Pollster Adam Probolsky is an Irvine Planning Commissioner and he’s on record as opposing a fee future Great Park homeowners will pay into Lennar Corp’s non-profit Lennar Charitable Housing Foundation. This foundation funnels money to programs that benefit the homeless. In fact, the charity has raised nearly $6 million to provide funds to 40 organizations including HomeAid America and Habitat for Humanity.ÂÂ
The fee, which would amount to about one-twentieth of one percent of the sale price of the home, would be collected each time the home is sold. So, if its a million dollar house, we’re talking a fee of $500. If you can afford a million dollar home, as so many of my neighbors here do, $500 is a drop in the bucket.ÂÂ
Irvine’s lawyers told Adam the city doens’t have the authority to ban this fee, so Adam pushed a disclosure notice through. The story in today’s Register on this is here.
In the Irvine World News yesterday, Adam called the fee an “underhanded effort to line the pockets of a foundation with (Lennar’s) name on it. Adam is concerned the fee will make it difficult to resell the home later (I laughed too). “I’m very specific about who I give to when it comes to charities; it takes away my ability to choose which charities I want to support.”
So Adam doens’t support charities that support the homeless is besides the point here. If you choose to buy a Lennar home in the Great Park, you are chooising to help support the Homeless. And I believe this is a positive development, not a negative one. I remember when my wife and I bought out first home in Boston and the real estate agent tried to tell us the neighborhood was mixed (code for racially mixed and also known as redlining), and she was surprised that we wanted to live in a racially diverse community. It’s all in how you look the situation.
I recognize this is a bit of an apples/oranges scenario, but I don’t like the fact my taxes are going to fight the war in Iraq or to pay for redition flights to countries that condone torture, but I stilll have to pay my taxes. $500 donation to a charity that benefits the less fortunate in order to buy a million dollar home in Irvine is small change.
But good for Adam to decide on his charities; keep writing checks to Republican candidates for office. ÂÂ
Adam is quoted