Does this sound like “honesty, integrity and reputation” to you?

While attending an ethics panel discussion around 2016, an economics scholar made the comment “there is no ethics in business.” Lightbulb! Somehow, until that moment, I had not connected an overall systemic injustice with the many little wrongs and outright extraction efforts I had experienced with a number of local businesses. 

For forty years we have labored under an economic theory that values greed, an extreme form of greed that puts profits over people regardless of the outcome on our ecosystem. A form of greed that aligns with destruction, pollution, unregulated capitalism, constructed chaos, instability, defunding government institutions that once sustained people at the lowest income levels from deep poverty, and so on. This power over us, reinforced by disinformation campaigns funded by the very same overlords, deserves a critical review. Not to mention a kick in the ass, and soon.

Housing offers a foundational perspective on business ethics and human life. An apartment rental company that claims it values honesty, integrity and reputation should not employ staff that behave the opposite of its employers’ values. A short list of bad behaviors include the following:

Making sexually suggestive comments to female applicants

Forcibly kissing female tenants

Dismissing complaints about lease violations while violating the rules yourself, particularly rules concerning quiet enjoyment and cleanliness

Repeatedly deleting data resulting in assessment of fees

Unilaterally changing the terms of the lease

Collaborating with residents who share your political views to harass those who do not

Generating a hostile environment

Retaliating against residents who report city code violations like illegally operating an auto repair business on the property

Withholding lease renewals to implement increasing the rent or adding new utilities to the total cost of renting

Polluting the property and stormwater system with toxic chemicals and feces

I read this behavior as manipulative, unethical, immoral, narcissistic, misogynistic, and all other antonyms for “honesty, integrity and reputation.” It resembles what we see everyday in our national elected officials--sowing chaos, confusion, destruction, lies. The MAGA model of behavior where money and ego rule and the rest of us are their property. I'm sure the mind altering drugs help solidify their god-complex. I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find a MAGA manager here. I live in Christian Nationalist ground zero--Colorado Springs. We have four military installations; a network of Christian Nationalist 'churches' where the current mayor was a pastor and the police, sheriff, and other local officials hold their swearing-in ceremonies and funeral services; many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists; white supremacists; Nazi worshippers; and a guy who runs for local office on a resume that includes posting himself on the roof of a city parking garage with an AR-15 aimed at George Floyd protesters below. In collaboration with the police, of course. So, that's the 'local flavor' sprinkled on top of what every renter knows about renting these days from out-of-state foreign entities, like the property owner and employer of the MAGA management where I live. 

The foreign LLC and its MAGA crew utilize the same pattern behaviors observed in private equities that are driving up the cost of everything; they own our health care, housing, pensions, jobs. In housing, the pattern is the same in every city: rent increases not related to amenities or improvements, lack of or minimal maintenance, adding fees for everything you can think of including the apps they use to generate the fees, use of algorithmic apps to flatten rent at the highest rate, threatening tenants with unjustified eviction, harassing tenants to force them to leave, adding utility charges that used to be included in rent, collaborating with local governments to gentrify downtown areas and build 'luxury' housing. If you know, you know and if you don't, you're part of the problem.   

Still, there is a groundswell of sentiment and activity that sounds like we humans have finally had enough, and this dark era is coming to an end. November is almost here. Do not let yourself be silenced when it matters the most. Vote like your life depends on it, because it does. Then we reign in the greedy monsters with taxes on their wealth, regulatory and legal protections for consumers, banning foreign entities from owning property, redefining corporations as entities that cannot contribute to elections or ballot initiatives, and more, so much more. Maintaining a democracy requires constant, determined participation. It starts at home.

The War on Democracy: A View From Ground Zero

 

Photographer: Kent Nishimura for the Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2021

On January 25, 2024, I sat down at my computer with a mission to understand how this country had fallen under the spell of the hatred spewed by MAGAts; hate-speech that I have long recognized as parroting Christian Nationalist discourses typical of Colorado Springs’ leadership and policymakers. Colorado Springs is ground zero in the Christian Nationalist war on democracy and the People.

