Kofi Bonner has been named CEO of Bedrock, the company announced Wednesday. The former Cleveland Browns chief administrative officer and California developer replaces Matt Cullen, who left Dan Gilbert's Detroit-based real estate development company last month to work on two Ohio casinos.
Bonner starts Sept. 21. Bedrock said that Bonner has "extensive experience in leading complex development projects in metropolitan areas."
Kofi Bonner is the new CEO of Bedrock.
As co-chief operating officer for Irvine, California- based FivePoint Holdings, Bonner led the development of projects including San Francisco Shipyard and Candlestick Communities.
“I look forward to building on the accomplishments of Mr. Gilbert and the talented team at Bedrock by advancing the transformational development program, partnering with the community to deliver positive social outcomes and working with local businesses to further the incredible momentum that Detroit and Cleveland have seen over the last decade," Bonner said in a statement.
Bonner was the executive vice president and chief administrative officer of the Cleveland Browns for seven years where he oversaw business operations and the development of the Cleveland Browns Stadium, according to Bedrock.
His other past experience includes roles as an affordable housing developer for Oakland Community Housing Inc.; redevelopment director for Emeryville, California; director of community and economic development and interim city manager of Oakland; and chief economic advisor to Willie Brown, then Mayor of San Francisco.
“With his extensive experience leading landmark projects on the West Coast and the years he spent in Cleveland with the Browns, Kofi Bonner is the right leader to build on Bedrock’s nearly 10 years of transformational development work,” said Bill Emerson, Bedrock Vice Chairman. “Bedrock has a really exciting future as momentum builds at the Hudson’s Site, Book Tower and dozens of other projects, and I look forward to partnering with Kofi to ensure they have a positive and lasting impact on the communities where we serve.”
Bill Emerson, the acting CEO, will retain his role as vice chairman of both Bedrock and Rock Holdings Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The U.S. Navy is drastically understating the severity of the ongoing environmental scandal at its former shipyard in San Francisco’s Hunters Point neighborhood, an official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared in newly released documents.
The biggest redevelopment project in San Francisco since the 1906 earthquake, with 12,000 planned housing units as well as millions of square feet of office and retail space, transformation of the former warship repair base and nuclear weapons testing laboratory—an EPA Superfund site contaminated with industrial and radioactive pollution—has largely been on hold since 2016, when the EPA halted land transfers while a fraud scandal could be unraveled.
Workers with Tetra Tech, a Pasadena-based firm with a history of winning government contracts, first came forward beginning in 2012 with allegations that the cleanup had been faked on the orders of higher-ups at the company.
A review of Tetra Tech’s data, conducted last year by other contractors hired by the U.S. Navy and first published by Curbed SF, found that as much as 49 percent of the company’s work had signs of manipulation or outright falsification and could not be trusted.
However, an independent review by the EPA found that the Navy dramatically understated the scope of the problem. According to the EPA, as much as 97 percent of the cleanup data is unreliable and must be retested, John Chestnutt, manager of the EPA’s local Superfund Division, wrote in a December 27 letter.
“The data analyzed demonstrate a widespread pattern of practices that appear to show deliberate falsification, failure to perform the work in a manner required to ensure [cleanup] requirements were met, or both,” Chestnutt wrote.
Chestnutt’s letter was obtained and published Monday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an advocacy group based in the Washington, D.C., area.
The EPA’s current review only covered about 40 percent of the base. However, the EPA’s findings echo criticism of the Navy’s handling of the scandal from environmental watchdog groups and neighborhood advocates.
Tetra Tech first admitted to providing false soil samples in 2014, but was allowed to continue working after blaming the problem on low-level employees and submitting other workers to “ethics training,” excuses and solutions the Navy appeared ready to accept until more whistleblowers came forward alleging more widespread and systemic fraud—allegations that have now been sustained.
“What makes these findings so remarkable is that the Navy was on notice for years that it had a major data meltdown on its hands yet is still trying to cook the books,” said Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director. “The Navy created an environmental nightmare on this stretch of the San Francisco Bay but instead of cleaning it up has spent the past several years compounding it.”
The Navy created an environmental nightmare on this stretch of the San Francisco Bay but instead of cleaning it up has spent the past several years compounding it.
Derek Robinson, the Navy’s program manager for Hunters Point, did not respond to an email or a telephone message seeking comment.
Michele Huitric, a spokesperson at the local branch of the EPA, did not offer comment to Curbed SF. In a statement issued to the San Francisco Examiner Monday, Huitric said that the EPA, which is responsible for overseeing the Navy’s cleanup of the shipyard, is “pleased” that the Navy will be “resampling the impacted parcels.”
The Navy is supposed to begin retesting contaminated shipyard land sometime this summer. No timeline or start date for that work has been publicly released.
According to Ruch, the shipyard scandal is “unfolding into the biggest case of eco-fraud in U.S. history.” Only the Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the automaker sold 500,000 cars designed to cheat the Clean Air Act, can compare, Ruch told Curbed SF.
The shipyard is divided into alphanumeric parcels. In a review of the work on Parcel B, the Navy found issues with 15 percent of the data collected. On Parcel G, the Navy recommended 49 percent of the data be resampled.
But according to a “technical team including national experts in health physics, geology, and statistics” assembled by the EPA, 90 percent of the data on Parcel B is untrustworthy. On Parcel G, 97 percent of the data is “suspect,” according to the EPA.
Tetra Tech workers falsified data in a variety of ways. These include pulling soil samples from an area known to be clean—the site of a former movie theater—and passing them off as soil from areas known to be dirty; running scanners too quickly to detect contamination; faking chain-of-custody records; and faking results at on-site testing laboratories.
Together, those two parcels comprise about 40 percent of the base’s land area. According to plans filed by FivePoint, the developer of the SF Shipyard, those parcels are the planned future homes for the area’s densest residential development and the core of a retail area.
FivePoint is closely associated with Miami-based homebuilding giant Lennar Urban, which in turn has close ties to the local Democratic Party power structure in San Francisco.
The development behemoth’s regional vice president, Kofi Bonner, is a former aide to Willie Brown, San Francisco’s former mayor. And Brown is a principal in Golden Gate Global, an investment fund that’s luring overseas investors to sink capital in the shipyard project in exchange for visas.
California’s two U.S. senators are part of the same San Francisco-based power circle: former state attorney general Kamala Harris is a Brown associate who served as city district attorney. And senior U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a former San Francisco mayor.
Yet for some inexplicable reason, “we’re not seeing California’s or even San Francisco’s delegation up in arms about this,” PEER’s Ruch noted. “San Francisco’s members of Congress are very well placed. They could enact revenge. They could force hearings.”
“You would think at the head of the line of aggrieved parties would be the U.S. Navy, but they don’t appear to be aggrieved,” he added. “There are no consequences.”
In a statement emailed to Curbed SF, Taylor Griffin, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who represents most of San Francisco in Congress, said Pelosi and her staff “continue to closely monitor” the situation, and has been in “close touch” with both the EPA and Navy.
“Public health and safety remains our top concern, while working to ensure the timely delivery of long-awaited housing and jobs when the cleanup is completed,” Griffin wrote.
