This post is related to whistle-blowing, as well as the time we all have for reading articles like this one, and contributing to stopping the corruption indicated by the denial of the FOIA request. It's about an area of corruption that an unknown number of us are facing, and that before now I didn't know, concretely, how it could be occu…
This post is related to whistle-blowing, as well as the time we all have for reading articles like this one, and contributing to stopping the corruption indicated by the denial of the FOIA request. It's about an area of corruption that an unknown number of us are facing, and that before now I didn't know, concretely, how it could be occurring.
This is about the diminishing availability of family homes, and the difficulty of families in purchasing the homes that are available. Owning a home, in turn impacts both financial security that leads to better health outcomes as well as direct shelter in which to nurture health, plus the time available to read substack articles and to help stop corruption.
Here's one astonishing. concrete way in which two longtime family homes in two different longtime cohesive neighborhoods in my city, have very readily been usurped:
Recently, one of the homes, two doors down from me in my very peaceful family-friendly neighborhood, was sold by a family with three children under the age of 5. The owners were approached with a letter from someone, Mr Z, which said he had a friend looking for a place to live in this city, and they should please get in touch with him if they ever wanted to sell their home. They decided to purchase a larger home nearby, and got in touch with Mr Z, who put them in touch with with his friend, Mr. X. Mr. X recently purchased two restaurants from Mr Z, one of which is near this neighborhood. Mr X told the sellers that he wanted to live here (near his restaurant), and made an offer to purchase their home, which they accepted. Before the closing, Mr. X requested that the name of the buyer be changed to an LLC named with the street address of the home being purchased. They assumed it was his LLC, accepted the change and completed the closing (i.e., the sale of the property). The closing happened first through a meeting with the buyer, and two hours later with a meeting with the seller, so the seller did not meet the buyer at the closing. Now the LLC owns the property. It turns out the LLC has a registered Agent, who is not Mr X or Mr Z, but whose office address is in our city. The registered Agent allows the Principal(s) of the LLC to be undisclosed (i.e., anonymous). This LLC in fact has undisclosed Principal(s), and their registered address is the same as the office address of their Agent. As an interesting footnote, the registered address of the Agent includes the country, USA, spelled out in all caps, whereas the same address of the Principal(s) does not include the country. I'm not claiming anything about this last piece of information, but it stood out for me, both because only one of the addresses had the country included and because I've registered three LLCs in this State in the past ten years, and I haven't ever feel the need to specify the USA on any of the addresses I provided when registering those LLCs. One concern I have about this whole thing is that the Principal(s) of the LLC could have their primary residence (or possibly even citizenship) outside this city, state, or country, but it's only one of many concerns and it's not in my most pressing concerns.
Within days of the closing, the LLC filed a Proposal with our City to divide the lot into two lots, with one of the lots being the entire front yard of the existing home. I am not kidding about this. the front yard is also the only usable yard space for the home. The backyard is a very steep ravine. The proposed new lot is just barely large enough to qualify as a "buildable lot". Furthermore, our city's current ordinances are written in a way that this Proposal might actually be approved, based on very narrow constraints that define the only conditions under which such a Proposal can be denied. Like with the pandemic response, it appears that someone must have thought about how to construct the ordinances before initiating such a Proposal and the strategy to obtain the property in the first place.
A similar scheme is in progress in another location in our city. In that case, the new LLC with undisclosed Principal(s) was able to get approval to create a new (buildable) lot from the entire side yard of a historic inn that the LLC purchased. Mr. Z had also initiated the LLC's purchase of that inn. The new, min size buildable lot next to the inn has been purchased (by a local business executive) for a cost that is roughly comparable to the average cost of a home in this city. The new lot owner has submitted more than one proposal to build on the lot; each proposal to build has been denied due to strong objections by stakeholders during the approval process. It's unknown what will happen next with that lot. So far, many very talented and productive people have spent untold hours preventing construction of a nonsensical and unsightly new home next to the historic inn.
All homeowners who want to preserve family homes and neighborhoods: please make sure you when you sell your home, to sell it to an individual or entity with a publicly available identity.
I have no idea who the owner(s) of the property two doors down from me is or are or where in the world they live. One way to resist the corruption, and protect our health, is to hang on to the property we have, and to pass it along to others who will wisely use it. Three previous owners of the property the LLC now owns near me, were families with school-age children and parents who work long hours nearby. It wouldn't be difficult to sell a home to another family like that. We've been in a "sellers market" for many years now. Let's be smart about who we sell our family homes to.
Our neighborhood and city has some very savvy attorneys who may (or may not) be able to thwart the approval of the proposal near me. Stage one of the approval sailed right on through, partly because the LLC submitted the proposal so quickly after closing, partly because the city moved so swiftly to schedule the public hearing, partly because the notice of the public hearing came during a school vacation period when many neighbors were busy with family time, partly because the city ordinance is written so narrowly (it's, frankly, ridiculous!), and partly because of the unexpected complexity of the undisclosed property owners. It seems that our City officials (including our City Attorneys) either don't know the difference between a Representative of an LLC (who filed the Proposal to divide the property) and a Principal of an LLC, or they don't care, because at the public hearing and since, our City officials haven't requested Mr X to state his relationship to the LLC, and they treat him and/or call him the owner of the property. Again, a lot of this is reminiscent of the confusing way the pandemic unfolded. I mention all of this so that others can be prepared for the various tactics that keep reasonable and talented opponents of the tactics off-balance.
