RSS Feed MenuThe recent scandals plaguing the community organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) have paralyzed the organization and emboldened Republicans to attempt to tie the Democrats to the group in order to score political points. Just last week, on the House Financial Services Committee, Republicans and Democrats again battled over ACORN. In a bill to establish a new consumer regulatory agency, Rep. Michelle Bachmann attempted to insert an amendment that would bar ACORN from a role in the proposed agency’s advisory board. Bachmann’s amendment was approved, but Democrats also outmaneuvered her and had the committee approve an amendment which would allow ACORN representatives to sit on another far more important oversight board in the agency. But while Republicans and Democrats in Washington continue scoring political points over ACORN, the problems the organization was created to address still remain.
An recent article in the New York Times suggests ACORN’s power and influence may have deep roots in the urban crisis and beyond. According to the article, ACORN’s relationship with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Sean Donovan dates back to his days as Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner in New York City. There, as they did nationally, ACORN has been highly active in community housing programs since the 1980s. The New York Acorn Housing Company, under the leadership of Ismene Speliotis, became a nationally recognized player in the affordable housing business, receiving over $40 million from the Bush Administration and building relationships with everyone from Adolfo Carrion to Rudy Giuliani.
Affordable housing deals are hugely complex and can involve literally dozens of investors including the state, local and federal government, private investors, pension funds, nonprofit trusts and community organizations. Tax incentives for affordable housing construction are often plentiful but accompanied by stiff regulations. Since the advent of HOPE VI and Moving To Opportunity and other programs designed to encourage mixed-income housing, developers and community organizations have had to balance competing pressures of affordable housing activists and the desire to attract higher-income clientele who can pay higher rents or fees. At the same time, as the Clinton and Bush Administrations encouraged home ownership as an alternative to renting or to public housing, groups like ACORN were active in helping members of the community avoid predatory lenders and in pressuring banks and mortgage companies to offer fair loans in poor and minority communities (NeighborWorks America and the Federal Reserve have both shown that African Americans were substantially more likely than whites to be given ARMs and to have ARMs in higher rates regardless of income.
As American political and policy leaders came to terms with some of the failures of New Deal and Great Society urban development programs, most specifically the failure of the “Tower in the Park” housing projects excoriated by Jane Jacobs, they responded by de-funding urban development programs and public housing. It was not until the Clinton era that a new approach to housing, emphasizing smaller units, mixed-income developments and public-private partnerships, came into existence and the “ownership society” led to a huge market in subprime loans. In cities like New York , politicians cooperated with community organizations like ACORN to move into the vacuum left by the departure of the federal government and to attempt to spread some level of financial literacy.
It is more than appropriate to excoriate ACORN for its wrongdoing, and it makes political sense to attack ACORN as a way of attacking Democrats. But attacking ACORN will not solve the problem of affordable housing for poor and middle class people in American cities, it will not increase financial literacy and it will not lead us toward a housing policy that works. Although it is not only tempting but also right to attack ACORN for its apparently gross improprieties, we must also remember that the rise of ACORN is intimately linked to a problem that remains for us to solve.
balconesfault // Oct 29, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Great piece.
I think it’s worth pointing out that organizations like ACORN are out there getting federal dollars in no small part thanks to the wave of privatization of federal functions over the last 30 years.
We have a choice of allowing the federal bureacracy to grow, or to hire contractors to carry out functions that once would have been carried out by bureaucrats. ACORN was already involved heavily in urban projects, and thus had the infrastructure to compete for and win work supporting these initiatives.
This is akin to a large firm like SAIC performing a huge list of functions that would otherwise require a larger bureaucracy to conduct. Except that SAIC operates at the high end of the labor pool, providing engineering and science talent to replace the need for hiring more bodies in the DOD or EPA or FCC, etc. ACORN worked at the low end, providing a less trained/lower price labor force to replace the need for opening and staffing multiple HUD and other bureaucratic offices across the country.
ACORN’s voter drives can be seen as commendable – we all want more of the nation’s eligible voters signed up to vote, right? – but very sloppy. They are from all appearances superior to those of people like Republican operative Nathan Sproul, as noted by Republican Congressman Chris Cannon during a joint hearing for the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law back in May 2008: “The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”
You’ve got that right. A Republican operative has been charged with conducting voter registration drives, and then throwing away Democratic registrations. That, my friend, is true fraud with intent to influence an election. In Minnesota Sproul’s firm was accused of actually firing workers who brought back Democratic registration forms.
