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HUD is Trying to Privatize and Mortgage Off All of America’s Public Housing
The Obama Administration's move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation called PETRA to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America.
The new owners would charge ten percent above market rates to impoverished tenants, money that would be mostly paid by the US government (you and me, the taxpayers). To maintain the property, the new owners would take out a mortgage for building repair and maintenance (like a home equity loan), with no cap on interest rates.
With rents set above market rates, the mortgage risk would be attractive to banks. Either they make a huge profit on the mortgages paid for by the government. Or if the government lowers what it will pay for rents, the property goes into foreclosure. The banks get it and can sell it off to developers.
Sooner or later, the housing budget will be cut back and such foreclosures will happen. The structure of the proposal and the realities of Washington make it a virtual certainty.
The banks and developers make a fortune, with the taxpayers paying for it. The public loses its public housing property. The impoverished tenants lose their apartments, or have their rents go way up if they are forced into the private market. Homelessness increases. Government gets smaller. The banks and developers win. It is a Bank Bonanza! The poor and the public lose.
And a precedent is set. The government can privatize any public property: Schools, libraries, national parks, federal buildings - just as has begun to happen in California, where the right-wing governor has started to auction off state property and has even suggested selling off the Supreme Court building.
The rich will get richer, the poor and public get poorer. And the very idea of the public good withers.
This is central to the conservative dream, in which there is no public good - only private goods. And it is a nightmare for democracy.
The irony is that it is happening under the Obama administration. Barack Obama, running for office, gave perhaps the best and clearest characterization of what democracy is about. Democracy, he has said, is based on empathy - on citizens caring about and for each other. That is why we have principles like freedom and fairness for everyone. It is why social responsibility is necessary. The monstrous alternative is having a society where no one cares about or for anyone else.
HUD, under the Obama administration, is about to take a giant step toward that monstrous society.
Here is a quote from the PETRA bill. It's intent is to:
provide the opportunity for public housing agencies and private owners to convert from current forms of rental assistance under a variety of programs to long-term, property-based contracts that will enhance market-based discipline and enable owners to sustain operations and leverage private financing to address immediate and long-term capital needs and implement energy-efficiency improvements.
Along the way, tenants' rights will be trampled, since tenants could not longer seek redress from the government through their public officials - because the government would no longer own the buildings.
Stop PETRA. This is urgent. There is a hearing next Tuesday, May 25, before the House Financial Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Housing, organized by Rep. Maxine Waters. Phone: 202-225-2201. Fax: 202-225-7854.
To write to the committee:
http://
Write to your Congressperson now.
If you want to sign a petition, go to:
http://www.gopetition.
Here is a letter from the National Association of HUD Tenants:
http://www.saveourhomes.
Here is an informational website, with letters, background information, and alternative proposals:
And do what you can to get the word out. This requires a national discussion.
80 Comments so far
Show AllThe continuous unrestrained looting and pillaging of our treasury, commonwealth, Constitution and environment suggests a situation in which writing to our "elected officials" is silly. Where is the outrage and the much needed mass protest? When do we as a people wake up react to this deliberate destruction of our nation?
Tony Vodvarka
"And a precedent is set." The author must have realized in writing this that the precedent was set with the health care bill. Aside from for-profit health care being immoral, one of my greatest fears -- and I'm sure that of many others -- was that an Obama win on health care would open the floodgates to this nightmare. This article reads exactly like health care reform -- Obama must have a boilerplate document in his desk -- oh, I'm sorry, his precious Blackberry -- that reads XYZ public entity is now open to XYZ private entity with no risk because the taxpayers will pony up whatever you need.
Now we'll get to read another barrage of comments by those "perfect" Americans who played by the book and now have to fork over their taxpayer dollars to "pay for the scum." And the class warfare continues, and a permanent welfare state ensues. Just like health care subsidies, all a person has to do is raise themselves a little bit higher on the financial ladder and they lose the subsidies and most likely their housing.
Excellent point that people forget. Passing his health care legilsation was the catalyist for the real pillaging to begin.
He's privatized the Gulf Coast with residents being poisoned, lives destroyed, and residents under BP Marshal Law via Obama.
There's few more cynical than I, but I'm starting to feel the dam of American apathy beginning to break.
