HUD’s “affordable housing” wasteland

Michelle Malkin ^ | 5/16/11 | Michelle Malkin

[Nachum]

No one knows more about the massive failure of public housing “revitalization” than Team Obama and its hapless Chicago social engineers and architects.

In 2009, I put the spotlight on Altgeld Gardens and the unfulfilled promises of Richard Daley and Valerie Jarrett’s “Plan for Transformation.”

Flashback:

For decades, the public housing boondoggle has provided lucrative jobs and windfalls for Daley cronies and developers.

The failure to make the communities safe for families and kids touches not only Obama, but his closest advisers — including real estate mogul/Daley operative/consigliere/city planning commissioner/Habitat Company chief Valerie Jarrett.

Daley/Jarrett’s “Plan for Transformation” for Chicago public housing was like Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize “achievement”– far more aspirational than concrete:

Chicago’s grand experiment to transform public housing is lagging nearly a decade after Mayor Richard Daley’s administration turned to private developers to shape the future of housing for the city’s poor.

Conceived amid a rising housing market, the city’s Plan for Transformation used hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars and virtual giveaways of public land to reverse decades of neglect that confined the city’s poorest residents to racially segregated ghettos.

Demolition of Chicago’s reviled high-rises became a national symbol of change and hope, but little attention has been focused on what happened next as rhetoric collided with realities.

[I_Like_Spam]

The idea of “transforming” housing predates Obama by a long shot and always fails.

The concept of poor and middle class and wealthy all living together just doesn’t work out.

Most folks who own their own homes don’t want to live next to Section 8 tenants and will avoid it if they can afford it.

Building brand new modern homes in the ghetto is a losing proposition and always will be. Here in Pittsburgh, they got a grant to build brand new homes on Beltzhoover near Industry St- with the idea of selling them for $130k each which was a subsidized price.

After 4 plus years, about 6 of the original 8 are unsold but now listed in the 40’s.

So you can buy a practically brand new home, never lived in, in Pittsburgh for less than $50k but you still would have to live in gangland.

[Mr. K]

There was a study done of the cost of one of “The Projects” in Buffalo, NY

For all the money they spent they could have given each PERSON who lived there a $200,000 house

(not each family, each person)

[Pining_4_TX]

Central planning always fails. When will people learn?

The fraud in the HUD programs is enormous.

[VanShuyten]

the WaPo actually wrote a pretty good article in Sunday's paper about the fraud and waste in HUD (although not really blaming anyone). An amazing number of non-profits got money to do nothing, and lots of contractors suddenly went bankrupt after getting the money and fixing up one or two units.

Of course, nearly no one is being prosecuted for fraud.