World | USA
Housing policy collapses in Chicago
Uninhabitable apartment complexes show the failure of Obama's subsidised residential programme.
- The New York Times Service
- Published: 00:58 June 28, 2008
Chicago: The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighbourhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidised by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.
About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks.
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 (Dh1.84 billion) a year.
But 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.
Angry residents
Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did not notice their plight. The development straddles the boundary of Obama's state senate district. Many of the tenants have been his constituents for more than a decade.
Obama's campaign affirmed the candidate's support of public-private partnerships as an alternative to public housing, but did not respond to questions about whether Obama was aware of the problems with buildings in his district during his time as a state senator, nor did it comment on the roles played by people connected to the senator.
Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:
Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co, which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidised complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.
Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama's US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama's former law firm. Davis, a developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several apartments.
Antoin "Tony" Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama's early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko's company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama's district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay until many no longer were habitable.
Six prominent developers including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko collectively contributed more than $175,000 (Dh642,000) to Obama's campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors.
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| This article on the national political campaigns in the United States is from The New York Times. It was specially selected and prepared by the editors of The New York Times News Service. |
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