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Have you ever had that nightmare where you are standing all alone in a strange place, surrounded by people looking at you silently in deadpan, and there is a man looking down on you with a sneer on his face, saying “We’re going to help you”?

In the dream, you know what it means. They will help you lose all your money, lose your property, lose your ability to walk across the street without their permission, lose your life.  

When said in waking life by a city administration, it takes on a few hidden meanings. For instance, when the city presented Powell with a list of code violations, and gave him 45 days to fix it, they were pretending he was a rich man, and could hire contractors with the snap of his fingers. Then, when the city pretended the deadline had passed when it hadn’t, it was secretly conniving. “We’re going to help you,” the list of violations pretended to say. You would have become a legitimate resident, it implied, if you had met our deadlines. The city secretly laughed, as if it were all a “big joke.”  

Mr. Powell’s response to the list was: “I’ll do it.” Wrong response. Can you guess why? He was perfectly happy to bring his house into code compliance. He got a few contract estimates. The lowest one was for $184,000. It would include rebuilding a few window frames and door jambs, as well as dealing with electrical maintenance and dry rot. Minor maintenance stuff. But the city didn’t want estimates; it wanted applications for "permits." Mr. Powell knew the contractor had to do that, not he himself. And he didn’t have the money yet to get a contract signed. When he asked for assistance, the city just accused him of missing a deadline. “Too late, Buster.” 

But the city ain’t all bad. It assigned a couple of beautiful ladies from the Housing Department to offer him a loan especially designed for elderly retired homeowners; $100,000, interest free. Can you imagine? An interest free loan from the city? Wow. They really do want to help. 

So they bring forth the paperwork, and Mr. Powell signs a Deed of Trust for the house, as a condition for getting the loan. That essentially puts the house’s future in the hands of the city (a DoT means nothing can happen with respect to the house without the Trustee saying so). But then, no money. Mr. Powell never sees a cent of the money he gave a Deed of Trust to cover as collateral. Not a single cent. 

Why not? 

Will you be satisfied with a minor technicality? The city was. It had a technicality ready that allowed it to withhold all that money. 

You see, when Mr. Powell moved into the house, back in the 1970s, it was a duplex. But he was the man of a family of eight. They boarded up one door, broke a hole in one wall that gave access to the internal stairway, and turned the house into a single family home. Just like that. It was perfect for that family. They lived well in it for 40 years. But Mr. Powell never got any permits to do those elementary operations. Officially it was listed as a duplex, while practically it was single family house. Nobody cared until that day in 2014. 

But even then, the city didn’t care. In its list of code violations, the city made mention of the fact that there had been no permit to change the house status, but did not consider it a code violation. The city actually suggested it accepted the house’s single family status. Indeed, it gave instructions to Mr. Powell as to what he would need to do if he desired returning the house to former status. He didn’t do them. He didn’t want that. 

But the loan was for duplex buildings only, and required the owner to live in one of its two units. Mr. Powell lived in the house, but it was no longer a duplex. So he couldn’t get the money, even though he had signed for it. The city had brought forth a loan targeting duplex houses, while accepting the change of status of this one. Thus, it falsely offered the loan. 

Are we clear on this? The city was implicitly accepting the building’s change of status (to single family), but then using that as an excuse to withhold the money. 

When the city actually went to court and petitioned for receivership, it claimed that Mr. Powell seemed to be unwilling to do the maintenance to correct the code violations. But it didn’t mention that he couldn’t because they hadn’t forwarded the money he had signed for. 

In short, the city created a condition in which Mr. Powell needed assistance, offered assistance that it was unable to provide, and then held it against him that he was unable to do what depended on that assistance. 

Do you know when the city actually admitted to what it had done? In March of 2017, two years later, when the city finally succeeded in getting the court to place the house in receivership, and assign a Receiver. 

All along, the city was arguing that Mr. Powell was not correcting his violations. On the very day, March 15, 2017, when the judge approved receivership, the city mentions (in one small paragraph in its filing) that it had withheld the money Mr. Powell needed on that little technicality. 

It was all a con. The city falsely offered money, and then falsely withheld the money, while getting a Deed of Trust as collateral for the money as if they had given it to him. And finally, the city falsely portrayed Mr. Powell in court as not willing to do the repairs required by the list of violations. 

He was trapped. The city had saddled him with $150,000 worth of work that he didn’t have the money for. The city promised to get him money to do the work that the city knew it could not give him. But in promising to give him money the city could not provide, it got him to sign a Deed of Trust making the city Trustee. So Mr. Powell could not finance his own house to get the money to do the work on the house that the city required because the city had a lien on the house for $100,000 that Mr. Powell never got but that a mortgager would have to pay off first in order to mortgage the house. He was trapped. There was nothing he could do to keep himself and his family from being taken to court and sued by the city. And it was the city that put him in that trap. It placed him in that trap by looking down on him and saying, “We’re going to help you.” 

And that’s when things really got crooked. The city turned its back and allowed it to happen. By November, 2017, Mr. Powell was in debt for $435,000. And by June, 2018, it was up to $700,000.