Prez: ‘Poor’ folk poor for $ posts
PRESIDENT TRUMP on Wednesday bragged about the wealth and business acumen of his cabinet members, singling out Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn.
“I love all people. Rich or poor,” Trump said during a campaign-style rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “But those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?” Cohn is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
Trump, haunted by low approval ratings and a Washington on edge over a secretive Senate health care bill and investigations into Russian election meddling, appeared at ease as he spoke to his adoring supporters.
In his hour-long speech, Trump applauded his own administration’s efforts to roll back regulations, celebrated Republican special election wins and blasted Democrats as obstructionists. SEN. CHUCK Schumer vowed Wednesday to monitor “like a hawk” the Trump administration’s inspection of a Brooklyn apartment complex that’s coowned by the President and plagued by deteriorating conditions.
The Daily News reported Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is about to inspect Starrett City in East New York, a 5,881-unit complex that generated millions in income for Trump last year.
The aging development, built in 1974 with President Trump’s father as an initial investor, has recently received increasingly declining HUD inspection scores. The next inspection is set for this summer.
Trump claims a 4% stake in Starrett City, formally known as Spring Creek Towers. It generated $5 million for him last year through April 5, according to his most recent financial disclosure form.
“In order to dispel even the hint of a conflict of interest, it is critical that HUD’s inspection be done in a thorough, professional and transparent way,” said Schumer (D-N.Y.). “I will be watching like a hawk to make sure that is exactly what happens.”
Schumer (photo) has a history with Starrett City dating to 2007, when Trump and his partners tried to sell the complex for $1.3 billion. Schumer and others criticized the deal, predicting that such a high price meant the buyer would have to make affordable apartments market rate.
HUD rejected the deal, but Starrett City’s owners tried again, threatening to pull out of the affordable housing program known as MitchellLama. Ultimately, Schumer helped broker a deal where the owners refinanced the complex with taxpayer subsidies and promised to keep it affordable and invest $40 million in upgrades. In recent years, the HUD inspection scores there have declined from 89 in 2007 to 70 after an October inspection. This week tenants struggled with Starrett City’s busted cooling system. The 43-year-old heating and cooling system is served by the same pipes, and the complex must switch from hot to cold water every June. About two weeks ago, when they shut down the system to make the switch, the owners found a big leak. Since then, the development’s 46 buildings have been without a cooling system as temperatures hovered in the 80s and 90s.
On Wednesday a line of 15 tenants stood outside the development’s maintenance building picking up electric fans distributed to help beat the heat.
Abraham Benoit, 43, who’s lived in Starrett since 1997, said the deteroriation as the years have passed has gotten more obvious.
“It’s catching up to them,” he said. “They’ve known about the pipe system for years, and now they’re finally having to fix it. All the maintenance they’re supposed to do they postpone.”
Sean Wade, a 35-year-old construction worker, has lived in Starrett City with his wife for over 10 years and raised three children there.
“The living conditions are just terrible, and it’s gotten way worse in the past couple of years than it was before,” he said.