Living in Colorado Springs is like living in a version of the Truman Show written, produced and narrated by Christian Nationalism (CN). If you’ve read Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming, then you have some idea of the context I’m describing. If you haven’t read her book, I highly recommend it. The CN ‘church’ on the north end of Colorado Springs that those of us not under its spell refer to as the cult, is not the only source of hateful rhetoric which is nothing close to being Christian but is very nationalistic in the sense of white nationalism. No, there is another well-funded, well-organized, and highly active CN branch in Woodland Park, about 40 minutes west of Colorado Springs. It was their annual disinformation revival that I suffered through that January, at least as much as they archived on their website. I want to share what I learned with you here because the snake oil they were selling, and continue to sell, serves as the framework of Project 2025. I am sharing because they have declared a war and I am not hearing enough about CN and its threat to our country. As Sun Tzu said, know your enemy; so, here they are.   

Truth & Liberty 2023: How to Kill a Democracy

With the White House’s dissemination of inflammatory disinformation about an imagined “radical Left,” I invite anyone reading this to watch and listen for yourselves to the vitriol and hatred of a cult in Woodland Park that supported and hosted TP USA at its so-called conferences. Do they sound like they are to the left of anything? The WH is disseminating dangerous rhetoric, meanwhile this “conference” in Woodland Park is underway yet again. You can find it yourself at truthandliberty dot net. Below is my summary and analysis of the 2023 conference.

Summary: The conference ticked all the boxes of cult leadership tactics described in The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan, PhD, a former Moonie turned writer, scholar, and psychotherapist. The Wommack Truth & Liberty coalition have created their own worldview through which all events are interpreted; established their followers as the in-group opposed to the evil out-groups (democrats, LGBTQ+, etc); requested donations or “offerings” and solicited volunteers for future events/protests; created myths establishing their credibility, especially of family members who died and came back to life through prayer; established multiple campaigns, such as recruiting school board candidates, registering church congregations to vote, etc.; distracted attendees from thinking critically by using rapid-paced speech stringing together every sentence with “and,” using repetitive phrases, and altering historical facts to fit their objective; and they one-up the MAGA chant with one that “re”establishes this country under one religious belief, a theocracy. All efforts, every political and issue campaign, need to focus on responding to the lie that the U.S. was once a theocracy, a Christian Republic.

This is a cult and they know what they’re doing. When session speakers, for example Faridi and Porter, delivered loaded language about stolen elections and racist tropes about Muslims, I noted their lack of conviction or belief in what they were saying in contrast with their smirks and smiles as the crowd of around 40 attendees clapped and cheered. Watch a portion of a session and look at the speaker’s eyes, their body language; they are toying with people, manipulating them. Did you ever watch The Manchurian Candidate? This conference is the real-life version.

I noticed a lot of mirroring, Hassan’s word, but pundits use the term “flagging.” Mirroring or flagging is when the speaker accuses the other side of doing something the speaker is actually doing. For example, Connelly talked about the holocaust implicitly equating Nazis to democrats; he stated that lying to people and creating fear was the key to Nazis killing 11 million people and democrats did the same through covid quarantines. It’s actually Wommack et al. lying and creating fear, their objective is to restore the country to what they claim is its original single-religion and religion-based education, to establish a theocracy. The establishment of a theocracy would of course dismantle democracy and result in violence and death of far more than 11 million people.

