In 2011, Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation promised to build 20 environmentally-friendly homes for free on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
Since making the promise, Pitt’s charitable foundation has built exactly zero homes for residents on the reservation near Fort Peck, Mont.
The fact that Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation hasn’t actually built any houses on the reservation apparently hasn’t stopped Pitt from boasting about such exploits, reports area CBS affiliate KRTV.
“From apartments for disabled veterans in New Jersey, to mixed-use housing helping kids leaving foster care in Missouri, to homes for Native Americans in Montana,” the Hollywood actor’s cool, deep voice vainly assures the world in a promotional video touting his charity work.
Reservation leaders say employees at Pitt’s foundation certainly led them to believe they’d be getting the housing Pitt has bragged about.
“That’s what they told us,” Fort Peck tribal council executive board member Tommy Christian told KRTV. “We have 20 of the best architects in the whole world under us and we’re gonna come and save you Indians from yourselves.”
Pitt’s failure to deliver on his promises in some 4 years has led to bitterness on the reservation.
“We’ve got councilmen who are mad at each other for the way this has developed and we feel like we’re stuck,” councilman Garret Big Leggins told the CBS affiliate.
Problems with Pitt’s promise of free housing arose after Stoney Anketel, a former councilman, left in 2013. Around then was when the concept of “free” disappeared, current tribal leaders maintain.
Tribal leaders ended up fronting $600,000 for the project, but problems continued to arise — particularly infrastructure problems like sewage and land development. The Environmental Protection Agency has been involved.
There was also a complex problem with tax credits.
Nevertheless, Fort Peck councilman Dana Buckles told the station, Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation continues to suggest that it has helped build a bunch of houses on the reservation.
For example, Buckles said, the Make It Right Foundation’s Facebook page shows what he says it calls people on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
“(They are) showing people that are not even from this reservation, showing homes that are not even from here,” Buckles told KRTV.
A Friday, Mar. 21 posting shows a half-finished house on an assembly line that Pitt’s foundation says is due to end up at the Fort Peck reservation.
Buckles noted that a number of bureaucratic developments in February have given the tribal council renewed hope that the new homes could maybe, possibly appear on the reservation soon.
Challenges remain, though. For example, the home developer, Integrated Solutions, is a manufacturer of office furniture, and has “never built homes,” a company board member admitted.
The Fort Peck Indian Reservation is composed of members of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of American Indians.
Pitt founded Make It Right in 2007 to build “homes, buildings and communities for people in need.” His charity building projects meet “the highest standards of green building.”
The actor’s foundation operates under the guiding belief that “everyone has the right to live in a high-quality, healthy home that enhances the natural environment.”
Pitt lives with Angelina Jolie and a gaggle of children in a 5,228 square-foot compound in an affluent, celebrity-studded hillside neighborhood in Los Angeles. The couple owns other fancy real estate as well.
Pitt and Jolie became engaged to be married in 2011 when Pitt popped the question and presented Jolie with a $500,000 engagement ring.
Follow Eric on Twitter. Like Eric on Facebook. Send story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.