Becoming rich by “helping” the poor
The largest affordable housing company in Texas, whose business dealings have drawn separate FBI public corruption probes in Dallas and in San Antonio, is selling its San Antonio apartment complexes it developed in partnership with local city agencies, the San Antonio Express-News has learned.
Brian Potashnik’s Dallas-based Southwest Housing Development Co. is divesting itself of the six San Antonio complexes as part of a much broader pending agreement to sell almost everything it owns in Texas — 54 low-income apartment complexes — to the Seattle-based Cascade Affordable Housing, company letters to a local housing agency show.
This isn’t terribly surprising to me. I can’t say if they are guilty or not because I don’t know the company personally but I can tell you there is money to be made in low-income housing. I sat on a board of a non-profit very like this one and the money is astronomical. I left after 10 years of fighting to the good fight because I was just tired and it was someone else’s turn to fight for the properties and the residents. I couldn’t tell you where that company stands now because I had to cut ties or spend the rest of my life fighting a losing fight. I can say that I am familiar with Carlos Madrid and his project management company and the fact that he is still making any money in San Antonio is amazing to me. I can’t imagine he would have done anything illegal for $25,000 since that is a drop in the bucket of what he makes or has made from rehabs of low-income housing. Who knows, maybe the FBI will start looking into his other dealings and find the board I sat on. That might be fun to see. Now, I am sure that board never did anything illegal because the company itself was too smart to lose their cash cow by skirting the law but I am not so sure about those like Carlos Madrid that were on the outside. I am really not as cynical as I sound, we did some good work but a lot of people became quite rich doing it.
Technorati Tags: low income housing, Southwest Housing Development,
Filed under: SAHA
