Communities of Color Organize against Urban Land Grabs
By Darwin Bond-Graham and Yvonne Yen Liu
he foreclosure crisis has disproportionately impacted communities of color because people of color were sold adjustable T rate mortgages at a higher rate than whites, even where income levels and financial risk were on par. 1 The upshot of this predatory lending practice has been a massive dislocation of workers and families (most of whom considered their homes their only economic asset) side by side with an unprecedented transfer of wealth to financial institutions and the private sphere.
Advocates abroad call this type of activity by a name more familiar to the third world—a land grab. 2 Multina - tional corporations have acquired 15 to 20 million hectares of land in wholesale purchases in the global south to establish large-scale industrial farms for food and bio - fuels. Closer to home, in the Detroit area, speculator John 63 Hantz is trying to purchase 200 acres to create a large cor - porate farm. 3 Indeed, land grabs have been afoot for some time within postindustrial landscapes from where capital has fled in search of cheaper labor. What makes the current to a few wealthy private equity firms. land grabs especially troubling is the opportunistic use of The Bay Area has rapidly emerged as the headquarters the tsunami of foreclosures by banks to seize properties. for many of the most aggressive companies and largest in - Their willful enablers in this transfer of assets have been vestors in the land grab. Oakland-based Waypoint the states and their housing policies, ostensibly created to Homes, founded in 2008, has led the way in developing reduce the number of vacant bank-owned properties by the technology and business model necessary to take ad - converting them into rental units. vantage of the situation. Waypoint is the partnership of two wealthy entrepreneurs who struck up a conversation Foreclosures: Excellent Investment for Some at an investment conference in San Francisco in 2008. A handful of fast-growing real estate management cor - Observing trends in the East Bay, especially in the subur - porations are now stepping into the foreclosure crisis. ban cities, such as Antioch and Concord where foreclosure Backed by billions of dollars in private equity, property rates have been phenomenally high and home values have management companies are viewing the crisis as a rare op - plummeted in half, Doug Brien and Colin Wiel agreed n portunity to amass tens of thousands of single-family to pool their money to buy as many distressed properties homes and convert them into rentals—i.e. long-term as possible. By the end of 2011, Waypoint reportedly had Photo: high-yield investments. Beyond the stresses on families in accumulated about 1,000 foreclosed homes, mostly in neighborhoods experiencing the land grab, this nascent Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. Foreclosure Poster industry—promoted by federal policies—will in all like - In an effort to “scale up” their operation, the firm’s
lihood facilitate the transfer of tens of billions in wealth founders welcomed a $400 million investment from GI Courtesy of occu - from distressed homeowners—largely Black and Latino— Partners of Menlo Park, a politically connected private eq - pysf.org
Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 19 No. 1 — 2012 Popular Power—Public Property
uity group that handles hundreds of millions of CalPERS funds. Execu - tives with GI Partners have said that they intend to back Waypoint’s fore - closure-to-rental mill up to $1 billion. Waypoint has indicated that the focus of its purchases will be in the Bay Area and southern Cal - Although generally praising Waypoint’s entrepreneur - ifornia. ship and innovation, the story does hint at the social costs It is worth noting that many among Waypoint’s senior exacted by this massive transfer of homes into the hands staff were previously with companies that caused the fore - of wealthy investors, noting that upwards of three-quar - closure crisis or were poised to reap rewards from it. Way - ters of residents whose homes are bought out from under point’s chief operating officer, for instance, was a vice them by Waypoint end up displaced. president at Wells Fargo for 11 years and head of its home “Most of the time, occupants have to leave within 15 finance group. The chief financial officer used to work at days of Waypoint’s purchase because they can’t afford the Kenwood Investments, Darius Anderson’s politically con - rent or choose to go. Gordon returns to one residence nected development firm. And until recently, the vice where a family has refused to move out for six months as president of acquisitions was employed by Ridgeback they pursue a legal claim that they’re the victims of mort - Partners—a “real estate investment and development firm gage fraud. No one’s home, but two brand new radio-con - formed in 2007 to take advantage of compelling oppor - trolled toy cars sit under the Christmas tree and family tunities in the distressed residential and land sectors in pictures line the mantle. Gordon sighs. It’s going to take the U.S. market.” 4 Cofounder Wiel is also involved in a more time before Waypoint earns a return on this prop - Panamanian land grab as founder of Rainforest Capital erty.” 64 Management, which has purchased 10,000 acres in According to news reports, Waypoint earned as much Panama’s Mamoní Valley with the intention of developing as a nine percent return on its foreclosure-to-rental invest - an “eco” hotel called Junglewood, and is also developing ments in the last quarter of 2011. multiple energy projects, selling carbon credits, and log - ging timber for sale in international markets. 5 Replicating the Model Land grabs in places like Panama and in Africa have Numerous other real estate management companies, occurred as a form of arbitrage. Wealthy private equity backed by major investors, are seeking to copy the Way - funds and corporations purchase land at prices far below point-GI Partners model in the U.S. where little has been the actual value and derive immense profits from devel - done to prevent or repair the massive foreclosure rates of oping, farming, mining, or leasing—activities not very major banks—even where they are in violation of state different from the Bay Area’s foreclosure-to-rental mill. A and federal laws and regulations. 7 recent Bloomberg Report story about Waypoint’s arbi - San Francisco headquartered Landsmith, LP is target - trage operation began as follows: ing homes in Arizona, where the foreclosure process is n “Ken Major climbs the steps of a county courthouse faster and homeowners have fewer protections owing to in a San Francisco suburb with $500,000 in cashier’s weaker state laws. According to press reports, Landsmith Photo: checks in one hand and a list of addresses in the other. purchased 225 foreclosed single-family homes in Phoenix