Ironically, under embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, cleaning Superfund sites has been a stated priority—and a source of rare praise for the Trump Administration from environmental advocates, who have credited Pruitt with pushing private companies to perform “aggressive, accelerated cleanups,” as the Washington Post reported in January.
[M]uch of the $1 billion in taxpayer money spent on cleaning up the shipyard has gone to waste.
Meanwhile, the fraud means that much of the $1 billion in taxpayer money spent on cleaning up the shipyard has gone to waste—and Tetra Tech, the contractor responsible for the faked data, has largely escaped punishment.
The company, which posted profits in excess of $350 million last year, managed to escape paying a $7,000 fine levied on it by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on appeal.
Tetra Tech is also a subcontractor on a $1.4 billion work arrangement with the Department of Energy to clean up pollution at Los Alamos in New Mexico—the historic home of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb (which was shipped in secret to Hunters Point, where it was loaded onto a ship for delivery to the Pacific). Critiques of that arrangement have fallen on deaf ears at the Department of Energy, which stated that Tetra Tech would remain involved.
Tetra Tech has yet to comment publicly on the findings. However, the company appears to be preparing for a leadership shift—and to compensate departing leaders.
According to SEC filings, in March, company shareholders approved a severance plan for Tetra Tech executives. For the next two years, executives “terminated by the company without ‘cause’” are eligible for “lump sum cash severance payments,” including salary, bonuses, and “full vesting of outstanding unvested stock options.”
Defendant G. Gordon Liddy has filed a renewed motion to transfer this case to the District of Columbia. The motion will be granted.
This case arises out of allegedly defamatory remarks that Liddy made about plaintiff Ida Maxwell Wells. Liddy has publicly articulated a theory that the Watergate burglary was prompted by a desire to obtain information about a call-girl ring being operated at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. According to the theory espoused by Liddy, Maureen Dean, John Dean's wife, is said to have been one of the call girls. Pictures of Maureen Dean and the other call girls allegedly were kept in Wells' desk. Dean allegedly instigated the break-in to recover the photographs.
The Deans filed an action for defamation against Liddy and others in 1992 based upon Liddy's public statements about the call-girl theory and other alleged libels against John Dean. The case was originally instituted in California but was transferred to the District of Columbia upon a motion to transfer filed by Liddy. Wells instituted the present action in 1997. Liddy moved to transfer it to the District of Columbia as well. Initially, I denied the motion. Two factors figured heavily in my decision. First, the Dean case was then dormant and had been for several years. Second, Wells asserted that she "has a very simple case" and that the "case does not depend upon any testimony from the Deans. . . ."
Circumstances have changed since I denied Liddy's original motion to transfer. Wells has now twice named Maureen Dean as a witness despite her prior representation that her case does not depend upon the testimony of the Deans. Although Wells has withdrawn Mrs. Dean's name from the witness list on both occasions, the interrelatedness between this case and at least a portion of the case instituted by the Deans in the District of Columbia has now become apparent. More importantly, the Dean case is no longer dormant. It has been reassigned to Judge Emmett Sullivan who has set a firm trial date of May 5, 2000.
Wells argues that I cannot transfer this case to the District of Columbia because it could not have been instituted there originally, as required by 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), since venue and personal jurisdiction over Liddy are lacking in the District of Columbia. This argument is unpersuasive. Liddy has substantial contacts with and engages in a persistent course of conduct in the District of Columbia. Also, the original complaint alleged acts of defamation committed over an Internet website maintained by an organization located in the District and through Liddy's nationwide radio shows. Moreover, prior to Wells bringing suit, Liddy had already purposely availed himself of the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia by initiating the transfer of the Dean litigation. In addition, the federal district judge in California found it was appropriate to transfer the Dean case to the District of Columbia.
I also note that the events underlying the Watergate burglary (in which Liddy was personally involved) occurred in the District of Columbia.
Therefore, this case can be transferred to the District of Columbia. The remaining question is whether it should be transferred. In making this determination I must consider a variety of factors, including the plaintiff's choice of forum, the convenience of counsel and the witnesses, the relative ease of access to sources of proof, and the public interest. See, e.g.,Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 508-09 (1947); Dickens v. United States, 862 F. Supp. 91, 92 (D. Md. 1994). The first of these factors obviously weighs against transfer; plaintiff has chosen to bring her action here in Maryland. The second and third factors weigh slightly in favor of transfer since lead counsel for both parties have their offices in the District of Columbia, many of the witnesses live in the District of Columbia area, and none of the witnesses live in the Baltimore area. However, since the District of Columbia and Baltimore are so close to one another, this factor is negligible.
I find the public interest factor dispositive. There is some overlap between this case and the Dean case, and it may be that they should be consolidated. Liddy vigorously argues that they should be; Wells argues just as strongly to the contrary. These conflicting positions essentially boil down to this: Liddy asserts that he should not be subjected to the cost of litigating (and to the risk of inconsistent results) in two different cases that arise, at least in part, from the same nucleus of facts. Wells acknowledges (as she must) that one aspect of the Deans' claims arises, as do her claims, from Liddy's public statements promoting the call-girl theory of the Watergate burglary. She points out, however, that the Deans' claims involve many other issues as well (apparently arising out of Liddy's broad assertions that John Dean committed "massive perjury.") Wells understandably does not wish her discrete claims to be eclipsed or compromised in the shadow of the larger Dean case.
Wells also expresses a concern that her costs of litigation will be much greater if she becomes embroiled in the trial of the Dean case since it is estimated to last longer than her own trial. While this may be true, a countervailing factor is that Wells' counsel is also local counsel for the Deans and will be participating in the trial of the Dean case in any event.
It would seem to be in the interest of the economic use of judicial resources for the two cases to be consolidated if they can justly be tried together. However, in transferring this action to the District of Columbia, I am expressing no view as to whether consolidation is appropriate. I have no jurisdiction over the Dean case and am not sufficiently knowledgeable about the Deans' claims to know whether Wells would be unfairly prejudiced by a single trial. It is clear to me, however, that it is in the public interest to have the case transferred so that Judge Sullivan, who has been actively presiding over the Dean case and has become fully familiar with it, can be given an opportunity to decide whether consolidation would be appropriate. If Judge Sullivan decides in favor of consolidation, the single trial can go forward in May. If, on the other hand, he decides that consolidation is inappropriate, Wells can file a motion to transfer the case back to Maryland, the forum of her original choice, on the ground that the sole reason for my transfer was to allow Judge Sullivan to rule on the consolidation issue.
Of course, it would be up to Judge Sullivan to decide a motion to re-transfer the case to Maryland. However, lest there be any uncertainty on this score, I affirmatively state that I would be fully amenable to having the case transferred back to Maryland in the event Judge Sullivan decides against consolidation. If it were not for the fact that I believe it to be in the public interest for Judge Sullivan to consider the consolidation issue, I would have respected Wells' choice of forum and ruled against the transfer. Moreover, it is against my own sense of responsibility to ask another judge to try a case that is properly before me. To that end, I will hold on my calendar the September 11, 2000 trial date I have set, so that, in the event Judge Sullivan denies consolidation and decides the case should be transferred back to Maryland, he and the parties can be assured that no unnecessary delay will occur.
