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Something Baltimore Would Love To Ditch: Decrepit 'Kushnerville' Housing
Huffington Post, July 28, 2019
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/jared-kushner-elijah-cummings-donald-trump-baltimore-kushnerville_n_5d3cf3e0e4b0c31569ebebf6
Something Trump-Besieged Baltimore Would Love To Ditch: Decrepit 'Kushnerville' Housing
If the president wants to see "disgusting" maybe he should check out some of his son-in-law's Maryland apartments.
After a series of vicious attacks on their home by their own president, proud Baltimoreans are standing by their city. But there is something local they would likely be happy to ditch: decrepit “Kushnerville” housing provided by Donald Trump’s own son-in-law, who has been blasted by tenants in the local press as a “slumlord.”
(snip) Jared Kushner’s many Baltimore housing projects — which he continues to own even as he works as a senior White House adviser — have racked up hundreds of building-code violations in Baltimore County in the kind of conditions that Trump hints at.
(snip) A scathing investigation in 2017 by ProPublica and co-published by The New York Times — headlined “The Beleaguered Tenants of Kushnerville” — slammed the multiple projects purchased by Kushner Cos. when it was helmed by Jared Kushner and managed by a company subsidiary. Kushner Cos. bought up some 15 complexes, almost all of them in or near Baltimore, housing as many as 20,000 people, according to ProPublica. None of the housing complexes are in Cummings’ district but several are close enough to share a ZIP code, Bloomberg reports, and many house African-Americans,
The investigation examined charges of decrepit conditions and lawsuits filed against tenants when they tried to move out. One court case described a leaking bedroom ceiling, maggots in the living room carpet and raw sewage spewing form the kitchen sink in a complex called “The Cove.” It’s the kind of apartment in which “no human being” would “want to live,” to quote Trump’s comment about Cummings’ Baltimore district.
After a series of vicious attacks on their home by their own president, proud Baltimoreans are standing by their city. But there is something local they would likely be happy to ditch: decrepit “Kushnerville” housing provided by Donald Trump’s own son-in-law, who has been blasted by tenants in the local press as a “slumlord.”
(snip) Jared Kushner’s many Baltimore housing projects — which he continues to own even as he works as a senior White House adviser — have racked up hundreds of building-code violations in Baltimore County in the kind of conditions that Trump hints at.
(snip) A scathing investigation in 2017 by ProPublica and co-published by The New York Times — headlined “The Beleaguered Tenants of Kushnerville” — slammed the multiple projects purchased by Kushner Cos. when it was helmed by Jared Kushner and managed by a company subsidiary. Kushner Cos. bought up some 15 complexes, almost all of them in or near Baltimore, housing as many as 20,000 people, according to ProPublica. None of the housing complexes are in Cummings’ district but several are close enough to share a ZIP code, Bloomberg reports, and many house African-Americans,
The investigation examined charges of decrepit conditions and lawsuits filed against tenants when they tried to move out. One court case described a leaking bedroom ceiling, maggots in the living room carpet and raw sewage spewing form the kitchen sink in a complex called “The Cove.” It’s the kind of apartment in which “no human being” would “want to live,” to quote Trump’s comment about Cummings’ Baltimore district.
Who would rent out the kind of apartments 'no human being would want to live in'? People who have long since lost their humanity, if they ever had any.
13 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’
Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-beleaguered-tenants-of-kushnerville
snip
A search for “JK2 Westminster” in the database of Maryland’s District Court system brings back 548 cases in which it is the plaintiff — and that does not include hundreds of other cases that have been filed in the name of the company’s individual complexes. The vast majority of these cases have been filed by a single small law firm in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills. The law office of Jeffrey Tapper specializes in “collections” work, with an emphasis on landlord-tenant cases. It has represented several other real-estate management companies, including Sawyer, which retains a stake in many of the Kushner complexes.
In April, I drove to Owings Mills in hopes of speaking to Tapper. As I waited for him by reception, I overheard an assistant making a call about a new case, saying that the firm would continue to pursue one tenant even if the other person on the lease had filed for bankruptcy. Tapper emerged, a man in his mid-60s with white hair, a paunch and a large smartphone clipped to his belt. Our interview was brief. “I’m not having any conversation with you that has to do with one of my clients,” he said. “I’m not helping you with any of whatever you’re trying to do.”
