A former Goldman Sachs partner who worked at the firm during the 2008 housing crash may soon head up Connecticut's economic development office. David Lehman volunteered for the job but he’s yet to be confirmed. Lehman would be expected to turn around cities hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis.
Doris Latorre saw the crisis first hand in her neighborhood near St. Vincent’s Hospital in the city’s north end. She works with the Bridgeport Housing Trust, a local agency that helps homeowners in crisis.
“Sometimes they come to my office not knowing that I am their neighbor.”
No city in Connecticut had a higher number of foreclosures than Bridgeport. Latorre had a case load of 1000 distressed homeowners at the peak of the crisis. She says things have stabilized somewhat, but the crisis is not over.
“It’s everywhere in every neighborhood that we find this. It’s not just a crisis of people who did not know any better and signed up into a bad loan.”
Latorre says many of her neighbors are barely holding on to their homes.
“What we find that seven years later, 10 years later, we still haven’t recovered from the economic crisis. They’ve got a job now but they are underemployed they are not making what they used to make”
A U.S. Senate investigation blamed Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for the financial collapse. It said brokers knew that the subprime mortgage-backed securities they were selling were risky. Here’s how Lehman answered a question about that at his confirmation hearing last month.
“Any suggestion that I knew a product was going to be worthless and then subsequently sold it to a client is completely and wholly untrue.”
Some state senators including Senate President Martin Looney were not satisfied. The New Haven Democrat has asked his staff to studying the 650 page U.S Senate investigation report.
“The presumption that the governor should appoint people who he wants to make part of his development team should probably prevail. However, if something turns up that seriously questions the recollection or version of events that Mr. Lehman gave at that hearing that would be a different story.”
Lehman has been trying to win over senators by meeting one on one, including with Matt Lesser of Middletown. Lesser has been a vocal critic. He wonders if Lehman’s wall street background makes him the best person to turn the state’s economy around.
“And that’s the question that I have. It’s really focused on the here and the now and what can we do to jump start the economy and implement that agenda. And if this is the right guy, great! But I haven’t been convinced that he is. And I’m hoping to hear more that would get me on the wagon.”
Governor Ned Lamont says he is 100 percent sure lawmakers will confirm Lehman. He says Lehman has the business relationships and experience to attract both federal and private money to invest in Connecticut.
“He is going to Bridgeport, he’s meeting with economic development he is meeting with community. He’s working in terms of workforce development to make sure that each of those young people get an opportunity and second chance. He takes this very seriously.”
Doris Latorre says if Lehman plans to come to Bridgeport, he needs to visit neighborhoods like hers that have not fully recovered from the housing crisis.
“They need to take the time to talk to the folks here, to listen, to talk to people like us who are talking to these folks every day.”
This story has been corrected to reflect that Senator Lesser is from Middletown, not West Hartford.
Copyright 2019 WSHU
