Archived link of Vice article.
House Bill 6608
Senate Bill 3402
Hedge Funds Have Invaded the Housing Market. A New Bill Would Ban Them.
A sweeping new bill introduced in Congress would essentially ban hedge funds and private equity firms from buying single-family homes.
Hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment trusts have been snatching up single-family homes all around the country for years, creating concern that homeowners themselves would be pushed even further out of the market. But a sweeping new bill introduced by U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Washington Rep. Adam Smith would, if enacted as written, essentially ban such corporate investors from the practice moving forward.
The bill, which was introduced in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, would over a ten-year period require hedge funds and large institutional investors to completely divest from single-family home ownership. Called the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, the bill would require large funds to sell off 10 percent of their homes each year over a decade.
“We shouldn’t allow private equity firms to buy up vast quantities of American homes and create a generation of lifelong renters. Congress needs to act fast and help promote access to safe, affordable housing and homeownership for American families, not Wall Street,” Smith said in a press release.
The bill would require the Internal Revenue Service to tax large funds that fail to sell off their single family homes over that timeframe. It already has some support in the house, where it is co-sponsored by the U.S. Representatives Nikema Williams and Linda Sánchez, as well as in the Senate, where it is cosponsored by Senator Tina Smith. Advocacy groups Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Consumer Action, and National Consumer Law Center have offered additional support.
The bill defines a hedge fund as partnerships, corporations, or real estate investment trusts that pool funds from investors and have $50 million or more in net value or assets under management, with exemptions for nonprofits and companies primarily focused on construction. Hedge funds failing to report single-family home purchases would face a $20,000 fine that would go toward a housing down payment trust fund. Funds that fail to sell off their housing stock in the timeframe required would face a tax of 50 percent of the fair market value for each property, with funds also going to the housing trust fund.
Merkley and Smith cite data from an Urban Institute report that said in 2011, no single entity owned more than 1,000 single-family rental homes, whereas by June 2022 hedge funds and institutional investors owned a cumulative 574,000 single-family homes. This includes large corporate owners like Invitation Homes, which owns more than 80,000 homes across the country. While corporate investors only own 5 percent of the nation’s single-family housing stock, the ownership is often concentrated in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods and in some neighborhoods, entire blocks have been purchased by investors.
The practice has ramped up since the beginning of the pandemic, with 28 percent of all homes sold in 2022 going to institutional investors according to Pew Charitable Trust. In 2021, a venture-funded company backed by Jeff Bezos and other billionaires also got in on the act.
Institutional investors have also been buying up multifamily apartments, and tenants across the country have been fighting back by forming unions to demand maintenance and push for stronger regulations.
https://knollfrank.github.io/HowBadIsMyBatch/HowBadIsMyBatch.html
Each batches adverse events and outcomes.
A spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) told The Tennessee Star they have “no idea” about the document obtained by Steven Crowder and released on Monday, which he purports to be the actual manifesto of Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale.
They did not specifically address the authenticity of the purported document.
“I have no idea what that is, and at this point in time I don’t think we know what that’s about,” a MNPD spokesman told The Star.
When asked about the specific document Crowder obtained, the spokesman said the department has “no idea who he is, what he’s got, what he’s talking about.”
Crowder claimed to have exclusively obtained the manifesto on Monday morning, and an image of the document quickly began circulating online. In the document purported to belong to Hale, the author wrote “kill those kids,” and disparaged them as “crackers” “going to fancy schools with those fancy khakis [and] sports backpacks.” The author wrote of their desire to “kill all you little crackers” due to their “white privileges [sic].”
The conservative pundit posted several images of handwritten notebook pages, which he claims to be from the manifesto, to his social media. In the document, Crowder claims Hale, who reportedly identified as a transgender male before her death, wrote “I hope I have a high death count” and “I’m ready… I hope my victims aren’t.”
The Star is behind two lawsuits seeking to compel the FBI to release the manifesto, but both federal and local law enforcement have resisted all attempts to obtain the document.
Representative John Rose (R-TN-06) sent a letter to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake more than 200 days ago, calling for its release, and recently condemned law enforcement’s decision to leave political leaders “in the dark” and “completely” ignore his “reasonable request” for the information to be released to the public. He claimed the “lack of cooperation” will hamper “policy solutions that may prevent future tragedies.”
Nitter link so you can see replies w/o twit account.
Screencap of twit.
Dan Whitfield (Democratic Party) is running for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Arkansas. He declared candidacy for the 2026 election.
Biography
Dan Whitfield was born in Clearlake Oaks, California. He earned three associate degrees from Northwest Arkansas Community College, magna cum laude, in 2020. Whitfield's professional experience includes working as an information services intern and as a quality engineer intern with JB Hunt, as an instrumentation technician, in cable, and with Dominos Pizza.
I don't know how he could have acquired this info and I'm sus of it, but it does show their resolve to pin it on MAGA and certainly makes me think it was FF/Planned/MK related.
