3. How can a large not for profit such as Four Oaks, Affordable Housing Network spend $170,000 per unit? (over 300% more than private property owners on the same type of project) Answer; by directing "for profit funds" into highly profitable, over paid for profit business partners (many of whom have direct relationships on the board or with board members of Four Oaks; Skogman Realty, OPN, Ryan Engineering). Former Iowa Senator Jack Hatch was paid as a "consultant" on this project, and that drove up the extremely inflated per unit cost even more.
4. When I arrived to present these facts to the "Ethics" Board, I found out that the 5 member board included both the Accountant and the Attorney of Four Oaks. (these 2 recused themselves, but on a small 5 member board, the other 3 bowed to informal peer pressure from these 2 cohorts as the 3 remaining Ethics Board members voted unanimously that there was "no conflict of interest". The Catholic nun from Mercy Hospital on the ethics Board commented that "Skogman is a good person who is on the Mercy Board and donates to the Hospital, so there is no way he could engage in conflict of interest". There can be no objective weighing of facts with such a stacked Ethics Board. The very composition of this board is a conflict of interest. There is no accountability with this kind of structure.
Often, "not for profit" funds are channeled into very lucrative payouts to for profit business interests. (You just have to be a for profit business with the right political connections in town) Many "charities" spend more on paid employees and administration costs than on service. There is need for new systems on this front.
At present Four Oaks/Affordable Housing network is engaged in a massive project of social engineering as they purchase hundreds of housing units in Cedar Rapids. Four Oaks has very strict credit and legal history requirements for families to participate in their housing programs. The poorest of the poor are actually being evicted to fend for themselves, as they are screened out by Four Oaks effort to forcibly restructure the neighborhood. It is not too difficult to see that one motive is to carry out a cleansing of the neighborhood as the adjacent medical district expands. The City of Baltimore spent 100 million dollars and a decade with the same attempt at neighborhood social engineering now attempted by Four Oaks. That experiment was a predictable dismal failure; you cannot change a neighborhood or a city without changing the underlying economic structure. Four Oaks is simply shuffling the deck; undesirable tenants are booted out. Those that meet their credit and legal history move in. It may look like change on the surface, but the human suffering and poverty just gets moved out of sight to another location.
To understand any system, it is imperative to understand the whole system. This is not really that difficult" simply look beyond the official PR dished out by each component of the present power structure and explore what lies beneath the surface of each iceberg. Also, follow the money" -In a profit driven economy, someone benefits from almost every action taken. Find out who benefits from each action, and you will start to understand how the system works. This requires the use of critical thinking skills that are glaringly absent from the official curriculum in our schools. This is not by accident. Our present industrial/consumer society depends on a very passive and compliant population. An alert citizen that asks questions and researches the unseen levels of each economic action is seen as a real threat.
During a time of deceit and deception, telling the truth is a revolutionary and necessary act.
Ask questions. Seek out facts. Analyze the system. Build a better system.
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