Public Comment

From the perspective of the Receiver, the punchline for the “Saga of Leonard Powell” would be that moment when he finally gets to sell Powell’s house. At that moment, he could crow, “Pay Day.” He would have taken another man’s house, worth maybe $300,000 in 2015, spent around $750,000 on it, and upon sale, cleared maybe $1.3 million, most of which would have ended up in his own pocket. That is, if he could have sold it.

At least, that was the plan, the way receivership is used. The Receiver inflates the total bill for the job to the point where it pushes the owner’s debt beyond what the owner can pay, and then the Receiver petition’s for the right to sell the house in order to recuperate his expenses (since the owner can no longer cover them). This works especially well to move black families out of a city. Black families generally do not have reserve assets to cover the Receiver’s bill, and it is harder for black people to get loans from a bank than white people.

This strategy was actually seen in action in Powell’s case. The real work on the building had ended in September, 2018. But as long as the "Receiver" is recognized by the court, he can keep adding costs to his bill (legal fees, employee expenses, etc.). This was allowed to happen from September, 2018, until the end of 2019. And it all got charged to Mr. Powell. During that time, the Receiver petitioned the court for the right to sell the house, perhaps figuring it was time to cash in his chips and get out of the game. After all, he had violated the judge’s instructions, though he had transformed the building into a fancy (well, semi-fancy) rental property, a nice income-earner for a new owner.

But it didn’t happen that way. A lawyer entered Powell’s side. And she was a fighter. She won the first round, challenging the travesty of this Receiver’s one-man show, by managing to get it on the record that the judge’s order to "repair" the house did not mean "reconstruct" it. Yet that was no easy trick, because the Receiver insisted that those two terms were synonymous. Yet she had all the facts in hand – from dictionary definitions and the judge’s original instructions to the legal distinction that the Receiver’s work obeyed the state construction code (Title 24) that governs "reconstruction," which is wholly distinct from Berkeley’s housing code, under which the building’s violations were listed.

Apparently unable to discern this difference in jurisdiction, the Receiver acted according to the fiction that the city required the house be restored to duplex status. And he actually hints at active collusion by the city to this end, that is, of transforming it into income property. To return the house to duplex status, the Receiver had the foundation worked on, the house tested for asbestos and lead presence, and new flooring installed – all on his own (or with yet unacknowledged city collusion). It is that extravagance that inflated what could have been a $150,000 job (according to a number of contractors) to $750.000.

But there was the end-game. While negotiations proceeded on the semantic difference between repair and reconstruction, the Receiver kept adding fees and expenses to his bill each month, revealing that his own income is simply a horrendous transformation of people into money. Ultimately, his game prevented the judge from arriving at a final figure, in order to terminate the receivership. The game went on for a few months, and was ultimately halted by the demands of Powell’s attorney. Thus, while the “pay day” punchline remained the same for the Receiver, it was still just a little out of reach when the pandemic hit.

One is reminded of that moment in the movie, "Titanic," when the man guiding the submersible with its cameras down into the hull of the ship on the ocean bottom, and finds, in the captain’s cabin, the "safe." He sees it on his computer screen, broadcast from the "deep," and crows “pay day.” As a treasure hunter, he counts his wealth even before it breaks the ocean surface. 

When the safe is brought on deck and cracked open, the necklace, with its enormous diamond, is missing. It is only to be found in Jack’s drawing of Rose. She is nude, and wearing the necklace as a taunt (to her past life, as well as to her future treasure hunters). It is the drawing that testifies to Rose’s liberation from elite class domination (or, as she puts it: “you see, he [Jack] saved me in every way a person can be saved.”) 

It is Rose in her presence as an old woman to the crew of treasure hunters who tells the story. Her audience on that salvage boat is unable to conceive of the story that she doesn’t tell, about how she never had to "spend" the necklace. She still has it with her -- all they had labored for was but a few feet away. It symbolizes for her, as the house and community symbolize for Powell, that they, the people and not the things, are the true forms of wealth. 

In Berkeley, somewhere in the depths of City Hall, some administrative “treasure hunter” saw Powell’s house on a computer screen, sometime in the past, and because it existed in a poor neighborhood, it glittered before his eyes as if of gold. He would have known that the capital gains accrued by development on property of low initial value would be enormous. 

Like Rose, Mr. Powell never thought to "spend" his house – that is, to sell or even rent it. But that is a story of which the city’s treasure hunters could have no conception. They come from a different world, a colonizing culture, unconcerned about whose life they disturb in their quest to get their hands on what lies glittering in the distance, as potential income property. Perhaps they (these administrators) expect a "cut" when the Receiver finally gets to sell the house that is not his to sell. 

By June of 2019, the Receiver thought that he had the gem in hand. But his collusion with the city caught up with him. He admits to it all, in his court filings of 2017 and 2018. Thanks to the support that Powell got from his community, that “Pay day” has yet to be dredged from the depths of the corruption represented by the city’s receivership process. It taunts the city’s treasure hunters, who are blind to the travesty of an illegitimate debt of three-quarters of a million dollars. None of them have ever stepped forward on their own to say, “this is wrong.” 

Mr. Powell is still fighting for his life, to keep himself from sinking into the freezing waters of urban gentrification. He is fighting against political corruption, against urban treasure hunters who see people like him as things, and any property they may have as something to be taken from them, like diving down into a shipwreck and looking for loot. He goes to court on Dec. 3 to answer the city’s undying corruption, and to fight free of its hold on his life. 

If you would like to help, please contact “Friends of Adeline” at 510-338-7843. Or email us at friendsofadeline(at)gmail(dot)com.