Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy

[Bann (Premo)]

OH, what a tangled web we weave...

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers.

As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy - The Boston Globe

[ImnoMensa]

You can build all the free housing you wish to build,but when people get free housing they dont appreciate it. They merely live there until they make it uninhabitable and then go looking for the next free housing.

The only way it might work is if the housing were inspected from time to time and those who dont keep it up are forced out, but of course that would violate their rights.

How many times did I see the elevators and exit stairways urinated in, the lightbulbs in the hallways stolen and used in someones apartment, the trash chutes set fire, the hallways covered in graffitti. Someone moves out of an apartment and the neighbors go in and remove the plumbing and sell the copper. I remember one project that was supposedly for old people. That didnt last long ,as soon as the old person moved in ,her daughter moved in with her and brought her little juvenile delinquents into the place with her. you can give people free housing , but if they have a record of living in squalor before they move in, they will quickly turn the new place into squalor.

[chernmax]

Originally Posted by ImnoMensa

You can build all the free housing you wish to build,but when people get free housing they dont appreciate it. They merely live there until they make it uninhabitable and then go looking for the next free housing.

The only way it might work is if the housing were inspected from time to time and those who dont keep it up are forced out, but of course that would violate their rights.

How many times did I see the elevators and exit stairways urinated in, the lightbulbs in the hallways stolen and used in someones apartment, the trash chutes set fire, the hallways covered in graffitti. Someone moves out of an apartment and the neighbors go in and remove the plumbing and sell the copper. I remember one project that was supposedly for old people. That didnt last long ,as soon as the old person moved in ,her daughter moved in with her and brought her little juvenile delinquents into the place with her. you can give people free housing , but if they have a record of living in squalor before they move in, they will quickly turn the new place into squalor.

Like Locus!!!

We lived in the Norfolk, VA area for two years while the carrier I was on was going through overhaul, and we lived in an area called Oceanside, just outside the naval base. For years it had been a run down area with pretty much shacks for junior enlisted people to live in. The City fo Norfolk wanted the area to look more like Virginia Beach, so the Norfolk and VA governments set up these investment funds for new housing and gave developers interest-free $50,000 loans for every new housing unit they put up, and the loans didn't have to get paid back until the developer sold the property.

The developers bought up all the old crappy housing, tore it down, and built lots of nice new condos. We got a gorgeous 2BR condo with a fireplace on the beach for under $400 a month! But all the junior enlisted folks who were paying $100 for a shack lost their homes as they couldn't afford to pay even $400. And once a large part of the population who had lived there could no longer afford to live there, the developers started making all the housing into welfare housing. We lived there in 1988-1989 when all this was just starting, and the last time I drove through there was back in 2000 and it was just one big open air drug market, all those nice new condos were trashed, etc. It was like living in some big city projects.

And at the end of the day, the city got raped because they had incurred all this debt by giving away all these loans, expecting to get that money back as the units were sold, and instead the developers held onto the money and the buildings, and got more money from the state in low-income housing payments that were more than they could get for rent... and in the end all the blight and dispair that the city had hoped to eliminate was right back where it had been.

These policies do not work anywhere they are tried.

[wintersprings]

But but its Free Free Free

so it must be good (healthcare, retirement, etc)

\\no go live in cuba

[chernmax]

Originally Posted by Bruzilla

We lived in the Norfolk, VA area for two years while the carrier I was on was going through overhaul, and we lived in an area called Oceanside, just outside the naval base. For years it had been a run down area with pretty much shacks for junior enlisted people to live in. The City fo Norfolk wanted the area to look more like Virginia Beach, so the Norfolk and VA governments set up these investment funds for new housing and gave developers interest-free $50,000 loans for every new housing unit they put up, and the loans didn't have to get paid back until the developer sold the property.

The developers bought up all the old crappy housing, tore it down, and built lots of nice new condos. We got a gorgeous 2BR condo with a fireplace on the beach for under $400 a month! But all the junior enlisted folks who were paying $100 for a shack lost their homes as they couldn't afford to pay even $400. And once a large part of the population who had lived there could no longer afford to live there, the developers started making all the housing into welfare housing. We lived there in 1988-1989 when all this was just starting, and the last time I drove through there was back in 2000 and it was just one big open air drug market, all those nice new condos were trashed, etc. It was like living in some big city projects.

And at the end of the day, the city got raped because they had incurred all this debt by giving away all these loans, expecting to get that money back as the units were sold, and instead the developers held onto the money and the buildings, and got more money from the state in low-income housing payments that were more than they could get for rent... and in the end all the blight and dispair that the city had hoped to eliminate was right back where it had been.

These policies do not work anywhere they are tried.

Well that sums it up, even your so called sea tour was on a carrier in a shipyard. Let me guess, your sea tour consisted mostly of Firewatch!!!

[Bann (Premo)]

Originally Posted by ImnoMensa

You can build all the free housing you wish to build,but when people get free housing they dont appreciate it. They merely live there until they make it uninhabitable and then go looking for the next free housing.

The only way it might work is if the housing were inspected from time to time and those who dont keep it up are forced out, but of course that would violate their rights.

How many times did I see the elevators and exit stairways urinated in, the lightbulbs in the hallways stolen and used in someones apartment, the trash chutes set fire, the hallways covered in graffitti. Someone moves out of an apartment and the neighbors go in and remove the plumbing and sell the copper. I remember one project that was supposedly for old people. That didnt last long ,as soon as the old person moved in ,her daughter moved in with her and brought her little juvenile delinquents into the place with her. you can give people free housing , but if they have a record of living in squalor before they move in, they will quickly turn the new place into squalor.

Right. The point of the (very long!) article is that all the developers of the place(s) in question were very heavily involved with Obama or in some way connected with him. He was first making all these promises to the communities for which he "organized" and then later as State Senator and even later, as US Senator and getting all kinds of kickbacks to his campaigns from these developers - some even work for him now.

While running for President - he is already promising all these "programs" and we see how those programs work on a longterm basis. We can all look around our own communities and see how they work. (or don't work, as it happens in most cases)