Uhhh, hold it. I take it back. Apathy's still solid here.
Must have been a caffeine rush.
I'm speechless. Obama is a beast beyond belief. He's facilitating the bankers psychopathic quest to steal every last shred in this nation, and throw us into the street with no chance and no rights.
I thought Cheney was the essence of evil.
Forget Cheney. Obama is the devil's spawn.
I think Obama is more of a puppet than a devil's spawn. The plutocrats have taken over all the levers of control and there is no way they will allow anyone to sit in the Oval Office unless that person is already signed on. The plutocrats continue the rightward march to total fascism regardless of the occupant.
Addressing the puppet in the White House or the lesser puppets on The Hill might not be the best strategy. Maybe action should be directed at those pulling the strings.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: Right on!
One sinister pattern emerging is the rabid degree to which the puppet-masters are taking aim at the poorest persons and not only in our own society. When the LUST to attack Afghanistan/Iraq began, there was talk of "bombing them back to the Stone Age," as if parts of these regions were far removed from that to start with? The attack on ACORN was a clear plan of aggression aimed against the poor. The prison-industrial complex also takes aim at those who don't have the money to hire a private attorney. You probably know better than most the percentage of cases, often when people are innocent, that get "pleaded" out. I had to go to court due to an issue with a renter, and I noticed how the court system was very quick to take my money in filing fees and yet was completely resistant to helping me once they got their pound of flesh. I saw the degree to which these entities have become self-perpetuating bureaucracies that deliver justice about as routinely as big insurance delivers access to health care. And now this program to essentially see elites, likely using the bailout money (i.e. OUR money as taxpayers) to buy up the same properties that had been used to help serve communities, particularly the poor, are about to be auctioned off. The same ones who engineered the fiscal house of cards and brought about its collapse are the first to take the prizes. A special hell will await them all... even if it's played out in future lives of poverty.
If these sociopaths could do so, they'd privatize oxygen and have us all renting gas masks by the hour in order to survive, as if we owed our lives to these pseudo gods!
"If these sociopaths could do so, they'd privatize oxygen and have us all renting gas masks by the hour in order to survive, as if we owed our lives to these pseudo gods!"
I'm afraid that it is already being worked on even as we speak.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=17142611&blogID=240449726
&Mytoken=BC89DE6E-492E-4FB0-9FA513BC87E49FFD38482055
Let me know if the link isn't working as I had to separate the link by the lines.
"One sinister pattern emerging is the rabid degree to which the puppet-masters are taking aim at the poorest persons and not only in our own society."
Capitalists believe in the most cost-effective larceny. So they go after the most vulnerable, the low-hanging fruit. And then they claim it is all "amoral," not "immoral." They are mostly mean bastards, aren't they? That is especially true here in Texas.
"...often when people are innocent, that get 'pleaded' out."
Yea, I have some friends who have worked as criminal defense attorneys in Houston who say that the great majority of the public defenders there, in Harris County, tell their clients they will only plead them out, giving them no alternative regardless of whether they proclaim innocence or not. The rule is that you are innocent until you run out of money.
Lakoff should already know that Obama has already given conservatives unprecedented victories with this being just another. Does Lakoff really expect us to believe that Congress or Obama would listen? I would have to first convince my own family that now is not the time to dip into buying a home before I could get a single member of Congress to listen.
They're simply following the model that worked so well with the White House.
THIS will be a national social disaster. This I know from personal experience. Senator Carl Levin will be getting an earful from me.
Occupants of any rent-assisted housing are de facto weak and vulnerable to all kinds of abuse. Rarely admitted to be a problem is tenant's vulnerability to intimidation and psychological abuse. Loss of housing can end up placing some homeless person on a Waiting List for alternative housing. The need to apply will surface a paper trail of lies or unsubstantiated accusations that will follow the housing screwee wherever s/he goes.
Barack Obama is no more a "Community Organizer" than he is a person of any sincere religious conviction or character. We need a putty knife to get the lipstick off Barack's public parts. Initially, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an embarrassment to Obama. Guess what. And, Obama is an increasing embarrassment to Occidental College, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Desmund Tutu, and Nelson Mandela.