A separate order effecting the ruling made in this memorandum is being entered herewith.
ORDER
For the reasons stated in the accompanying memorandum, it is, this ______ day of December 1999
ORDERED
1. Defendant's renewed motion to transfer is granted; and
2. This case is transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
An LLC linked to Cavs owner Dan Gilbert just purchased the 11,000-square-foot Palm Beach mansion featured in the video above for $24.5 million. The listed address of the buyer, "Golden Crate LLC," is that of Quicken Loans, in Detroit.
A Florida real estate blog reported that a document filed with the city of Palm Beach was signed by Matthew Rizik, current CFO of Gilbert's Rock Ventures.
Literally the day before, Palm Beach outlets reported, the same Gilbert-linked LLC purchased an $18.75 million mansion in the same area. That home, however, is only 5,000 square feet. Ho-hum.
Who knows whether Gilbert intends to use these for personal use, as investment properties or something else. The $24.5-million Mediterranean estate in the video above, which reportedly has nine-and-a-half bathrooms, was last sold for $20.38 million, netting the previous owner a cool $4 million.
Gilbert's personal fortune was revealed to have ballooned to $34 billion last week, after the initial public offering of Rocket Cos. corporate stock. He is now the 28th-richest person on planet earth.
Cleveland, Ohio, and Cuyahoga County, meanwhile, on the brink of crippling economic crises spawned by the coronavirus, will be paying off the debt on renovations to the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, a venue where fans may not congregate for several years, until 2034.
Rocket Companies, which owns Quicken Loans, went public on Thursday, boosting founder and chairman Dan Gilbert's fortune to about $34 billion.
Gilbert is close friends with Warren Buffett and has partnered with the investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO several times over the years.
For example, Gilbert and Buffett pranked Quicken employees with a fake sale in 2014, Berkshire insured a $1 billion Quicken marketing stunt the same year, and Buffett agreed to finance a bid for Yahoo by Gilbert and other investors that ultimately failed.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Rocket Companies' founder and chairman Dan Gilbert saw his net worth soar to $34 billion after the parent company of mortgage lender Quicken Loans went public on Thursday.
Gilbert — who is also the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team and the founder and controlling shareholder of StockX, the online sneaker marketplace — now boasts a fortune roughly half the size of Warren Buffett's, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO will likely be cheering Gilbert on, as the pair have been friends and occasional business partners for years.
"I'm an enormous admirer of Dan and what he has accomplished in Quicken Loans," Buffett told CNBC in May 2016.
Read more: BANK OF AMERICA: Buy these 5 commodities now for profits into next year as pandemic uncertainty boosts their prices and lifts gold to $3,000
Rocket didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Pledges, prizes, and pranks
Gilbert and Buffett first met at a conference years ago, and became acquainted over lunch in Buffett's hometown of Omaha, according to Reuters.
In 2012, Gilbert signed the Giving Pledge, which Buffett launched with Bill and Melinda Gates to encourage the world's wealthiest people to give away at least half of their fortunes to philanthropic causes.
Gilbert roped in Buffett two years later, when Quicken's marketing team wanted to hold a competition with a $1 billion reward for any contestant who filled out a perfect bracket for the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.
No one succeeded, but Quicken paid Berkshire an estimated $10 million premium to insure the prize, according to Crain's Detroit Business.
Read more: 100 deals and $1 million in profit a year: Here's how Mike Simmons made a simple change to his real-estate investing strategy that took him from small-time house flipper to full-fledged mogul
Gilbert also interviewed Buffett at an event called Detroit Homecoming in 2014. The pair revealed backstage that they pranked most of Quicken's management team on April Fools' Day that year: Gilbert falsely claimed that Berkshire had bought the company, and Buffett played along on a video call, Crain's Detroit Business reported.
"I go along with whatever he comes up with, and so far I haven't gone to jail," Buffett joked at the time.
Buffett also agreed to finance a group of investors including Gilbert when they tried to buy internet titan Yahoo in 2016, Reuters said. The consortium's bid ultimately failed.
There's no mention of Buffett beyond the basketball stunt in Rocket's initial public offering filing. However, in light of their tie-ups over the years, it would be no surprise if Gilbert name-checks him during future interviews and earnings calls.
Read more: Investors are piling into socially responsible ETFs at an unprecedented rate — and Morgan Stanley says these 4 stocks are best-positioned to profit from the trend
Shares of Rocket Companies Inc., the parent of billionaire Dan Gilbert's mortgage lending giant, closed up more than 19% on their first day of trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
An unspecified amount of the $1.8 billion the company is set to earn from its initial public offering will support initiatives in its hometown, such as increasing internet access in Detroit neighborhoods, CEO Jay Farner told The Detroit News.
The first public shares of Rocket, which includes Quicken Loans, ended trading up 19.5% to $21.51 on the exchange under the RKT symbol — a milestone for the Detroit company that was an early harbinger of the city's revitalization and recruiter for young tech talent. The firm is slated to become the seventh-largest IPO of 2020, according to Dealogic, with 100 million shares available at $18 each.
The price was lower than the original $20 to $22 range the company had suggested last week for the IPO. Despite the decrease, shares did reach a high of $22.70 around 2 p.m. and were in line with last year's 18% average first-day price rise.
"The purpose of this was not to raise capital," Farner said in an interview. "Whether it was $3.3 billion or $2 billion, the goal was to take the company public, which is an important step and gives us more flexibility into the future."
The stock's performance was a "Goldilocks stock-price bump," said Erik Gordon, a faculty member at the University of Michigan's Ross Business School.
It was "high enough to make money for investors who bought stock at the opening price and not so high as to make you think the company sold the stock for too little," he said.
The smaller IPO, Farner said, is expected to bring about a long-term investor base thinking three to five years in the future. Although Rocket is in the mortgage business, it is seeking to pitch itself as a tech disruptor in the industry by allowing homebuyers to apply for loans completely online.
The company represents about 9% of the highly fragmented mortgage industry, Farner said, but it hopes to grow it to 25% over the next decade. Rocket Companies closed $145 billion in loans in 2019 and recorded $893.4 million in profit on revenue of more than $5.1 billion.
Although COVID-19 had put a pause on IPO plans in the spring, low interest rates have spurred a frenzy of refinancing and homebuyer activity that contributed to record months in March, April and May, Farner said. Coupled with an upward trending market since March, the company decided now was the time to go public.
"I think the market is really recognizing or confirming that we have some pretty special technology that we can grow and scale and do so profitably," he said.
Going public should help Rocket reach its goal, Farner said, providing opportunities for greater name recognition and funds to improve its market share. It also provides for an employee stock option — something Gilbert has wanted to provide to the company's more than 20,000 employees, most of whom work downtown and many of whom are highly sought tech talent.
"It was challenging to do that in our previous structure," Farner said. "You see that a lot in Palo Alto, California. Here in Detroit, I think, it's less common. We're proud that we can offer our employees the opportunity to be owners of the business."
