as antidotes to urban blight; sources of healthy, affordable food in a city that, incredibly, has no chain supermarkets; providers of meaningful, if generally unpaid, work to the chronically unemployed; and beacons around which disintegrating communities can begin to regather themselves.

That actually sounds a lot like what Hantz envisions his farms to be in the for-profit arena. But he doesn't have many fans among the community gardeners, who feel that Hantz is using his money and connections to capitalize on their pioneering work. "I'm concerned about the corporate takeover of the urban agriculture movement in Detroit," says Malik Yakini, a charter school principal and founder of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which operates D-Town Farm on Detroit's west side. "At this point the key players with him seem to be all white men in a city that's at least 82% black."

Hantz, meanwhile, has no patience for what he calls "fear-based" criticism. He has a hard time concealing his contempt for the nonprofit sector generally. ("Someone must pay taxes," he sniffs.) He also flatly rejects the idea that he's orchestrating some kind of underhanded land grab. In fact, Hantz says that he welcomes others who might want to start their own farms in the city. "Viability and sustainability to me are all that matters," he says.

And yet Hantz is fully aware of the potentially historic scope of what he is proposing. After all, he's talking about accumulating hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of acres inside a major American city. And it's clear that he views Hantz Farms as his legacy. Already he's told his 21-year-old daughter, Lauren, his only heir, that if she wants to own the land one day, she has to promise him she'll never sell it. "This is like buying a penthouse in New York in 1940," Hantz says. "No one should be able to afford to do this ever again."

That might seem like an overly optimistic view of Detroit's future. But allow Hantz to dream a little. Twenty years from now, when people come to the city and have a drink at the bar at the top of the Renaissance Center, what will they see? Maybe that's not the right vantage point. Maybe they'll actually be on the farm, picking apples, looking up at the RenCen. "That's the beauty of being down and out," says Hantz. "You can actually open your mind to ideas that you would never otherwise embrace." At this point, Detroit doesn't have much left to lose.

Infamous housing project goes down!

A great time-lapse video made entirely of photographs on the demolition of Cabrini-Green



Taken from Planetizen Article, here

Detroit has enough money in its coffers for 1/3 tear down

Bridging the gap in public and private fund, Detroit aims to demo some of its vacant properties that have brought increased blight to the city. Read more here

Detroit can afford to tear down at least 2,500 homes, council is told

By Suzette Hackney, 2/22/10
Detroit has the funding to tear down 2,500 to 3,000 of the roughly 10,000 dangerous houses that are on the demolition rolls, according to city officials.

About $14 million in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program money and about $6 million from other funds will be used to demolish the homes, Karla Henderson, director of Detroit’s Buildings & Safety Engineering Department, told City Council this morning. It costs the city about $10,000 to demolish each single-family home.

“A lot of it comes down to funding,” Henderson said.

The city also is pursuing options to collect the cost of demolition from property owners.

Council members also said they want a better working relationship with the utility companies, which must shut down electricity, gas or water, before demolitions can begin. Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown suggested a task force to address the eight- to nine-month lag time it can sometimes take to cut off utility services.

But Councilwoman Brenda Jones said she would prefer the city use a computerized system to prioritize and track houses that have been on the demolition list for years.

Henderson said she was not confident that the housing information in the city’s current computer system is accurate.

“We are operating like 30 years ago,” she said.

Charles Beckham, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s group executive for operations, said a new system is 80% in place, and the city is just awaiting some additional software.

What's it worth in the long term?

Great Article from our very own Chicago Tribune about the effects of the Stimulus Package:

Obama's stimulus package, one year later: Too much quick fix; too little long-term infrastructure

By Blaire Kamin, 2/18/10

Here’s something you probably haven’t heard lately: a stimulus story where Democrats and Republicans aren’t hurling accusations at each other.