In the cases that Tapper has brought to court on behalf of JK2 Westminster and individual Kushner-controlled companies, there is a clear pattern of Kushner Companies’ pursuing tenants over virtually any unpaid rent or broken lease — even in the numerous cases where the facts appear to be on the tenants’ side. Not only does the company file cases against them, it pursues the cases for as long as it takes to collect from the overmatched defendants — often several years. The court docket of JK2 Westminster’s case against Warren, for instance, spans more than three years and 112 actions — for a sum that amounts to maybe two days’ worth of billings for the average corporate law firm associate, from a woman who never even rented from JK2 Westminster. The pursuit is all the more remarkable given how transient the company’s prey tends to be. Hounding former tenants for money means paying to send out process servers who often report back that they were unable to locate the target. This does not deter Kushner Companies’ lawyers. They send the servers back out again a few months later.
snip
When I presented JK2 Westminster’s record of litigation to Matthew Cypher, a Georgetown University business professor who used to work for the real-estate giant Invesco, he said it was highly unusual to put so much effort into pursuing former tenants in court. “These people fade into the shadows of the night,” he said. “It’s amazing to me that there’s that much to go after.” Brian Pendergraft, an attorney in Greenbelt, Maryland, who works on both sides of landlord-tenant litigation, told me he had heard of large property-management companies pursuing former tenants for unpaid rent but not going so far as to pursue tenants who predated the company’s ownership of a complex. “I guess you can do it,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s cool.”
But Matthew Hertz, whose Bethesda, Maryland, firm represents landlords and tenants in similar cases, explained to me that there is a logic behind such aggressive tactics. The costs of the pursuit are not as high as you might imagine, he said — people are not that hard to find in the age of cellphones and easily accessible databases. “If I give my process server a name and phone number, it’s generally enough to trace you,” he said. “If I have a date of birth and Social Security number, it’s even easier.” The legal costs can be billed to the defendant as attorney’s fees, if the terms of the lease allow. And garnishing wages is relatively easy to do by court order, assuming the defendant has wages to garnish.
snip
long article, deffo worth the read
Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-beleaguered-tenants-of-kushnerville
snip
A search for “JK2 Westminster” in the database of Maryland’s District Court system brings back 548 cases in which it is the plaintiff — and that does not include hundreds of other cases that have been filed in the name of the company’s individual complexes. The vast majority of these cases have been filed by a single small law firm in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills. The law office of Jeffrey Tapper specializes in “collections” work, with an emphasis on landlord-tenant cases. It has represented several other real-estate management companies, including Sawyer, which retains a stake in many of the Kushner complexes.
In April, I drove to Owings Mills in hopes of speaking to Tapper. As I waited for him by reception, I overheard an assistant making a call about a new case, saying that the firm would continue to pursue one tenant even if the other person on the lease had filed for bankruptcy. Tapper emerged, a man in his mid-60s with white hair, a paunch and a large smartphone clipped to his belt. Our interview was brief. “I’m not having any conversation with you that has to do with one of my clients,” he said. “I’m not helping you with any of whatever you’re trying to do.”
In the cases that Tapper has brought to court on behalf of JK2 Westminster and individual Kushner-controlled companies, there is a clear pattern of Kushner Companies’ pursuing tenants over virtually any unpaid rent or broken lease — even in the numerous cases where the facts appear to be on the tenants’ side. Not only does the company file cases against them, it pursues the cases for as long as it takes to collect from the overmatched defendants — often several years. The court docket of JK2 Westminster’s case against Warren, for instance, spans more than three years and 112 actions — for a sum that amounts to maybe two days’ worth of billings for the average corporate law firm associate, from a woman who never even rented from JK2 Westminster. The pursuit is all the more remarkable given how transient the company’s prey tends to be. Hounding former tenants for money means paying to send out process servers who often report back that they were unable to locate the target. This does not deter Kushner Companies’ lawyers. They send the servers back out again a few months later.
snip
When I presented JK2 Westminster’s record of litigation to Matthew Cypher, a Georgetown University business professor who used to work for the real-estate giant Invesco, he said it was highly unusual to put so much effort into pursuing former tenants in court. “These people fade into the shadows of the night,” he said. “It’s amazing to me that there’s that much to go after.” Brian Pendergraft, an attorney in Greenbelt, Maryland, who works on both sides of landlord-tenant litigation, told me he had heard of large property-management companies pursuing former tenants for unpaid rent but not going so far as to pursue tenants who predated the company’s ownership of a complex. “I guess you can do it,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s cool.”
But Matthew Hertz, whose Bethesda, Maryland, firm represents landlords and tenants in similar cases, explained to me that there is a logic behind such aggressive tactics. The costs of the pursuit are not as high as you might imagine, he said — people are not that hard to find in the age of cellphones and easily accessible databases. “If I give my process server a name and phone number, it’s generally enough to trace you,” he said. “If I have a date of birth and Social Security number, it’s even easier.” The legal costs can be billed to the defendant as attorney’s fees, if the terms of the lease allow. And garnishing wages is relatively easy to do by court order, assuming the defendant has wages to garnish.
snip
long article, deffo worth the read