Why do I hear echos of Joseph N. Welch asking Senator McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Trylon
Don't forget MLK. He above all would be ashamed of Obama. I wonder what it feels like to sell your soul for money? Really hoping there is a hell. Don't forget the FEMA camps waiting for us when we revolt. They are real.
HA! Ashamed!? Are you kidding !? MLK would be flipping over in his grave if he knew what Obama was doing!!
Don't forget Suzanne Power who was sooo close to Obama until she became an embarrassment (calling Clinton a 'monster'). Or his pullout of support for Dems in the current race because they looked like they weren't gonna win (though I agree with the voters on that one).
Or his "Constitutional Scholar" bs as he ran versus his admins prosecution of whistleblowers, judicational support of State Secrets, and now the 'tweaking' of Miranda Rights (not to mention he can condemn to death citizens by decree (no matter how heinous an individual)).
He seems to have turrets syndrome. More than the usual 'if his mouth is moving, he's lying' type. Most politicians wait until they are outted to defend their indefensible actions. Obama's mouth methodically lobby's in his defense as he acts in ways he KNOWS make lies of his words.
What's the value of a Harvard Law Degree? He obviously learned nothing.
Au contraire. Harvard Law teaches one, and only one thing, their Credo: "Life is about MONEY, only money, its accumulation without limit, its control by the fewest of us, and nothing else in the human condition even comes a close second." Being "decent and helpful to others" has a Latin name attached, and is tax deductible.
A first step in making a better planet would be to shove Harvard Law into the Atlantic Ocean, out beyond the continental shelf. We need a former Dean of it on the U.S. Supreme Court like we need herpes or a hole in the head.
Trylon
Thanks for the head's up. I have signed the petition. I hope everyone does. Time for us frogs to start being more active as the heat is being turned up under us.
we need to smash the machine...
I've suggested September 22, 2012...anyone have a better day in mind?
I'm not sure about the scope of your plan, but I would hope it would encompass the complete annihilation of "the machine."
The problem is your date. September 22, 2012 is too far into the future. At this point, waiting until 2011 might even be too late. What about September 22, 2010?
Ok. I'm gonna bite. What's with this Sep 22, 2012 date? What's so special about it?
there is nothing special about it, but an attempt at a point of consensus, a point at the end of a growing season...and the hope that we would use the intervening years to build support, plant food and plan with neighbors...
2012 sounded reasonable to me when I started this bit, a year or two back, but, at this time, I'm not sure we can wait that long, either...
we need to make a serious decision, take back our world, and we need to act in concert...
private property will be the line in the sand, and will bring reprisal...
if not September 22, 2012, let's pick another, sooner day...
September 22, 2010? suggestions?
Isn't Sept 22, 2012 the last day of the Mayan calendar?
Depending on what nut you talk to, it is either when some kind of Age of Aquarus will begin, or it some kind of life-ending natural or human-caused planetary catastrophe. I vote for the latter.
DEC 21, 2012 is the end of the Mayan calendar.. We think unfortunatly there are no Mayans left to ask. :(
>^^<
Why not wait for DEC, 21 2012.... It's all over then, right?
I am appalled! I voted for this a..hole TWICE (primary & general) only to discover that he is the biggest whore in the history of the world. I am now joining:
DEMOCRATS AGAINST OBAMA
One term was a "mistake";
Two would be "TREASON"!!!
"DEMOCRATS" against Obama? Are you serious? He's just a sock-puppet. Your problem is with the PARTY, and most of our politicians. The Democratic Party was sold to the highest bidder years (decades) ago, and that wasn't you and me. How can you possibly stay in an utterly corrupt organization?
"DAO" isn't a link, so I'm guessing it isn't even an organization. People have been trying to move the DP back to the people for forty years, and the whole time it's only moved to the Right.
You DO have a choice: the Green Party, www.gp.org.
If I've said this a hundred times or more, I'll say it again: I smelled a rat from the get-go.
Frankly, I'd just as soon let Obama just fall flat on his face.
Someday I expect to find a pair of glasses that lets me see it all, The signs "Consume" and "Breed" where we think we see other things. We currently have Kentucky Fried Chickens "UNTHINK" adds maybe they'll just give up the lies and put the message upfront. "OBEY" "DON"T QUESTION" and such.
>^^<
Privatizing public housing is one discussion.