So perhaps if we’re really concerned about a contractor like ACORN having excessive political leanings, we need to just expand the bureaucracy to perform the function instead of putting it up for bid?
MFarmer // Oct 29, 2009 at 6:28 pm
“But attacking ACORN will not solve the problem of affordable housing for poor and middle class people in American cities, it will not increase financial literacy and it will not lead us toward a housing policy that works. Although it is not only tempting but also right to attack ACORN for its apparently gross improprieties, we must also remember that the rise of ACORN is intimately linked to a problem that remains for us to solve.”
Is this a progressive site? Affordable housing policy? Do you know anything, or care about, the free market? Holy crap — THIS is the new majority? It looks like the current majority. Why do “we” have to solve the affordable housing problem? Who are the “we”? What about affordable computers? TVs? Cars? Stereos? Boats? Refrigerators? Do “we” need to solve these affordability problems? How do “we” solve them?
One way to solve the problem is to remove government from solving these problems, let the free market flourish and create jobs, then people can buy stuff. Taxes on the producers who creat jobs are climbing, in total, to 60%. This will kill more jobs. Let the free market work — quit taxing and redistributing wealth.
MI-GOPer // Oct 29, 2009 at 9:06 pm
MFarmer, it’s worse than even you portray. While BlankHead is praising the piece for everything short of earning a Pulitzer, it’s clear that the author is woefully ignorant of even the basics behind the national policy on housing.
First, it was Reagan working in a bipartisan fashion with Sen Reigle (D-MI) that shifted the role of providing affordable housing to the states and then to private enterprise. ACORN didn’t grow out of the need to build affordable housing –ACORN hasn’t built a single unit of multifamily housing, ever. Never. Like Habitat, it was good at getting politicians of all stripes to worship at its altar. In Michigan, when the Atty Gen, Mike Cox (R), did his obligatory worship of ACORN-Detroit in some mortgage re-education efforts with ACORN (which felt more like Khmer Rouge re-education camp) they turned on him when he began investigating ACORN’s corrupt voter fraud programs.
Cox learned that a political bedmate spurned has no shortage of wrath for the bedmate. it got nasty, public and ultimately ended with ACORN staff being indicted and convicted of vote fraud.
But then, according to BlankHead and ottoBS, ACORN has never been convicted of vote fraud… they never do anything wrong.
ACORN started as a welfare rights advocacy group. It grew as access to politicians and govt money grew. It used the Sharpton-Jackson corporate “shake-down” techniques and raised those intimidation techniques to a new art form. ACORN is a corrupt, criminal enterprise that has willingly and knowingly engaged in money laundering, vote tampering, vote fraud, illegal activities intended to defraud the IRS, misappropriation of non-profit funds and lying… widespread, fundamentally corrupt, immoral leadership feeding off politicians too fearful to act properly and end ACORN.
From Barney Frank to NancyBoTox.
The author knows less about ACORN and what gave it rise than the little bit he knows about affordable housing. But I can see why BlankHead and ottoBS think it a great piece. Enablers and cheerleaders on the side of corruption. God bless the little trolls.
Reason60 // Oct 29, 2009 at 9:19 pm
MFarmer-
Welcome to New Majority!
There is a reason why both political parties encourage home ownership; there is a tremendous public good that comes from people being able to purchase real estate, among them an increased investment (financial and personal) in their communities, a first run ont he path to upward mobility, etc.
“Let the market take care of it” … this is a platitude, but no one really wants to make it happen. Meaning, the government is already deeply embedded in the housing market.
Examples of direct government intervention are the housing tax credit and mortgage interest deduction.
But there are other, more indirect government interventions; most local jurisdictions craft zoning laws (which explicitly intervene in the marketplace) to encourage higher housing density in certain areas, and low density in others.
Developers in particular, often ask for higher densities; the cities aren’t required to give it to them, but often do in exchange for low income units, or “in lieu” fees towards public housing. Developers also are fond of asking for government infrastructure- roads, freeways, sewer and water projects- that provide service to their housing projects that otherwise would not be feasible. When a new road is built out to an outlying suburb, it is an example of an indirect government subsidy for the housing there.
