I stumbled across this article over on the Huff Post entitled:
Katrina Aid Goes Toward Football Condos
Here's what's really disturbing about these condos...
THEY'RE IN ALABAMA, 200 MILES AWAY FROM THE MAJOR DISTRUCTION IN MOBILE.
Follow me across the great divide.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama's football stadium.
Consider that you are still in a FEMA trailor and FEMA is beating your door down asking you to return the $2,000 dollars they gave you to "tide" you over that first month of two of evacuation. You've just read a couple of weeks ago, a report that your FEMA trailor is leaking Formaldehyde.
Add to that that you've just received a notice that the house you've been paying your mortgage on is scheduled for bulldozing next week. Of course, you haven't heard anything from the Road Home program and you gave up on your insurance company long ago when they told you, repeatedly, that the damage to your house was due to flooding and aren't covered for that. As you look out the little window over your little sink, you wonder if the field of occupied trailors house people that are getting sick and thinking just what you are.
I guess it's just a dog eat dog world - and the winners are George Bush's friends, the "haves and the have mores". Get a load of this..
About 10 condominium projects are going up in and around Tuscaloosa, and builders are asking up to $1 million for units with granite countertops, king-size bathtubs and 'Bama decor, including crimson couches and Bear Bryant wall art.
My, my. Who can afford these things? Where is this again and why are they being built?
While many of the buyers are Crimson Tide alumni or ardent football fans not entitled to any special Katrina-related tax breaks, many others are real estate investors who are purchasing the condos with plans to rent them out.
And they intend to take full advantage of the generous tax benefits available to investors under the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, or GO Zone, according to Associated Press interviews with buyers and real estate officials.
What is the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, or GO?.
Here's a quote from the big guy himself:
When I spoke to the nation from Jackson Square, in New Orleans, I said our job and our goal for the Gulf Coast was not just to survive, but to thrive, and not just to cope, but to overcome. And I meant it. And we're now implementing a comprehensive plan to help the people of the region recover and rebuild. We've helped a lot of people get temporary housing. We're now in the process of helping them to transition to permanent homes. Helping people find housing is going to be one of the really important challenges that we all face together in order to help these areas rebuild.
Well, here's one guy in Tuscaloosa who's not afraid to speak out (even though he's benefitted from it himself).
"It is a joke," said Tuscaloosa developer Stan Pate, who has nevertheless used GO Zone tax breaks on projects that include a new hotel and a restaurant. "It was supposed to be about getting people ... to put housing in New Orleans, Louisiana, or Biloxi, Mississippi. It was not about condos in Tuscaloosa."
There's alot more to read about this but this part caught my eye. Huh?
Defenders of the GO Zone said the Tuscaloosa area needed the aid because of the hundreds of evacuees who remained here for weeks after the hurricane.
They can all afford 1M Condos? I didn't know the evacuees were so, well, well off.