Is Fox News host Sean Hannity a slum lord?
The Guardian first reported last week that Hannity secured loans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to buy rental properties and they now report that evictions soared by 400 percent(!) after Hannity bought one such property with help from HUD.
County court records say that judgments approving the removal of 61 different residents of the Hampton Place apartments in Perry (Georgia) have been issued during the three years and 10 months since Hannity took over.
The previous owner of the 152-unit apartment complex obtained similar orders against 12 different tenants during the preceding three years and 10 months, according to the records, before selling it to Hannity for almost $8m. [...]
Perry, which is in Houston County and about 100 miles south of Atlanta, has a population of about 16,200. According to the US census bureau, 22.6% of residents are living in poverty, compared with 16% of Georgia and 12.7% across the US. At $20,470 a year, Perry’s average income is about 31% lower than the US average.
A lawyer for Hannity told The Guardian that he is not involved in management of the property, but something tell me that's not the whole story. Orthodoxy starts at the top and Hannity would have hired the current managers of the property. From my experience, property managers can't even blow their nose without permission from the owner or parent company.
In any case, Hannity obtained these properties with a subsidized insurance policy from the Department of Housing and Urban Development which means these evictions have been indirectly carried out in the name of taxpayers.
At the same time, HUD Secretary Ben Carson is calling for tripling rent for poor Americans who receive federal housing subsidies.