Acorn’s Woes Strain Its Ties to Democrats

By JIM RUTENBERG
NYT

Last December, in one of his last acts as New York City’s top urban development official — and just days before President Obama nominated him as the federal housing secretary — Shaun Donovan attended a groundbreaking ceremony in the South Bronx.

A complex of 125 apartments had fallen into such disrepair that Bush administration housing officials had foreclosed on the building and transferred it to a group they and Mr. Donovan had come to trust: the New York Acorn Housing Company.

“These renovations will transform this once-troubled property into a remarkable asset,” Mr. Donovan declared in a city news release trumpeting the apartments’ “rescue” by Acorn and its development partners.

Now in Mr. Obama’s cabinet, Mr. Donovan is unwilling to speak publicly about that project or any other work with Acorn, a group with which he at times worked particularly closely during his five years as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s housing development commissioner but whose missteps have allowed conservatives to cast it as a symbol of liberalism run amok.

(Original here.)