In other words, no one – not private developers, not homeowners, not banks, not construction companies…no one wants to get the government out of the housing market, and “let the marketplace take care of it”.
So I guess my question is, why the hostility to this? If private developers (not exactly known as pinko libtards) see the benfit to government interventions in the marketplace, what are your objections?
Don’t get me wrong- the marriage of government and private industry often creates horrible results- and there have been some awful train wrecks in housing policy- but overall, how would a pure, pristine “free market” in housing even work?
balconesfault // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Cox learned that a political bedmate spurned has no shortage of wrath for the bedmate. it got nasty, public and ultimately ended with ACORN staff being indicted and convicted of vote fraud.
But then, according to BlankHead and ottoBS, ACORN has never been convicted of vote fraud… they never do anything wrong.
Surely you can provide a link to ACORN staff being convicted of vote fraud? I’ve been Googling in search of this, but I cannot find what you’re referring to.
Funny enough, I have spoken of ACORN doing something wrong. Not criminal, but wrong. Clearly they were sloppy in their training and instructions to the contractors they used to collect voter registrations, and they should have had penalties in place for registrations rejected by the state to disincentivize contractors adding fake names to the rolls.
sdspringy // Oct 29, 2009 at 11:36 pm
“The recent scandals plaguing the community organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) have paralyzed the organization and emboldened Republicans to attempt to tie the Democrats to the group in order to score political points. Just last week, on the House Financial Services Committee, Republicans and Democrats again battled over ACORN. In a bill to establish a new consumer regulatory agency, Rep. Michelle Bachmann attempted to insert an amendment that would bar ACORN from a role in the proposed agency’s advisory board.”
This is really a fine attempt at trying to redefine the arguement.
First the Dems are tied to ACRON. Obama is ACORN. At every turn, as you point out, the Dems take every opportunity to support ACORN. So YES the Dems are tied to ACORN without any effort at all from Republican.
Ask for a rebate on that political science degree.
And Bachmann’s amendment would have barred organizations that are under investigation from serving. OHHHH, that is sooooo bad. ACORN is not mentioned by name nor should be for there are many public or private organization which should be monitored.
sdspringy // Oct 29, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Further the housing bubble and ACORN’s push to place low income persons into housing has its roots in CRA.
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was a vehicle ACORN used to force lending to low income, ie riskier borrowers. ACORN, the professed defender of the poor against predatory lending, also offered no down payment, no interest, and buy more than you can afford home loans. The big service ACORN offered though was credit counseling to applicants, much like their counseling to proprietors of child brothels.
Banks that refused to lend to the riskier borrowers could be sure to count on ACORN “volunteers”, though these were more intelligent than the ones registering voters, showing up at hearings involving said banks merger or expansion. Once there ACORN could provide documentation showing the banks lack of financial understanding in lending $400,000 dollars to someone whose only means of support was child support and unemployment. All of which were now considered valid forms of income thanks to, wait for it, the Dems rewrite of CRA in the 90s.
OH, no did I just tie the Dems to ACORN.
sinz54 // Oct 30, 2009 at 10:22 am
reason60: how would a pure, pristine “free market” in housing even work?
In a pure free market, there would be no public infrastructure, as you say.
When I lived in Portsmouth Rhode Island, I saw some of that. At the time, Portsmouth had no city sewer system. (I don’t know if it does now.) All the shopping malls, big corporations, and housing developments had their own private sewage–giant septic tanks for each. I guess we can imagine that access roads from such developments to the main arteries could be privately owned too.
But more importantly, there would be no zoning laws either. In a totally free market, a company could site a polluting factory or a toxic waste dump right next to a housing development. True, those homeowners could go to court to block the company from such projects near their homes. But that would cause far more litigation. It might get to the point that just about everybody would be suing all their neighbors.
sinz54 // Oct 30, 2009 at 10:28 am
ACORN has become a boogeyman for the Right, because of all its organizing for left-wing causes.
But the housing issue does remain. The best way we conservatives could reduce the influence of ACORN and left-wing influence generally, would be to propose real solutions to the social problems we face in this country. Not to just wave our hands about a magical “free market” that is a gross oversimplification in an organized city. A city has a location, infrastructure, zoning laws, and a culture that determines what types of people are going to live there. Is the city a playground for the rich? Does it offer blue-collar jobs to the poor? Is it relatively isolated? Is it a cosmopolitian mecca for tourists? What types of industry does it have? Smokestack? High-tech? Tourism? Finance?
