Another Reason Why
 Broward County Doesn't Work

   Safely ensconced on the 9^th floor of the Sun-Sentinel building in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the newspaper's shrinking staff covers most of the events of the day by telephone, email, fax and press release.
   Call it the Blanche DuBoise Syndrome – where a newspaper staff “depends on the kindness of strangers” to cover the events of the day.
   So much for the Sun-Sentinel's role as a watchdog for its increasingly disinterested and declining readership.
   Trouble is, the community is very much the worst for the Sun-Sentinel's journalistic impotence.
   Take the recent headlines involving Lauderhill's Brampton Court apartment complex – where some 250 residents were forced to evacuate their apartment homes after city inspectors determined the 36-year-old building was unsafe.
    In covering the story from their lofty perch high above downtown Fort Lauderdale, what the newspaper's reporters have yet to discover – among a great many other key details – is the identity of owner of the decaying apartment complex. :
    Which serves as a sad metaphor of what's wrong with journalism by Fax, phone, email and press release.
    For example:
    One - With 352 units Brampton Court is one of 31 low income apartment complexes owned by the Atlantic Housing Foundation, a Texas-based 501c3 (non profit) corporation headquartered in Southlake, Texas – an affluent suburb of Dallas with some 21,000 residents.
   Two – The Texas address of the Atlantic Housing Foundation is the same as the Windover Health Club LLC, a Florida 501c3 (non profit) corporation.
   Three – Also located at the Atlantic Housing Foundation's address is the Sonterra Texas Investment Corporation, a for-profit real estate investment firm.
    Four – with 35 years in commercial real estate, Daniel B. French is listed as an officer of the three above corporations.
    Five – IRS data and its website suggest the Atlantic Housing Foundation hires independent contractors to operate maintain the 7,300 apartment units it owns throughout the Southeastern United States.
    Six - In Florida, Atlantic Housing owns and operates five low income apartment complexes with nearly 2,000 units in Largo, Lauderhill, St. Petersburg, Sanford, and Tampa.
    Seven – As a non-profit corporation, Atlantic Housing Foundation's 2008 income tax report listed $51,370,486 in rental income from its properties --- assets of $312,224,897 with liabilities of $403,374,294.
    Eight – The purchase of Atlantic Housing Foundation's low income rental properties in Florida was financed with some $270 million in tax-exempt bonds issued by the Capital Trust Agency, a non profit corporation created by the tiny Florida city of Gulf Breeze, a community of some 6,000 residents south of Pensacola.
    Nine – While the total taxable value of the entire City of Gulf Breeze is less than $900 million, the city's Capital Trust Agency has issued more than $1.2 billion tax exempt revenue during the past ten years.
    Ten – In October of 2006, Gulf Breeze and Capital Trust Agency were cited in an 18-page Bloomberg Markets in-depth investigative article detailing a $7 billion “scandal” in so-called “black box bonds” – including a $220 million bond deal involving Capital Trust Agency of Florida. 
    Eleven - Capital Trust, Bloomberg Markets reported, was an “invisible” public authority that “consists of three people working out of a ranch house that's situated behind the police station in the city of Gulf Breeze.”
    Anyhow....
    The above should be enough to spark the intellectual curiousity among most journalists with the intellectual curiousity of a common house cat.
    However, I'm reminded of the question Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kept asking as they fled a mysterious posse of relentless riders.
    Like “Who are these guys?”
    Which is a question the Sun-Sentinel has yet to ask of the people responsible for all the Hard Times for residents at Lauderhill's decaying Brampton Court.
    And probably never will.
    But then what can you expect from the toothless and impotent journalistic watchdog that still has enough balls to call itself “South Florida's leading information provider”?

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