Posted on 06/11/2012 4:57:52 AM PDT by safetysign
President Barack Obama wants his 2012 re-election campaign to focus on Gov. Mitt Romney’s private-sector record, but his own private-sector history shows that he promoted and profited from the nation’s disastrous real-estate bubble. One striking example comes from the president’s 1995 housing-discrimination class action lawsuit: It provided him with legal fees, greased his political donations and boosted his role in Chicago politics.
While he made personal gains, his lead African-American client, Selma Buycks-Roberson, declared bankruptcy in 2001 — and again in 2008 as she received a home foreclosure notice, according to unpublicized federal and city records obtained by The Daily Caller.
Buycks-Roberson is still likely underwater on her mortgage, owing more to her home lender than the property is worth. Her house has dropped in value by 30 percent since 2010. Its 2011 assessed value for tax purposes was $97,520, well below her 2006 mortgage of $112,400. Meanwhile, the online real-estate database Zillow estimates that home is worth just $69,400 today.
Buycks-Roberson’s story is not an anomaly. It can be found repeatedly throughout Obama’s Chicago. (RELATED: Full coverage of President Obama’s roots in Chicago politics)
By 2012, the average home equity in Chicago’s African-American neighborhoods had shriveled to $6,800, according to a March report from the Woodstock Institute, a liberal Chicago housing advocacy group. The average equity in homes in the city’s white neighborhoods is $108,000.
Fully 44 percent of homes in Chicago are underwater, compared to a national average of 31 percent, according to a Zillow-generated map.
The zip code located five blocks south of Obama’s house at 5046 S. Greenwood Avenue has an underwater-mortgage rate of 56 percent, slightly above Detroit’s famously depressed 55 percent rate. Zillow’s map shows that the wealthier neighborhood just four blocks north of Obama’s has an even more stunning rate of underwater mortgages — 72 percent – one percentage point above that of worst-in-the-nation Las Vegas.
Knowing Rahmbo, he is going to implement a “snorkel tax” for those who are trying to stay afloat.
It is a shame that the ignorant see color only, thier loss
Anyway, this is all the fault of greedy white bankers and greedy white capitalists. If only there was some way to break the Republican stranglehold on local government in big cities like Chicago and Detroit, all would be well....
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