As the Chicago Transit Authority was rebuilding its heavily used Red and Brown Line stations at Fullerton and Belmont Avenues in 2007 and 2008, cash ran short. That forced the canopies over the stations’ platforms to be only about 125 feet long—nowhere near the length needed to protect all the passengers from the elements. Then, last year, the CTA got $1.9 million in stimulus funds to extend the canopies, making them roughly 300 feet long.

Now, rain and snow fall on far fewer riders than before. Passengers are less likely to bunch up under the canopies. Because the riders are evenly distributed, boarding and exiting the trains goes more smoothly. The canopies, made of a translucent plastic supported by steel columns, even upgrade their neighborhoods, gliding airily over the streets—and subtly encouraging more people to use transit.

As shaped by the station’s designers, Ross Barney Architects of Chicago, the canopies offer precisely the kind of benefit that the $787 billion stimulus package is supposed to provide. They’re useful, handsome and, above all, durable. Check back in 25 years and they’re sure to be around. Here’s the trouble for President Barack Obama: So far, they’re an exception to the kind of public works the controversial stimulus package is producing, not the rule.

In a bid to preserve or create much-needed jobs, most of the stimulus spending for infrastructure is pushing short-term fixes, like repaved roads. Such projects have undeniable added value, allowing traffic to flow more smoothly and preventing crater-sized potholes from blowing out tires. Yet the roads will simply have to be repaved a few years down the line. In the long run, whether the stimulus helps bring down unemployment or not, little will have changed.

“Few of the [stimulus] projects are transformative,” said Joseph Schofer, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.

Not all of them were supposed to be, of course. Given the economic crisis that attended the passage of the stimulus package, tensions were bound to surface between putting people back to work quickly and building a lasting framework of public works. The construction of such a framework was always one of the animating ideas behind the package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Obama aimed to create public works on a grand scale, embracing traditional infrastructure projects, like fixing roads and bridges, as well as new ones such as extending broadband service to rural communities. The idea was to simultaneously jump-start and reshape the moribund economy, making it greener and more competitive. But the bill the president signed into law a year ago this week departed from this strategic vision in crucial ways.

With congressional Democrats crafting the measure, it funded a grab bag of tax cuts, jobless benefits and other measures. Infrastructure is just one piece of the sprawling piece of legislation and by no means the biggest one. The American Society of Civil Engineers puts the bill’s infrastructure spending at $71.8 billion, or less than one-tenth of the package. And, as a look at Obama’s home state of Illinois reveals, much of the money being spent is simply fixing existing infrastructure rather than building a new framework.

The state’s top recipient of stimulus funds is the Illinois Department of Transportation, which has received more than $845 million, according to the government’s stimulus Web site, www.recovery.gov. Give IDOT that kind of money and it will spread asphalt and concrete like peanut butter. And that’s what the department is doing, hiring contractors by the score to resurface roads from the Wisconsin border to the state’s southern tip.

Read more here!

This Friday: Bike for Your Rights, a Chicago Benefit for Mariel Mentink

What better way to enjoy a cold Friday night? Critical Mass, then come out and support a fundraiser for Mariel Mentink, this Friday at the Viaduct Theater at 9pm. Bikes, beer, and advocacy go hand in hand!!

The background: Early on New Years Day, Chicago resident, Mariel Mentink and a friend were riding home after a group bike ride around Austin. Riding westbound on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard near Springdale, Mariel was hit from behind by a motorist in a grey SUV or pickup truck that immediately fled the scene. This near fatal hit and run has left Mariel with an uncertain future and a recovery time estimated to be 3 years that consists of intensive care, rehabilitation and physical therapy. This event's purpose is to support Mariel financially and also to help to increase bike safety and driver to bicycle awareness. Join us for live music, beer, and bike mechanics working for donations to give your ride a tune up or repair.

More information can be found here and here

So, dust off your bike and meet me Daley Plaza at 5:30pm for the start of critical mass, where we will ride over as a group to the Viaduct Theater. More info on Critical Mass can be found here. Questions about where to meet? Email samara2@uic.edu

Don't forget to dress warm!

