And yet another twist in the Regency Inn debacle.
At the Feb. 5 meeting, City Councilmember Zack Matheny stated that the city should find some way to acquire the Regency Inn property and then the city would have more control over how it is developed into permanent supportive housing for the homeless.
Currently the property is owned by Partnership Homes Inc. (PHI) and the city is negotiating with Step Up On Second Street Inc. to develop the old motel into permanent supportive housing. Step Up On Second Street, however, doesn’t have a contract or an agreement in place to purchase the property from PHI.
On Thursday, Feb. 8, Mike Cooke, president of Partnership Homes, sent an email to the Greensboro Housing and Neighborhood Development Department Director Michelle Kennedy offering to transfer the Regency Inn property to the city.
The email from Cooke states, “PHI wishes to start a process whereby we deed the property to the City of Greensboro and be made whole for our out-of-pocket expenses to insuring and maintaining the property. As you know we have kept the property in good repair until early December 2023 when the weather turned cold and the break-ins and vandalism started anew. Our continued requests to Neighborhood and Development for assistance in maintaining the property while the Step Up debacle has played has met with silence. Therefore in December we shut down all systems at the property but continue to insure it at a cost of approximately $3,000/month.”
As Matheny noted several times at the City Council meeting, the city invested $3 million in the Regency Inn property in 2021, but, now, in 2024, doesn’t own it and still doesn’t have a viable plan to develop the old motel into permanent supportive housing.
Cooke, in the email, also states, “We have acted in good faith throughout this process in spite of being replaced as the developer in August 2022. The revisionist history and evolving false narrative regarding PHI’s involvement and the general history of the project are shameful. I am prepared to speak with anyone or share any documents/info/communications that anyone may wish to see in this regard.”
What a boondoggle. I can’t blame Mr. Cook for looking for an exit. This joke of a program has drug out for years now. If I were a betting man I’d bet that most of this time was spent while certain people tried to figure out a way they could get their hands in the kitty. Simple math would tell any sensible person that an organization utilizing under employed or unemployed people to build small houses for homeless people would cost the City or County a heck of a lot less than the numbers already wasted with a promise of more to be wasted in the future. Instead we have state, county, and local “politicians “ eager to spend upwards of $150,000 of our tax dollars per unit, assuming certain MWBA companies get their share and on and on and on.
Why not just advertise you’re giving one company $3,000,000, to build the first 40 units, give them a deadline and a basic floor plan and let them go to work? Copy that blueprint again and again and soon you’ll have hundreds of “homeless” people living in Greensboro. Then you can give them SNAP benefits and Medicaid, again from our tax dollars. Or , you could ask each potential homeowner to deliver sweat equity, like other programs, and you’ll have need for less than the original 40 homeless homeowners.
The road to HADES is paved with good intentions and this project fits that bill.
Now let’s watch and see how city council will screw this up.
We need competent management……..where is city manage…..GSO is being destroyed piece by piece
Since PHI owned this property, and paid property TAXES on it, weren’t they entitled to GPD protection of their property? Anyone think the City can manage this rat-hole?
Name something our govt does well.
That flushing sound you hear is your tax dollars down the drain. The worst part is the wasteful spending on this site has only begun. Millions more to be flushed away!!!!
Who didn’t see this clownshow coming?
Don’t worry, I’ll wait…..
When will the sheeple figure this out? This has never been about the homeless, or about the contractors, or the Regency. Those are simply parts in this ploy to buy votes. The project put all the liability on the owners & operators, not the city (except for the forgivable loan that we all know would never be repaid). Yet, the mayor & every one of those libtard council members checked the liberal feel good box in the name of doing something positive for the homeless. They made sure it got plenty of press too.
Hell, look here, even John & Scott wrote about their wonderful project multiple times. They don’t care if Jimmy freezes this weekend, they need those blue votes in the primaries & the general elections this fall.
Michelle Kennedy’s employment should be terminated. She is the person who exerted undue influence on the council members regarding the Regency Inn Project. Her grandiose plan foolishly sold them on the $3,000,000 forgivable loan and the the ridiculous rehabbing of this property. Since then she has done northing but complicate the whole project, and now we find out she is refusing to pay for upkeep of the property when the need is well-established.
Of all the incompetent personnel involved with this project, she is the most harmful. Please……terminate her employment for the future well-being of this city.
Absokutely! Kennedy should be “deported” back to Los Angeles where she came from. Keep this libtard s#!+ on the West Coast.
The city staff and department heads should have finished dancing with one girl before asking the next. I imagine the first 3 million went to PHI for the first year of temporary operation. Now it sounds like they want more in order to walk away. Greensboro is back to square one and it sounds like the homeless are in the process of moving in on their own. Great bit of work Greensboro.
So basically, the city has wasted $3 million dollars of taxpayers money. Yet they’re always soliciting funds through increased taxes and bond referendums. These are the same people that get voted in, hold the positions for multiple terms, and do nothing! This is what taxpayers get? Everyone from Mayor Vaughn down needs to be removed. Michelle Kennedy? Get her too.