You know, having raised four daughters, and being fond of their spouses, I like to refer to them as a lot of men do, as "the sons I never had." But Donald Trump already has two sons, and his son in law, Jared Kushner, is at least as bad, if not worse than either of them.
NBCNews is reporting on the lengths to which the Kushner company would go to turn a quick buck. Actually, it wasn't even as far as I have to walk to get to the nearest Walmart. All they had to do was lie to city regulators. In 2015, the company bought three apartment buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their plan was to renovate the buildings, and then rent out the units to more upscale tenants, then sell the buildings for a quick profit to new owners. There was only one problem with that plan.
The problem was that the buildings had a lot of tenants who had rented under subsidies with city "rent control" restrictions. Even if the Kushner's renovated and gentrified the buildings, under the rent control restrictions, they couldn't oust the current tenants to rent the units to more upscale tenants.
So they did it the old fashioned way, they lied their asses off. The improvements they wanted to make required city permits, and one of the questions on the permit was whether or not the building had rent control tenants. Answering that question "yes" put additional restrictions in place,including restrictive rules on construction crews, and unscheduled "sweeps" by city inspectors to ensure that rent controlled tenants were not being harassed to leave. Records show that the Kushner company had inherited as many as 94 rent controlled tenants from the previous owner in the three buildings. So, the Kushner company simply checked the "no" box, and the result was predictable;
Instead, current and former tenants of the Queens buildings told the AP that they were subjected to extensive construction, with banging, drilling, dust and leaking water that they believe were part of targeted harassment to get them to leave and clear the way for higher-paying renters.
The plan worked like a charm. Within two years of buying the three buildings, the renovations were completed, and the Kushner company sold them for $60,000,000, nearly doubling their original investment. And the rent control families they pushed out into the street? Well, I hear the Port Authority bus terminal is nice this time of year.
Like most scandals, finding one thing gets investigators looking, and they often find other things. It turns out that th8is isn't the only time the Kushner company has used harassment tactics to get rid of less fortunate tenants to turn a quick dirty buck.
The Housing Rights Initiative of New York has taken a deeper dive into records from the Kushner company, and it shows a stunning greed at the cost of human dignity. from 2013-2016, the group found more than 80 falsified applications regarding rent controlled tenants, covering 34 buildings spread across the city, and affecting more than 300 rent control recipients. The Kushner excuse is the usual nickel plated bullshit, that it pays an outside contractor to fill out the forms that deal with the city. They also point out that Jared's signature appears on none of the forms.Yeah, and Tony Accardo's signature never actually appeared on a "contract" for a mob "hit" in Chicago either, so I guess he wasn't involved.
One thing I would like to point out. The records showed dishonest activity on the part of the Kushner company spanning a time period from 2013-2016. Jared Kushner married Ivanka Trump in 2009. Think that maybe the old man was giving the snot nosed kids a few business pointers over bacon cheeseburgers and fries at dinner? Remember the old saying, "The family that preys together, stays together."
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.Cross posted on The Trump Impeachment.