Obama’s Real-Estate Bust [Obama's 4 Slumlord Friends]

He did for Illinois taxpayers what shady mortgage lenders have done for the economy...

Using his elected office and his clout, Obama helped Tony Rezko and other unscrupulous low-income housing developers obtain millions of dollars in state grants, tax credits, low-interest loans, and regulatory advantages.

Taxpayers had no serious chance of recouping these “investments” in Rezko and other developers. And many beneficiaries went one step farther, depriving the public of even the benefits they could have gotten. These developers took government help to build low-income housing, and then let their buildings deteriorate into uninhabitable slums...

To date, the most complete account of this sad story is Binyamin Appelbaum’s piece in the Boston Globe. Not only does it demonstrate the monumental failure of the low-income-housing policy that Obama vocally championed as a state senator, it gives a detailed look at how some of Obama’s donors and friends — the beneficiaries of that policy — neglected their own housing developments at the expense of the inhabitants.

There is no indication that Obama approved (or even knew) of the massive and systemic neglect of these properties in his own state-senate district. But there is also no question that he was an enabler in these transactions. He cosponsored at least six bills to give special tax breaks, tax credits, building-and-maintenance subsidies, and zoning exemptions to the developers. In 1998, he wrote letters to state and city officials requesting $14 million for a project developed by Tony Rezko and another close Obama friend — the politician’s old law-firm boss, Allison Davis...

Despite all this cheap and free taxpayer money, all of Rezko’s 30 buildings eventually ran into financial difficulties. As of 2007, 17 had gone into foreclosure. Six were boarded up and abandoned.

"The City of Chicago sued Rezmar at least a dozen times for failing to heat its properties. During the winter of 1997, Rezmar claimed it lacked the funds to heat a 31-unit building in Englewood on the south side of Chicago — one of eleven Rezmar buildings in Obama’s state-senate district. Tenants there went without heat from late December 1996 through mid-February 1997. Despite his company’s financial hardship, Rezko signed a $1,000 check for the campaign fund of the newly elected state senator Barack Obama on January 14, 1997."

Rezko, Allison Davis (Obama's former boss), Valerie Jarrett (Obama’s campaign adviser), Cecil Butler (Obama donor) all had failed housing projects.

Freddoso gives Obama the benefit of the doubt about not knowing the conditions of these building, but how could Obama not know? Many were in his district, and he worked as a lawyer on affordable housing projects in a law firm specializing in affordable housing projects, not to mention one of his two achievements as a "community organizer" was to organize a meeting to discuss removing asbestos in a housing project.

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis: Kevin Hassett
Bloomberg | Sep 22, 2008 | Kevin Hassett
Posted on 09/22/2008 8:00:21 AM PDT by fightinJAG
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2087698/posts

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