Bike Parking: High Density Style

In Japan, they have created a bike parking structure that rivals all over bike parking structures, leaving us here, in the US, dreaming of this type of security.

Read the Article, taken from Planning Commissions Journal:
Given the high population density in Japan's metropolitan area, it shouldn't come as a surprise that a Japanese firm has come up with an automated bicycle storage facility. Take a look at this short video from The Guardian newspaper's website.

As Guardian editor David Munk describes it: "Has Japan designed the world's best bike shed? It's not often something stops you in your bike tracks. But a spectacular "bike tree" invention from Japan bowled me over when I was in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago.

Fed up with bicycles locked to railings, piled on top of each other, blocking doorways and roads, a local council in the city installed the mechanical masterpiece. It's basically an automatic storage system for cycles and operates with computer tagging of bikes and either storage in a building or a basement structure.

There are a number of locations where these bike trees are now in place in Tokyo some hold 600-odd bikes, others more than 6,000. The concept came from the massive Japanese steel company JFE, whose engineering works division first started them in 2007 but are now spreading.

... The process of retrieval normally takes 15 seconds but can be slightly longer (it took 30 seconds in my experience). The advantages are plain your bike becomes theft-proof, you are encouraged to cycle to work and local authorities don't have to deal with unsightly and sometimes annoying bicycle clutter. The downside is that it costs a lot of money and the infrastructure involves serious resources."

For more details on the bicycle storage facility, see:

• CYCLE TREE: Multi-level Mechanical Bicycle Parking System (from JFE Engineering corporation, which built the facility)
• Yet Another Video of Amazing Japanese Bike Storage System (from Treehugger.com)

Watch the Video:

Forgivable Student Loans?

Hey MUPPS! Did you know that if you work in the public service field after graduation AND you have made 120 payments to your Federal Student Loans, that the government will FORGIVE you of the rest of your payments? No kidding?!

Check it out. More information can be found here

Prepared by Federal Student Aid
U.S. Department of Education
February 3, 2010

The Questions & Answers (Q&As) that follow provide information about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program that is available to most borrowers with loans made through the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program (Direct Loan ProgramSM). We have grouped the Q&As into four categories: General Information, Eligible Loans, Qualifying Payments, and Qualifying Employment. Following each answer is the date we posted that response. We will include a new date each time we add a question or when we update a previously posted response.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness – General Information

Q1 What is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program?
A1 The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program was established to encourage individuals to enter and continue in full-time public service employment by forgiving the remaining balance of their William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program loans (Direct LoansSM) after the borrower has made 120 qualifying monthly payments (beginning anytime after October 1, 2007) while employed full-time by a public service organization. (February 3, 2010)

Q2 What are the borrower eligibility requirements for loan forgiveness under the PSLF Program?
A2 You must be employed full-time by a public service organization (see Q&A #26) when you made each of the required 120 monthly loan payments on your Direct Loan and at the time you apply for loan forgiveness, after making the last of those 120 payments.

Q3 Are loan amounts forgiven under PSLF considered taxable income?
A3 No. According to the IRS, student loan amounts forgiven under PSLF are not considered income for tax purposes.

Q4 Is income a factor in determining my eligibility for PSLF?
A4 Not directly, but you will not have any remaining balance to be forgiven after 120 payments unless, at some point, your payments have been reduced through your use of the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan or the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) Plan (see Q&A#15).

Q5 If I have student loans through the FFEL Program, the Perkins Loan Program, or private non-federal student loan programs, can I take advantage of PSLF?
A5 Although PSLF is available only for Direct Loans, borrowers with FFELSM or Perkins loans may qualify for PSLF by consolidating those loans into the Direct Loan Program. Payments made on the FFEL or Perkins loans before they were consolidated into the Direct Loan Program are not counted toward the required 120 monthly payments. Non-federal student loans are not eligible for either consolidation into the Direct Loan Program or for PSLF. For more information about consolidating into the Direct Loan Program, go to www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov, or call 1-800-557-7392.

