Mamdani tries to make NYC Venezuela

Not my words, but exactly my thoughts from the newsletter of investment advisor Joel Ross:

"Mamdani has only been in office a few days and each day it gets much worse as he announces his appointments. They are all far left radicals who will destroy the city. Their policies are socialist to communist and anti-capitalist and anti- landlord. The result will be a much worse education for poor kids and a far worse rental apartment situation. No developer is going to want to start a new multi project. Dealing with evictions has just become totally impossible. Schools will experience a downgrade in education in the name of diversity. The homeless will begin to reappear in parks and on the streets in spring. Tisch as police commissioner is all that prevents crime from going way up again, and we will see how long she lasts. Now Mamdani has lashed out at Trump for arresting Maduro. That is right out of the Socialist manifesto. He already is virulently anti-Israel. He knows nothing of how to run the city but suddenly he thinks he knows about geopolitics. He is dangerous because now he has a bullhorn and will be read and followed on social media. We can expect much more of that. He abolished the Adams committees and definition of anti-Semitism. His father is a rabid outspoken anti-Semite who actually is a professor at Columbia-where else. This is going to bad or worse than we all expected."

So true about Mamdani's parents. All bad ideas come from academe, and it's probably worse when they are Communists who flee from India via Uganda.

He's appointed a "tenant advocate" who thinks home ownership is "white supremacy." Landlords should be fleeing the city. Zohran Mamdani’s new NYC tenant advocate called to 'seize private property,' blasted homeownership as 'white supremacy'

Just looking

This week we visited "The Forum," a retirement facility that's about 3 miles from here. I remember when it was built, about 35 years ago. It was sort of on the edge of our community with not a lot of housing and apartment buildings nearby, but now it is surrounded. I'd made a check list of what to look for based on some I'd seen on the internet, but I rearranged it a bit. They were all for "mom" and that was not our concern, and most lists were for assisted care or memory care. The Forum stopped doing nursing care during Covid so that section is vacant. Memory care and assisted care are across the street in a different building, so that's a separate concern.

So, I had things on my list like staffing, cleanliness, security, activities and proximity to the things we already knew. For proximity it gets A+ as our primary care doctor is on the same street. If we were 5 years younger, we could walk there. Also, the pharmacy, the stores we are used to are within a mile, and it's maybe one more mile to church than our current home. The big shock was it sits on 14 wooded acres. We've been driving past it all these years and didn't know that--I'd seen trees but I guess I thought there were houses in there. There's nothing prettier than a woods this time of year in central Ohio, So, that was a plus. Now I suppose that could change as land prices shoot up. Around here they are building very ugly multi-story apartment buildings in every open space.

I had picked out a floor plan from their website, and we toured the model, and also 2 that were empty, and not updated. It's 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living/dining area and a one person kitchen. that's 856 sq. ft., although there are some models that are over 1200 sq. ft. with a den and a dining room. One perk is a lovely balcony or deck. No washer/dryer--there are several on each floor. Some larger units do have a stackable in a closet. That would be hard to get used to, although they launder sheets. Elevators, of course. Beautiful dining room that looks into the woods. It was well appointed having been recently "refreshed" in contemporary colors and new chairs and flooring. We didn't have a meal, but there is a chef on site. There was a group of residents waiting in the lobby to go to a state park for a picnic, and it turns out the bus driver (an employee) is a member of our Sunday School class. Each unit has free parking at the entrance closest to that unit, but you can rent garage space. The word has it that many people use their garage for storage! Imagine that.

I was expecting some sort of meal plan in the cost, but it is full throttle--3 meals a day. I'm an apple and walnuts or cottage cheese breakfast person myself, and Bob is boring oatmeal with raisins guy. We'd probably put on weight. That might solve one problem--I have a bit of a china fetish--5 sets, and with no cooking, I won't need but a few dishes. As I thought about it, it started to sound like a good idea. If we have guests, just take them to the dining room.

And storage is definitely a problem for us. It's different for everyone, but in our case it's paintings. Hundreds. Other painters, plus both of us. If you're familiar with "flat files" which architects use, that's another problem.  I won't mind packing up and giving away the bazillions of nails and screws we've moved from house to house over the years, but paintings are a bit more personal. Books are a smaller problem, but we've been whittling that down for the past year.

Enjoy the holiday.

 I took a wrong turn today and drove through a neighborhood I probably hadn't seen in 20 years. The small houses I remembered had either been remodeled grandly, or torn down and replaced and all the empty lots now had mini-mansions. Then I saw something that really warmed my heart; two young girls were roller skating on the sidewalk, laughing and having the best time. The younger one was looking up to the older. The neighborhood had changed, but kids hadn't.

