The Panama Papers and SF’s housing crisis
http://www.48hills.org/2016/04/04/panama-papers-show-sfs-housing-marked/
The whole world is talking today about the Panama Papers, the amazing leak of documents from a law firm that specializes in helping the rich hide their money. Leaders of numerous countries are involved. Vladimir Putin is a player. The prime minister of Iceland may have to resign. The government of Pakistan is caught up in the scandal. And there will be a lot more as investigative reporters continue to dig through the terabytes of data.
So far, none of my top corporate and political bad guys are on the list – no Donald Trump, no Koch Brothers, no Ron Conway (and my list goes on and on). But it’s clear that there’s a connection between all of this shadowy money and San Francisco. In fact, there’s a connection to the SF housing crisis.
On NPR this afternoon, the vice president of Transparency International talked about how the offshore deals impact ordinary people – and the first thing she talked about was housing in cities like New York and SF. See, the shadowy banking system allows people with illegal money – money from arms trading, money from drug sales, money stolen from the people of a struggling country – to launder it and use it, among other things, to buy real estate.
So, she said, the bidding wars that are driving up the cost of housing in cities, and the mega-priced condos that are shoving out other types of housing in places with scarce real estate, are directly linked to this dark money.
If they're paid for with dirty money, they can be seized!
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