More For The Rich, Nothing For The Poor
Via Melissa at Shakesville , Scout at First Draft notes that the Gulf Opportunity Zone (GO Zone) Tax Credits that were sold as an encouragement to investment in rental housing in the areas devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita are actually being used in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, home of the University of Alabama, for luxury condominiums rented to people attending the home football games.
Tuscaloosa is 200 miles from the coast and experienced a thunderstorm as the result of Katrina, but that’s where the tax credits are being used.
I would also note that these tax credits are only available for people investing in rental properties, not people rebuilding their homes. Low cost rental housing is desperately needed for workers to return to the area, but there is none on the drawing board.
If you have questions about the push to include wind coverage in the Federal flood insurance program, you should read Ana Maria’s coverage of the Katrina town hall meeting with Congressional leaders in Mississippi.
When you have insurance agents complaining about the way things were handled, and a banker telling you that they aren’t going to buy insurance for their new branch because it’s too expensive, you start to understand what a mess the current system is.
4 comments
…I long for a time when stories about the shady doings and morally corrupt practices of the “have’s” at the direct painful expense of the “have-not’s” can once again stir feelings of shock and outrage. The events of the last 6 1/2 years seem to have almost beaten that capacity out of me…
I know what you mean, Jack. It’s been going on so long that it’s no longer surprising.
It would only be surprising if it was otherwise.
You mean like actual tax credits to encourage actual low cost rental properties on the Gulf Coast so actual people could live in the area on the the prevailing wages? Never happen.