This is how we did it in the 1940s-50s.  The base could be lengthened so you could pass them on to the next kid.  It would hurt when the shoe clip would slip and you'd go flying into the grass.

The Chicago Bungalow

 When I was a child and the family or school group or church group would travel to Chicago, I was always amazed by the vast neighborhoods of bungalows.  But I didn't know they were this popular, 80,000, or 1/3 of the single family housing stock.

http://zachmortice.com/2022/02/25/chicagos-bungalows-are-where-the-city-comes-together/

https://www.chicagobungalow.org/chicago-bungalow

Do as I say, not as I do--how progressive are Democrats

https://youtu.be/hNDgcjVGHIw

When Democrats have the power, just how progressive are they?

Start with housing.  The vote down low income housing--but they say they want it.

Then tax codes.  The wealthiest pay the lowest tax rate--but they are Democrats.  Texas is more liberal than Washington state on taxes.

What about education?  World class in every zip code? 140 districts in one county--Cook in Illinois. So there is great inequity in funding schools.  Same in wealthy Connecticut.  Liberals don't want to share. Than blame Republicans for the crises in blue states.

This video had about 6 million view when I watched it.

Where major corporations are investing, guest blogger Michael Smith

"If you are paying attention, you do not need an army of analysts or a divining rod to find water here.

Meat prices at the grocery store are going up - and yet the price on the hoof is not. As a matter of fact, many cattle producers are caught in a squeeze and losing money on a per head basis. I saw a report a few weeks ago that noted the retail businesses have a profit margin of about $30 per head of cattle while the meat processor’s margin is around $1000 per head. The rancher’s margin? Between $10 a head and loss of $30, depending on the timing of the sale.

How does that work? The answer is that it does not.

 
The meat processing industry is controlled by four companies, Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef, that process 80% of all slaughtered animals and because access to processing is so limited, you either sell to them or one of their agents or you do not sell at all. Why would the meat processors be putting so much pressure on the producers of protein on the hoof?

Well, at present, three of the four major processors have gone woke, adopting the ESG methods of corporate control. Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance data refers to metrics related to intangible assets within the enterprise, roughly equivalent to China’s Social Credit System (that ranks citizens and punishes them with throttled internet speeds and flight bans if the Communist Party deems them untrustworthy).

And a good ESG score means you must believe in anthropogenic climate change. The “climate scientists” at the UN have determined that livestock production, especially raising cattle, generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent than transportation. In 2006, senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said, “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

Cow farts are killing us.

Why would meat processors be destroying their own businesses?

They really are not. They will still process cattle, but the meat will be far more expensive, a luxury for most – but where these companies are putting their investments is telling – fake meat. Each of these companies are pouring millions into research and development of plant-based protein meat substitutes.
Plant-based? Is it any wonder why Bill Gates is the largest private owner of farm land in the United States?

Several large investment firms are buying up single family homes. BlackRock, the largest asset management firm on the planet with over $9 trillion in assets, and other money institutions buying up single-family homes as quickly as they can at rates higher than the average homebuyer is willing to pay. Of course, taking homes off the market by overpaying for them, drives overall home prices up.
Why? Well first, these investment firms can borrow money at historically low rates, even lower than any individual home buyer, but the goal is more insidious - BlackRock and others are causing a shift from home ownership to renting (BlackRock is also the third largest institutional shareholder in the "engineered meat" producer, Beyond Meat).

 
Renting degrades the economy for lower and middle class folks while limiting their upward financial mobility by robbing them of the equity increases home ownership typically brings. This is not just BlackRock, Bloomberg just published an article claiming that “America should become a nation of renters”, further stating “The very features that made houses an affordable and stable investment are coming to an end.”

This idea, coupled with BlackRock’s actions, simply points to a commoditization of the housing market and a consolidation into corporate control of the foundational asset of the American family, their own home. It represents the loss of individual control of another asset class and a created dependence on corporations for the most basic of needs, shelter.

Now, add to that the control over media and the fact the Internet Overlords and Social Media Commissars have become agents of the federal government and the Democrat Party, and you have a pretty good idea of where the corporations and the big investors think we are going.

