I’ve visited Chicago’s South Side a dozen times during the past two months, and much of what I’ve seen is dispiriting.
There are large stretches where every third lot is vacant and neighbored by a boarded-up building or a shuttered storefront church. Streets are in disrepair, parkways and curbs strewn with litter, stores closed. The young are leaden-eyed, their dreams prematurely smothered out. Residential segregation is near-total.
Real estate values, and the hopes and plans they sustained, have been obliterated, and it’s hard to imagine their recovering within decades, if ever.
Mortgage fraud played a major part in much of the recent wreckage on the South Side. Some of the fraudulent schemes are outlined in this Department of Justice news release (PDF) outlining charges lodged against sixty-defendants in a dozen major cases.
One of those defendants, Robert Brunt, was a principal in Harvard Pointe, pictured above, at 314 W 72nd St in the Grand Crossing neighborhood. One of the forfeitures requested by the government in a superseding indictment (PDF) against Brunt included “$4.2 million in US currency,” i.e. hard, cold cash.
If you look at the sign on Harvard Pointe you’ll see an offer of one of the standard tools in the mortgage fraud trick-bag: down payment assistance. You’ll also note the broker: the once-respected Sudler Sotheby’s. All over the South Side you’ll see signs for purportedly reputable firms hanging on disreputable deals.
The photos below are of the other three corners of 72nd and Harvard, opposite Harvard Pointe.
