'Evil'-Doers Target Stimulus Housing Credits — ProPublica

'Evil'-Doers Target Stimulus Housing Credits

by Sabrina Shankman

Oct. 20, 2009, 11:07 a.m. EDT

Today’s roundup of stimulus coverage:

With just over a month left in a tax break program for first-time home-buyers, The Wall Street Journal reports that the IRS is looking at more than 100,000 suspicious claims for the $8,000 tax credit. "Any time there is a lot of money around, there is going to be people attracted to it with evil intent," a Realtor association spokesman told the Journal. The measure, which is part of the stimulus package, is set to end Nov. 30, although housing-industry lobbyists are doing their best to see it extended.

In other housing news, a report released today by the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that new housing starts last month were lower than expected. TheBusiness Insider reports that September’s lower rates could be an indication of a "stimulus hangover" to come once the first-time home-buyer tax credit ends. Our suggestion? Advil before bed, and greasy food in the morning.

Are you tracking the stimulus? ProPublica has set up a mailing list for reporters covering the stimulus, and you’re welcome to join. Just e-mail us.

Follow ProPublica

Most Read

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Nearly Two Years After Uvalde Massacre, Here Is Where All the Investigations, Personnel Changes Stand

“Everyone Will Die in Prison”: How Louisiana’s Plan to Lock People Up Longer Imperils Its Sickest Inmates

Inside the Historic Suit That the Gun Industry and Republicans Are on the Verge of Killing

Michigan Lawmakers Working to Fix a Program That Failed to Compensate the Wrongfully Convicted

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page