The funds will support the company's greater efforts in Detroit, as well, Farner said. A company spokesman declined to disclose how much of the offering would support those initiatives.
"We're selling only about 5% of the organization," Farner said. "We wanted to take that and be able to use it for some of the initiatives here in the city of Detroit, not just today, but though for example the Gilbert Family Foundation to provide even more capital to continue to help our city down the road."
The Gilbert Family Foundation has contributed to COVID-19 relief efforts in Detroit as well as supported efforts in education and blight removal. IPO funds also will support efforts around the Connect 313 Fund, an initiative to increase internet access in the city.
"Technology empowers us to get a loan, to buy a home or find a home, get a mortgage; it increases education," Farner said. "It's crazy 30% of people here don't really have that. We are working with others to solve that problem."
Gilbert will maintain a majority controlling stake in the company with 79% of shares under a multi-tiered system. He will have final say over major decisions such as the election of board directors, proposed mergers, or sale of the company's assets. Gilbert's net worth totals $7.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Gilbert founded the company in 1985. In 2010, he moved its headquarters from Livonia to downtown Detroit. He joined Farner and other executives in New York to ring the opening bell in New York. They wore face masks amid the pandemic.
“Rocket has spent the last 35 years becoming America’s largest mortgage lender by taking the road less traveled,” Gilbert said in a statement. “I have full confidence in Jay and the rest of the senior leaders to build on the blueprint that got the company to where it is today and find innovative ways to reach new clients in the future.”
This is the Judge who ruled upon the physical bondage of the youth to Children's Villages.
Hon. Mary Ellen Brennan Presiding Judge of the Family Division Presiding Judge, Oakland County Family Court Division Presiding Judge, Oakland County Family-Focused Juvenile Drug Court Elected to the Oakland County Circuit Court on November 4th, 2008 Senior member of the Oakland County Family Court Bench Graduate - James Madison College of Michigan State University Graduate - Wayne State University Law School Judicial Staff Attorney, 44th District Court 2002-2008 Assistant City Attorney, City of Royal Oak 1998-2002 Assistant General Counsel, Meadowbrook Insurance Group 1996-1998 Assistant Prosecutor, Oakland County 1990-1996 https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-ellen-brennan-71709454
Hon. Mary Ellen T. Brennan is the presiding judge of the Oakland County Juvenile Drug Court (Family Division). She was a judicial staff attorney for the 44th District Court from 2002 to 2008 and was elected to the Oakland County Circuit Court in 2008. Prior to that, Judge Brennan was an assistant city attorney for the City of Royal Oak, assistant general counsel of an insurance firm, and an Oakland County assistant prosecutor. She is a former board member of CARE House of Oakland County, an organization that offers prevention programming, forensic interviewing for victims of sexual abuse and assault, therapy as needed for victims, family-support services, and a court-appointed special advocate program for children involved with the court. Judge Brennan is also a former board member of the RESTORE Foundation, a group that raises funds for the adult and juvenile therapeutic drug treatment courts through private, tax-deductible donations. She is a graduate of Wayne State University Law School.
Slavery was never abolished because it was renamed gerrymandering and it was privatized through foreign Public Private Partnerships as tiny human asset forfeiture operations.
A 15-year-old in Michigan was incarcerated during the coronavirus pandemic after a judge ruled that not completing her schoolwork violated her probation. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said the girl’s mother.
PONTIAC, Mich. — One afternoon in mid-June, Charisse* drove up to the checkpoint at the Children’s Village juvenile detention center in suburban Detroit, desperate to be near her daughter. It had been a month since she had last seen her, when a judge found the girl had violated probation and sent her to the facility during the pandemic.
The girl, Grace, hadn’t broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn’t in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place.
She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills switched to remote learning.
Because of the confidentiality of juvenile court cases, it’s impossible to determine how unusual Grace’s situation is. But attorneys and advocates in Michigan and elsewhere say they are unaware of any other case involving the detention of a child for failing to meet academic requirements after schools closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
The decision, they say, flies in the face of recommendations from the legal and education communities that have urged leniency and a prioritization of children’s health and safety amid the crisis. The case may also reflect, some experts and Grace’s mother believe, systemic racial bias. Grace is Black in a predominantly white community and in a county where a disproportionate percentage of Black youth are involved with the juvenile justice system.
Across the country, teachers, parents and students have struggled with the upheaval caused by monthslong school closures. School districts have documented tens of thousands of students who failed to log in or complete their schoolwork: 15,000 high school students in Los Angeles, one-third of the students in Minneapolis Public Schools and about a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students.
Students with special needs are especially vulnerable without the face-to-face guidance from teachers, social workers and others. Grace, who has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed. Without much live instruction or structure, she got easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said.
“Who can even be a good student right now?” said Ricky Watson Jr., executive director of the National Juvenile Justice Network. “Unless there is an urgent need, I don’t understand why you would be sending a kid to any facility right now and taking them away from their families with all that we are dealing with right now.”
In many places, juvenile courts have attempted to keep children out of detention except in the most serious cases, and they have worked to release those who were already there, experts say. A survey of juvenile justice agencies in 30 states found that the number of youths in secure detention fell by 24% in March, largely due to a steep decline in placements.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order in March that temporarily suspended the confinement of juveniles who violate probation unless directed by a court order and encouraged eliminating any form of detention or residential placement unless a young person posed a “substantial and immediate safety risk to others.” Acting on Whitmer’s order, which was extended until late May, the Michigan Supreme Court told juvenile court judges to determine which juveniles could be returned home.
Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, the presiding judge of the Oakland County Family Court Division, declined through a court administrator to comment on Grace’s case. In her ruling, she found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the assault and theft charges that led to her probation.
“She hasn’t fulfilled the expectation with regard to school performance,” Brennan said as she sentenced Grace. “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter, to the order, of the probation.”
That June afternoon, a month after the sentencing, Charisse left Children’s Village without seeing Grace, but she did pick up a shopping bag of clothes and toiletries she had delivered days earlier. She said officials had rejected them because they violated facility rules: underwear that wasn’t briefs; face wipes that contained alcohol; a pair of jeans deemed too tight.
Charisse counts each day they’re apart, and that was day No. 33. Another month has since passed, and there could still be months to go before they are at home together again.
Driving home, Charisse had to pull over soon after she turned onto the road leading away from the complex. She sat in a parking lot, sobbing.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She shook her head as tears dampened the disposable blue face mask pulled down to her chin.
“Every day I go to bed thinking, and wake up thinking, ‘How is this a better situation for her?’”
It has always been just the two of them, Charisse and Grace.
Told by doctors that she would be unable to have children, Charisse, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, was shocked when she became pregnant at 44. She has raised Grace on her own after the girl’s father did not want to be involved, she said.
They did everything together: winter sports throughout Michigan, rounds of golf, going to the opera, singing to Tony Bennett on road trips. They even appeared in a “Pure Michigan” tourism ad. As a child, Grace wanted so much to be like her mother that she asked to be called Charisse No. 2.
