ACORN Housing Finally in Foreclosure

[Geee]

Front Page Magazine:

The largest branch of ACORN – ACORN Housing Corp.— has finally kicked the bucket despite cash injections from the Obama administration.

Like a con artist trying to escape his past, ACORN Housing legally changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) two years ago after the devastating “pimp and pro” videos surfaced in 2009. In those undercover videos created by conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles ACORN and ACORN Housing employees were shown offering helpful advice on setting up a brothel for pedophiles and breaking other laws. A year later the controlling entity in the ACORN network, ACORN Inc., filed for bankruptcy after Congress cut off its taxpayer funding and left-leaning foundations ran away from it.

After a reliable source in the progressive movement confirmed the demise of AHCOA to this writer, Chicago-based writer Mike Volpe (who blogs as The Provocateur) visited the group’s headquarters at 209 West Jackson Boulevard in the Windy City last week. Volpe confirmed that the nonprofit corporation is no longer there. Building management advised him that the last AHCOA staff members vacated the premises almost two months ago.

 

Efforts to reach ACORN Housing personnel, including executive director Mike Shea, have been unsuccessful. AHCOA’s website (ahcoa.org) is down and the nonprofit’s Twitter feed hasn’t been updated since August of last year. Senior staff abandoned ship months ago. AHCOA’s public affairs director Bruce Dorpalen left the nonprofit in April to become executive director at the National Housing Resource Center in Philadelphia. AHCOA’s director of operations Martin Shalloo also left earlier this year.

As of June 30, 2010, AHCOA was in the red by almost $2.5 million according to its most recent publicly available tax return. AHCOA and its subsidiaries owed an eye-popping $162,813 in back taxes as of July 2011. The money was owed to the IRS, California,Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,Texas, Washington, the city of Philadelphia, and the California counties of Fresno and Santa Clara.