- After buying a home in Barrington Hills, Chaoshan Lai and his wife couldn�t unload the 15-year-old townhouse that they�d bought for $935,000 in Central Station, a taxpayer-subsidized development in the South Loop where former Mayor Richard M. Daley lived for years.
Lai couldn�t even find anyone to rent the townhouse on South Prairie Avenue � until he got a call in 2013 about a woman who�d gotten a �housing choice voucher,� from the Chicago Housing Authority through a program that had long been called Section 8.
Lai says the woman wanted to lease his three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home, which has a library and is within walking distance of Soldier Field and the lakefront.
�I said, �You probably cannot afford the rent,� � Lai recalls. �But they said they have a special program in the �opportunity area� that pays much better. I said, �Let�s give it a shot.� �
It ended up being a good deal for Lai. Since June 1, 2013, he�s collected more than $100,000 from the CHA, which administers public housing in Chicago for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The CHA pays him $3,911 a month in federal funds to lease his townhouse to the woman and three others in her household, including a child under the age of 6, records show.
Most coppers probably have a mortgage that is half of that $3,911 per month and they don't have a swanky million dollar Central Station townhouse. But the CHA is burning through $47 million A MONTH to subsidize this crazy type of crap.
Nothing like making it big.....without having to earn any of it.
Nothing like making it big.....without having to earn any of it.