Q6 Will my interest rate change if I consolidate my FFEL or Perkins loans into the Direct Loan Program to take advantage of PSLF (see Q&A #5)?
A6 The interest rate on a Direct Consolidation Loan is a fixed rate that is based on a weighted average of the interest rates of the loans that you consolidate, rounded up to the next higher one-eighth of one percent. Because of this rounding up, the new fixed interest rate may be slightly higher.

Q7 Are loans that are in default eligible for PSLF?
A7 No. However, a borrower with a defaulted loan may be eligible for PSLF by consolidating the defaulted loan (see Q&A #5) or by rehabilitating the defaulted loan. Rehabilitation includes the making of at least nine on-time payments on the defaulted loan. Specific information on the rehabilitation of a defaulted loan is available from the holder of the defaulted loan.

Q8 Are joint Direct Consolidation Loans (consolidation loans made jointly to married borrowers) eligible for PSLF?
A8 Yes. However, if only one of the two borrowers meets the eligibility requirements for PSLF, the forgiveness after 120 qualifying payments applies only to the remaining balance of the joint consolidation loan that is attributable to the loans originally received by the borrower who performed the qualifying employment.

Q9 My spouse and I have a joint FFEL consolidation loan and we both work in public service jobs. Can we consolidate our joint consolidation loan into the Direct Loan Program to take advantage of PSLF?
A9 No. Because the law no longer permits joint consolidation loans to be made, you cannot reconsolidate an existing FFEL joint consolidation loan into the Direct Loan Program.

Q10 Are PLUS loan borrowers eligible for PSLF?
A10 Grad PLUS borrowers can benefit from PSLF by working in public service employment and making at least some of the required 120 payments under the IBR or ICR plans (see Q&A #13).
Parent PLUS loans are not eligible to be repaid under IBR or ICR. However, a parent PLUS borrower could consolidate the PLUS loans and then choose ICR for the new Direct Consolidation Loan. While a Direct Consolidation Loan that repaid a parent PLUS loan may not be repaid under IBR, it can be repaid under ICR. Note that if you are a parent PLUS borrower, your eligibility for PSLF is based on your own public service employment, not the employment of the student on whose behalf you obtained the PLUS loan.

Q11 What are the specific loan repayment requirements for loan forgiveness under the PSLF Program?
A11 You must have made 120 separate monthly payments (beginning after October 1, 2007) on the Direct Loan Program loans for which you are requesting forgiveness. Each of the monthly payments must have been made for the full scheduled installment amount within 15 days of the due date for the payment.

Q12 I have been making payments on my Direct LoansSM since before October of 2007. Will these payments count towards the required 120 payments for PSLF?
A12 Under the law, only payments made after October 1, 2007 may be counted towards the required 120 payments for PSLF.

Q13 What Direct Loan Program repayment plans qualify under the PSLF Program?
A13 The 120 required monthly payments must be made under one or more of the following Direct Loan Program repayment plans –
•The Income Based Repayment (IBR) Plan;
•The Income Contingent Repayment (ICR) Plan;
•The Standard Repayment Plan, with a 10 year repayment period; and
•Any other Direct Loan repayment plan, but only payments that are at least equal to the monthly payment amount that would have been paid under the Standard Repayment Plan with a 10-year repayment period may be counted toward the required 120 monthly payments.

Q14 What other Direct Loan repayment plans would give me a monthly payment that is at least equal to the payment that would be required under a 10-year Standard Repayment Plan?
A14 In some cases, payments made during the later portion of the repayment period under the Graduated Repayment Plan may equal or exceed the payment amount that would be required under a 10-year Standard Repayment Plan. Under the Graduated Repayment Plan, payments start out lower and then gradually increase, generally every two years.

