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The accommodation for failed asylum seekers cost £6.4m to run last year but only housed 14 families for an average of three nights each.

The building, a former hotel, has nine apartments designed to create a “family-friendly environment”, according to a report by the Independent Monitoring Board.

“Each apartment has a kitchen and lounge area, family bathroom and between one and three bedrooms to accommodate up to six people,” it said.

Facilities include a “multi-sensory room”, a gym, basketball court, family and visitor lounge areas, a well-stocked library with a range of books in different languages, access to computers and the internet, landscaped gardens including a sensory garden, and children’s play areas.

The site has “24 hour healthcare, including daily access to a GP” and a chaplaincy, mosque and prayer room.
There is also a “café and dining area, where families can eat with other residents three times a day, or prepare and cook in their apartments”.

Thousands of jobs have fled in the last few years. A thousand businesses closed in 2008, and 3,000 more last year. One cause was the national recession. But O’Malley also passed the largest tax increase in Maryland history in 2007. He bumped the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent and raised the corporate income tax from 7 percent to 8.25 percent. The following year O’Malley increased the millionaire’s tax from 4.75 percent to 6.25 percent.

According to the Tax Foundation, Marylanders carry the fourth highest tax burden in the nation, and the state ranks 45th in business tax climate.  Already, nearly one third of Maryland’s millionaires have fled, according to the “Rich States Poor States” study published by the free-market American Legislative Exchange Council, taking $100 million in tax revenue with them. 

The bill unveiled by House Democratic leaders Tuesday would create three new tax brackets for high earners, with a top rate of 45 percent for families making more than $1 million. That would be the highest income tax rate since 1986, when the top rate was 50 percent.
The plan would honor Obama's campaign promise not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000. But it would break an Obama pledge that no one — including the wealthy — would pay higher taxes than they did in the 1990s.

Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, called the plan "the moral thing to do."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31927196/ns/politics-capitol_hill/

On September 24, 2008, the House Ethics Committee announced an investigation into Rangel's alleged failure to report thousands of dollars in rental income or pay taxes on his beachfront villa in the posh resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, allegedly living in multiple rent-subsidized apartments in New York City while claiming his Washington, D.C. home as his primary residence for tax purposes, alleged use of congressional stationery to solicit donors for a public policy institute in his name at City College, and other alleged questionable activities.