Politics & Government
Politics Report: The Housing Commission Mess
The broker hired to negotiate a $67 million hotel purchase had first purchased 40,000 shares of stock in the company selling the hotel.
By Andrew Keatts and Scott Lewis, the Voice of San Diego
May 22, 2021
Learning the broker it hired to negotiate a $67 million hotel purchase had first purchased 40,000 shares of stock in the company selling the hotel appears not to have dissuaded the Housing Commission that it got a great deal on the property.
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In fact, it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between the agency’s view of the transaction before and after learning of a conflict of interest that its own legal counsel concluded was likely criminal.
In February, after the Union-Tribune published an article scrutinizing the Housing Commission’s purchase of a Mission Valley hotel to combat homelessness during the pandemic, the agency’s president and CEO Rick Gentry fired off a letter to the paper defending the acquisition.
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