National non-profit housing advocacy organization Acorn is folding and will shutter state affiliates and field offices by April 1, the scandal-plagued group has announced. The news follows a string of highly-publicized embarrassments for the group. Last fall, Acorn employees were accused of giving advice to activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their criminal behavior, and during the 2008 election, Acorn was hit with a barrage of criticism over allegedly shady voter registration efforts. Since then, Congress stopped giving grants to the organization and the Internal Revenue Service dropped it from its Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office last month concluded that the Acorn employees in the video had not taken part in any criminal activity. But in the end, the organization’s image could not recover. “For Acorn as a national organization, our vindication on the facts doesn’t necessarily pay the bills,” Acorn head Bertha Lewis said in a statement. The New York chapter, however, has split from the national
group and operates under a new name, the New York Times reported previously.
(Other state groups also reorganized and will take courses separate from

national group.) [more]

After sensitive Acorn documents revealing a possible name change, along with other information, were found in the dumpster behind a California office, Fox News anchor Glenn Beck cited a possible relationship between Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner and Acorn, which he said may explain Acorn’s support of the pricey Atlantic Yards project. Although Acorn originally supported the Atlantic Yards project because of its promises of affordable housing development, the non-profit organization still supports the project today although there are still no definite plans for affordable housing, according to the group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. After Acorn came out of an alleged embezzlement scandal last year, Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner complied with the organization’s pleas for $1.5 million in grants and loans, Beck said. “It’s a good thing that the guy who wants to build an arena today was there for Acorn last year to give them money,” he said. “Normally, Acorn would have never let this project go through.” [more]

Scandal-ridden non-profit group Acorn could garner millions in profits from its involvement with Bruce Ratner’s pet project, the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood, according to the New York Post. Ismene Speliotis, executive director at the group’s New York branch, said that she expects her organization will take part in marketing and leasing out the 2,250 affordable housing units planned. A former Acorn official said the deal could net as much as $5 million to $10 million annually for the group, which was recently embroiled in a hidden camera scandal, during which Acorn officials were caught giving illicit tax advice to individuals posing as sex workers.

Nearly 1,400 people headed to a foreclosure auction at the Grand Hyatt
Hotel in Midtown yesterday, where foreclosed homes were being auctioned
off at below-market-rate prices. Families walked away with vacation
homes, rental properties, and larger homes for cheap. One family paid
just $80,000 for a seven-bedroom, three-bath home in Newark previously
assessed at $425,000. However, outside the hotel, housing advocacy
groups such as Acorn and Bail Out the People protested the auction,
which they say will only spur new foreclosures. But Jim Corum,
president of the Real Estate Disposition Corporation, thinks it is
important to fill empty, foreclosed homes. “You don’t want to have a
vacant home on your street. That’s not a positive thing for anybody,”
he said. [more]