“Affordable” housing levels the playing field?
on June 2nd, 2009 at 2:52 pmFrom: nydailynews.com
Sonia Sotomayor’s mother – who singlehandedly raised her two housing project kids to become a doctor and a judge – basked in an afterglow of pride a day after her daughter’s historic nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I am so proud of her,” Celina Sotomayor, 82, told the Daily News on Wednesday outside her Margate, Fla., home, a simple duplex apartment as modest as the woman who raised Sonia to become a success story against all odds.
If government affordable housing supposedly levels the playing field, why did Sotomayor have to overcome it?
Second. For those who have been calling for more government assistance in the housing sector, why do many of these folks still believe that government is a much better manager of affordable housing than the private sector? Never mind the poor reputation of public housing projects over the years. Never mind the fact that the government STILL cannot get the housing situation straight for Katrina and Rita survivors.
I-Team: FEMA Still Has Shortage Of Trailers
Hold up! Wait a minute! Didn’t FEMA have a SURPLUS of trailers a little while ago?
FEMA Taking Hit on Sale of Surplus Trailers
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency hurriedly bought 145,000 trailers and mobile homes just before and after Katrina hit, spending $2.7 billion largely through no-bid contracts. Now, it is selling off as many as 41,000 of the homes, netting, so far, about 40 cents on each dollar spent by taxpayers.
Thousands more of the homes — critics say more than 8,000 — have never been used and cannot be sold immediately, even though scores of people in the South have been made homeless by recent storms.
“While FEMA has 8,420 brand new, fully furnished, never-used mobile homes in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas, they refuse to provide the people from Desha, Back Gate and Dumas counties with help. This is crazy,” said Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.). “If this is the new and improved FEMA, I don’t want any part of it.’”
Katrina protesters seek housing, changes
HUD’s mission statement:
“HUD’s mission is to increase homeownership, support community development and increase access to affordable housing free from discrimination. To fulfill this mission, HUD will embrace high standards of ethics, management and accountability and forge new partnerships–particularly with faith-based and community organizations–that leverage resources and improve HUD’s ability to be effective on the community level.”
HUD sued over Katrina fund diversion
Groups want $600 million in aid for Miss. port expansion used for housing
FEMA mission statement
The primary mission of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is to reduce the loss of life and property and protect the Nation from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters, by leading and supporting the Nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation.
So I ask you: Has the government been able to meet up to its own mission statements regarding public housing?
Bottom line, pushing for more government housing based on past and current performance just does not make any sense. Yet, when you repackage it as “affordable”, elites feel good about themselves while the Sotomayors of the world are still left to “overcome the odds”.
