Shocking

Not. The only surprise here is that HUD squandering doesn't run into the Billions instead of mere hundreds of millions. (Color me highly skeptical about that, btw.) If I were a developer, the very sound of "Housing and Urban Development" would make my pupils dilate, among other things.

Whenever the word 'government' appears in close proximity to the word 'housing' sirens and flares should go off to signal investigative committees to get in gear, pronto. Corruption, graft, and rip-offs of every kind and description, eminent domain abuse, wrecking of communities and neighborhoods, even the destruction of pretty much the entire housing market itself and with it the equity savings of tens of millions of Americans -- when it comes to government mischief, housing is the Hydrogen Bomb.

Byron

via Instapundit:

Washington Post: Million Dollar Wasteland: A trail of stalled or abandoned HUD projects.

The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.

It’s like it’s just a bunch of corruption masquerading as an effort to help the poor.