I wanted to get to this story earlier but have been generally busy. Still, it is worth noting if you have not heard about it. The Boston Globe reports on some of the slimy financial deals that Barack Obama has been involved in here in Chicago and how it has impacted the people that he claims to want to help. Well, we know that it helped to enrich his influential friends and associates to be sure. But as for the people who live in these rat-infested slums I think we can conclude that the change they were promised has yet to materialize.
Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.
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.
Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
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