Throughout the sessions, the cult uses mirroring to delegitimize election processes, education, and other foundational elements of our democracy. However, I sense they are one component of a larger strategy under the old Tea Party apparatus to defund the federal government, specifically the departments overseeing education, healthcare, energy, and environment as promised by several republican presidential candidates in recent history. The Convention of States Action is led by Mark Meckler, the founder of the Tea Party movement. COSAs intent is to establish republican control of the necessary two-thirds of the states per Article V of the Constitution to call a convention and enact their agenda to defund the federal government, specifically the departments responsible for education, healthcare, energy, and environment. COSA, the Freedom Caucus/Tea Party and Truth & Liberty converge on defunding the department of education. This is not to say that cult members are not also engaged in defunding other departments, consider climate change deniers, they likely are, but taking the larger view exposes the broad base of overlapping interests in taking down our democracy. Christian nationalism is driving the anti-government agenda that is rooted in the Southern states going back to the Civil War. It’s not a coincidence that most of the Truth & Liberty speakers are residents of the deep south.

Returning our focus to education, it is imperative to understand that higher education is being used to disseminate disinformation which has a ripple effect on local school districts and other campaigns. There are at least two disinformation spreaders at UCCS, one funded by Koch and the other by Turning Point USA. Koch funded a “research” center at UCCS, headed by faculty of the Political Science Department, in appreciation for inviting and sponsoring Trump’s campaign rallies on UCCS campus in 2016. Koch’s influence is called The Center for the Study of Government and the Individual and is supported by several of Koch’s extremist factions. The first incident that peaked my awareness of Koch’s access to our campus was the dissemination of The Epoch Times to all UCCS email users after 2016. Fast-forward to January 6, 2021, that disinformation rag, Epoch Times, was in the pockets of thousands of insurrectionists. For a few months immediately after the insurrection, I assisted Insurrection Hunters with the identification of symbols, military patches, documents, vendors, and organized groups among the participants. I flagged some papers sticking out of the back pocket of a “cowboy” with a gun tucked into his waistband. Another Hunter identified the papers as The Epoch Times that had been circulated at a rally that morning. The “cowboy” I had worked to identify was later arrested for stabbing someone to death in a park sometime after he returned home—drug deal gone sideways. The feds made a deal with him for information about 1/6. He’s free. I have moved on, but many continued to identify insurrectionists and their work contributed to the arrest and conviction of hundreds of Americans who have been brainwashed. Until the leaders are processed by the justice system, the public, and our democracy--which depends on a well-informed public--teeters on the brink.

In addition to the Koch bros on our campus, a Wommack collaborator Turning Point USA has established a student group at UCCS. I have observed clapboards on campus advertising bible study groups and prayer groups, but I do not recall the name of the student group that organized it. More likely, Turning Point USA at UCCS would recruit protest participants for the upcoming Kingdom to Capitol marches as well as local protests, school district actions, and to serve as poll watchers. Note the word choice, ‘kingdom’; it suggests dominion over the state, aligned with their theocracy over democracy objective.    

The Wommack cult made it very clear that this is a war, they have declared it. Therefore, I am using their war framework to analyze their plan of action. Below, I have outlined the order of battle starting with the strategic level, moving on to the operational level including organizations and leaders, and finally, the tactical level detailing their methods as described by the operational leaders during the conference. I categorized and color-coded the major campaigns: Red denotes congregation voter registration drives, legal action, and policy writing; Orange indicates all direct actions opposing public education; Gold represents anti-abortion actions and dovetails with education on anti-LGBTQ, anti-CRT, etc.; Blue signifies protests/counter-protests and disruption. The campaigns directly involved in the attack on education include a cross-collaboration between the National School Board Coalition/Ted Mische, Christian Home Educators of Colorado/Carolyn Martin, Family Policy Alliance/Autumn Leva, Nehemia Institute, and Faith Wins/Chad Connelly.

    

Truth & Liberty Objective: To control communities through the church, ultimately (re)establishing a theocracy.

