If you ever thought about being a slumlord . . . - JSOnline

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If you ever thought about being a slumlord . . .
e-mail print By Patrick McIlheran of the Journal Sentinel
Feb. 16, 2010 |(2) COMMENTS

…your opportunity, unfortunately, may be coming.

The local agitator group for left-leaning pastors, Common Ground, is heading to Madison, the Journal Sentinel reports, to yank around some large banks.

The paper (which has the report in print but not visible online) says the group will campaign for a bill by Milwaukee east-side Dem Jon Richards that bars state agencies from doing business with any bank that owns more than 100 foreclosed houses in the state. The idea is to make three such banks, Wells Fargo, US Bank and Deutsche Bank, more pliable to Common Grounds’ demands.

Which are, more or less, a shakedown. The banks, which actually own few of the houses, since they generally didn’t make the bad loans, are trustees for the lenders whom the homeowners stiffed. They’re obligated to keep the houses in good shape, which is reasonable, but what Common Ground wants is for the trustees instead to pay either to renovate the houses or tear them down -- and to donate big bucks, too, about $75 million, to a slush fund that supposedly will be used to fix up houses in poor neighborhoods.

Gee, wonder who will get to run that?

Not that I’m losing any sleep over the fate of the three banks, which, being run by grown-ups, presumably knew the risks of inner-city real estate dealings. They'll live. And it’s almost superfluous to note the kind of self-dealing here -- Common Ground relies, for instance, on the angry testimony of a local activist who’s now the executive of a competing Milwaukee bank -- and the shamelessness with which the politically radical community-organizing hustle, of which Common Ground is one example, is using people’s real financial misery to push for more government control over people’s economic lives.


No, the question you have to ask is this: If the state suddenly makes it exceedingly unhealthy for a bank to own (or, presumably, be a trustee for) more than 100 foreclosed homes, do you suspect banks might do whatever they must to make sure they don’t have many foreclosed homes on their hands?

Yes, you would expect it.

And what is the easiest way to achieve such a divestment?

Sell the homes fast and cheap, of course. The community-organizer hustlers don’t like this, because it means selling houses at prices low enough to depress the real estate market, and often to people buying the houses to get into the bottom end of the landlording business. Heck, no one would like that. I wouldn’t like that happening in my city.

But it is the predictable consequence of making lenders (or trustees) dump properties. ACORN, which is running this campaign in other cities, has been suing in places such as Cleveland to keep lenders whose arms they're twisting from doing this. They would rather, of course, that the banks (or trustees) just take an even bigger bath and turn over the houses to the community-organizer hustlers.

And suppose, for a minute, that this comes to pass. Suppose that banks do agree to the shakedown, they pay the millions, they give the houses to the shakers-down. Ask yourself this:

When the economy recovers, when people in lower-priced neighborhoods near the inner city meltdown look to borrow money to buy homes, do you think they’ll find lenders as willing to lend, rates and conditions quite as favorable, opportunities just as plentiful, as they otherwise would?

Or do you think lenders will price into their deals the increased possibility that they'll get shaken down again?

In which case, as usual, the community organizers will have accomplished nothing but to make the future dimmer and more dependent for the very people they claim to be helping.

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Tags: Econ : Lefties : Business : Milwaukee prosperity : State politics
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mrlundt - Feb 16, 2010 2:00 PM» Report abuse 01
That has to be one of the most hair brained ideas/ policies I have heard in a long time----that says something.
SkunkyBunny - Feb 16, 2010 2:26 PM» Report abuse 01
I expect nothing more from Common Ground, an organization rooted in Ayers policy that has a credo founded on Alinsky goals.

This stinks from the ground up.