Don’t you just love citizen journalism?
Danger Room: Late last year, O’Keefe and fellow activist Joe Basel went into the Detroit and Chicago offices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with a hidden camera. They pretended to be scam artists, asking employees there to participate in a complex kickback scheme involving federal incentives for first-time home buyers. In the excerpted footage shown to me by O’Keefe, the staffers seemed only to happy to comply.
The law says that the tax credit maxes out at $8,000 for an $80,000 home. On the tape, O’Keefe asked a staffer, “What if I bought a place for $50,000, but the seller and I agreed to write down $80,000 as the purchase price?”
“Flip it any way you want,” the staffer replied.
What if the place is worth much less — like only $6,000?
“Yup, you can do that.”
I wish I could provide more details — like the names of the staffers, or the exact dates of the recordings. But O’Keefe showed me the tapes just once, and quickly. O’Keefe did mention, however, that he was surprised he was able to avoid the federal buildings’ security systems.
Oh, and Andrew Breitbart said there will be many more tapes. “More than we can handle.” It should be interesting.
Via memeorandum
You DON’T want to know what is really happening in the HUD program.
Many abuses are due to tenants forced to maintain a low income, lest they loose their housing and medical entitlements.
The most common abuse is taking in one or two “room mates” who pay a (very low)rent which suppliments the HUD Tenant’s income keeping many of them in cigs and beer.
The Contractor has a sure thing with a steady rent check from the gov’t so they don’t enforce the rules…and don’t fix up the place either. Since many (most) tenants are not in compliance, they can’t complain about the apartments being substandard at best, rat traps at worse.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0