When Grace hit her preteen years, however, their relationship became rocky. They argued about Grace keeping her room clean and doing schoolwork and regularly battled over her use of the phone, social media and other technology.
By the time Grace turned 13, the arguments had escalated to the point that Charisse turned to the police for help several times when Grace yelled at or pushed her. She said she didn’t know about other social services to call instead. In one incident, they argued over Grace taking her mother’s iPhone charger; when police arrived, they discovered she had taken an iPad from her middle school without permission. At her mother’s request, Grace entered a court diversion program in 2018 for “incorrigibility” and agreed to participate in counseling and not use electronic devices. She was released from the program early, her mother said.
While there was periodic family conflict, Grace has always had strong friendships and is active in her school and community, her mother said. She has helped run programs at church, played saxophone in the school band and composed music, and regularly participated in service projects.
The incident that led to her current situation happened Nov. 6, when someone called the police after hearing Charisse crying “Help me!” and honking her car’s horn. Grace, upset she couldn’t go to a friend’s house, had reached inside the car to try to get her mother’s phone and had bitten her mother’s finger and pulled her hair, according to the police report.
Police released Grace to a family friend to let the two cool down and referred the case to Oakland County court, where an assault charge was filed against her.
Weeks later, she picked up another charge, for larceny, after she was caught on surveillance video stealing another student’s cellphone from a school locker room.
“After I was caught, I felt instant remorse and guilt. I wanted to take back everything I had done,” Grace wrote in a statement to police. She said she had questioned herself even as she took the phone but wanted one after her mother took hers away.
The other student’s mother, who declined to comment for this story, told police she wanted to press charges, although the phone had been returned to her son soon after Grace took it. “My sincere hope is that any punitive action taken in this case be grounded in the goal of providing this student with opportunities for growth, change and future success,” she wrote in a statement to police.
In the months following the two incidents, Grace and her mother participated in individual and family therapy and Grace stayed out of trouble.
Charisse told a court caseworker assigned to the case that other than being irritable and getting “cabin fever” from being shut at home during the pandemic, “nothing significant” had taken place between the mother and daughter. There was no police contact after the November incidents, records show.
The April 21 juvenile court hearing on the larceny and assault charges against Grace was conducted via Zoom since the courts had shut down, with everyone calling in from their homes. Grace connected from her bedroom, her mother from their living room.
It had the familiar awkwardness of many online meetings: dropped audio; a dog barking in the background; participants swivelling in their chairs; the prosecutor losing his connection. (This hearing and others in the case were recorded, and a ProPublica reporter watched them at the Oakland County courthouse last month.)
Ashley Bishop, a youth and family caseworker for the court, told the judge she thought Grace would be best served by getting mental health and anger management treatment in a residential facility. The prosecutor, Justin Chmielewski, said he agreed. Grace’s court-appointed attorney, Elliot Parnes, said little but asked that she be given probation because she had committed no new offenses and because of the risk of COVID-19 in congregate facilities.
Parnes and Bishop declined to comment for this story and Chmielewski did not respond to calls.
Throughout the hearing, Grace took her glasses off to brush away tears and wiped her nose with her sleeve. She shook her head, which the judge later criticized as a sign of disagreement but which Grace told ProPublica signaled her disappointment in her past behavior. She raised her hand a couple times and asked, in a small voice, “Can I just say something please?”
“My mom and I do get into a lot of arguments, but with each one I learn something and try to analyze why it happened,” she said. “My mom and I are working each day to better ourselves and our relationship, and I think that the removal from my home would be an intrusion on our progress.”
Brennan admonished Grace for the fights with her mother, her thefts at school and behaving in a way that required police to come to their home. “Police,” she said. “Most people go through their entire youth without having the cops have to come to their house because they can’t get themselves together.”
But, citing the pandemic, Brennan decided not to remove Grace from her home and instead sentenced her to “intensive probation.” The terms of the probation included a GPS tether, regular check-ins with a court caseworker, counseling, no phone and the use of the school laptop for educational purposes only. Grace also was required to do her schoolwork.
“I hope that she upholds her end of the bargain,” Brennan said at the end of the hearing.
Schools across the country weren’t prepared for the abrupt turn to remote learning. Grace’s school, Groves High School, in one of the most well-regarded districts in the state, was no different.
In mid-March, thinking the closures might last for only a month, the district initially offered optional online activities and then recessed for an already-scheduled weeklong spring break. Soon after, Whitmer announced that schools would end face-to-face instruction for the rest of the year. The Birmingham Public Schools superintendent asked families for patience as schools moved to an online curriculum in mid-April and promised flexibility in their support. Officials said student work would be evaluated as credit/no-credit.
The initial days of remote school coincided with the start of Grace’s probation. Charisse was concerned that her daughter, who was a high school sophomore and had nearly perfect attendance, would have trouble without in-person support from teachers. Grace gets distracted easily and abandons her work, symptoms of her ADHD and a mood disorder, records show. Her Individualized Education Plan, which spelled out the school supports she should receive, required teachers to periodically check in to make sure she was on task and clarify the material, and it allowed her extra time to complete assignments and tests. When remote learning began, she did not get those supports, her mother said.
Days after the court hearing, on April 24, Grace’s new caseworker, Rachel Giroux, made notes in her file that she was doing well: Grace had called to check in at 8:57 a.m.; she reported no issues at home and was getting ready to log in to do her schoolwork.
But by the start of the following week, Grace told Giroux she felt overwhelmed. She had forgotten to plug in her computer and her alarm didn’t go off, so she overslept. She felt anxious about the probation requirements. Charisse, feeling overwhelmed as well, confided in the caseworker that Grace had been staying up late to make food and going on the internet, then sleeping in. She said she was setting up a schedule for Grace and putting a desk in the living room where she could watch her work.
“Worker told mother that child is not going to be perfect and that teenagers aren’t always easy to work with but you have to give them the opportunity to change,” according to the case progress notes. “Child needs time to adjust to this new normal of being on probation and doing work from home.”
Five days later, after calling Charisse and learning that Grace had fallen back to sleep after her morning caseworker check-in, Giroux filed a violation of probation against her for not doing her schoolwork.
Giroux told the prosecutor she planned to ask the judge to detain Grace because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community,” according to the case notes.
Grace has said in court and in answers to questions from ProPublica that she was trying to do what was asked of her. She had checked in with her caseworker every day and complied with the other requirements of intensive probation, including staying at home and obeying all laws. She had told her special education teacher that she needed one-on-one help and began receiving daily tutoring the day after the probation violation was filed.
Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming whether Grace was meeting her academic requirements. She emailed Grace’s teacher three days later, asking, “Is there a certain percentage of a class she is supposed to be completing a day/week?”
Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”
“Let me be clear that this is no one’s fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming,” she wrote. Grace, she wrote, “has a strong desire to do well.” She “is trying to get to the other side of a steep learning curve mountain and we have a plan for her to get there.”
Giroux declined to comment. Tarpeh told a reporter she was not allowed to discuss Grace’s case.
The May 14 hearing to decide whether Grace had violated her probation, and what would happen if she had, took place at the Oakland County courthouse when the Family Division was hearing only “essential emergency matters.”
