The Real Dirt is a monthly column by award-winning advocacy journalist Patrick Range McDonald that exposes the real estate industry’s lies, scams, and other unscrupulous acts, which impact the lives of millions.
For the past several weeks, Capital Realty Group, a New York-based corporate landlord, has found itself in a whole heap of trouble for allegedly not addressing poor living conditions, among other serious issues, at its properties across the United States.
“What we’ve been forced to endure under Capital Realty Group, run by Moshi Eichler, is unacceptable, unsafe, unsanitary,” Amy Plante, a Kansas City area tenant, told a reporter.
Things have gotten so bad that tenants in Missouri, Connecticut, Michigan, and Kentucky that live at Capital Realty Group’s properties have created tenant unions and banded together to hold the corporate landlord to account. They figure strength in numbers can get some results.
The bright side of this controversy is that activists and tenants have come to understand that only a broad people-power movement can rein in the predatory business practices of deep-pocketed, politically connected corporate landlords. It’s a theme we wrote about this month: “Tenants and Activists Around the World Must Band Together to Fight Corporate Landlords.”
Over in England, billionaire corporate landlord Stephen Schwarzman, who co-founded Blackstone Group, was taking heat for trucking in millions of gallons of water to fill a lake at his lavish country estate – during a drought. His neighbors have to adhere to water restrictions that prohibit residents from using hoses for watering gardens, but Schwarzman, like many billionaires, figured he lived by different rules. It turned into an international controversy.
“To see someone fill up a giant lake with the same water that people are saving is pretty unacceptable,” Adam Luke told the New York Times.
A Blackstone spokesman, of course, got technical and said everything was legal. But Tim McMahon, Southern Water’s managing director for water in England, said he was “appalled” by what the billionaire was doing and noted: “It’s certainly not in the spirit of the incredible and ongoing community effort to save water across the country.”
Southern Water ended up stopping the transportation of water to Schwarzman’s multi-million-dollar renovation project.
The scandal reminded us of an article we wrote, in 2022, about how uber-wealthy corporate landlords charge outrageous rents and then use their profits to live extravagant lifestyles while the rest of us struggle to keep a roof over our heads. Real estate titans have been buying superyachts, amassing luxury-car collections, and even paying for a private audience with superstar rapper Drake.
Schwarzman is no different. In 2019, United Nations housing experts found that Blackstone Group was a major force in fueling the global housing affordability crisis. Schwarzman then used tenants’ hard-earned cash to finance the costly lake project at his English estate. He’s also used tenant money to help him buy numerous mansions around the world.
No wonder Schwarzman and Blackstone spent millions to kill pro-rent control ballot measures in California: he wanted to keep charging unfair, sky-high rents so he could keep living large.
We recommend reading our special report: “Modern-Day Robber Baron: The Sins of Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.”
All of these scandals make it all the more disturbing that California YIMBY, YIMBY Action, and Abundant Housing LA worked with the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords, including Blackstone Group, to kill Prop 33 in 2024. That initiative would have ended statewide rent control restrictions in California and allowed cities to rein in billionaires like Schwarzman. But the YIMBY groups decided it would help corporate landlords rather than protect hard-working tenants. There’s a reason why activists call them “Corporate YIMBYs.”
Until next time…
Follow Housing Is A Human Right on Facebook, X, Instagram, and Bluesky.