OOB:

Unit	Task	Leader
Faith Wins	Register church congregations to vote, targeting all “early states”	Chad Connelly
First Liberty	File religious liberty lawsuits to roll back previous Supreme Court decisions on religious displays in public spaces/government buildings, and schools	Unk (attorneys)
Wallbuilders	Draft “pro-family” legislation & review education standards for legislators & lobbyists	David Barton
Pacific Justice	School board policy templates, in 31 states	unk
National School Board Coalition	School board candidates, propaganda about sexualizing kids	Ted Mische
Christian Home Educators of Colorado	Homeschooling, bible-based education, parental rights, propaganda about original theocracy	Carolyn Martin
Family Policy Alliance	Defund public education, religious liberty lawsuits	Autumn Leva
The Life Network	Anti-abortion actions	Rich Bennet
Turning Point USA Faith	Protests	Lance Williams
American Pastor Project	Train pastors to organize churches	Lucas Miles

 

 

Strategies:

·         Elect leaders with a “biblical worldview”—congress, state legislatures, school boards, etc.

·         Defund public education, replace it with home-schooling and bible-based education

·         Engage government/teachers/school board in lengthy, expensive court processes

·         Disorient the public with disinformation and protests across all operations and campaigns

Operations:

·         Christian voter registration drives in churches--Chad Connelly, Faith Wins

·         File lawsuits demanding religious liberty—First Liberty

·         Lobby legislators and monitor education legislation in all 50 states—David Barton, Wallbuilders’ ProFamily Legislative Network; Pacific Justice; First Liberty

·         Recruit, train, and vet school board candidates—Ted Mische, National School Board Coalition

·         Privatize education--Carolyn Martin, Christian Home Educators of Colorado; Autumn Leva, Family Policy Alliance attorney; Nehemiah Institute

·         Close all abortion service provider locations—Pueblo pastor Quinn Fryberg; Rich Bennet, The Life Network

·         Kingdom to the Capitol marches--Lance Williams, Turning Point USA Faith and Shawn Foit; Book bans, school board action--John Amanchukwu

·         Provide resources and networking for pastors to organize churches--American Pastor Project, Lucas Miles   

Tactics:

·         Collaborate with pastors in churches to register their congregations to vote, prioritize all of the early states

·         Use poll watchers to target voter turnout and challenge validity of every ballot cast in real time, but charm election staff with offers to help and to pray for them so they collaborate willingly

·         Harass school boards with fear messaging (“they’re coming for your kids” “they’re coming for your churches”), book bans, and oppose sex education

·         Lobby for parental rights, pathway to homeschooling and defunding public education

·         Collaborate with a legislator to challenge education standards that do not comply with “biblical worldview”

·         Spread gospel in Muslim nations

·         Broadcast alternative facts about a time when America had common values and a common faith

·         Recruit school board candidates through face-to-face interaction in the community, churches, and both political parties

·         Frame unwilling candidates as “imperfect people” but with righteous intent

·         Recruit through propaganda about RFID chips in student IDs so predators can track your kids, lies about kids being taught to make illicit drugs in chemistry class and satanic temples teaching in school classrooms

·         Establish homeschooling as an alternative to public schools, pathway to privatizing public education

·         Repeat message that America was established on one religion, taught in the home, the school, and the church

·         Advocate for parental rights as opposed to public education, religious liberty as opposed to secular/inclusive education, and home schooling as opposed to public education

·         Organize anti-abortion protests, file lawsuits against abortion providers, force closure of women’s health clinics that provide abortions

·         Promote ideation that life begins at inception

·         Advocate for Heartbeat legislation across the country in collaboration with Janet Porter the election denier

·         Train pastors to respond to social issues using Charis as a model to gaslight authorities, meaning government and police, with prayers for their souls instead of protesting their order-following behavior

·         Oppose globalism and one-world doctrines with sovereign nation doctrine, specifically the sovereignty of the U.S. and of Israel    

 

Summary of The Propaganda Team (platforms range from Fox News to Truth & Liberty radio and their followers’ blogs and podcasts):

Lucas Miles, American Pastor Project—pastor at Influence Church, and propagandist for epic times church and church boys podcast

Alex McFarland—propagandist Truth and Liberty radio

David Barton, Wallbuilders—propagandist on early American colonies and bible-based education