Giving the banks a piece of the action (no doubt, the best piece) is another discussion altogether.
The future: Obamavilles in Central Park? Lafayette Park? Every other park?
I think I'd prefer the mountains.. Yosemite, or maybe South to Central America where living is easier, and everyone is poor.
Clinton betrayed us with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that ushered in the control of the media by the right wing.
Obama is screwing us too.
We should be hitting the streets people.
It’s very difficult to express my feelings towards this move. I grew up in the housing projects and became a public school teacher in that exact community which is still impoverished. Over 90% of the students I teach receive some form of government help through HUD, section 8 programs, welfare etc. The reality is that many of them solely depend on these programs for their basic survival. If these programs are tampered with or in anyway altered it could have a devastating affect on these communities that could truly topple our democratic system. Poverty is not synonymous with stupidity. Unfortunately, the information is not getting to them fast enough and many of them feel powerless when they do receive this information. Think of an injured animal pinned against a corner it can be vicious; it isn’t that different with humans.
What's really sad is that these poor students and their parents think Obama is their savior.
What appears to be happening is this. The true "Powers that be" sense that the Publics acceptance of the privatization of the Commons wanes and will be met with an ever growing resistance. The prison systems failure under privaitization is one example, but so too are all the Public bailouts of private banking concerns.
It begins to dawn on people that the Randian vision of small governments and Private ownership of everything is a failure.
Mr Obama seeks to accelerate this process getting as much of the commons into private hands before the people fully realize they are being fleeced.
If the time comes where the people elect a Government that would seek to claim these assets back into the commons, the price to do so will be prohibitive as the Corporations will demand excessive compensation for "their seized property".
The appeal to "The protection of property rights" will become the new mantra.
Sioux Rose
GW NORTH/TOM LARSEN: Excellent analyses. You see what I see, and I wish it wasn't what's in plain sight! Like a shadowy Trojan Horse placed in DC as the living totem to the now exorcised ideal of democracy; in media land it's now presidency by dead symbol(ism).
If a Rep. were doing what Obama is doing, the Dems would be up in arms, but he's the wolf in sheep's clothing that will bring the system down around our ears with nothing more than the pale refrains of "this troubles me" echoing in our ears. He is the best investment Wall St. has made in a long time .....
"The appeal to "The protection of property rights" will become the new mantra."
It has been for a long time in this country ....
Republicans cannot go after popular and important social programs, they leave that to the Democrats. Remember welfare "reform"? That was Clinton. Look to Obama to go after Social Security (almost guaranteed if he gets a second term). It's time to stop being "shocked" by Obama's "capitulation" to the Right. The Republicans and Democrats serve the same interests: the interests of capital. The only difference between them is their style, which most Americans mistake for substance.
While reading this article, I believe the situtation that is going on is completely messed up because why does HUD want to mortgage off all of America's public housing and I realized that pthe people aren't fighting back. I feel that the HUD should not mortgage off all America's public housing because they yet to think that when they take their housing away what would happen to the people, will they end up on the streets or something but they shouldn't take their housings.
So now even Lakoff thinks Obama is worse than Bush.
Some of us tried to warn you, but CD censored us. You do have a choice:
www.gp.org
OK, all of you Obamabots, hows all of that Hopey, Changey shit working for you now? Way past time for a hard left turn in your politics!
Sioux Rose
I live in the Bible belt and I usually don't discuss these issues around here because this zone is the "Fox News" center, and bearing evidence of the truth that goes against the local program of indoctrination can be dangerous. Anyway, I was at the post office and I mentioned the Gulf water situation and government not doing enough, and how many lives would be ruined. And the postal clerk definitely was upset about things, but tried to tell me how OBAMA is TRYING to do the RIGHT thing but that he's blocked by other forces.
This is really the line used to placate democrats or those who want to give "the president" the benefit of the doubt. Because the right wing hate machine is so effective (hey, they're the ones who represent big money interests and so they get the funds AND air time to repeat their message ad nauseum) in demonstrating that it can be intimidating, this tactic is an ingenious cover; for it's one that reflexively grants to Obama numerous cozy, enabling sentiments. Given the hostility spewed towards Obama, many believe he really wants to do the right thing for citizens, but just look at what he's up against.
