Today, in a city where more than a third of the residents are impoverished, billionaire Dan Gilbert

[demmiblue]

Today, in a city where more than a third of the residents are impoverished, billionaire Dan Gilbert is asking Detroit for an additional $60 million in tax breaks for his long-delayed high-rise project at the Hudson's site.

Five of the nine council members who are expected to vote on the tax handout received sizable donations from Gilbert. This is the same billionaire who donated heavily to Trump's campaign.

What's unusual about this request is that it comes after the project is well underway. So Gilbert still has to finish the project even if he doesn't get the money. Those taxes would help finance desperately needed services.

What does Dan Gilbert envision downtown Detroit to look like? Just look to Bedrock's ad banner in July 2017 depicting a virtually all-white crowd with the words: “See Detroit like we do.”



The city sold the Hudson's site to Bedrock for $1. Since then, Gilbert has received nearly $200 million in tax incentives from the city and state. He's the wealthiest resident in Michigan, and one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare.

Here are the council members who received donations from a Gilbert PAC, according to a @Freep
report today:
• Fred Durhal III
• Scott Benson
• Coleman Young Jr.
• James Tate
•Latisha Johnson

Let's see how they vote today.

Council is now debating the wisdom of this corporate welfare. James Tate, who received donations from Gilbert's PAC, is talking about the benefits of giving the tax rebate. Some are calling for a delay on the vote.

Coleman Young, who also took money from Gilbert's PAC, said he plans to vote for the tax incentives because of the jobs it creates, even though the project is already ongoing and won't be stopped, with or without the handout.

Angeles Whitfield Calloway, who didn’t receive donations from Gilbert’s PAC, plans to vote no on the tax handout, saying the public overwhelmingly objects to corporate welfare for the state's wealthiest resident.

Latisha Johnson, who took donations from Gilbert’s PAC, says opponents of the tax breaks misunderstand what’s at stake. So far, those who got donations from Gilbert, support the handout.

Fred Durhal, who took donations from Gilbert’s PAC, also took aim at opponents of the tax break, saying “Miseducation is a dangerous thing.”

Not a single supporter of this tax handout is addressing what opponents are saying: The project is already underway, so withholding the tax break won't impact whether it happens.

Scott Benson, who also took a donation from Dan Gilbert’s PAC, also claims that residents who oppose the tax handout are misinformed. That means all 5 council members who received a donation support the handout.

Just in: The Detroit City Council voted to delay the vote on a tax handout to Gilbert by a week. Whatever the case, the council has enough votes to support it next week. Every council member who took a donation from Gilbert's PAC said they are in favor of the handout.

Link to tweet

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I don't know if it fits

but I suspect USA slumlords have been subject to gentrification too. Because every city has them, developers and landlords who are too big to fail because they provide the housing and jobs that keep things moving. In poor areas some never fix anything. In revitalization, they do things like this guy, begging for every last dollar from government. It's all because of the tax code, federal, which was written to make sure there are houses and jobs by providing tax write offs on debt and incentives. My analysis loosely connected to reality, but you get the idea.

[CurtEastPoint]

2. Bingo! The Atlanta paper is running a series on a wealthy LA maggot who owns shit tons of apts in

Atlanta that have astounding statistics of death, crime, murder, theft and stories of people literally living in human waste, rot and filth.

https://www.ajc.com/news/investigations/dwellings/apartments-profits-over-tenants/

At Pavilion Place, a derelict apartment complex south of downtown Atlanta, residents contend with cockroaches and crime, doors that won’t lock and windows that won’t open, plumbing that backs up and dumpsters that overflow. They clean up when intruders defecate outside their doors. They listen at night as rats scratch inside the walls.

A continent away, in Beverly Hills, California, Pavilion Place’s owner employs a pool man and a gardener, a housekeeper and a tutor for his preschool-age children. His household expenses approach $40,000 a month. Most families at Pavilion Place earn half that much in a year.

For residents, each day at Pavilion Place represents an existential struggle. Seven people have died there in homicides since 2015, and at least 14 others have been wounded by gunfire. In 2020, four people were killed over just 59 days.

The owner faces challenges of a different magnitude. In a contentious divorce case, his wife has accused him of infidelity and financial misconduct. She is seeking half a million dollars a year in support.

Pavilion Place, constructed 56 years ago into a steep embankment above Cleveland Avenue, not far from the Atlanta airport, highlights a predatory housing system in which owners of even the most dilapidated apartment complexes prosper while residents remain trapped in homes that are unsafe, unhealthy or, often, both.

An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified more than 250 complexes across metro Atlanta where violent crime and dangerous living conditions combine to make apartments all but uninhabitable. The investigation found that at least three-fourths of the region’s most dangerous complexes belong to private equity firms and other remote investors, many of whom, in the absence of robust governmental oversight, prioritize earnings over their tenants’ well-being.

Pavilion Place belongs to a 52-year-old California real-estate investor named Behzad Beroukhai. Known to tenants merely as “Ben,” he built an apartment-rental business of about 30 buildings and complexes, seven of them in metro Atlanta, from an office in a cream-colored house in a residential section of Beverly Hills.

Since Beroukhai bought Pavilion Place in 2015, an already dilapidated complex has slipped even further into disrepair.

The only driveway into the complex lacks a security gate, so anyone can enter at any time. A banged-up perimeter fence can be easily breached.

Open basement doors reveal a putrid stew of trash and standing water. In some apartments, floors and ceilings are spongy with rot, so bad that one resident crashed through his kitchen floor in 2019 and had to be extricated by firefighters.

And on the playground, in a complex that 103 school-age children list as their home address, a scrap two-by-four plank served for a time as a makeshift swing seat. Now, two bare chains dangle from an overhead bar, with no seat at all.

At Pavilion Place apartments in south Atlanta, in the playground in a complex that 103 school-age children list as their home address, a scrap two-by-four plank served for a time as a makeshift swing seat. Now, two bare chains dangle from an overhead bar, with no seat at all. (Hyosub Shin /

Besides the killings and the other shootings, there have been 22 attempted or completed suicides at Pavilion Place since Beroukhai bought the property, Atlanta police records show. There have been 69 aggravated assaults. Thirty-five automobile thefts. Fifty burglaries. Four rapes. Eight sex crimes. Seventeen armed robberies — not counting an unreported one committed by two teenagers wielding a military-style assault rifle.

In an interview, Beroukhai said Pavilion Place has overcome problems he attributed to other people: employees of a property-management company, unsavory tenants he inherited from the former owner, workers who failed to resolve residents’ complaints.

But now, he said, “we are really on top of the game.”

“The property is 100% livable,” he said. “Whatever I have to do, I just do it. Better to spend the money and get the stuff fixed.”

[multigraincracker]

3. I have a friend that is a CPA

that works for him and says he is the best boss she has ever had. Go figure.

We have a minimum wage, we need a maximum wage too.