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Part 1 of a series.

Once upon a time, in Berkeley, California, …

No no no. This story is going to be a saga, not a fairy tale.

It is the saga of a man, a family man, an Army veteran, a tax payer, who got stomped on by the city of Berkeley. 

Oh, go on, no one gets stomped on in that little town, that wears its humanitarianism on its sleeve. 

Well, don’t be so sure. He had a house, 6 kids, and a wife to whom he owed his life (she had rescued him from the juice). He loved her more than anything. When she came to him, she brought 5 kids whom he welcomed with open arms, and gave him a sixth kid after they were married. They all lived in that house for 40 years, raising kids, watching grandkids grow up. He paid the house off, owned it free and clear, and paid the taxes on it. It was just an urban family, living an urban life and minding their own business. 

Then, one day, the cops show up, looking for someone who didn’t live there. While they are searching the house, and questioning the man, and arresting the one who didn’t live there because they had found him a couple of blocks away already, another man, this one in a suit and tie, shows up. He and the homeowner know each other. But when the suit passes the owner in the front yard, he gives no salutation, and offers no sign of recognition to the owner. He just goes in the house, looks around, comes back out, and walks away. 

That man in the suit worked for the city. He was a pretty big man, politically speaking. A few weeks later, some official inspectors show up. Then a list comes in the mail, a list of code violations, something a contractor could handle for around $150,000. But by the time the city gets finished with what it was doing, three years later, it has managed to saddle this homeowner with a debt of over $750,000. 

It took 3 years to do it. But the city was able to transform a house owned free and clear into a debt of three-quarters of a million dollars. 

How could they do that? 

How they could do it is becoming a big question in this little town, because the case is going to court in a couple of months. Did the city create a huge debt for this family in order to take it to court. No. the city took the family to court in order to create this huge debt for it. Is that the secret of what the courts are for? Ask some of the people who have gotten caught in Probate Court. You get a similar stomping. 

But the other question, the real one, is, Why would they do that? 

Ahh. I left out a small detail – well, maybe it’s not so small. The homeowner and his family are black, that is to say, African American. In other words, the lid to the box of official shenanigans was lifted, and then left open. 

Those in the know, who have been following this story as it has unfolded, know that it is the story of Leonard Powell, and the story of his house on Harmon St. in south Berkeley.  

When the cops arrived during the summer of 2014, they were looking for a member of Leonard Powell’s large family, one who didn’t live in that house with Mr. Powell. He was a young man, and lived elsewhere with his parents. The cops knew that, yet they raided the house anyway. Why raid Mr. Powell’s house if the person they are looking for doesn’t live there? What were they really looking for? 

They searched the house and found "stuff" in an upstairs room – you know, the kind of "stuff" that later on gets called "evidence." Did they charge the kid they said lived where he didn’t live? No. They held him for a couple of weeks and let him go. Did they charge the owner of the house, Mr. Leonard Powell, since the "evidence" was found in his house? No. They knew he had nothing to do with it. They already knew where it came from. That’s not why they were there. 

Their whole thing was for show. It was simply to provide a cover for something else. For the man in the suit, perhaps? Were they just creating an opportunity for him to take a look around? Did the man in the suit know that his visit was going to come close to costing Mr. Powell his house? But then, why was he there? 

How did the city of Berkeley do this? How did it manage to impose a huge debt on this family? We have a bunch of fancy words, like civil suit (a court process), receivership (another court process). But these just restate the problem. A word the city doesn’t use is "impoverishment." 

The real question is, once they had Mr. Powell in court, how did they make their extravagant impoverishment of his family look reasonable or legitimate? 

And why would the city be expending resources to deprive a family of its home when entire neighborhoods are clamoring for affordable housing? Housing was being built, but it wasn’t the kind that people who had grown up in Berkeley could afford any more. Is the city just creating a roll model for how landlords should be treating black people? 

One way to answer these questions would be to go to the computer in the city court building (next door to the BPD) and read the court records of the case. The case number is RG15762567. See if you can figure out how the city did it. A second way would be to call your city councilmember and ask him or her, how did the city get away with putting a poor family in debt for three-quarters of a mil? They’ll know, since the case was actually discussed in City Council at one point. But don’t bet on them telling you. 

Better yet, wait a week; in the next chapter in this saga, we will address the city’s machinations. It’s not pretty. 

Notice: Mr. Powell will be defending himself against this travesty of justice in Alameda Superior Court on Dec. 3.