Q15 Is it true that, while payments made under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan are eligible for PSLF, if I make all required payments under a 10-year plan, there will not be any remaining balance to be forgiven?
A15 Yes. The Standard Plan is included because some borrowers may have made payments under a Standard Plan for a portion of the 120 months and made the remaining payments under either IBR or ICR, leaving them with a remaining balance after 120 payments have been made. While payments under certain other repayment plans may be counted toward the required 120 payments, to receive any forgiveness under the PSLF Program it is likely that you must make at least some of your loan payments under IBR or ICR.

Q16 Must the 120 required payments be consecutive?
A16 No. You must make 120 separate on-time, full monthly payments while you are employed by an eligible public service organization, but the payments do not have to be consecutive.

Q17 If I pay more than the required amount of my monthly student loan payment, can that be counted as more than one qualifying payment for PSLF? For example, if I make a single payment that is equal to three monthly payments, will that be counted as three payments toward the required 120 monthly payments?
A17 No. You must make 120 separate monthly payments. There is a limited exception to this requirement for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps volunteers – see Q&A #19.

Q18 What happens if I can't afford to make the required monthly payment under IBR? Are other repayment options available if I want to qualify for PSLF?
A18 Payments made under certain other Direct Loan repayment plans may be counted toward the required 120 payments for PSLF (see Q&A #13), but the IBR Plan will generally provide you with a lower monthly payment than you would be required to make under any of the other plans. Therefore, changing from IBR to one of the other repayment plans that qualifies for PSLF would most likely increase your required monthly payment amount. If you cannot afford to make your required IBR payment, contact the Direct Loan Servicing Center to discuss deferment or forbearance options that would allow you to temporarily stop making payments
or, in the case of a forbearance, to temporarily make smaller payments. However, the months when you are in a deferment or forbearance do not count toward the 120 on-time, full monthly payments required for PSLF.

Q19 I’m thinking of serving as a Peace Corps or AmeriCorps volunteer and plan to request a deferment or forbearance on my loans, since I won’t be able to afford to make loan payments while I am serving. If I’m not making payments during my service period, can my Peace Corps or AmeriCorps service count for PSLF?
A19 Yes, Peace Corps and AmeriCorps volunteers were afforded special treatment under the PSLF regulations to recognize their service. Peace Corps volunteers receive a transition payment after completing their period of service, and AmeriCorps volunteers receive a Segal Education Award after a year of service. If you use some or all of your Peace Corps transition payment or AmeriCorps Segal Education Award to make a lump sum payment on your Direct Loans, your service will be considered PSLF-eligible service and you will receive credit for up to 12 qualifying payments for PSLF. The number of payments that you receive credit for will be determined by dividing the amount of your lump sum payment by your scheduled full monthly payment amount, not to exceed 12 payments.

Q20 If my monthly payment under IBR or ICR is zero, does each month during which my calculated payment is zero count towards the required 120 payments?
A20 Yes. Any month when your calculated payment under IBR or ICR is zero will count toward your required 120 monthly payments.

Q21 How do I know if my employer is a “public service organization” that is an eligible employer for the PSLF Program?
A21 The term “public service organization” covers a broad range of employers, including any federal, state, or local government organization or agency and most charitable non-profit organizations.

Q22 What public (government) employers qualify as eligible employers for the PSLF Program?
A22 Any federal government, state government, local government, or tribal government entity (including the military, public schools and colleges, public child and family services agencies, and special governmental districts) is an eligible employer for the PSLF Program.

Q23 What private non-profit employers qualify as eligible employers for the PSLF Program?
A23 Eligible non-profit employers include those that have received a 501(c)(3) designation from the IRS. These include most private schools, colleges, and universities, as well as thousands of other organizations, agencies, and charities. Your employer will easily be able to tell you if it has the required IRS designation. The IRS has a searchable database of 501(c)(3) organizations at http://www.irs.gov/app/pub-78/.