Biden's government continues its radical eco-agenda. Aside from being implicated tree spiking in the Pacific Northwest, an ecoterrorist act, and support for government enforced population control, Biden's horrific nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, is notoriously anti-cattle grazing rights on federal lands. In her graduate thesis, Stone-Manning wrote:

"The origin of our abuses is us. If there were fewer of us, we would have less impact. We must consume less, and more importantly, we must breed fewer consuming humans."

The thesis also goes on to claim that cattle grazing on public lands is "destroying the West."
While not busying himself with mumbling incoherently, creepily whispering to reporters and lying about the Constitution, Dementia Joe is shutting down pipeline construction and cutting off oil leases on public lands.

What could go wrong?

Pick any dystopian novel or movie production – Blade Runner, Alien, Fahrenheit 451, Soylent Green, even The Fifth Element – all feature a future managed and controlled by marriages between corporations and governments and people dependent upon that unholy marriage for housing and sustenance.

 
This is a future being created today in the boardrooms and halls of government - and a one that is entirely avoidable.

They say science fiction will become science fact.

Let us hope not.

Remember – Soylent Green is people."

*     *    *

Glenn Beck has also done extensive research on the problem,  https://youtu.be/PQTbpJl2-Ho  seeing it as an extension of the Obama fundamental transformation.  The great reset.

Noem: State-Inspected Meat Processors Can Sell Out of State | South Dakota News | US News

Chinese middle class buying up American residential real estate (cnbc.com)

The affordable housing game

The paper reported another real estate sale fee increase (you pay a hefty fee when you sell property based on sale price) to build "affordable housing" in Columbus, Ohio. And if you check the business news for your town, you'll probably see the same thing, different amount, different catchy name or acronym.

I've tracked this ploy for 40 years, under various names at my blog. Even 20 years ago, based on the transfers that went into this, there should have been no unaffordable housing for the workers our booming economy is drawing to central Ohio. Why? Because if you're smart and invest wisely, you move up and sell that house to another family. We bought our first home, a duplex in a shabby neighborhood, for $14,000 in 1962, the renter (now a FB friend, a liberal) paid our mortgage, and 2 years later we "moved up" to a nicer area and our renters paid both mortgages plus the car payment, and we paid back my father from whom we borrowed the down payment.

Many do benefit from "affordable housing" government (local, state, federal) programs. Middle and upper middle class. Developers, builders, sub-contractors, bureaucrats, government employees, banks, non-profits who get the grants, churches, salesmen, and even groups like ACORN who provide the workshops on how to use the money. The article names specific programs and funds. So what happened to "North of Broad," "Crossing at Joyce", "Home Again," "Restore Columbus," and CHIP, to name just a few that a decade ago were the darlings of the housing saviors?

https://www.columbusunderground.com/fee-increase-will-go-to…

https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-george-bush-isnt-fiscal.html

https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-need-for-affordable-housing-in.html

There were 160 housing programs in the federal government in 2012. That figure probably hasn't shrunk. I suspect they may have been at the bottom of the 2007-08 housing bubble that burst.

Did the candidates talk about Baltimore?

When Bernie reported on Baltimore's conditions, the media and politicians did nothing. Same with Obama. Same with Baltimore's mayors. Now Trump has brought attention to the bad housing and crime and has forced Democrats to defend the indefensible. We know it's not money--Baltimore gets billions of our money. It's not having no representation in Congress--it's got Cummings the guy who screams at border personnel in hearings, or no minority police, or no minority city government, or no minority school officials. So what will help Baltimore?

If Democrats in congress spent any time in their own districts inspecting the conditions children live in, they wouldn't have enough time to go to the border to pose for phony photos of faux concern calling border facilities Nazi concentration camps.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/49999/trump-called-racist-saying-baltimore-rat-infested-amanda-prestigiacomo
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-cummings-pelosi-and-baltimore-11564433687?fbclid=IwAR2gsBz0gEKPNTaUovaH7c-bk7AeD8L3ERSu4hqpqX-LddE6VkkQxCJtC9o

Gender Identity and homeless shelters

Emergency shelters are the next target for regulations from the federal government elevating gender identity over health, safety, privacy, and religious liberty concerns. Why is this tiny fraction of a fraction of the population considered more important than the health, safety, privacy and religious liberty of women who have been women since conception and who have struggled for centuries for the crumbs of laws and protections given to men?

 http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=%2Fpress%2Fpress_releases_media_advisories%2F2015%2FHUDNo_15-150

Housing for the poor

The nation’s leading housing agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), reported in April 2015 that more than 7.7 million very low - income families have “worst case housing needs ”because they do not receive government housing assistance and paid more than half of their monthly income for rent, lived in severely substandard housing, or both. But how can that be? There are at least 160 federal programs at 20 different federal agencies providing assistance and affordable housing for the poor! $270 billion in 2012. There are block grants to states, special deals for mortgages, vouchers for rent assistance, thousands of regulations on special housing projects—you name it—and there are eager government employees making a good living helping the poor. If you’ve wondered why government won’t do much to lower the costs of health care by taking over insurance, just look at how government takes care of the poor who need housing.

