Did You Know Rents Are Sky-Rocketing Here In Mesa?

Hey!
This is a story sideline from an article about Chicago ...
How did Mesa get a mention and why?
In Chiucago rent increases are getting blamed on increases in primary property taxes.
Mesa has no primary property tax - so what's the story here?
That particular story has been covered here on this blog in many posts - use the search box on this page to see them all.

Huge apartment rent increases forecast for Chicago but have not yet hit

 

Like death and taxes, there is one other inevitability in life – apartment rent increases.

By Don DeBat

1-Sep-19 – With the battering ram of real estate tax increases hammering away at Chicago apartment owners this year, experts are wondering how much longer “Ma and Pa” landlords can compete with downtown luxury rental developments and stay in business.
Skyrocketing tax assessments on homes, condominiums, and small apartment buildings in 2018 led to dramatic increases in real estate tax bills payable in 2019 for hundreds of thousands of property owners on Chicago’s North Side and Northwest Side.
Outgoing Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios raised the estimated fair market value of some properties from 30 percent to more than 140 percent in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods. This comes as a parting shot from Berrios after he lost his re-election campaign to challenger Fritz Kaegi, the newly elected assessor.
In 2018, the entire city of Chicago was reassessed. The sharply higher assessed valuations sparked mind-bending real estate tax hikes when bills arrived this month
Currently, median rents in Chicago stand at $1,095 a month for a one-bedroom unit and $1,288 for a two-bedroom layout. Experts say renters should brace themselves for hefty rent hikes on new leases offered by landlords in spring of 2020.
Meanwhile, rents are skyrocketing more than 4.5 percent in Henderson, Nevada, and Mesa, Arizona, and more than three percent in Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; and Raleigh, North CarolinaSource: https://www.loopnorth.com/news/rent0901.htm
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Will Mesa Multifamily Activity Trigger New Development?

The strong investment activity in Mesa last quarter will likely be the catalyst for new development.

By Kelsi Maree Borland | August 22, 2019 at 04:00 AM

Mesa, a submarket of Phoenix, has become the newest hotspot for Phoenix multifamily investment. According to the second quarter report from ABI Multifamily,

Mesa saw the biggest increase in multifamily investment activity in the greater Phoenix area.

It isn’t surprising that investors have turned to Mesa. The city’s geography makes it a good candidate growth and there is strong rent and population growth. This combination of rising demand and rents will could trigger new apartment development in a market that has seen little new construction in the past. . .

Read more > https://www.globest.com/2019/08/22

Mesa Police Department Makes Headlines Again

IN THE NEWS AGAIN > More internal issues get a very public airing

Mesa PD suspends reserve officer program, former member claims retaliation a factor

Carissa Planalp                                    

SOURCE: https://www.azfamily.com/news 30 Aug 2019

MESA, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) -- The Mesa Police Department says it has suspended its reserve officer program as it looks to make improvements to serve the agency and the community better. One former reserve officer believes the move was made, in part, to retaliate against him.
Retired Mesa Police Sgt. Rob Scantlebury served his last assignment as a reserve officer on Thursday. He says he was one of 14 reserve officers who were told the program would now be on hold.
"Literally the jobs just pour in because there's (sic) not people available to work," Scantlebury said.
[WATCH: Scantlebury explains his position]
Reserve officers are volunteers. In exchange for free work, the Mesa Police Department helps them maintain their peace officer certifications through training and other requirements.
There are also paid gigs. Scantlebury filled in many times as a school resource officer.
"Kids talking about blood or bombs when they shouldn't -- stuff that would have been no big deal 10 years ago," Scantlebury said. "Now, every one of those we need to bring in and investigate."
The Mesa Police Departments strongly disputes Scantlebury's claims of low staffing, saying there are about 650 active officers eligible for off-duty work, including filling in as a school resource officer.
The department says there will be no reduction in service to the community while the program is suspended. It also says former reserve officers will be given the opportunity to reapply when the updated program is implemented.
Scantlebury suggests suspending the reserve officer program may have been politically motivated.

"I've been outspoken when things aren't right with the chief," he said. "I was active working with the labor groups with the Make Mesa Safe campaign and the vote of no confidence with the chief."

Scantlebury sees the reserve officer transition as an attempt by the administration to "clean house."
The Mesa Police Department says it has not received any formal complaint about retaliation from Scantlebury.
The department says reshaping the reserve officer program has long been a goal and that suspending it seemed to be the best way to launch that process.
A working group has been formed to review and suggest changes that may include a focus on helping patrol operations.

Trees For The Dead Campaign: To Shelter-and-Shade Those Who Come To Pay Respect



Apparently it looks like "Shade-and-Shelter"  in a city-owned cemetery for the dead means more than  "Shade-and-Shelter" for the people who are living here in Mesa now.

