In a strange twist of truth and hyperbole at the HuffPo, US Representative Major R. Owens (NY-11) steps over the “Sanity Line” with a little piece titled “Ethnic Cleansing in the Shadow of the Superdome” .
If you skiped the post title and went right into the body, you wouldn’t realize that the guy is whacked out of his skull until around the fifth paragraph.
Like Rep. Owens, I believe that spending my federal tax dollars, via FEMA, to repair a stadium is an insult.
But unlike Rep. Owens, I don’t think it is the fed’s duty or their job to build low-cost high density housing projects for anyone. If folks weren’t so used to being dependant upon government dollars, the forces of the market would take over and investors would build housing.
But ask anyone you know who has had any success in investing in real estate and they will tell you the one thing that is holding back a big boom in building of apartments in NOLA: Because gov’t is a follower and not a leader, as soon as the fed sees someone dumping loads of private money into the construction of high density housing, they will then do the same. This would sink just about any possibility of profit that an investor or a group of investors could hope to gather.
Why would someone sink $10 Million into a housing project when there is a high probability that the fed will come in and build a half-dozen projects shortly thereafter, for little to no cost to the new tenants? To someone who wants a return on their investment, that sounds like a good way to fail.
The wasting of our tax dollars on rebuilding the Superdome is one of the most ignorant things I’ve seen the fed do in recent years, but it is not an attempt to wipe out the black population in New Orleans.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuttier than squirrel turds.
That’s not what would wreck the investment, Phil. What kills these private complexes built for the Section 8 filk is that their private operators don’t allow the level of overall trashiness that the HUD does.
Private managers are more likely to terminate the lease of a tenant whose kids harass other kids or the elderly, whereas HUD looks the other way.
So, as soon as a new HUD project opens, all the trashy filk want in so that they don’t have to follow rules.
Nothing that Major Mental Defective Owens says or does surprises me in the least. I watched him on C-span claim that the migratory patterns of sharks were actually changed because of slaves thrown or jumped overboard.