Jeff Anderson—Cong. Lamborn’s Senior Adviser for Community Outreach, pro-Israel propagandist and political insider

Elizabeth Muren—propagandist and screenwriter on banning abortion

Janet Porter—legislative activist/organizer for abortion ban, election-denier

Mohamad Faridi, Destination USA—propagandist for one-world Christian religion, anti-Islam

Richard Harris—propagandist in chief of Truth and Liberty radio

There you have it. As we face the 250th birthday of this country, sullied by a cult working from the inside to complete the insurrection it started in 2021, whatever the motivations and faults of its beginnings, this country is ours and no one will take it from us if we don't let them. Check often that you are registered to vote. Expect shenanigans and act accordingly.  

When Police Shrug, Neighbors Explode

Conflicting calls on “excessive noise” left quiet enjoyment unprotected—violence followed.

Last week, I went to the courthouse to file for a restraining order against the violent offender next door—someone who has repeatedly, persistently, and aggressively harassed me for over a year. 

While filling out forms, a young woman I’ll call Mimi glanced at me and shared that the forms seem like a lot but she had been through this before and getting an order for protection is not as grim as it appears. Mimi shared that she had been attacked by her downstairs neighbor. She showed me deep, red scratches across her arms, chest, and face, including scratches across her eyes from her forehead to her cheeks. Shocking to say the least. She shared that she and her school-aged son had been moving into an apartment that she loved—high vaulted ceiling, wood tiled floors, lots of space compared to her previous apartment.

Next, she showed me footage from the camera she put in her living room window looking down on the parking lot. A woman approached Mimi in an aggressive manner—bobbing her head and waving her arms. The attack ended with Mimi’s legs sticking out of her window as she had stretched her body away from the attacker’s claws. Again, shocking.

Then more photos—multiple police vehicles responding to repeated calls for service made by her downstairs neighbor since she began moving in. One image showed about six cruisers lined up in the parking lot.

Mimi said that while she was moving, the neighbor repeatedly called police to report excessive noise and requested welfare checks on her. She insisted she was just living her life.

On one call for service, the responding officer told Mimi she was doing nothing wrong. On another, the responding officer had spoken with the neighbor downstairs first and personally witnessed the excessive noise. When the officer went upstairs to speak with Mimi, the officer told her, “Whatever you were doing up here, it was very loud.” 

Mimi explained that she was moving heavy boxes of books and asked the officer, “Do you expect me to bend down and set each box on the floor?” She didn’t share with me what the officer advised. But maybe my raised eyebrows said everything because my brain was screaming, “Hell yes you better bend your damn knees, squat down, and place each 50 pound box of books on the floor!!!”

On what planet is it okay to drop multiple 50 boxes of books on your neighbor’s ceiling? She’s frankly lucky all she ended up with were a few scratches. Instead of a restraining order what she needs is self-restraint.

The example she’s setting for her child explains a lot about how we ended up where we are as a society. We didn’t get here overnight. We’ve been drip‑fed hyper‑individualism and blinded by the idea that personal convenience outweighs collective responsibility—for decades.

Forty years of unfettered markets and “every person for themselves” thinking has consequences. We’re living in them now.

Still, I found myself cautiously hopeful after the most recent election results. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s done watching unchecked entitlement masquerade as victimhood. 

Maybe more of us are finally asking where the line between me and we actually belongs.

Caveat venditor, slumlords!

 

I have lived in cities across the US, from Las Vegas to D.C and a few in between, and I have never had a bad experience with a property manager until I moved to Colorado. What I have been through brought out my activist side.

In 2019, I testified in support of a Safe and Healthy Homes bill to strip away the landlord's presumption of good intentions in Colorado landlord-tenant law to make us equal in the eyes of the law; the bill also added habitability standards. My testimony described a nightmare situation in 2008 followed by another slumlord situation a few years later and I am still testifying for renter's rights today. Weak consumer protection in Colorado is not new, and it's time to end the exploitation. I'm sharing my testimony from 2019 and hope you will share your stories.