 

160 entities involved in housing 

Chart book

Federal rental assistance

What could possibly go wrong?

“In mid August of 2013, the developer Extell applied for the benefits of New York City’s Inclusionary Housing Program with its 40 Riverside Boulevard residential tower, part of a residential development stretching from West 61st to 72nd Street in Manhattan. 40 Riverside is 33 stories, with 219 market-rate condominiums and 55 affordable rental units. New York City’s Inclusionary Housing program, began in 1987, provides developers who voluntarily build permanent affordable units with increased square footage (also known as FAR). These units are available to those who make 60% of the Area Median Income and have reduced rent rates, such as two-bedroom for $1,099. So, while developers may receive less rent from certain apartments, a building with 20% affordable units receives a 33% more square footage.”

Well, a “poor door” was included in the design. A special entrance for the “mixed income” segment, and it’s not that unusual in NYC.   Now they’re (don’t know who “they” are) trying to discover who is responsible for this defacto segregation by income. $1100 a month is cheap for NYC, but doesn’t sound like homeless, unless the occupants also have other transfer type payments.

This is a city regulation that allows it, but you can bet the politicians are scrambling to blaming someone, anyone else.

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2014/08/140812-Poor-Door-No-More-40-Riverside-Boulevard-Extell.asp

Push the poor to the suburbs where there is no transportation or services

Even more money for Ohio State was announced by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a $30 million grant to Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) and Partners Achieving Community Transformation (PACT) to help improve and revitalize the Near East Side neighborhood around University Hospital East.

PACT is a partnership between The Ohio State University, the City of Columbus and the CMHA. The federal Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Grant will allow PACT to redevelop and improve housing, empower people with workforce training and wellness programs, and grow this community by attracting new businesses."

Low income people are driven out of their neighborhoods in these types of  "initiatives" of transformation and empowerment and they rarely get the construction jobs and mom and pop stores can't wait it out. In Columbus we had German Village renewal in the 1960s, Victorian Village in the 1970s, and the Short North in the 1980s. In the 1990s, areas around Ohio State University were practically leveled as the University welcomed more initiatives, renewal and gobbling up land.  Where do these people go?  To the suburbs. No bus service, no churches of their denomination, no social services.  Here’s what I wrote in 2008 about a different alphabet soup of grants.

“Dear reader--housing doesn’t change lives. Marriage does. Parenthood does. Faith in God does. Employment does. Education can. Art and music can. Pets might. Leisure activities don't. Substance abuse will definitely change your life downward. But not housing. Ask any landlord who turned the keys over to a careless, slovenly tenant. Housing doesn’t create safe neighborhoods; it doesn’t get transportation issues funded; it doesn’t improve health; it doesn’t pass bond issues. In partnership with the private sector, this kind of housing for low income people creates jobs and profits for . . .the construction companies.”

Where can the middle class afford a home? Ohio

“Some 86% of homes in the Akron, Ohio area are within reach of middle-class buyers in the area, the highest share in the nation, according to a report from Trulia, the real estate listings site. The next two cities on the list, with 85% of homes affordable to middle class, are Dayton and Toledo, respectively.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2013/10/10/where-can-the-middle-class-buy-a-home/?mod=trending_now_3

Friday Family Photo—The Lustron

I love the Lustron, I really do. There are many in Mt. Morris, IL where I graduated from high school, and my grandparents owned one. They are beautifully designed and very functional. But they were the Solyndra of the 1940s--a federal government boondoggle that ran into problems with the local housing codes, unions, and an over priced product that eventually failed. They live on today.

[Carl] Strandlund knew a major investment would be required to achieve the efficiencies necessary for financial success, so he heavily lobbied the federal government for support. The Truman administration saw the potential of his concept and, in 1947, helped him secure a $15.5 million dollar loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a government agency formed to assist industry during the Depression. In addition, Strandlund got the keys to a million-square-foot former Curtiss-Wright plant next to the Columbus airport. It was an unprecedented government venture into the housing industry, but, according to Knerr, that fact actually gave the project greater credibility and notoriety.

 http://www.ohiohistory.org/publications/ohio-histore-news/2013/july-25-2013/the-lustron-home

Unlike this story reports, there was no post-WWII housing shortage. Housing was taken off the market with government regulations, and that created the shortage which created a housing and mortgage boom.