Grace’s case was the only one heard in person in the courthouse that day.
Crop of a court document describing Grace's sentence.
On May 14, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan found that Grace was in violation of probation for not submitting schoolwork and ordered that she be detained at Children’s Village in Oakland County, Michigan. (Records provided by Grace’s Family)
Grace’s attorney, concerned about his health, participated by Zoom, though he told the judge it was difficult to represent her without being there. He told the judge he decided not to request a postponement because the family was worried she would detain Grace if they waited for a later court date.
The prosecution called Giroux, the caseworker, as its only witness. In response to questions from Grace’s attorney, she acknowledged she did not know what type of educational disabilities Grace had and did not answer a question about what accommodations those disabilities might require. Her assessment that Grace hadn’t done her schoolwork was based on a comment her mother made to her teacher, which Charisse testified she said in a moment of frustration and was untrue.
Grace’s special education teacher, Tarpeh, could have provided more information and planned to testify but had to leave the hearing to teach a class, according to the prosecutor.
Grace and her mother testified that she was handling her schoolwork more responsibly — and that she had permission to turn in her assignments at her own pace, as long as she finished by the end of the semester. And, Charisse said, Grace was behaving and not causing her any physical harm.
The transition to virtual school had been difficult, Grace testified, but she said she was making progress. “I just needed time to adjust to the schedule that my mom had prepared for me,” she said.
Brennan was unconvinced. Grace’s probation, she told her, was “zero tolerance, for lack of a better term.”
She sent her to detention. Grace was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
From March 16, when Michigan courts began limiting operations to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, to June 29, at least 24 delinquency cases involving youth in Oakland County court resulted in placements to juvenile facilities. Of those, more than half involved young people who are Black, like Grace.
Those numbers, obtained by ProPublica from the Oakland County Circuit Court, reflect long-standing racial disparities in the state and county’s juvenile justice system. From January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland court. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black.
A report released last month, which found inadequate legal representation for juveniles in Michigan, noted that research has shown a disproportionate number of youth of color are incarcerated in Michigan overall. Black youth in the state are incarcerated more than four times as often as their white peers, according to an analysis of federal government data by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that addresses racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
“It is clear that kids of color are disproportionately involved and impacted by the system across the board,” said Jason Smith of the nonprofit Michigan Center for Youth Justice, which works to reduce the confinement of youth. “They are more likely to be arrested, less likely to be offered any kind of diversion, more likely to be removed out of the home and placed in some sort of confinement situation.”
In Grace’s case, too, she was sent to a facility at a time when the governor had encouraged courts to send children home.
At the county-run Children’s Village, which has space for 216 youth in secure and residential settings, the population was down to 80 last week, according to the facility manager. There have been no COVID-19 cases in the youth population and four workers have tested positive from contacts outside Children’s Village, she said.
During March and April, 97 juveniles were released from Children’s Village by court order, said Pamela Monville, the Oakland County deputy court administrator. “We understood the orders and the concerns to stop the spread,” she said. Judges, caseworkers and attorneys worked together to determine “who could go back to the community,” she added.
Juvenile justice experts and disability advocates decried the decision to remove Grace from her home, particularly when “the state gave clear directives that children, and all people, unless it was a dire emergency, were to be kept out of detention,” said Kristen Staley, co-director of the Midwest Juvenile Defender Center, which works to improve juvenile defense across eight states.
Terri Gilbert, a former supervisor for juvenile justice programming in Michigan and a high-profile advocate, said the system suffers from inconsistencies in treatment and sentencing, aggravated by a lack of public information.
“This is too harsh of a sentence for a kid who didn’t do their homework. … There is so much research that points to the fact that this is not the right response for this crime,” said Gilbert, a member of a governor-appointed committee that focuses on juvenile justice. “Teenage girls act out. They get mouthy. They get into fights with her mothers. They don’t want to get up until noon. This is normal stuff.”
Monville said Brennan, a judge since 2008, “made the decision she made based on what she heard and her experience on the bench.”
But officials at the Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, the state disabilities watchdog organization, said they were especially troubled that a student with special needs — one of the most vulnerable populations — was punished when students and teachers everywhere couldn’t adjust to online learning.
“It is inconceivable that, given the utterly unprecedented situation, a court would enforce expectations about what student participation in school means that was not tied to the reality of education during a pandemic,” said Kris Keranen, who oversees education for the group.
Charisse says the “greatest pain and devastation” of her life was watching Grace handcuffed in the courtroom. She got a letter in the mail a few days later:
Handwritten letter from Grace to her mother while detained.
In the first letter to her mother while in detention, Grace wrote, “I want to be a better person.” (Records provided by Grace’s Family)
“I want to change. I want to be a better person. Here I’ve realized how much you care and love me. I’m sorry I took that for granted. Please continue to send me pictures of me and you or just with anyone. I love you mommy and I miss you.”
On Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the end of slavery, Charisse sat alone at her kitchen table, the wall behind her covered with Grace’s childhood artwork. As the country faced a reckoning over systemic racism, the day had taken on increased recognition and Charisse lamented she and Grace couldn’t mark it together as they usually did, attending programs at church or at the Museum of African American History in Detroit.
Charisse made strawberry lemonade with fresh watermelon, a variation on the traditional red Juneteenth drink, and talked to Grace the only way she could, through a video call monitored by a Children’s Village case coordinator. The longest they had ever been separated before was when Grace attended a leadership sleepaway camp for six weeks over the summer.
“Juneteenth is all about freedom and you can’t even celebrate. What do you have? It has been taken away,” she said to her daughter.
Other than three recent visits, they have seen each other only on screen, including during a court status hearing in early June. On that day, Charisse watched as Grace walked into a room at Children’s Village handcuffed and with her ankles shackled, her mother said.
“For us and our culture, that for me was the knife stuck in my stomach and turning,” Charisse said. “That is our history, being shackled. And she didn’t deserve that.”
“I Can’t Breathe.” It Happens at Schools, Too.
Students in Illinois schools said “I can’t breathe” while being restrained at least 30 times over the time period we investigated, according to our analysis of the records. The practice of face-down restraint is still legal in Illinois.
At the hearing, both Grace and her mother pleaded with the judge to return her home. “I will be respectful and obedient to my mom and all other people with authority,” Grace said. “I beg for your mercy to return me home to my mom and my responsibilities.”
The judge, however, sided with the caseworker and prosecutor. They agreed that Grace should stay at the Children’s Village not as punishment, but to get treatment and services. She ordered her to remain there and set a hearing to review the case for Sept. 8. By then, it will be a week into the new school year.
On Juneteenth, Charisse and Grace spoke for their full allotted 45 minutes. Grace wore a light blue polo shirt her mother had dropped off a few days earlier. Her hair was pushed back with a Lululemon headband.
Their conversation began with the mundane: Charisse reminded Grace to use her deodorant, and Grace said she needed to get her glasses fixed. But it landed, inevitably, at the frustration they both feel.
“I want you to write in your journal,” Charisse told Grace. She urged her “not to get too comfortable” in detention. “I want you to do what you are supposed to do, but I don’t want you to feel like this is your new norm.”
