Looks like Pattern-and-Practice that's for sure ". . .Despite the battles, Palmer is forging ahead with plans to expand his empire. He's building new projects in L.A., Ventura and San Diego, as well as “aggressively targeting opportunities to develop and/or buy" apartment complexes with 200 units or more in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
“I enjoy what I’m doing,” Palmer said in 2015. “If somebody asked me, “What’s your favorite deal?” I’d say it’s the next one I’m doing.”
Meet The Real Estate Billionaire Who Hates Affordable Housing And Loves Trump And The GOP
Geoffrey Palmer made a multibillion-dollar fortune building luxury residential buildings in southern California. To keep rents high and taxes low, he’s spent nearly $32 million in the past six years opposing ballot initiatives and backing Republicans–particularly Donald Trump.
Geoffrey Palmer has been called the “worst developer” in Los Angeles and a real estate “villain.” He prefers to call himself a “true visionary.”
One title not up for debate: billionaire. Since completing his first apartment complex in Santa Clarita in 1985, Palmer, 72, has built up a portfolio of nearly 13,000 apartments throughout southern California, including faux-Italian luxury “fortresses” in downtown L.A. Those properties are now worth an estimated $3 billion, boosted by a 17% increase in rents in L.A. from pre-pandemic levels and a more than 75% rise since 2010.
✓ He’s made those riches by developing properties in historically low-income neighborhoods and installing high-end apartments that price out local residents. He’s done it by unabashedly fighting local government for years. He’s done it ruthlessly, bragging about how he’s in the real estate business to avoid taxes.
✓ And, most recently, he’s done it by spending $31.5 million in the past six years on ballot measures and politicians—particularly Donald Trump—that will keep his juggernaut going, no matter who he drives out.
Palmer has more than enough money to keep funding politicians and financing lawsuits. Between his real estate firm, G.H. Palmer Associates, a private jet and nine homes—in upscale locales like Aspen, Beverly Hills, Malibu and Saint-Tropez—Forbes estimates Palmer is worth $3.2 billion, even after factoring in debt. Palmer did not respond to Forbes’ requests for an interview for this story but a representative for Palmer told Forbes he had no comment on the valuation.
✓ Much of his fortune comes from Palmer’s so-called “Renaissance Collection” of high-end, Italian-style buildings. Before redistricting last year, eight of Palmer’s nine downtown Los Angeles developments were located in California’s 34th congressional district, where 23% of people live below the poverty line, double the nationwide average. That puts his properties out of reach for many local residents. Rents at his Piero complex—two blocks from the 110 freeway and a one mile walk from Skid Row, home to more than 4,000 unhoused people—range from $2,266 a month for a studio to $4,068 for a two-bedroom apartment.
Not surprisingly, he has quite a few critics. “You have these luxury apartments [with] fairly rich people overlooking homeless encampments," says Susie Shannon, policy director at Los Angeles-based nonprofit Housing is a Human Right.
Palmer built his Da Vinci Apartments (pictured in 2014 when still under construction) next to a homeless encampment in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
"Palmer has been involved in a lot of unhelpful [and] destructive behavior in terms of solving Los Angeles' housing crisis,” says Cynthia Strathmann, executive director of the economic justice nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE.) "But he's been here for so long and people are so used to him doing unhelpful and unpleasant things that it's no longer a surprise."
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Palmer’s first salvo against local real estate regulations came in 1987. In a bid to oppose the incorporation of the city of Santa Clarita—which would have slowed down his plans to build 1,452 condos—he allegedly routed $7,000 in political donations to an anti-incorporation committee through seven of his company’s employees and one employee’s mother. The incorporation measure passed, and the new Santa Clarita city council shot down his proposals in 1990. Two years later, the California Fair Political Practices Commission charged him with 15 counts of illegally laundering campaign contributions and fined him $30,000. (Palmer did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes about the charges.)
At that same time, Palmer was building in Los Angeles and completed
his first project there in 1988. He sued the city for the first time in
2001 over its affordable housing requirements, arguing they violated a
1995 law allowing landlords to set rent levels. He eventually settled
for $2.8 million, which allowed him to build his Visconti project with
only market-rate units. . .
✓ He sued the city of Los Angeles once again in 2007 over its policy mandating 15% of rental units to be priced for low-income residents. This time an appellate court ruled in Palmer’s favor in a case that had far-reaching consequences. In what has come to be known as the “Palmer” case, in 2009 the court determined that the mandatory housing policy violated a 1995 state law, a decision that effectively prohibited local governments from requiring owners to offer units at lower rents.
"[Palmer] was directly responsible for the city not being able to mandate affordable housing in a city that had growing homelessness and people who just couldn’t afford to live [there] anymore," says Shannon of Housing is a Human Right.
. . .
For his part, Palmer claims to have almost single-handedly revitalized a once-derelict neighborhood. “Everybody was trying to create downtown as a ghetto, and it was my concept to re-gentrify it,” Palmer said in a rare 2015 interview with trade publication The Planning Report. “We’ve created prosperous areas out of what were formerly blighted and decayed areas. If you remember what LA looked like [in 2000] downtown, it looked like Sarajevo—just bombed out.”
That comparison is far from the truth: Many of L.A.'s tallest buildings in the downtown financial district were built in the 1980s and 1990s. Still, Palmer’s first developments in the area came at a time when downtown was becoming a more attractive destination, with the opening of the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena, where the L.A. Lakers and L.A. Clippers play) in 1999 and the L.A. Live entertainment complex in 2008.
“When he first started building in the downtown area, there wasn't much else other than a couple of older high-rises that you could rent,” says Greg Wasik, president of real estate appraisal firm Los Angeles Valuation Group. “He's definitely made an impact in proving the viability of downtown L.A. as a 24-hour city, being the first one to go in there more than 20 years ago.”
Palmer’s aggressive moves don’t always pay off. In 2019, he was sued in a class-action lawsuit by tenants from several of his buildings who alleged he had kept millions of dollars in rental security deposits. Last June, Palmer agreed to a proposed $12.5 million settlement with more than 19,000 tenants.
Palmer shares not only a love for gaudy architecture with former President Trump but also a disdain for taxes. In his 2015 interview with The Planning Report, Palmer said he’s in the real estate business for a simple reason: “Quite simply, I don’t like paying taxes!” He also claimed that “through the magic of depreciation,” his firm hadn’t paid federal taxes for 30 years—another parallel to Trump, who once said he “loves depreciation.”
. . . In the meantime, Palmer has continued filing—and defending against—lawsuits. In August 2021, he sued the city of Los Angeles over its pandemic eviction moratorium, seeking more than $100 million in compensation for missed rent payments. Several community groups joined the case on the side of the city in October 2021. The case has been on hold for several months while the defendants wait on a decision from the judge on their motion to dismiss Palmer’s case, according to Faizah Malik, a senior staff attorney at Public Counsel, who represents the community groups.
Palmer’s attorneys in the case did not respond to a request for comment..."
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