The team sport indoctrination, added to the strong identification millions hold for specific religious denominations makes it impossible for them to understand that these dramatic plays of apparent opposition are only window dressing, there to hide the degree to which both parties serve the same interests. It's Orwell mixed with Bernays, added to Barnum... most don't realize the truth due to all the vitriol. Some remain utterly convinced that there really are differences worth fighting over, or why the fight? Ipso Facto...
Remember: Ph.D candidates in psychology and psychiatry are frequently the ones recruited by military brass and the PR arms of big business. They learn expert ways to move the masses, tweak emotional chords, sound the "right" buzz words to gain a seeming consensus or approval for acts and policies that no sane, neither civilized society should EVER accept, no less champion. We are living to see the fruit of a merger between Mammon ($ is the key motivating factor, or rationale behind all policy making) and Mars (the military might to back up the resource hunger that keeps feeding the machine that mammon has built). Implosion is inevitable.
You can't discuss issues period. dork.
HUD is just another captive agency. (Rubber stamping the housing bubble, for example.)
Public housing, even with Government's decades old efforts to destroy it, has been housing for people with little alternative. A place to call home; you know, shelter. Despite the sensationalism of violence and squalor around big Chicago housing projects such as Robert Taylor Homes (especially with the viciousness of the Reagan era) the residents , in fact, created their own justice system, largely Democratic. Imagine that, a group of people, ignored by society at large, successfully taking matters into their own hands, then ultimately losing their homes to bulldozers.
"The irony is that it is happening under the Obama administration."
It's not ironic when someone cons the public via campaign promises. It's lying, or, if you prefer, "neo-conning."
The demise of our democracy is nothing to mourn if it leads to revolution, which is the only way out now for "we the people."
Obama is making war on the American People. They are using the big guns. Lives will be destroyed. Capitalism as currently practiced in America is your oppressor, Obama is unbridled Capitalism's house boy. Rahm Emanual is his nanny. Does it really make sense to praise a President that's hurting people? Just friggin' wake up!
HUD and welfare are fish in a barrel: politically easy to shoot at. But the PROCESS being explored here is most worrisome, for what it means for our education department, and national park system.
"The government can privatize any public property: Schools, libraries, national parks, federal buildings" If ObamaCo can do this, anyone can. This is deeply troubling.
On the other hand, GwNorth may be right: they are trying to privatize as much as possible, as quickly as possible, before the unsuspecting public suspects.
Something should also be made of the connection here with the bankster bailout. Washington is selling off public assets for cash to banks, who are propped up with what? public cash. Quite a scam.
This is the process of building a new Feudalism, where a powerful few own planet Earth as their own private property. After they play out their "failed state" scenario & they crash the global financial system & cause the massive die-off of people (due simply to lack of services & infrastructure upgrades) they'll get around to parcelling out the U.S. into a few hundred feudal estates with just lords & serfs. Then we'll get our wish of living locally, simply, & close to the land (that is the 10 or 20% that survive this transition). Even a violent confrontation to stop this process will only serve to further it along. I don't know how to turn it around. Return to FDRism & affirming the the value of human life (ie. there IS NO excess people, only LACK of INFRASTRUCTURE, if one says no, they are a betrayor of humanity), would do the trick, but how to sell that idea? We seem hell-bent on self destruction.
ravaged and plundered and ripped her and did her, stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn, tied her with fences and dragged her down...FDR, MLK, and more are rolling over in their graves...cry for my beloved country...
It's looking like go time. Between the oil volcano in the gulf and the stripping of the last tatters of social insurance covering the weakest and poorest, only the most delusional can advocate continued work within the system.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, many organizers were disappointed that new government programs, however unprecedented, were half-measures and left undone more permanent changes. These days, it's just the opposite. Nothing is too mean for the poor and the government is ready and waiting for revolt. Sure, this mess can be turned around, pointed in a different direction than the corporate overlords want. It won't be easy, but throwing off these shackles will be liberating and difficult and often fun.
The hard part is getting it started - making sure Americans understand that they're not middle class, the system doesn't care about them at all, and they aren't going to live forever. Any questions before stone by stone we tear down some castles?
privatization of HUD? yes its "change we be believe in". what next privatize Yellow stone national park and sell the wolfs and the elk?