My grandparents enjoying the porch on the Lustron.

My cousins Pam, Ron, Fred, Jenny Sue, and Lorrie in front of the Lustron owned by their grandparents.

How to create a new housing crisis

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) evolved to the mess that gave us lower standards for mortgages and the meltdown of 2007. Now Obama wants one of his own and is pushing loosened standards for credit and home ownership again. Now all we need is packaging the loans and selling them. What a concept.

http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2013/04/obama-administration-wants-to-loosen-home-loan-availability-for-people-with-weak-credit.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/blog/morning-edition/2013/04/obama-urges-banks-to-loosen-credit.html

Monday Memories—Our First Apartment 1960

        

We were in Indianapolis over the week-end to attend an Arsenal Technical High School class reunion at the Riverwalk Restaurant in Broad Ripple, and all class gathering on the campus (70+ acres).  On our way to the Tech campus we drove by our first home at 1311 North Rural (apt. 2).  My.  The neighborhood has certainly changed.  This was a very tidy 4-unit, probably originally built to be a duplex, then the upstairs 3 bedrooms were changed to a 1 bedroom, kitchen and living room apartment with a side entrance (not visible here).  It’s hard to say, but it may be back to a duplex.  We couldn’t see the side entrance. 

We were about 3 houses from a lovely park, and 3 blocks from 10th avenue which had a number of small stores.  I still have a few kitchen items I bought from a hardware store on 10th.  We can’t remember where we parked our car—there was an alley and garage behind the house, and the stairs to the street were extremely steep.  Every day I drove to my job at General Mold and Engineering, and Bob caught the bus to work downtown at Ayrshire Collieries on South Meridian (11th largest coal company controlled by Pierre Goodrich at that time). 

When we lived on Rural it was a working class white neighborhood, now it is mostly black with some Hispanic.  The condition of the homes is really awful, with many boarded up.  And as you can see, a couch on the porch is not a good sign in any neighborhood, even on college campuses studies show this is a serious indication of decay and trouble.

We never thought to take any photos when we lived there, but I’m pretty sure it was painted white and the owners, who lived down stairs, were careful with the property.

Our first Christmas in that apartment

                                

A few months later, my college graduation photo from 1961, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana

Some people still think homelessness is a housing problem

In order to provide work for architects, this fellow writes at an architectural forum: "I would suggest that the AIA Housing KC develop a National Housing Policy that says, in effect, that it should be a right for every citizen in the United States to go to bed each night in a safe, secure and weather tight environment. In other words, we need to eliminate homelessness from our nation's vocabulary."

Substance abuse is often a cause of homelessness. Addictive disorders disrupt relationships with family and friends and often cause people to lose their jobs. For people who are already struggling to pay their bills, the onset or exacerbation of an addiction may cause them to lose their housing. A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities). Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless.
In many ["some" would be a better word choice, nb] situations, however, substance abuse is a result of homelessness rather than a cause. Link

Further more, a tiny percentage of the homeless are chronically homeless.

5% of the nearly 2 million homeless people reported by the USHUD in 2009 categorized as chronically homeless, nearly all people living without a home for more than a month have family problems and some kind of disability, including drug or alcohol addiction or mental illness. Based on the 2009 HUD Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, Link

So unless the architects have found some sort of super-human solution to drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness and chronic family problems, they need to look elsewhere for a solution to their own employment problems.

Self esteem and housing bubbles

If you were a child or a parent in the 1970s-1980s, you were caught up in the self-esteem bubble. Even Christians like James Dobson did well on this misguided movement with books, TV shows, government grants, workshops for teachers, special session for child psychologists, NIH grants, etc. I know I certainly bought into it. Even Seseme Street got into the act. The idea was that instead of deriving healthy self-esteem from accomplishments, children could become accomplished by artificially ratcheting up their self-esteem. Although that’s been disproven (very evil and narcissistic sociopaths as well as deprived, abused and homely people can have very high self esteem) the memory and movement lingers on in “fairness” and “everyone is a winner” education movements. Everyone gets a prize, everyone is a success--and even 5 years ago during the booming Bush economy supervisors were looking for ways to reward workers (besides a paycheck) by inflating titles and having gimmicky staff awards for those employees who‘d had their self-esteem artificially inflated by these 30 year old, disproven concepts.

