PHA and the feds still doing exactly NOTHING to help predatory loan victims

Thank God Journal Star reporter Elaine Hopkins has started reporting on the Peoria Housing Authority predatory loan scandal again. She previously wrote one story about how the PHA brought in this crook to teach a course in home ownership, who then turned around and started selling these predatory loans, with the PHA telling poor working class families that they had to deal with this guy if they wanted to participate in its first-time homebuyer program.

Instead or returning Hopkins' call, PHA director Roger Johns got in touch with someone on the Journal Star's editorial board and gave them a lame "mistakes were made" excuse and same vague statement about how the agency would try to help. And the agency still isn't saying why they weren't making the payments toward these loans that they were supposed to. That leads me to think someone with access to these funds has been pocketing the cash.

Well, Hopkins actually attended a meeting and came back with a story about how the PHA attorney agrees that the situation was "sad," but how it was all a misunderstanding and how "hindsight is 20-20." No kidding, Sherlock. There is still no assurance from ANYONE in the PHA that their victims will be allowed to keep their homes.

Again, I ask: What is Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan going to do? Where does U.S. Rep Ray LaHood stand on this issue? How about Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, Illinois' two U.S. Senators? Perhaps I need to send copies of these articles to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to get some sort of reaction.

The silence is deafening, suggesting the powers-that-be care more about Johns than it does about poor people who work hard and are trying to become valuable members of society.