Q24 Can a private employer that has not received a 501(c)(3) designation qualify as a public service organization for the PSLF Program?
A24 Yes, if the employer is a non-profit organization that meets certain requirements (see below) and provides one or more of the following public services:
•Emergency management,
•Military service,
•Public safety,
•Law enforcement,
•Public interest law services,
•Early childhood education (including licensed or regulated childcare, Head Start, and state-funded pre-kindergarten),
•Public service for individuals with disabilities and the elderly,
•Public health (including nurses, nurse practitioners, nurses in a clinical setting, and full-time professionals engaged in health care practitioner occupations and health care support occupations),
•Public education,
•Public library services, and
•School library or other school-based services.
In addition, the employer must not be a labor union, a partisan political organization, or an organization that is engaged in religious activities (unless the qualifying public services it provides are unrelated to religious instruction, worship services, or proselytizing).

Q25 What types of public service jobs will qualify me for loan forgiveness under the PSLF Program?
A25 The specific job that you perform does not matter, as long as you are employed by a public service organization. For example, if you are a full-time employee of a public school system, your employment would meet the requirements for PSLF, regardless of your position (teacher, administrator, support staff, etc.).

Q26 What is considered full-time employment for PSLF?
A26 Generally, this means you are working an average of at least 30 hours per week or the number of hours the employer considers full-time. For more detailed information about what is considered full-time employment for PSLF purposes, see the definition of “full-time” in the PSLF regulations at 34 CFR 685.219(b).

Q27 Will the Department of Education track my qualifying employment and payments while I am working toward meeting the 120 months of required payments for PSLF?
A27 It is the borrower’s responsibility to have documentation that supports a request for loan forgiveness under the PSLF Program. This includes documentation from the borrower’s employer or employers. Based on this employment documentation, the U.S. Department of Education will be able to identify qualifying employment and payments. The U.S. Department of Education is developing a PSLF application that borrowers may use to document their qualifying employment while they are making the required 120 payments.

Q28 What kind of documentation do I need to keep to show that I worked for a qualifying employer while making the required 120 payments?
A28 A PSLF application form that may be used to document qualifying employment is being developed. Until the form becomes available, you should keep records that clearly identify your employer, show that your employer meets the definition of a public service organization (see Q&As #23 and #24), show your dates of employment, and demonstrate that you are a full-time employee.

Q29 Does Peace Corps service qualify as public service employment?
A29 Yes, if you are serving as a full-time Peace Corps volunteer. (See Q&A #19)

Q30 I am employed full-time by a private company, doing work under a contract with a state government agency. Does this employment qualify for PSLF?
A30 No. You must be directly employed by the public service organization.

Q31 I know that employment with a public school qualifies for PSLF. What about employment with a private school?
A32 Most private schools, colleges and universities are not-for-profit entities that are tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. Therefore, they would qualify as public service organizations for PSLF purposes.

Q33 May I hold several different qualifying jobs while making the required 120 payments for PSLF and still be eligible for forgiveness?
A33 Yes. As long as you can provide documentation verifying that you were employed full-time by a public service organization (or by a combination of public service organizations) at the time you made each of the 120 required payments, and also at the time you applied for and received the PSLF benefit.

Q34 If I receive my pay in the form of a stipend, will my employment qualify for PSLF?
A34 The determining factor for PSLF eligibility is whether you made each of the required 120 payments while you were employed full-time by a public service organization. The form of payment you received from the public service organization does not matter.

Additional information on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is available at: http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/attachments/siteresources/LoanForgivenessv4.pdf

APA Conference: Last Day to Register at $100 Student Rate

A reminder that today is the last day to take advantage of the student registration price of $100 before it increases to $120. Register today to save money and don’t forget to submit a copy of your receipt to UPPSAINFO@gmail.com to be eligible for reimbursements. Thanks to all who have already sent in their receipts!