Grace’s initial weeks in detention were “repetitive and depressing,” she recently told ProPublica in response to written questions.
Grace was required to stay in her locked room from 8:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. She couldn’t turn the lights on and off herself and she slept on a mattress on a concrete slab, she said. She passed the time by reading, drawing and watching some TV.
The local school district provided packets of material but no classes. She said that she has not yet worked with a teacher in person or online, and that she meets less regularly with a therapist at Children’s Village than she did at home.
She has since been transferred to a long-term treatment program at Children’s Village, where she has a bit more freedom. Still, she tells her mother, it’s difficult to think about what she’s missing. “Everyone is moving past me now and I’m just here,” she said during the Zoom call.
A Children’s Village case coordinator, listening, tried to be encouraging. “You are doing very well right now,” she said. “Whatever happens, it looks good. You are respectful, you are following the rules.”
Then she told them their time was up.
“Stay strong,” Grace told her mom.
“You stay strong, too,” her mother replied. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
ProPublica is using middle names for the teenager and her mother to protect their identities.
There are unspoken gag orders in child welfare, where, if a parent speaks out, parental rights will be terminated and the child put up for adoption.
One of Mike Duggan's money hustle signs I snatched
because it caused me Post Traumatic Fraud Distress.
NO!
You cannot have any more money.
Do you realize what great lengths I have arduously harrowed just to find out what you did with the Hardest Hit Funds, Neighborhood Stabilization Funds 1 & 2, property taxes and all the other taxpayer funded Public Private Partnerships that allowed the fraud schemes to go on in the exfiltartion and selling off the land patents of the City of Detroit, replete with those fake ass quiet title, mortgage, quit claim, reverse mortgage, blah, blah, blah, and those foreign tiny humans trust funds?
Perhaps, we should ask Alexis Wiley what happened to all that money.
I know where lots of these properties you just gave away are.
Then, you used public money through our institutions of learning to come up with some more fake ass laws, like the ones Ian Conyers introduced to expand that fake ass Detroit Land Bank Authority, to set up more fake ass LLCs, or not, to flip, cash, flip, or for the properies that are too blighted, hand out to your next wave of foreign insurgents, so they can be ready, at a moment's notice, to do the bidding of your political handlers.
What are you going to do with the properties you save?
Give them to the Detroit Land Bank Authority to run them through the property tax, mortgage fraud, money hustle system, again?
I have a better question.
What are you going to do with the land?
More land patents?
More gerrymandering?
Forced migration?
I have a better idea.
How about going after all the fraudfeasors who were just a-stealin' the children, land & vote?
Last time I checked you were still an officer of the court.
I bet Dan Gilbert could help you recover all that $250,000,000 so you do not have to burden the residents of the City of Detroit, again.
Correct me if I err in my assumption, but, do you not still have an active SIGTARP investigation going on for stealin' that money that was supposed to go to saving houses and removing blight?
I had better stop before Mikey forecloses on my property, again.
I hate when that happens because no one in City and County governments, or the "Elected Ones" want to provide me any assistance.
Detroit — A neighborhood improvement plan that would hinge on a $250 million bond proposal on the November ballot was introduced Tuesday by Mayor Mike Duggan and other city officials.
The plan — called Proposal N, as in neighborhoods — would stabilize 8,000 vacant but structurally sound houses and demolish 8,000 structures that can't be saved. The city would commit to a goal of awarding more than 50% of all contracts to Detroit companies.
"This will transform the quality of life in the neighborhoods in this city if we secure 8,000 houses and move families in and get rid of the 8,000 burned-out houses that can't be saved," Duggan said during a press conference. "We believe all of this is possible and we're going to put people to work."
Detroit City Council is expected to consider in the next two weeks whether to put the bond proposal on the Nov. 3 ballot. If voters approve the proposal, bonds would go to market in December, officials said.
According to the city, the bond can be sold without raising property taxes by phasing in new debt payments as other debt drops off.
The latest proposal follows the City Council's rejection last fall of Duggan's previous $250 million plan aimed at erasing blight. At the time, some city council members cited unresolved questions and concerns including a long-running federal criminal investigation into the city’s demolition program. Others called for more inclusion in the hiring of Detroit workers.
Earlier this year, the city hired a leader for its new demolition department and the demolition program shifted July 1 from the control of the Detroit Land Bank and Detroit Building Authority to the city government for the first time in six years.
The new proposal puts higher priority on saving structurally sound houses, officials said. The previous plan was more aggressive on demolitions and called for 19,000 demolitions by mid-2025.
According to the city, there are 14,000 houses that require demolition. Under the latest proposal, 8,000 would be demolished during the next three years. The city plans to seek other funding to complete the rest of the demolitions in 2023 and 2024.
The city has depleted the $263 million it received through the federally funded Hardest Hit program. It was used to fund 15,000 demolitions.
Contractors will be required to either comply with the city's executive order requiring that 51% of all hours on the job be worked by Detroit residents — or pay into the city's job training funds. Another option is to interview Detroiters first from a list of applicants provided by the city's Detroit at Work program.
"We're going to be able to knock down homes in our most challenged neighborhoods, in our most low-income neighborhoods — the areas that didn't see these types of resources in the past," Councilman Scott Benson said.
"We're going to be able to hire our residents who are going to be looking for jobs," he said.
After the $600 a week in extra federal unemployment benefits runs out July 25, Benson said, "You're going to see a great change in people's economic standing within the city of Detroit. It's important that we give people a chance to invest and rebuild their own communities."
City Councilman Andre Spivey said Tuesday that after the council rejected the mayor’s previous proposal, he asked for a more robust plan that would include renovation and provide more opportunities for local demolition contractors.
“I support this plan,” he said. “I’m ready to vote on it when the time does come. I still receive phone calls from residents who live near a vacant house, and it is leaning close to their home. I still have residents who cannot get homeowners insurance on their property because they live in an area where they have too many vacant homes."
Securing the 8,000 houses that would be saved would involve clearing out the structures, installing secure exterior coverings over doors and windows, and fixing holes in roofs.
“It adds value to anybody that wants to buy it," Duggan said. "We’ll probably put $10,000 or so into securing the outside, fixing the roof. That means for anybody who to buy that house, we’ve added $10,000 of value right off the bat. It makes it far more attractive to the community groups. And if you’re a buyer, you can put in plumbing and furnace and not have to be nearly as worried that somebody is going to come in and steal them because we have a secure exterior system in place.”
The plan would putt $90 million toward stabilizing homes and $160 million for demolition.
George Preston, president of the Mohican Regent Resident Association, said Tuesday he’s pleased to hear of the plans. Preston has lived in his eastside neighborhood for almost 40 years. One concern among neighbors is blighted vacant properties, he said.
“We try to do our part in terms of trying to keep it as clean as we possibly can, but we want people in these properties,” he said. “I’m excited when I hear that hopefully this is something that going is coming. We’re going to get people hopefully in these properties, we’re going to get these properties cleaned up and bringing about a vibrant neighborhood.”
