Hundreds of government-subsidized apartments in Sen. Barack Obama’s former Illinois state Senate district that were built or rehabilitated by a half dozen of his close political friends and donors are now in such bad condition they will have to be demolished, The Boston Globe reports. This raises a big question for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: Is this the kind of change he plans to bring to the White House?
Obama co-authored an Illinois law that created $26 million in tax credits for local developers to join local authorities in public-private partnerships designed to rescue Chicago’s famously bad public housing. As a U.S. senator, Obama has also called for massively increased federal housing subsidies.
But the backstory to Obama’s support of housing subsidies appears to be the six major Chicago developers who contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns. Those Obama donors got millions in government subsidies to rehabilitate housing units in the city and made beaucoup profits in the process. But then they sat back and counted their money while ignoring the collapsed roofs, raw sewerage backing up into kitchen sinks, fire damage and vermin infestations that followed. It was as if the Great Society’s warehousing of the poor in hellish public housing projects never went away.
The six included Obama’s close friend, campaign contributor and major fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who helped the Illinois Democrat and his wife, Michelle, purchase their million-dollar home. Rezko — who in June was found guilty of 16 counts of wire fraud and money laundering in an unrelated bribery case — was also a slumlord who allowed more than 1,000 low-income apartments to decay into ruins after pocketing $87 million in government grants, loans and tax credits.
Allison Davis, Obama’s former employer and current campaign supporter, collected more than $100 million in affordable housing subsidies, but allowed the 504-unit Grove Parc Plaza complex to fall into such disrepair that it now faces demolition. Of course, taxpayers will never get their stake in the property back. In fact, they’ll be hit up again to pay for affordable replacement units.
Yet Obama apparently still hasn’t learned any lessons. He’s out there campaigning for a federal Affordable Housing Trust Fund so we can throw another $500 million a year down the same rathole. Bill and Hillary Clinton turned the Lincoln Bedroom into a political automated teller machine. We wonder whether Obama plans to do the same with the dark arts he learned in Chicago.