Some extra tidbits of information that may help you plan your trip follow:

1. Some transportation options to and from New Orlean’s Louis Armstrong Int’l Airport and the city centre are:

· Deluxe Shuttle If you want a little more leg room at an affordable price. They provide transportation between the airport and any downtown location for $25 each way. Contact us at 1-877-546-8788 or at www.deluxeshuttle.com

· Jefferson Transit: The Airport-Downtown Express (E-2) Bus picks up outside airport Entrance #7 on the upper level.

o Bus Fare: The fare for Airport-Downtown Express (E-2) is $1.10. The fare boxes will accept $1, $5, $10, $20 dollar bills and all U.S. coins. The fare boxes will provide change in the form of a value card that can be used for future fares.

o About the Airport-Downtown Express (E-2) Route: The Airport-Downtown Express (E-2) provides service from the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, down Airline Drive into New Orleans. The Airport bus stop is on the second level of the Airport, near the Delta counter, in the median (look for the sign and bench). At Carrollton at Tulane it connects with RTA's 27-Louisiana and 39-Tulane buses. (Visit the RTA website to check their current schedules.)

o For more information on public transit in the area, visit the Jefferson Transit website, www.jeffersontransit.org, or the RTA website www.norta.com.

· Taxicabs: A cab ride costs $33.00 from the airport to the Central Business District (CBD) for one or two persons and $14.00 (per passenger) for three or more passengers. Pick-up is on the lower level, outside the baggage claim area. There may be an additional charge for extra baggage.

2. The location of the Conference will be at the Morial Convention Centre (900 Convention Center Blvd. New Orleans, LA 70130.) http://www.mccno.com/ The Centre is located just south of the Vieux Carre and downtown (walking distance for some).

3. Through Kayak.com, the lowest airfare from Friday 4/9 through Tuesday 4/13 is $236 on Delta Airlines (via Atlanta).

o Alternatively, Amtrak.com has published roundtrip fares for 4/9 – 4/13 of $220 per reserved coach seat. Greyhound.com has fares for the same dates, roundtrip at $154.

4. For those less selective as to which hotel they stay at, Hotwire.com is offering a three-star hotel room at $98/night pre tax.

o For hostel accommodations in New Orleans, visit http://www.hostels.com/new-orleans/usa . Nightly rates range roughly in the neighborhood of $16-20.

o A hotel thread has been started on UPPSA’s Blogspot under the February 7th post. Feel free to make a posting should you need a roommate or have a hotel room already with extra space @ http://uppsa.blogspot.com/2010/02/hotel-pool-and-information-board.html

5. Finally, volunteer applications are still being accepted through March 9th. http://planning.org/conference/registration/pdf/studentvolunteerform.pdf

6. Lonely Planet’s thorough website has great reviews on where to eat and what to see while down in the “Crescent City.” http://www.lonelyplanet.com/usa/new-orleans

APA Conference - Sessions v Mobile Workshops

The APA Conference website, and organization of the conference in general can be a bit confusing to those who have not attended. Here is a response to a recent student question outlining the difference between sessions, mobile workshops, and training sessions and how you sign up for them. Enjoy! ~ Katie

At the conference there are several kinds of activities - sessions (or could be called panels), mobile workshops, and training sessions.

The sessions are the bread & butter of the conference - they are what is included in your registration fee and there are multiple sessions going on in each time slot throughout the day at the conference. They are basically talks and presentations from practicing planners, etc, about the topic. You do not have to sign up for these sessions and can choose right before you go to them (or even go to one and leave for another one) - open door policy. You can view the session in the conference section by going to Program/ Browse and then clicking on the different tracks (They are the ones that say 0$). There is the tab to add the session to your schedule, though you don't have to. This schedule of sessions that you set up is only for your convenience and you can change it. You will receive a brochure in your registration packet when you arrive that shows all of the sessions for each day and is much clearer.

The mobile workshops and training session are extra (however much noted next to their tab). You do need to sign up (and pay for) these ahead of time. When you register you will be given the option to do this. Once you are signed up for them, you are not able to change the workshop. When you arrive at the conference, your registration packet will include a ticket for this workshop. They may have a bulletin board at the conference where people can put up tickets that they are not using, so you could try to trade out a ticket there.