As we are aware, social media has allowed every nut, social deviant and political radical to have a soap box. On Campuses across the country, other than U of Chicago and a few others, there is no longer free speech and the left is permitted to shut down any speech or thought they do not agree with. Social media just feeds that culture.
The result is anyone in the middle or conservative have to be subjected to harassment and even threats of violence. Now these kids are graduating and going out into society, and taking their extreme views and behavior into the community. They have been taught on campus that it is OK to shut down anyone who does not hew to their way of thinking. False stories abound on Facebook and Twitter, and it has not reached a point of crisis as we see from Zuckerberg trying to figure out how to manage the problem. Everything is now racist and anti white, and anti successful business enterprise.
Now we go forward to try to get our projects approved into this toxic, left wing environment. The young people have been trained on campus that it is OK to spread false stories on social media and to mount demonstrations and even violence to stop whatever they deem racist, offensive, white supremacy, anti-low income or whatever their cause happens to be. They believe cost is not their concern and regulation to bar whatever they see as offensive is what is needed. This trend is going to get much worse in places like CA and NY, and WA.
The implications for CRE are bad. It is now deemed OK to protest against projects on false pretenses and to mount protests and make false claims. In many jurisdictions, the same sorts of attitudes now are becoming more prevalent as these same kids grow up and get into politics, and as the Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders left wing gets entrenched in some of the local councils and state legislatures. In California and New York, it has now become so costly in time and money to do a project, that there is now an affordable housing shortage because of these costs. I have just experienced this costly situation on a relatively benign project in southern CA, that the town was all for to remove blight, but state regulators made absurd demands that proved nothing new about the site and materially diminished the returns.
It is becoming important for developers and owners to be very aware of these trends and to be very careful not to be like Trump on Twitter or where they might be quoted. Have your own social media campaign ready to go on new projects, especially if they are neighborhoods with any sort of racial or lower income issues. Just assume whatever you do will be attacked, even if you mean well. We have all had to deal with the environmentalists and NIMBE protestors, but things are now at a whole new, far more challenging level due to social media. It is free now and easy as a computer stroke to rile up a community, and spread false stories and anti developer attitudes. Be prepared much more than you ever were for resistance and even potential violence in some cases. That is what colleges have now instilled in kids.
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Joel Ross
Joel Ross began his career in Wall St as an investment banker in 1965, handling corporate advisory matters for a variety of clients. During the seventies he was CEO of North American operations for a UK based conglomerate, and sat on the parent company board. In 1981, he began his own firm handling leveraged buyouts, investment banking and real estate financing. In 1984 Ross began providing investment banking services and arranging financing for real estate transactions with his own firm, Ross Properties, Inc. In 1993 Ross and a partner, Lexington Mortgage, created the first Wall St hotel CMBS program in conjunction with Nomura. They went on to develop a similar CMBS program for another major Wall St investment bank and for five leading hotel companies. Lexington, in partnership with Mr. Ross established a hotel mortgage bank table funded by an investment bank, and making all CMBS hotel loans on their behalf. In 1999 he formed Citadel Realty Advisors as a successor to Ross Properties Corp., focusing on real estate investment banking in the US, UK and Paris. He has closed over $3.0 billion of financings for office, hotel, retail, land and multifamily projects. Ross is also a founder of Market Street Investors, a brownfield land development company, and has been involved in the acquisition of notes on defaulted loans and various REO assets in conjunction with several major investors. Ross was an adjunct professor in the graduate program at the NYU Hotel School. He is a member of Urban Land Institute and was a member of the leadership of his ULI council. In 1999, he conceived and co-authored with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Hotel Mortgage Performance Report, a major study of hotel mortgage default rates.
