Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. This story in the Sun-Times exemplifies everything that’s wrong with Chicago, its Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the Chicago Democratic Party:
A housing-assistance program that Mayor Rahm Emanuel set up two years ago to help people with “low to moderate incomes†buy homes has frequently ended up financing pricey homes in expensive neighborhoods, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
So far, 218 households have received a total of more than $1.6 million under the program run by the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, the not-for-profit that Emanuel created to finance public improvement projects.
The median value of a house in the city of Chicago is around $230,000. An astonishing number of the houses purchased under the program were bought for considerably more, in some cases a multiple of the median value:
• The program’s largest grant — $25,020 — went to a single man who owns a T-shirt company to help him buy a $500,000 bungalow one block from Wrigley Field.
• Another single businessman got a $16,490 grant to help him buy a $340,000 “garden†condo in Lincoln Park.
• A Chicago cop got $21,137 toward the cost of a new, $445,000 home on the Northwest Side.
• Another police officer got $13,353 toward a $340,000 home on the Northwest Side. He got the grant one day after he sold a nearby home for $277,000.
• A $6,480 grant went to a couple who appear to work for one of the mortgage companies that approve loans and grants for many of the home-buyers in the mayor’s housing-aid program. They used the money to buy a $187,000 home on the Far South Side.
Perhaps it’s just my defective hearing but when I hear cases like that it makes me wonder if the proceeds of the program aren’t going to benefit the politically connected rather than “those of low to moderate incomes”. To qualify for the program requires a household income of $131,000 per year or less. $131,000 is in the top decile of household incomes in Chicago. There’s nothing low or moderate about it.
I can’t understand why voters in Chicago elected “The Godfather” in the first place. He was a crony politician hiding in plain sight with a smirk on his face. Rode in on Obama’s coattails. Very, very, short coattails.