Monday, April 27, 2009

Beshear's $37.4 million housing shuffle

Gov. Steve Beshear kicked off his big cardboard check tour today in Richmond with $1,268,933 for the city to buy up dilapidated houses and sell or rent them to low income families. In all, he will deliver $37.4 million in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Fund grants to local governments to manipulate housing markets.

Beshear said the money will "benefit communities by returning vacant lots to productive use while providing new opportunities for homeownership to deserving families."

A press release from the Governor's Office said: "Once the city has purchased and made any necessary repairs to foreclosed homes, families with a household income not exceeding 120 percent of the area median income may buy or, in some cases, rent the home at a reduced rate."

Good thing we're using that money to make politicians look good and to expand government functions rather than paying down any of our massive debt.

1 comment:

Bruce Layne said...

Free markets work. This sort of pseudo well meaning Big Nanny government meddling never works. It causes more problems in the long term than it addresses in the short term. Either people can afford houses or they can't. Stop providing temporary assistance that only leads to future failure. A lot of the crashing real estate bubble was the result of government sponsored Freddie Mae and Fanny Mac putting people in houses they can't afford, and the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to grant mortgages people couldn't afford. If government wanted to really help these people, it'd stop stealing from them by confiscating a large chunk of their wages as income tax, and it'd stop stealing from them by devaluing their money via the inflation that The Fed creates to feed a voracious bloated government.