It never occurred to me before that this method of buying a family home could happen, and I myself am glad that I am prepared to deal with such corruption should it occur when I sell my home. Hope others find it helpful to know this example as well.
This post is related to whistle-blowing, as well as the time we all have for reading articles like this one, and contributing to stopping the corruption indicated by the denial of the FOIA request. It's about an area of corruption that an unknown number of us are facing, and that before now I didn't know, concretely, how it could be occurring.
This is about the diminishing availability of family homes, and the difficulty of families in purchasing the homes that are available. Owning a home, in turn impacts both financial security that leads to better health outcomes as well as direct shelter in which to nurture health, plus the time available to read substack articles and to help stop corruption.
Here's one astonishing. concrete way in which two longtime family homes in two different longtime cohesive neighborhoods in my city, have very readily been usurped:
Recently, one of the homes, two doors down from me in my very peaceful family-friendly neighborhood, was sold by a family with three children under the age of 5. The owners were approached with a letter from someone, Mr Z, which said he had a friend looking for a place to live in this city, and they should please get in touch with him if they ever wanted to sell their home. They decided to purchase a larger home nearby, and got in touch with Mr Z, who put them in touch with with his friend, Mr. X. Mr. X recently purchased two restaurants from Mr Z, one of which is near this neighborhood. Mr X told the sellers that he wanted to live here (near his restaurant), and made an offer to purchase their home, which they accepted. Before the closing, Mr. X requested that the name of the buyer be changed to an LLC named with the street address of the home being purchased. They assumed it was his LLC, accepted the change and completed the closing (i.e., the sale of the property). The closing happened first through a meeting with the buyer, and two hours later with a meeting with the seller, so the seller did not meet the buyer at the closing. Now the LLC owns the property. It turns out the LLC has a registered Agent, who is not Mr X or Mr Z, but whose office address is in our city. The registered Agent allows the Principal(s) of the LLC to be undisclosed (i.e., anonymous). This LLC in fact has undisclosed Principal(s), and their registered address is the same as the office address of their Agent. As an interesting footnote, the registered address of the Agent includes the country, USA, spelled out in all caps, whereas the same address of the Principal(s) does not include the country. I'm not claiming anything about this last piece of information, but it stood out for me, both because only one of the addresses had the country included and because I've registered three LLCs in this State in the past ten years, and I haven't ever feel the need to specify the USA on any of the addresses I provided when registering those LLCs. One concern I have about this whole thing is that the Principal(s) of the LLC could have their primary residence (or possibly even citizenship) outside this city, state, or country, but it's only one of many concerns and it's not in my most pressing concerns.
Within days of the closing, the LLC filed a Proposal with our City to divide the lot into two lots, with one of the lots being the entire front yard of the existing home. I am not kidding about this. the front yard is also the only usable yard space for the home. The backyard is a very steep ravine. The proposed new lot is just barely large enough to qualify as a "buildable lot". Furthermore, our city's current ordinances are written in a way that this Proposal might actually be approved, based on very narrow constraints that define the only conditions under which such a Proposal can be denied. Like with the pandemic response, it appears that someone must have thought about how to construct the ordinances before initiating such a Proposal and the strategy to obtain the property in the first place.
A similar scheme is in progress in another location in our city. In that case, the new LLC with undisclosed Principal(s) was able to get approval to create a new (buildable) lot from the entire side yard of a historic inn that the LLC purchased. Mr. Z had also initiated the LLC's purchase of that inn. The new, min size buildable lot next to the inn has been purchased (by a local business executive) for a cost that is roughly comparable to the average cost of a home in this city. The new lot owner has submitted more than one proposal to build on the lot; each proposal to build has been denied due to strong objections by stakeholders during the approval process. It's unknown what will happen next with that lot. So far, many very talented and productive people have spent untold hours preventing construction of a nonsensical and unsightly new home next to the historic inn.
All homeowners who want to preserve family homes and neighborhoods: please make sure you when you sell your home, to sell it to an individual or entity with a publicly available identity.
I have no idea who the owner(s) of the property two doors down from me is or are or where in the world they live. One way to resist the corruption, and protect our health, is to hang on to the property we have, and to pass it along to others who will wisely use it. Three previous owners of the property the LLC now owns near me, were families with school-age children and parents who work long hours nearby. It wouldn't be difficult to sell a home to another family like that. We've been in a "sellers market" for many years now. Let's be smart about who we sell our family homes to.
Our neighborhood and city has some very savvy attorneys who may (or may not) be able to thwart the approval of the proposal near me. Stage one of the approval sailed right on through, partly because the LLC submitted the proposal so quickly after closing, partly because the city moved so swiftly to schedule the public hearing, partly because the notice of the public hearing came during a school vacation period when many neighbors were busy with family time, partly because the city ordinance is written so narrowly (it's, frankly, ridiculous!), and partly because of the unexpected complexity of the undisclosed property owners. It seems that our City officials (including our City Attorneys) either don't know the difference between a Representative of an LLC (who filed the Proposal to divide the property) and a Principal of an LLC, or they don't care, because at the public hearing and since, our City officials haven't requested Mr X to state his relationship to the LLC, and they treat him and/or call him the owner of the property. Again, a lot of this is reminiscent of the confusing way the pandemic unfolded. I mention all of this so that others can be prepared for the various tactics that keep reasonable and talented opponents of the tactics off-balance.
It never occurred to me before that this method of buying a family home could happen, and I myself am glad that I am prepared to deal with such corruption should it occur when I sell my home. Hope others find it helpful to know this example as well.
DEATH TO GLOBALLASSED 💣☠️⚰️🔥