Steve Williams - Former Congressional Candidate Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, we're talking about code Red with Steve Williams, former
congressional candidate seven twenty two here in Houston's Morning News.
Welcome to the show, Steve. I saw your story in
Red State about how Democrat run cities like Washington, d C.
For example, and others have been taking over commercial properties
for redevelopment and using tax taxpayer dollars to buy up

(00:24):
these buildings, which I guess they ultimately own.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yes, Jimmy, thank you for having me on. What they're
doing is is, especially here in California and Los Angeles
and San Francisco, we have vacancy rates in the office
buildings that are north of thirty percent in our downtown districts.
And what we're starting to see across the nation is
local governments using taxpayer money to purchase these buildings under

(00:55):
the guys of revitalization or affordable how and utilizing those
to those acquisitions to hand them off to their developer
buddies in order to convert these buildings into residential use. So, really,
if a de facto land grab by the government under

(01:18):
the guise of, like I said, revitalization or affordable housing,
and here in California, it's probably made it out, the
stories made it out there. But last year our state
auditor found that twenty four billion dollars was unaccounted for
and addressing our affordable housing slash homeless crisis, homelessness crisis,

(01:41):
which really has just been one big hustle that the
government's been doing with the nonprofit organizations and basically laundering
this money for kickbacks and bribes, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yike's the one thing that could make that story wars
would be if they were confiscating these buildings declaring eminent
domain in order to build affordable housing. They haven't gone
to that level yet, have they.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
They have not, but you know that that's coming next.
In fact, we had one situation here, if you recall
the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict back in
the nineties, we had an entire block in south central
Los Angeles that burnt up and the developer wanted, or

(02:31):
they should say the property owner worked for decades after
those riots to deliver something in the redevelopment that the
community wanted, and in that in that specific case, the
community wanted a big retail development. We have something that's

(02:51):
been built out here over and near the Hollywood area
called the Grove. If any of you been out in
Los Angeles, it was developed by Rick Caruso, who ran
for mayor against Karen Bass's last election cycle. And what
happened is the County of Los Angeles ended up using
its eminent domain power to take that property and convert

(03:14):
it into an affordable housing and charter school as well
as a metro bus station, and totally didn't listen to
the community which wanted the retail development, and a lot
of people in the community weren't happy. But that has happened,
so there is precedent for that eminent domain so we

(03:36):
very well could see that take place in the future.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
I would think, you know, especially in a place like
Los Angeles, affordable housing is probably a good opportunity for somebody.
So my question would be, if you are the owner
of an office building that is half vacant, why wouldn't
you on your own convert that office building into affordable housing.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
That's a great question because the city, the county, the
state of California will actually pay you more. In fact,
we have a situation in the city of Torrance, that
is a suburb of Los Angeles where we have an
Extended Stay America Hotel that it just came out the

(04:18):
City of Torrance, the city council, the community did not
want this property to be acquired by the state under
its Cavin Newsom's Project Home Key and to be converted
into a permanent support of housing for chronic homeless people.
The county came in County supervisors led by janishn a Democrat,

(04:42):
and overrode the City of Torrance's wishes and is moving
forward with the acquisition and conversion of this property. The
reason why this property owner is willing to sell is
because the property has been appraised at ten million dollars
and the county is going to pay thirty million dollars

(05:03):
for the property.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Oh my god, So the taxpayers.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
That's why the tax bearers property owners.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, the taxpayers only are not having their wishes of
how they want developing to occur followed by government. They're
they're seeing their dollars wasted by paying in this case,
three times what a building is worth. That's crazy, just.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Crazy, absolutely and all four where the City of Torrance has,
according to the County of Los Angeles' own homeless dashboard
that tracks point in time homelessness in the city of Torrance.
There is less than fifty people that are unhoused, and

(05:42):
they want to build one hundred and twenty or convert
this hotel to one hundred and twenty unit facility. So
why are we paying three times the amount of money
to have one hundred and twenty units for fifty one
house people?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Thanks? No sense it all, Steve. Thanks for telling us
your story, and I wonder so many of your fellow
Californians are headed in this direction. Steve Williams's former congressional candidate,
joining us at seven twenty eight. Let's take a look
at your money.