A Clockwork Orange: Of the Worm, the Donald, the Marshal, American Junkie and the LBC

DESTINATION GENTRIFICATION
“A statistical portrait of gentrification” emerges in a new analysis of California home-mortgage data that included troubling information gleaned from Long Beach, according to the authors.

The analysis released Dec. 12 by the Greenlining Institute and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that most loans in low-income tracts do not go to low-income buyers, say the researchers, who viewed statewide data as well as local statistics for Long Beach, Oakland and Fresno.

“African-American and Latino borrowers continue to receive a disproportionately low share of home purchase and refinance loans, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” says the report’s co-author Vedika Ahuja, Greenlining’s Economic Equity senior program manager. “We see a lot of home purchase loans in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, but few of them going to low- and moderate-income borrowers.”

Among the key findings of “State of Gentrification: Home Lending to Communities of Color in California”:

Latinos and blacks together make up 43.8 percent of California’s population but only receive 24.2 percent of home purchase loans in the state.

In Long Beach, loans in low- to moderate-income (LMI) census tracts from the top 10 lenders exceeded loans to LMI borrowers by 4:1, suggesting that middle- and upper-income borrowers are displacing lower-income buyers in these neighborhoods. In Oakland, the ratio was roughly 3:1.

Regulators for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)—which has led to more than $1 trillion in investments, loans and services to low-income neighborhoods over the past 40 years—are awarding financial institutions CRA credit for extending loans in LMI census tracts, even if the borrower is wealthy.

Statewide, five of the top 10 home purchase lenders were non-banks. These lenders are not subject to the CRA and may be undercapitalized. In addition, non-bank lenders have effectively marketed to low-income and immigrant communities, who may be more vulnerable to predatory lending.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I’ve been trying to tell Donald since day one: ‘Come talk to me, man. . . . I’ll tell you what the Marshal wants more than anything. . . . It’s not even that much,'” says NBA Hall of Famer and sometime Newport Beach resident Dennis Rodman on his “friends” Donald Trump and “the Marshal,” Kim Jong Un, in The Guardian on Monday.

Pressed by the U.K. newspaper for more details, Rodman reportedly replied, “I ain’t telling you. . . . I will tell [Trump] when I see him.”

The Worm’s fifth trip to North Korea was sponsored by PotCoin, a bitcoin-like digital currency aimed at transactions between legal marijuana users and merchants, which posted on its website that Rodman is in “the very rare position to be able to claim longtime friendships” with Kim and Trump.

The latter relationship apparently comes from the ex-basketball star’s stint as a Celebrity Apprentice contestant, but Trump tweeted on May 7, 2014, “Dennis Rodman was either drunk or on drugs (delusional) when he said I wanted to go to North Korea with him. Glad I fired him on Apprentice!”

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP
The former security manager at the American Junkie nightclub in Newport Beach has been charged with supplying drugs to patrons, causing multiple overdoses and one overdose death, according to authorities.

Sean Robert McLaughlin, 43, of Aliso Viejo, is also accused of holding a woman against her will in his American Junkie office and supplying her with ecstasy—a month before the four men he’d allegedly plied with cocaine laced with fentanyl were hospitalized.

Newport Beach Fire Department paramedics responded to a medical-distress call at the nightspot at 2406 Newport Blvd. after 1 a.m. in November 2016; they sent the club patrons to local hospitals for treatment. Ahmed Said, 25, of Santa Ana, died at 7:06 that same morning at Huntington Beach Hospital.

After McLaughlin was booked into the Newport Beach Police Department jail that night for suspected involuntary manslaughter, further investigation uncovered the September 2016 incident with the woman.

There is no mention of manslaughter in the Orange County district attorney’s office announcement about the charges that were filed against McLaughlin on Dec. 8. They are: four felony counts of sale/transportation of a controlled substance, a single felony count of sale/transportation of ecstasy, a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment and four sentencing enhancements for inflicting great bodily injury.

A conviction could send him to state prison for 16 years. At press time, he was being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

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