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WASTE $$$ REVEALED IN PLAN TO PAY GRADS TO LIVE HERE

By Frank Parlato


DHIP plan will pay grads to live here

Niagara Falls Community Development Director Seth Piccirillo has a plan for taxpayers to pay college graduates to rent downtown apartments. 20 students will get $6,984 each to rent in targeted areas for two years.

Mr. Piccirillo says his plan might keep the population of the city over 50,000, a figure he says is necessary to keep HUD’s annual $3 million allotment in Urban Renewal money flowing. HUD money pays Piccirillo’s salary.

In 1990, the city’s population was 61,840. In 2000, it was 55,593. By 2010, it dropped to 50,193. An average loss of almost 100 people per month.

Mayor Paul Dyster says 20 college graduates moving into certain downtown areas, now occupied by mainly low-income blacks, will boost the city.

“Twenty individuals of a pro-active nature moving into a concentrated neighborhood is a massive infusion of energy, imagination, talent, but also potentially, buying power,” he said.

Mr. Piccirillo also speaks of the economic impact that 20 graduates will bring: “That’s 20 more dinners. That’s 20 more cups of coffee. That’s 20 more trips to the dry cleaners.”

GOVERNMENT WASTE

The plan uses a federally funded round robin: A federal program (HUD) helps students pay off federally assisted college loans (Stafford loan program) so the city can keep its population above 50,000 in order to keep receiving (HUD) federal assistance. With more than 30 percent overhead, the program requires $200,000 to hand out $139,680 to the 20 grads.

$60,320 is needed for administration. The plan requires some bureaucratic “babysitting” with application and certification processes, meetings with grads, city inspectors examining properties, meeting with landlords, monitoring occupancy, etc.

Based on HUD’s overhead being a similar 30 percent, HUD will require $290,000 from the US Treasury in order to give $200,000 to Niagara Falls. The US Treasury, in turn, has overhead, such as 93,000 IRS employees, and will need to tax working people an estimated $414,000 in order to have $290,000 to give to HUD.

Ultmately, the US taxpayer will pay an estimated $414,000 in taxes in order to give $139,680 to 20 college graduates in Niagara Falls. $276,285 will be spent in “handling costs.’

Now you see why government programs to make us wealthy never work.

THE DHIP PLAN


The “Downtown Housing Incentive Program” or “DHIP” plan states: “Knowledge professionals are the difference between any city’s success and failure as a living destination.” And there you have it: Blue collar, salt of the earth, worker/residents have become undesirables. Now we are to pay college types from around the nation to bring smarts to Niagara Falls.

The question is since the targeted areas are mainly black neighborhoods, will the city wind up paying mainly white college grads to live there? Critics of urban gentrification say plans to “improve” minority neighborhoods through gentrification usually mean a plan to attract educated whites.

If the goal is to attract “college grads,” regardless of race, won’t reducing crime, controlling taxes, cleaning streets and demolishing dilapidated buildings be more effective than paying grads to live in high tax, high crime areas with abandoned buildings?

BAD PUBLICITY

In the wake of the highly publicized Nik Wallenda wire walk, Niagara Falls got more national publicity for its “creative” DHIP program. From Forbes to ABC, to the Huffington Post it was reported we are a city in decline.

The DHIP plan was a national advertisement that our city does not have educated people and, in spite of an attraction like Niagara Falls, we need to pay them to live here. Like a man who cannot attract a woman on charm, he hires a prostitute, then advertises his “creative” plan to attract women. He reveals more of himself than of the plan.

Frankly, the idea of ignoring longtime residents and giving tax money to people deemed more desirable is not creative, or inventive. It is insulting.

 

 

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com July 03 , 2012