As you know, we’ve been writing for some time about The Center for Community Self-Help and its financing affiliates Self-Help Credit Union, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and Self-Help Ventures Fund. As of late, the organization has been under increased scrutiny for its questionable lobbying activities, its former leader and soon to be CFPA Czar Eric Stein, and its $15 million donation from disgraced hedge fund billionaire John Paulson.

According to the Self Help website, the organizations “provide financing, technical support, consumer financial services, and advocacy for those left out of the economic mainstream.” Within that complex web of entities under the Self-Help umbrella exists about forty or so real estate development projects. I thought it might be a productive exercise to start looking into some of Self-Help’s individual properties.

So, I started with Barr Building, LLC, a Self-Help investment registered under its affiliate Self Help Ventures Fund. The property is located at 910 17th Street NW, Washington, DC.

And wouldn’t you know, it happens to be home to one of our most frequent subjects:

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

This seemed especially curious, because it was only recently I’d discovered that SEIU, together with the AARP, is also the proud funder and agitator for one of the Center for Responsible Lending’s other advocacy projects – its state-specific lobbying websites targeted at regulating short-term loans in an effort to insulate its own predatory practices from any private industry competition. For example, take a look at this site, from Arizonans for Responsible Lending. It’s chock filled with all of the usual SEIU corporate campaign elements: the menacing title and domain name, the array of photos depicting abused consumers who simply could not have known any better, the manufactured headlines, and of course – the staple of their strategy – the studies and the research (all funded and conducted by their own organization allies).


And of course, the site is immersed in SEIU and ACORN through its flagship partners, such as “Americans for Financial Reform“, which is run by Heather Booth and Lisa Donner – longtime radicals of ACORN, SEIU, Center for Working Families and other leftist organizations.

How convenient. And there’s one of these sites for most of their ballot measure lobbying states. Even more convenient.

I suppose I’ll spend some time looking into the entire list of properties. Who knows what one will find? Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. Especially when SEIU enters the picture in the middle of someone else’s scandal.