Jack & Jill Politics

Rikryah - when you say "Skeptical" you should have more clearly said the HUD secretary. We all know that you have not one bit of "skepticism" on Obama.

By the way - this past summer when I was in your fair city for a college graduation I noticed that Chitown - home of the Democrats was not so inexpensive either. They wanted to charge me $12 to park for 5 minutes and beyond that required a Sub-Prime loan to afford the rates.

[quote]Considering that Bloomberg is gentrifying everything, and throwing out working class and middle class people from New York so that they can’t afford to live there, I’m skeptical on this choice[/quote]

This gentrification is happening within various urban cores Rikyrah. Despite these places being sure bets for the Progressives at the polls - the facts of real estate pricing and the tax money going into the city coffers has trumped the "abstract theories" that some people have.

I guess only a "living wage" can bring these gentrified people back into the city. Now if we can just figure on who is going to actually pay for the person rather than the relative value of the unit of work.

We will have to watch who Barack picks for each cabinet position and check their records. He won on "Change" and we will have to pray that he meant what he said because "Prayer changes things." His success will be based on all of us praying for him because, I would imagine that the pressure is great on him...............

From Politico:

HUD pick foresaw subprime crisis in '04

Barack Obama's pick for HUD -- former New York City Housing Commissioner Shaun Donovan -- was one of the earliest public officials to foresee the magnitude and destructive capacity of the subprime crisis.

In the middle of 2004, I sat down with Donovan (I was at Newsday at the time) for a chat about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's initiative to tackle the shortage of low- and middle-income housing in the city.

To my surprise, Donovan brushed aside my questions about the city's initiatives and began talking at length about the coming "flood" of foreclosures he anticipated among highly leveraged apartment buildings purchased by recent immigrants -- and a looming subprime crisis for one- and two-family homeowners in up-and-coming neighborhoods in southeast Queens and central Brooklyn.

I left the meeting a little shaken: At the time housing prices in previously depressed parts of the city were booming and the city had been able to sell off almost of all its once-massive stock of foreclosed properties to private owners and investors. The future looked bright to almost everyone -- but not to Donovan, who was planning for the looming disaster.

Bloomberg's housing program has received mixed marks from advocates, but Donovan is extremely well regarded among groups that have often clashed with City Hall, in part, because he's focused on improving conditions in rental housing at a time when many officials spurned such initiatives.

And, unlike many Clinton-era housing officials, the 42-year-old financing expert never subscribed to the prevailing (and deeply misguided) belief that low-income homeownership was the panacea for all the nation's housing ills.

I don't like the pick. That pick worries me. But to be fair to Bloomberg, this gentrification mess started with the Koch administration in the mid-80's. Koch and his boys were definitely in the pocket of real estate. But what makes Bloomberg different than the Koch, Dinkins, and Guiliani administrations is that real estate is for big business. Unlike the previous administration which gentrification was about families with big income. Big business bring in bigger revenue (property taxes, business taxes, as well as other monetary perks) than individual families. So those family who make the measly amount of 200,000 or less are hard press to find homes in the New YOrk real estate market. (homes in good neighborhoods can cost 1 mil and more.

What also worries me is the Sec of Education pick. I've been hearing the name Joel Klein thrown around. I pray he does not pick him. He is not an educator. He is a shrewd lawyer that finds loopholes to a) position big business to suck off the tit of the education budget, thus little less money is provide for actual services for the children b) weaken unions c) install fear and paranoia in the work place d) neutralizes the power that parents, teachers, and administators have the educational system.

I have written to change.gov in with regard to Joel Klein. He can not be anywhere near the Obama administration.

Doesn't NY have a longstanding history of displacing black folks and poor people on a whim? Robert Moses, as I recalled from a college history course, was an MF when it came to black people. Philadelphia isn't much better, there are whole neighborhoods that were cleared out (with nothing even close to equitable compensation..) for plans that never got built or universities that wanted to expand.

Yes NYC does a history of doing that. I can tell you stories about redlining caused the that creation of Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant slums. Yes Robert Moses (my brother calls Moses an anethema(sp)) used federal Title 1 money to disposes Black, Brown and poor folks in the 40's, 50's and 60's.

What people do not know is that the actions of Robert Moses helped lead to the urban decay that exposed in mid-70's with Pres. Jimmy Carter touring the South Bronx. It was Moses who initiated and controlled the building of the housing projects and expressways all over the city. He destroyed community cohesion (synergy of local businesses, long standing neighbors relations, and housing) by rezoning, and tearing down existing structures and institutions that are needed for neighborhoods to prosper. He was the most powerful man in New York City for over three decades. No one, not one single mayor had more power than Robert Moses.

Gentrification from Koch administration forward was the "remedy" for Robert Moses' willful act of urban destruction.

Ok we'll see what he does. I thought Obama had appointed Bloomberg reading your comment at first - I was in hurling expletives. Let's not forget Bloomberg only picked up from where "I Saved NY" Guiliani started. I remember how the rents first doubled and scores of people were evicted. Thompson Sq. Park went from tent city to jungle gyms for the kids of newly rich residents literally overnight.