A city just doesn’t spring up out of zillions of free market transactions. Every city was built for a reason, and had a mission in life, if you look at its history closely enough. City planning was a vital function in every city.
balconesfault // Oct 30, 2009 at 10:59 am
Sinz: In a totally free market, a company could site a polluting factory or a toxic waste dump right next to a housing development. True, those homeowners could go to court to block the company from such projects near their homes. But that would cause far more litigation. It might get to the point that just about everybody would be suing all their neighbors.
There are those of us who see a long-term strategy to the whole privatization movement – to defund government enough so that it cannot perform the essential services we build governments to provide, and then force tax-strapped governments to sell off public assets to large corporations – a decade or so ago it was power plants, these days it’s our highway system, next will be water supply systems.
A critical part of that strategy is “tort reform”. As you note, as government is stripped of authority to regulate (something which has happened on a de-facto basis over the last 30 years as regulatory enforcement has been gutted both through budget cuts and through administrations uninterested in enforcement actions) the fall-back is the legal system. Tort reform is the essential tool for the corporatist, as politicians can often be bought off, but the legal system often cannot.
balconesfault // Oct 30, 2009 at 11:03 am
City planning was a vital function in every city.
Exactly.
Consider Central Park in New York. The free market would not have produced Central Park. Yet thanks to Central Park, life in New York is very different for millions of people who rely on that huge urban oasis on a regular basis for their refuge and sanity. It probably contributes to the vibrancy and livability of New York in a thousand different unquantifiable ways.
Left to the free market, during the next real estate boom in the city the call would go out for the city to cut taxes and make up the revenue loss by selling off portions of the park … over time it would shrink to a series of postage stamps surrounded by massive buildings, like the parks you find in lower and upper Manhattan.
sinz54 // Oct 31, 2009 at 9:11 am
balconesfault: Consider Central Park in New York. The free market would not have produced Central Park.
New York City has examples of both how to do planning, AND how not to do planning.
Good planning included planning the street layout of Manhattan, which included leaving room for Central Park as you say. North of Lower Manhattan, the rest of Manhattan Island was laid out in an easy-to-navigate rectangular grid, with Central Park as its center. That’s why it’s easier to find your way around NYC than around Boston, whose twisted streets with illogical names are a legendary nightmare to navigate around. I agree with you that private transactions could not have produced this. Zoning laws are another example of how we interfere with the free market to prevent social chaos.
Bad planning involved deliberate attempts by NYC to drive already successful private infrastructure operators out of business. Case in point: The subway system.
For 30 years, NYC had successful privately owned and operated rapid transit: The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) which built the first subway line in New York; and the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit Company (BMT) which ran subway lines in Brooklyn, with connections to Manhattan.
The City of New York embarked on a deliberate attempt to destroy private transit, so that the City could get the revenues from subway riders instead. They did it EXACTLY the same way you liberals now plan to destroy private health insurance–by creating a “public option”. In this case, the “public option” was the Independent Subway System (the IND). The City deliberately built many IND lines within a couple of blocks of the IRT and BMT, to draw riders away from those lines. (Take a look at a subway map of NY sometime.) The City then passed ordinances forbidding the IRT and BMT to build any more lines elsewhere, or to raise fares to compensate for the loss of ridership to the IND. This made it impossible for the IRT and BMT to compete with the IND. Eventually, the IRT and BMT went out of business, and the City took over those lines. Now New York has only a public (“single-payer”) transit system, with IND lines only a couple of blocks away from IRT and BMT lines, which is wasteful. Did this improve service? No. If anything, subway service got worse, as it was now a legal monopoly and there was no other competitive alternative.
They did the same thing with the private bus lines–drove them out of business and then took them over. Remember “The Honeymooners”? In the 1950s, Ralph Kramden was a bus driver for a private bus company. Now there are no more private bus lines.
City planning ahead of time to provide for future growth, as the street layout was, is a good thing. Zoning laws are also a good thing for that reason.
City planning driven by greed or ideology, as in the case of the subway system where liberals like you insisted that private subway lines were “wasteful,” is not.
Capital Research Center: // Nov 2, 2009 at 2:43 pm
[...] writer who doesn’t have a clue about ACORN, look no further than Charles W. Brackett’s ahistorical drivel on the radical activist [...]