And along came the housing bubble of the Bush years. Although the idea that housing changes people instead of the other way around didn’t originate in the GWB presidency (it was birthed during the Carter years), it certainly flourished . Brilliant, educated academicians looked around and saw that very often successful, educated, well off people owned their own homes. So the idea developed, and then caught on with the unions, construction trades, real estate, and city planning professions, that if the poor and lower class and less educated or immigrant peoples could live in nicer homes and have mortgages like those people living in the suburbs who also paid higher taxes to support better schools, streets, parks, police, etc., then gradually people with a completely different set of values, would want to mimic middle class values. The pride of home ownership would somehow transform them! They would want to sit down with teachers and plan IEPs for the kids, they would decide to get married, they would not leave cars sitting on rims in front of trash filled lawns, they would choose chocolate Labs instead of white Pit Bulls, crime rates would go down, and it would all be kum ba ya.

Banks, lobbyists, think tanks, politicians, and all construction trades and their unions, did very well. The poor didn’t change. With no skin in the game, and still with that pesky low self-esteem they just moved with their values and standards, just like an earlier generation had done with public housing (now torn down because yuppies want to live downtown).

But, just as with the self-esteem movement, the memory lingers on, and the government is still shelling out billions to rescue the poor through housing--even though we all know that it’s the industries surrounding housing that are being propped up and controlled by the government. People still need shelter; they don’t need big brother or even big church to manage their lives.

Here’s a myth that helped create our housing crisis

“Homeport Programs at Columbus Housing Partnership is a private, nonprofit organization founded in the belief that a decent and affordable home is the cornerstone of family life and a healthy community.”

1) When you see the word HOUSING linked with NONPROFIT, it means government grants fund it, or the government provides tax incentives to foundations, churches or private companies like Nationwide or Huntington to help fund it.

2) PARTNERSHIP means that rather than private developers bringing their skills and resources to the neighborhood, they are encouraged to “invest” in a corporation offering tax credits where the money will first be used by the CHP to pay its staff and office expenses before it selects the builders and unions that will “redevelop” poor neighborhoods, most of whom will be making political donations to the Democratic party or the Mayor or city councilmen.

3) The mortgage industry and the construction trades may be private non-governmental businesses, but they are the biggest beneficiaries of the government's experiment of putting low-income families in mortgages they can‘t possibly afford, rather than rental property they can afford until they can develop home ownership and budgeting skills, can learn a few home repairs, or save enough for a down payment and all the expenses that go along with ownership.

4) DECENT doesn’t mean cheap. Home Again, a Columbus rehabbing project of $25,000,000, in one year (2006) did 96 roof repairs costing nearly $1,500,000. That’s nearly $14,000 a piece in crumbling neighborhoods of small houses 70-80 years old with poor streets, utilities and public schools. After Hurricane Ike a damaged church in affluent Upper Arlington with a huge roof had it replaced (not repaired) for $5,200.

5) AFFORDABLE in government housing speak means money has been transferred from tax-payer abc to entitlement receiver xyz, but many in that chain are not poor--they are staffers in government backed programs and agencies (like HUD, USDA, HDAP, OHFA COHHIO) earning good salaries, with excellent benefits and job security, which is why the programs must be continuously expanded.

6) FAMILY LIFE may be a single mom with several children. Does she really need a mortgage to add to the burdens the government has already imposed on her and the children? Like limits on her income or savings if she is to qualify for health care or nutrition supplements. The housing money would be better spent on job training and moving the children to charter schools, or a small private van service to get her to a good supermarket outside her unsafe neighborhood (but with repaired roofs).

Dear Reader, do you think the households of Andrew Weiner or Arnold Schwarzenegger are “healthy?” What about their “communities” that are circling the wagons defending them?

A house is shelter. Period. It should not be turned into a government experiment in economics, morality or education, nor an evangelization vehicle for churches.

Your home is shelter, not a retirement nest egg or a bank or a tax shelter

"Since the housing market began to turn in 2007, Washington has tried to keep prices from falling with every policy gimmick known to politics: Foreclosure mitigation, more guarantees from the FHA, higher guarantee thresholds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Fed purchase of mortgage assets, and the $8,000 home buyer's tax credit promoted by the White House and Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson.

Their main result, other than subsidizing some Americans at the expense of others, has been to sustain the housing recession over a longer period of time. The price decline would have been sharper without them, but the recovery would have happened sooner." Review & Outlook, WSJ, June 2, 2011