Preston said he hopes an increase in residents in the neighborhood would attract more businesses to the area.
Brenda Jones & Detroit Land Bank Authority
behind the obverse Seal of the City of Detroit
FUN FACT! BRENDA JONES CERTIFIED HER OWN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION AS A CITY OF DETROIT ELECTION COMMISSION MEMBER BECAUSE SHE REFUSED TO RESIGN
ANOTHER FUN FACT! BRENDA JONES IGNORED MULTIPLE ELECTION COMPLAINTS OF ELECTION FRAUD WHEN SHE CERTIFIED HER OWN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION ONE MORE FUN FACT! SIGTARP IS INVESTIGATING THE TARP MONEY QUICKEN LOANS CONTRIBUTED TO BRENDA JONES' CAMPAIGN
LAST FUN FACT! BRENDA JONES WAS MEAN TO MY SWEETIE
This article is a nice start, so I shall grade it a C+, just because it did not take the time to identify TARP as the public subsidy nor did it mention the Detroit Land Bank Authority as the vehicle for TARP.
Rashida got some of that TARP money for her campaign, too, you know.
To better foreshadow, think of it like this: Detroit politicians funded their campaigns from the fake ass mortgage and tax foreclosure crisis, then participated in blasphemy to take out a congressional office holder, just so they could run for his seat to cover up the fact that they did what they did - stealin' the children, land & vote.
Let us see if The Intercept, or anyone else for that matter, will bring it up.
IN THE WEEKS leading up to Brenda Jones’s vote in November 2017 to award $250 million in taxpayer funds to billionaire Dan Gilbert and his Quicken Loans empire, the Detroit City Council president cashed $8,000 in campaign checks from current and former executives at Gilbert’s companies. In total, Jones has received nearly $25,000 in campaign contributions from the executives, their spouses, and Quicken’s political action committee, while Gilbert, Michigan’s richest man, has accumulated over half a billion in public subsidies.
The $250 million from the city council allowed Gilbert, the owner and co-founder of Quicken Loans, to continue an ambitious redevelopment of downtown Detroit through his real estate company, Bedrock. In the years that followed — and as Jones collected more Gilbert-linked campaign contributions — the relationship between Jones and Gilbert has only tightened.
Jones is one of just two elected officials, alongside her ally, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, on the board of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. One section of the Trump tax cuts included the bipartisan Opportunity Zone program, which selects low-income census tracts for lucrative tax breaks. The DEGC helped to craft Michigan’s recommendations to the Treasury Department for Opportunity Zone designations that benefited Gilbert. A ProPublica investigation revealed Gilbert’s role in lobbying for the census tract designations, which sparked outrage in Detroit, including a call for a congressional investigation from first-term Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents the city in Congress.
Jones, however, made no public statement as anger rose at Gilbert following the revelations. Jones also stayed silent as Gilbert attracted criticism for refusing to assist the city in collecting income taxes from the new, wealthier residents of Bedrock’s luxury apartment buildings.
Jones and Tlaib faced off in two elections in 2018, one to fill the remainder of former Rep. John Conyers’s term, the second for the nomination to succeed him in the next Congress. Jones won the first, serving for roughly three weeks, while Tlaib won the second, going on to become a high-profile member of the so-called Squad, quickly making headlines declaring that House Democrats would “go in and impeach the motherfucker.”
Related
Brenda Jones Took Illegal Campaign Cash From Donors Doing Business With the City of Detroit
Gilbert, who has been referred to by President Donald Trump as “a great friend,” is the most powerful man in Detroit, and owns vast swaths of the city. But his team responded angrily and attacked Tlaib’s demand for an investigation. “Rep. Tlaib would be well served to spend some time at www.oppzonefacts.com learning the truth behind the false ProPublica narrative before advocating that the government spend the public’s money chasing a ghost story,” a Quicken Loans representative told the local press. Now Gilbert has an opportunity to help a politician deeply enmeshed in the census tract designation as a board member of a powerful local development agency, as opposed to a member of Congress, Tlaib, who demanded a federal investigation into the controversial tax break.
Polls for the August 4 Democratic primary show a tight race.
The Intercept reported last month that Jones had received illegal campaign contributions in her 2017 re-election campaign to the Detroit City Council. Neither Jones nor Gilbert, through Quicken Loans, responded to requests for comment.
GILBERT’S ENTRANCE into Detroit began in 2011 when Quicken Loans moved its headquarters to downtown from Livonia in the Michigan suburbs. In a city that is 84 percent African American, with 35 percent of the city and half of its children in poverty, Gilbert’s role in Detroit’s politics and development have not come without controversy. Community discomfort with Gilbert’s vaunted new status was encapsulated in 2017 when Bedrock ran an ad campaign titled “See Detroit As We Do” featuring overwhelmingly white models.
“Dan throws a tremendous amount of money around in the city,” said Maurice BP-Weeks, who lives in Detroit and is co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy. “He is a political kingmaker. It’s difficult for people to credibly contest him and feel that they can keep their job or their funding because those are the things that are threatened when you take on such a powerful person. If you’re contesting power in Detroit, you’re contesting Dan Gilbert.”
Gilbert is the richest man in Michigan, with a net worth of $7.3 billion.
“The risk here is that a small group of developers can capture a city council or county board and get overpaid to do something they would have done anyways” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, which advocates for transparent and fair municipal subsidies.
“If you’re contesting power in Detroit, you’re contesting Dan Gilbert.”
“For a city like Detroit, it really doesn’t have the luxury of wasting any money,” LeRoy said. “Do you want to put all your eggs in one basket, like Dan Gilbert-sized office parks, or do you try to do other things where you’re not putting so many eggs in one basket — where you’re doing public transit, public infrastructure, health, and education, all the things that benefit lots of employers and don’t put you at risk of any one company’s business plan not working out?”
Between 2011 and 2016, Gilbert and his affiliated companies spent $451 million purchasing parcels of land in downtown Detroit. Gilbert and his companies employ over 17,000 workers in Detroit, making it the city’s largest employer. Of the five lenders that had the highest percentage of foreclosures in the city in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, only Quicken is still extant. As of 2015, half of the properties that Quicken has foreclosed on had become blighted. Gilbert has been a leading advocate of expanded government funding to tear down blighted structures. Last June, Quicken Loans paid $32 million to settle charges brought by the Justice Department that it had approved hundreds of loans for unqualified borrowers, and then profited when the borrowers defaulted.
“Dan Gilbert and Brenda Jones are not looking out for the residents,” said Charlevoix VIllage Association President Toyia Watts, a community organization that led the opposition to the 2017 giveaway. “They’re not putting money in the pots for fixing up homes, give the people that live here the empty lots they’ve maintained. We’ve given developers too much power over the community. They have too much power over our neighborhood. The way they’re making money doesn’t work for us.”
BP-Weeks noted the connection between Quicken’s role in the subprime lending crisis and Gilbert’s role in crafting development policy in Detroit today. “Quicken is the folks that were responsible for the last housing crisis” said BP-Weeks. “For an executive of Quicken making all those decisions including about housing is ridiculous. He should not be making those decisions.”