“I want to tell you about my personal experiences with substandard housing and unscrupulous landlords. In 2008, I moved into an apartment in Colorado Springs that was affordable based on my income. In the middle of a cold winter night, I woke up so dizzy and sick that I could not stand. I crawled across the apartment to the front door, opened the door, and fell out across the threshold into the snow. When my head cleared up enough that I could stand again, I opened every window in the apartment and shut off the heater that was burning bright orange flames. The next day, the manager was reluctant to tell me what had happened but the guy that did the work told me he didn't know how I was still alive. He informed me that the gas unit had been red-tagged by the City as hazardous and should not have been used until it had been repaired and inspected. I was that close to being a casualty of carbon monoxide poisoning because my life was not worth the cost to repair a red-tagged gas heater. I was eventually able to move to a larger apartment complex but left when the lease was up because management increased rent by $200 per month which was not affordable.

That move led to my second experience with a slumlord. On moving into an apartment in Fountain, I noted a long list of needed maintenance and repairs including apparent mold in a bathroom wall and ceiling, loose tiles around the tub, a broken window that could not be closed or locked, a sliding patio door that did not have a lock, and other problems. A month went by, then another with nothing but excuses from the manager.

Early the day after Thanksgiving, as I ran the water in the bathroom sink to brush my teeth I noticed the drain was sluggish, then the toilet bowl started to gurgle and back up with brown-colored water. The same gurgling sound crept under the bathtub followed by a stench, then debris and brown water—technically, greywater. I heard people running in the hall trying to figure out how to shut off the water main as greywater filled the bathtubs, sinks, and toilets of every apartment on the first floor. Someone finally reached the property owner. He was not eager to leave his $500,000 home in Monument on a holiday weekend to deal with a maintenance issue at his slum property in Fountain. When he finally arrived, about six hours later, he said he would wait until Monday to call a plumber because the repair would already be expensive; calling a plumber on a holiday would cost even more. I took out my phone and started dialing the local news, other neighbors made threats that I won’t repeat. He relented, but it took the rest of the weekend to get some kind of repair completed and the water back on. Not once did the owner offer to provide water or some other place to stay; he left us to live in that muck for three days.

In either of these situations, if I had an equal legal right to enforce the terms of the lease contract then I would not have faced retaliation or been forced to move out. But that's what happened to me, both times. I didn't choose to live in these places for any reason other than it was affordable based on my income. Rent in the Springs has increased year over year and moving expenses every year or two adds a greater burden, especially given the shortage of affordable housing.

All this bill is about is fairness. This is a health and consumer protection issue. No one should have to live in unsafe or unsanitary conditions because they can’t afford to move elsewhere or to live in a more modern property. I urge the committee to pass this bill. Thank you for your time.”

Safe and Healthy Homes was signed into law. As for the slumlord who hid needed repairs to a gas heater and almost killed me, he died on a tour bus in California when they were hit by a mudslide. The slumlord who left us swimming in shit over Thanksgiving weekend not only sold off the Fountain property but also several Victorian homes in downtown Colorado Springs after the Colorado Springs mayor was informed of that slumlord’s dirty deeds in Fountain. #FAFO, I guess. Never give up, never give in.

What My Renting Experience Taught Me About Who Really Owns My City

 

I have been working on my Colorado Springs housing study for the past few months, in between mini-dramas next door and property management harassment. I have learned that much of my renting experience is explained by foreign entity ownership of rental housing: their use of apps to increase rent (not based on amenities or improvements to the property, just plain greed), hiding ownership behind LLCs, using ratio utility billing to hide other unrelated expenses, polluting the ground water with products related to illegal auto repair work, manipulating app features to generate fees & change lease dates/terms, and harass and bully anyone who challenges their extraction scheme. Actually, one-hundred percent of my experience is explained by foreign LLCs owning rental housing.