Except for Pioneer Park and new landscaping at the site of the LDS Temple renovation on Main Street, open green spaces accessible and open to everyone are scarce. Rendezvous Park has been obliterated and bulldozed. Way too many Asphalt-covered heat islands!

Any Quality-of-Life initiative to establish more "Shade-and-Shelter" in green public spaces are sadly missing from the public discourse. What is that 1% 'Quality of Life" for anyway?? 

Can you see all the Shade-and-Shelter from the 'iconic' Italian Cypress trees?????

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Tree planting fundraising program for Mesa Cemetery

August 28, 2019 at 3:48 pm
With several trees lost to recent storm damage, a fundraising campaign is underway to purchase, plant and care for new trees at the Mesa Cemetery.
The campaign received a big boost today with a $2000 donation from Maricopa County District 2 Supervisor Steve Chucri, who was raised in Mesa.
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A FEW DAYS AFTER THIS POST WAS PUBLISHED - 15 hours ago -THERE WAS ANOTHER SIGNING OF A BIG CHECK BLOWN-UP ON POSTER BOARD TO STAGE THE SIGNING BY STEVE CHUCRI ["To pay Respect . . ."] 

"I care deeply about this City and its public spaces," Supervisor Chucri said. "I was saddened to learn of the recent damage to the Mesa Cemetery, but heartened to be part of a larger effort to help restore its grounds with new trees to shelter and shade those who come to pay their respects."
The Mesa Cemetery lost more than 25 mature Italian Cypress and Olive trees during a monsoon storm July 30. The uprooting of the trees resulted in damage to the perimeter fencing, turf and landscape along the Center Street entrance and throughout the Cemetery. More than 70 trees were also lost in a storm in July 2018.
"The Italian Cyprus trees at the Mesa Cemetery are iconic," Mayor John Giles said. "I'd like to thank Supervisor Chucri for his generous donation and encourage others to donate to the campaign through the Foundation for Mesa Parks and Recreation."
There are two ways to donate to the campaign.

1 You can donate online at www.foundationformesaparks.org, click on the "Donate" tab and select the "Tree Planting Program."

2 You can also send a check to:

Foundation for Mesa Parks and Recreation,

P.O. Box 4121, Mesa, AZ 85210.
"The Mesa Cemetery has been a staple of this community since 1895 and we want to make sure it continues to be for the next 100 years," Vice Mayor Mark Freeman said. "I can't thank Supervisor Chucri enough for this generous donation and for his dedication to helping replace the trees. This will go a long way to ensuring the cemetery is well-equipped for the next century."
For questions related to the Tree Donation Program, contact Aimee Manis at (480) 644-5327 or aimee.manis@mesaaz.gov.


Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities
Contact: Kevin Christopher
Tel. 480-644-4699kevin.christopher@mesaaz.gov

OZones: Once-In-A-Generation Bonanza For Elite Investors

Right!
Like we now realized back in February 2018 here in Mesa, Arizona many of the projects that will enjoy special tax status were underway long before the opportunity-zone provision was enacted.
//// Resource for this post: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31


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BLOGGER NOTE: There are been many posts on this blog site about Opportunity Zones here in Mesa, mostly about rampant real estate speculation here in Downtown Mesa and how plans for taxpayer-debt financing for a satellite ASU campus were the keystone
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Case-in-point 1: then AZ State Senator Bob Worsley who gambled on his own private wealth creation while holding public office
Case-in-Point 2: Tony Scaramucci's investment company, SkyBridge Capital, is using the so-called opportunity zone initiative for a new e-commerce center at Mesa-Phoenix Gateway Airport
(“Capital is going to flow to the lowest-risk, highest-return environment,” said Aaron T. Seybert, the social investment officer at the Kresge Foundation, a community-development group in Troy, Mich., that supported the opportunity-zone effort.

“Perhaps 95 percent of this is doing no good for people we care about.”)

Nearly a third of the 31 million people who live in the zones are considered poor — almost double the national poverty rate. Yet there are plenty of affluent areas inside those poor census tracts. And, as investors would soon realize, some of the zones were not low income at all - nearly 200 of the 8,800 federally designated opportunity zones are adjacent to poor areas but are not themselves considered low income.

In some cases, developers have lobbied state officials to include specific plots of land inside opportunity zones. . . and in one local case, it was ex-U.S. Congressman Matt Salmon, hired on as a lobbyist by ASU before his resignation, who appeared with Bob Worsley at a Mesa City Council meeting back in February 2018...

BLOGGER NOTE: Mesa has two of those areas - one on NE Mesa around Falcon Field and one in SE Mesa around Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Area

The law does not require public disclosure of who are taking advantage of the initiative or how they are deploying their funds.

