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August 16, 2010
HUD housing policy conference includes no affordable housing advocates
Bankers and academics will debate the administration's housing policy without help from, say, community organizers
Salon.com
by Alex Pareene
Brooklyn's biggest affordable-housing-free affordable-housing project makes a cameo in this critique of an Obama administration housing conference.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has exactly the sort of resume that would impress Meritocrat-in-Chief Barack Obama. Degrees from Harvard, a master's in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and even a master's in architecture. He word for HUD in the Clinton administration, and then, most importantly, went on to work on housing and development for our nation's foremost technocrat executive, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Which should've immediately disqualified him.
The Bloomberg administration has a wretched and largely ignored history of promising affordable housing and never delivering. (Not to mention the worst failure of the Bloomberg era: homelessness. It was at historically high levels even before the great financial crisis and no serious attempts at ameliorating it ever developed.)
The Bloomberg housing plan was to give land to private developers, for pennies, in exchange for the promise to build affordable housing for middle and low-income families, and then just not do anything, at all, when the developers simply ignored their promises and built nothing but luxury units. This happened on the Williamsburg waterfront, and it's happening right now near my neighborhood at the Atlantic Yards. Those developments are the norm, not exceptions.
NoLandGrab: A reader points out that it's not true that only luxury units are being built in Williamsburg, nor planned for Atlantic Yards. The reality is perhaps even worse — subsidized units which in many cases rent at market rates.
Posted by eric at August 16, 2010 11:00 AM