I framed my examination of Colorado Springs housing policy and developers’ websites through the lens of financialization/neoliberal economic theory to better understand decision-makers’ perception of housing needs. Next, I searched the same source documents for other participants in the decision-making and found the rest of us were not included. We were spoken about but not asked what we needed or what our vision was for our city and neighborhoods. Long story short: when I looked at household characteristics and housing type, I found renters were bearing the heaviest housing cost burden, meaning paying more than 30% of household income on housing alone. No other basic needs, just the roof over our heads. And yet, no one asked us. That is not a democratic process, it is a hierarchical paternalistic entity.

How can Colorado Springs justify to its residents that building more apartment complexes for foreign entity owners to use to extract as much profit for themselves and as little safety and security for us? I say it cannot. Yet Colorado is among the 10 states with the highest number of private equities draining our pockets, and not just in housing. Private equities run our health care, public pensions, and private sector workforce. I can’t share my study here yet, but here’s a report about private equities in Colorado: https://privateequityrisk.org/state/colorado/

If you open the link you can find your state in the drop-down and learn how equities are shaping affordability in your home. Does my experience sound familiar to your own? Please share your story.

Rental Housing in an Antisocial Environment

I’ve heard some of the local NIMBY group members complain at City Council public meetings about overcrowding, heavy traffic, and other typical growth issues when apartment complexes are planned for development pretty much anywhere in the city. But when one of the men complained about window air conditioners decreasing his property value, I was stumped. I had to think about that for a minute. What was he really complaining about? Maybe it wasn’t appearances but behavior. Why can’t we talk about behavior? It’s necessary to talk about behavior when tax dollars are funding so much as a nickel (because we don’t have pennies anymore) toward housing developments.

If this neoliberal economic hellscape we’re living in had a mantra it would be “I will do whatever I want!” That attitude is reflected in the poor living conditions of every Foreign LLC owned and managed rental apartment complex in the city, not just those built for section 8.

Constructing housing for a specific program need does not solve the problem of affordability when the attitude among those who “do whatever I want” destroys the property they live in and the neighborhood around it. And this attitude prevails at Foreign LLC owned and managed apartment complexes. The appearance of window air conditioners is not the worst thing you’re going to find at these apartment complexes. Antisocial behavior is the bigger concern, and it seems like city development plans lack robust situational awareness. Here’s what it looks like when neoliberal laissez faire economics kicks the shit out of civility and common sense; things I see on any given day:

>>kids run screaming around the parking lot and in between cars, throw rocks, vandalize personal property, kill landscaping plants, break branches off the trees, leave bikes and scooters and toys in the middle of the parking lot, cuss at and beat up other kids, speak disrespectfully at all the adults who live here, etc.

>>adult-age tenants disrupting quiet enjoyment by letting their dogs bark without correction

>>exposing neighbors to the toxic effects of smoking and drug use

>>violating quiet hours with loud conversations and stomping their feet, slamming doors and cabinets

>>throwing objects against shared interior walls, pounding on the walls

>>polluting the groundwater by operating illegal auto shops

>>parking in the fire lanes

And this is happening in what is called “market-rate” apartments. The problem is, the owner/management company is a foreign LLC.

A Foreign LLC is only interested in extracting profit from these properties so they promote antisocial behavior by not taking corrective action or in some cases, directly participating in it themselves. The combination of antisocial tenants and antisocial foreign LLCs adds up to uninhabitable living conditions and the curb appeal of a junk yard. 

Rather than fund large apartment complexes, spend our tax dollars on accountability measures: ban Foreign LLCs from owning and/or managing rental properties; establish a rental licensing program for accountability and retention of what remains of habitable rental housing; prioritize small starter homes for retirees wanting to downsize and use their equity for their personal needs, and for individuals who want to secure their financial future with home ownership. The purpose of housing is not to accumulate wealth for asset managers, but to secure our own personal wealth. Constructing apartment complexes does not contribute to individual financial security or stability and is not sustainable model for the development of a thriving city.