“Opportunity zones, hottest thing going, providing massive new incentives for investment and job creation in distressed communities,” Mr. Trump declared at a recent rally in Cincinnati.
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The stated goal of the tax benefit — tucked into the Republicans’ 2017 tax-cut legislation — was to coax investors to pump cash into poor neighborhoods, known as opportunity zones, leading to new housing, businesses and jobs.

The initiative allows people to sell stocks or other investments and delay capital gains taxes for years — as long as they plow the proceeds into projects in federally certified opportunity zones.

Any profits from those projects can avoid federal taxes altogether.

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FACTOIDS:

> The opportunity-zone tax break was targeted at the trillions of dollars of capital gains held by rich Americans and their companies: profits from investments in the stock market, real estate and other businesses, even short-term trades by hedge funds. When investors sell those assets, they can incur tax bills of up to 41 percent.

> Confined to six pages in the 185-page tax bill, the provision can significantly increase the profits investors reap on real estate and other transactions.

It allows investors to defer for up to seven years any capital gains taxes on the money they invest in opportunity zones. (That deferral is valuable because it allows people to invest a larger sum upfront, potentially generating more profits over time.) After 10 years, the investor can cash out — by selling the opportunity-zone real estate, for example — and not owe any taxes on the profits.

> Over a decade, those dual incentives could increase an investor’s returns by 70 percent, according to an analysis by Novogradac, an accounting firm.

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Cadre, an investment company co-founded by Mr. Kushner and his brother, Joshua, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars that it hopes to use on opportunity-zone projects. The company is eyeing neighborhoods in Savannah, Ga., Dallas, Los Angeles and Nashville that are expected to grow larger and wealthier in coming years. Jared Kushner has a stake in Cadre worth up to $50 million, according to his most recent financial disclosure.

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CBRE, one of the country’s largest real estate companies, is seeking opportunity-zone funding for an apartment building in Alexandria, Va., which CBRE is pitching to prospective investors as “one of the region’s most affluent locations.”

JPMorgan Chase is raising money to build housing targeting students in College Park, Md., near the University of Maryland. (Because many students do not have jobs, census data often wrongly suggests that college towns are poor neighborhoods.)

 

Caliber [The Wealth Creation Fund] Shifts To Luxury Living In Scottsdale > 9 Commercial Spaces Here On Main Street in Downtown Mesa Remain Vacant

It's been more than 19 months since then-AZ State Senator Bob Worsley plunked down what he said was $20M to gamble in real estate speculation at the same time holding public office to gain title investing in various holding companies to more than eight so-called "historic properties" built between 1910-1954 than line both sides of the sidewalks on Main Street from Robson Street to Center Street just before the end of 2017.
As you can see in the featured opening image, 9 of those properties are presented as available. Retail opportunities in commercial properties on Main Street offered by Caliber are getting out-paced by two other investment groups. Pass by and take a look. 
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Here's a quick one-minute offering from Caliber

 

John Giles In Downtown Mesa's OZone: 9 Caliber-Owned Properties Marked 'Available'. No Takers So Far

< This is the empty location viewed from outside at the NWC of Robson & Main Street used to film a promotional video by Caliber The Wealth Creation Company that owns a portfolio of nine "under-utilized" commercial properties that were scooped-up in low-ball deals before the end of 2017 by then AZ Senator Bob Worsley who gambled in real estate speculation at the same time he held public office.

CBRE has the exclusive contract to market and sell the speculative buys offered in the holding companies registered at Worsley's residence at The Groves along with Kent Lyons.
Details on all nine are mounted on foamcore and displayed on easels - they're on offer for $15-25 per square foot and were built from 1910-1954.
Take the time to walk around downtown Mesa's OZone sometime soon . . .Giles is still waiting for that "Salvation Train" to arrive more than four years after a milestone was reached when Valley Metro Light Rail service extended through the Central Business District . . .
Now we have what Caliber's calls "a new milestone".
Take a look below - it's only about a minute

Published on Aug 22, 2019

Views: 22

Last Wednesday was a new milestone for Caliber, our partners, and the amazing state of Arizona as we had the opportunity to spend the day exploring Opportunity Zones with Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, Scott Turner

 

'Surreal' video captures gunfire in Odessa, Texas

Get-it-on camera for sure
A by-stander at the scene does a remarkable recording before a SWAT team arrived to throw a bomb into the van. 5 more killings and 21 injured in Odessa, TX just four weeks after El Paso

Published on Aug 31, 2019

Views: 495,000++

A witness in Odessa, Texas, captured what appears to be a gunman shooting outside of a theater as police arrived on the scene. He spoke with CNN after the shooting