Obama adviser: limit number of poor black people in public housing (Updated)

The Boston Globe’s Binyamin Appelbaum wrote June 27, 2008, that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.”

Appelbaum commented that this was a “[g]rim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy.” Sen. Obama “endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair.”

Sen. Obama’s political patron and personal real estate fairy, convicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, is not the only one in his past to have connections to Chicago’s slum housing.

Chicago Tribune reporters Jason Grotto and Laurie Cohen added July 5, 2008, that close campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett “stands at the center of Chicago’s controversial efforts to redevelop public housing.”

Jarrett has pushed to integrate new developments by limiting the number of residents, mostly poor and black, who can live in the new communities. From the beginning, that stance clashed with efforts by residents and housing advocates to ensure the number of units set aside for the poor was as large as possible.

Got that? Can’t have too many poor black people living in new developments. Bad for the ‘hood.

Since 1995, Jarrett has been a high ranking executive at Habitat Co., a real estate firm tasked by a federal judge to ensure the CHA ends segregation in public housing.

The company decides how many public, affordable and market-rate units will be built at each site, approves the budgets and helps negotiate the contracts. In some cases, Jarrett, who became chief executive officer of Habitat last year, has personally signed off on the location of public housing units inside the new developments.

Habitat argues that to integrate public housing it must attract middle-class families, who will not buy into a development that includes too many poor people.

The ChiTrib reporters describe Jarrett as “a former top official in Mayor Richard Daley’s administration.” Surprise! They failed to mention a few details about Jarrett’s long and close relationship with both Sen. Obama and his wife, Michelle Robinson Obama.

On January 29, 2008, RBO/RW wrote:

An April 22, 2007, Chicago Tribune biographical profile relates that in summer 1991 a “young Sidley Austin attorney named Michelle Robinson” interviewed with Valerie Jarrett, who was then Mayor Richard Daley’s deputy chief of staff. Reporters Christi Parsons, Bruce Japsen and Bob Secter reported that, before accepting the subsequent job offer, Michelle Robinson said that first “her fiance”, Barack Obama, “the independent-minded community activist [who] had privately expressed his political ambitions”, wanted to meet with Jarrett.

What followed was a Chicago dinner meetup by Jarrett, Robinson and Obama:

This job would put his wife-to-be squarely in the offices of the man whose father had perfected the Democratic machine.

“My fiance wants to know who is going to be looking out for me and making sure that I thrive,” Jarrett recalled Robinson telling her. …

At the end of the evening, Jarrett turned to Barack and asked, “Well, did I pass the test?” Obama smiled, put his head down, closed his eyes and said, “Yeah, you passed the test.

That was the start of a long relationship that has paid off politically for Barack Obama, connecting him to Daley’s inner circle.

From summer 1991 until sometime in 1993, Michelle Obama was well-positioned at Chicago’s City Hall.

Michelle Obama’s “close and lasting friendships with Jarrett and many other top Daley aides, including former Corporation Counsel Susan Sher and David Mosena, who was the mayor’s chief of staff when Michelle Obama first joined his administration”, have endured, with their careers “frequently overlapped, and together they make up a network that reaches into virtually every aspect of Chicago politics.

“After leaving City Hall, Jarrett went on to lead the Chicago Transit Authority. She recruited Michelle Obama to the transit agency’s citizen advisory committee. Mosena, who now is president of the Museum of Science and Industry, served with Obama on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. …

City Hall records show Michelle Obama, then still named Robinson, began work as a $60,000-a-year mayoral assistant in September of 1991. She didn’t stay long in the mayor’s office. Within weeks, Daley promoted Jarrett to run the new Department of Planning and Development. Obama followed.

She had no background in economic development, but Obama served as a troubleshooter for Jarrett.

After only 18 months at the city, she left to launch the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, a group that sought to build future community leaders by arranging apprenticeships for young adults with non-profit organizations. Barack Obama was on the founding board of Public Allies, and it was he who recommended his new wife for the job as the Chicago chapter’s first executive director, recalled Paul Schmitz, the current president of the group, which is now headquartered in Milwaukee and has chapters in many cities.

Bottom line? By early 1993, Michelle Obama had a good working knowledge of Chicago’s infrastructure and topography, having worked as a mayoral assistant, with the Chicago Transit Authority, and in the Department of Planning and Development. Three years later, in 1996, when she left Public Allies for a position at the University of Chicago, her husband, Barack Obama, was serving or soon to serve with the Illinois State Senate. By this time, the Obamas each had, at minimum, four and half years of street-level experience in Chicago.

Among other things, Valerie B. Jarrett has served as treasurer of Barack Obama’s leadership political action committee (PAC), the Hopefund.

Oh, and let’s not forget, Jarrett is the vice chair of Chicago’s 2016 Summer Olympics bid committee.

There’s just so much more that could be added here. The number of unsavory and questionable associations both Obamas hold within the Chicago community appear to be legion.

Update: A reliable source informs that Valerie Jarrett’s father is the former head of the Chicago Housing Authority. The September 17, 2001, issue of Jet magazine reported:

Former Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) chief Vincent Lane was recently sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and three years of supervised release for lying to banks to get more than $2 million in loans.

Lane, 58, received national recognition for his innovations at the CHA and was once touted as a candidate for mayor and a finalist for federal housing secretary.

A federal jury in March convicted Lane on two counts of making false statements in connection with a $1.9 million refinancing of the Continental Plaza shopping center located in Chicago.

He also was found guilty of lying to Chicago’s South Shore Bank to get three loans exceeding $600,000 in 1993 and 1994, when he was CHA chairman.

The charges, however, did not involve his public duties, but were connected to his work as a private developer.

Lane took the helm of the CHA in 1988 and was praised as a visionary for his police sweeps of gang-infested buildings and commitment to tenant management. But in 1995, Lane and other members of the CHA board resigned amid allegations of pervasive waste and fraud, and federal officials took over daily operations.

Also see related RBO article Rezko’s slum housing, Obama’s district, June 27, 2008 (updated version).

Also see Uppity Woman
s April 10, 2008, Obama’s Boycott Dilemma: Genocide vs. Chicago Games 2016.