Demonstrators Major is a buyer for Waypoint Real Estate Group LLC, in 2011 and is converting them into rentals, hoping to decorate a fore - an Oakland-based investment firm that’s scooping up earn a yield of 14 percent. Also seeking to scoop up fore - closed building at Occupy Real foreclosed homes in California. On this December after - closed homes in hard-hit Arizona is American Residential Estate march in noon, he joins a dozen house flippers as an auctioneer Properties, which reportedly bought 800 homes in the East New York on 8 December 6, starts hawking the latest batch of defaulted properties to Phoenix suburbs in 2011. For expansion, the company 2011. hit the market. Major bids on a three-bedroom house in is reportedly seeking funds from the New York-based cc Brennan Antioch, and after other buyers counter, he wins at Ranieri Partners, whose founder describes himself as the Cavanaugh $147,600.” 6 “father” of the securitized mortgage market. 9
Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 19 No. 1 – 2012 McKinley Capital Partners is another Bay Area firm disposition initiative.” At stake are roughly 83,000 fore - that has been rapidly purchasing foreclosed homes. Ac - closed homes from the government-sponsored enterprises cording to McKinley’s website, the company has invested inventory. 13 While this figure might seem small in com - over $100 million through three funds to purchase nearly parison to the 1.17 million home foreclosures that oc - 400 “distressed single-family homes” in California. 10 curred nationwide in the first half of 2011, 14 the McKinley is backed by New York’s Och-Ziff Capital Man - government’s plans for federally-owned housing poses se - agement, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, entrusted rious problems in terms of racial justice. The inventory of with money from private investors, as well as public pen - Fannie, Freddie, and FHA foreclosures are disproportion - sion systems like CalPERS. ately owned by non-whites and low-income families, and Foreclosure hot spots like California, Arizona, and located in urban minority-majority communities, such as Florida are also investment hot spots for opportunistic Oakland and Los Angeles. private equity groups and hedge funds. Now thanks to The government’s pilot program, unveiled on February policies developed by the Obama administration (in close 27, 2012, targets federally-owned homes in Atlanta, cooperation with private equity and corporate real estate Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Florida managers), the federal government is poised to hand over because these metropolitan areas contain the largest stocks tens of thousands of homes currently owned by the gov - of geographically concentrated REO single-family hous - ernment-sponsored housing enterprises (GSE) and mil - ing. Foreclosed homes held by Fannie, Freddie, and the 65 lions of foreclosed homes owned by banks, to private FSA are especially valuable to private equity because they equity. can be sold in large blocks in single metropolitan regions, allowing companies like Waypoint to profit from Policies Promote Major Housing Grab economies of scale. Such transactions essentially transform The administration’s intentions to feed distressed U.S. traditional single-family homes into massive multi-family housing stock to private equity investors was officially an - apartment housing. nounced on August 10, 2011, when the Federal Housing Federal policymakers see this pilot program as the start Finance Agency (FHFA) put out a request for information of a larger effort to sell off GSE-owned foreclosed homes “to solicit ideas for sales, joint ventures, or other strategies across the U.S. The full program will surely include the to augment and enhance Real Estate-Owned (REO) asset San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento regions, which disposition programs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the accounted for 1,546 Fannie, Freddie, and FSA-foreclosed Enterprises) and the Federal Housing Administration units in December, 2011. As of March, 2012, there were (FHA).” 11 The government’s bias towards the private eq - over 18,000 foreclosed homes in Alameda and Contra uity-funded model of Waypoint and GI Partners was clear Costa Counties alone. 15 in statements, such as these: “FHFA, Treasury and HUD anticipate respondents may best address these objectives Occupy to Liberate the Land n through REO to rental structures.” 12 The FHFA report - Clearly, this is a story of Goliath swallowing up David. edly received 4,000 comments, many of them from the But, in communities of color around the country, people Photo: very corporations and investment firms that hope to earn are organizing—often in conjunction with the Occupy Occupy San billions of dollars from government-owned “distressed” movement—to sling rocks at the ravenous monster. The Francisco homes. first volley included defending the right of families to stay
On February 1, 2012, the FHA finalized plans and in - in their homes while undergoing foreclosure. ©2012 Eric K. vited interested investors to pre-qualify for a pilot “REO More recently, the organizing has been on the offen - Arnold
Race, Poverty & the Environment | Vol. 19 No. 1 — 2012 Popular Power—Public Property
sive, rather than the defensive. On De - The flag accompanied cember 6, 2011, Occupy Our Homes MST leader Janaina Stronza - launched its “Go out of the streets and ke when she visited the into the homes” campaign to expropri - Occupy Wall Street encamp - ate empty buildings and convert them ment at Zuccotti Park last into residences for the homeless and November. 19 “Occupation is a families who have lost their homes to time to grow,” she told the foreclosure. 16 In East New York, organ - assembly. “To grow educa - izers converged to help a family squat a tion, empowerment, and food vacant home. community.” The crowd The movement’s next offensive roared back: “Occupy, Resist, move—perhaps its most radical chal - and Grow!” n lenge to capital—was to occupy build - ings for collective use. The first salvo in this campaign was fired on November 2, 2011, the day of the general strike Endnotes 1. Applied Research Center Report. Race and Recession. May 2009.
Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist and author. Yvonne Liu is a senior research associate at the Applied Research Center.
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