Miami housing agency reportedly fails poor

[Judi Lynn]

Miami housing agency reportedly fails poor

MIAMI, July 22 (UPI) -- The Miami-Dade Housing Agency squandered millions of dollars given to developers who failed to build what they promised, the Miami Herald says.

The newspaper said a monthlong investigation found 40 percent of affordable housing projects authorized between 2003 and 2005 were canceled. Only 14 of the 72 projects that were supposed to be done in a five-year period have been completed.

Rep. Carrie Meek, a Democrat who represents the heavily black Liberty City neighborhood, said she hoped that affordable housing would be her legacy.

"This undermines it," she told the newspaper.

Rene Rodriguez, the agency's longtime director, funneled millions of dollars to developers for projects that were in the early planning stages. The Herald said that in some cases developers were given funding without putting up collateral or signing loan documents.
(snip/...)

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060722-053121-2531r

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Miami Herald feature:

Housing agency is an ATM
for developers

In the nation's least affordable city, the Miami-Dade Housing Agency lost millions to developers who built nothing, stranding the poor in decrepit and unsafe homes
By Debbie Cenziper

The dirt lot that cost taxpayers $764,000 sits on a grungy corner just outside Miami, strewn with slashed tires and beer cans and an official white sign, now covered by weeds, announcing Miami-Dade's promise to the poor:



Elizabeth Garcia, right, and her children Joe, 2, and Anir, 4,
moved into a homeless shelter after Garcia's husband
stopped helping with her $550 rent during a separation. The
reunited family plans to move into a two-bedroom apartment.
(Raul Rubeira/Miami Herald) Part 1 photos

Riverside Homes. Miami-Dade Housing Agency Funded Project.

Here, behind a sagging chain-link fence, developer Oscar Rivero promised to build 24 houses for low-income families. Across town he promised 54 more, but that lot, too, is barren, occupied only by a contractor who uses the spot to hose down cement trucks.



Rivero

For these two affordable housing projects, the Miami-Dade Housing Agency paid Rivero's development companies almost $1.6 million but not a single house was built.

It was the beginning in a series of illfated government deals that shook the foundation of public housing in one of the poorest and most distressed communities in the nation.

In the past five years, the MiamiDade Housing Agency squandered millions of dollars on failed projects, pet programs and insider deals even as thousands of families languished in rotting and unsafe homes.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/multimedia/miami/news/archive/housing/part1/index.html

[badgervan]

1. Them That Knows a Bush...... Do O.K.

In Bushmerica, it is the golden age of Corporate Welfare. The rest of us? - not so much.

[Stargazer99]

2. and the taxpayers wonder why the poor cannot lift themselves

up by the bootstraps when those that have bootstraps are continually heisting the bootstraps of the poor.