Therapy by Jonathan Kellerman
June 25, 2025, 6:50 PM
see my reading notes from: "Therapy" by Jonathan Kellerman
May 28, 2025, 5:41 PM
From: Therapy by Jonathan Kellerman, 2005, Ballantine Books, United States.
Page 15: squawk box
Page 254:
* “...and from what I can tell he likes to partner with the government.”
* “Federal, state, county. A lot of his holdings seem to be co-financed by public funds. We’re talking low-cost housing projects, senior citizen residences, landmark buildings, assisted care. And guess what: halfway houses for parolees...(t)he state legislature says we have to pay for the board and care of felonious individuals”
* It’s a great arrangement. Find some building or construction project that’s eligible for bond money or a grant, split your costs with John Q, take all the income”
Page 255:
* own properties...”that were financed with tax bucks. The hotel qualifies for an HUD gift and the strip mall got a FEMA grant because the stores that stood there before were earthquake-damaged.”
* “The only time his name appears on court documents is when he sues someone or someone sues him. Mostly the former-back-rent and eviction cases. Once in a while he gets tagged with a slip-and-fall by a tenant. Sometimes he settles, sometimes he fights. When he fights, he wins. He distributes his business among eight different law firms, all downtown, all white-shoe.
* “mixed-use neighborhood”
Page 256:
* “….Mercedes Benz headquarters, a hig-profile, extravagantly landscaped office complex that catered to entertainment lawyers and film agents, and construction dust from a fulminating high-rise”
Page 259-260:
* “...so all of a sudden I was a landlord. A year later, I sold that property, used the profit and a bank loan to invest in a bigger building. I did that for a few years—flipping and trading up. Real estate was booming, and I made out okay.”
Page 261:
* “I haven’t found a will, and no executors have come forth.”
* “...being so organized about everything else.”
* “….she didn’t want to think about death”
Page 262:
* “If there are no creditors or heirs...they’d revert to me. A hundred percent in the case of the ones whose mortgages I carry—I own a little financing company, allows me to keep things in-house. Those that are bank-financed, I’d have the choice of paying off….or selling”
Page 263:
* “I’m in the real estate business. A handful of my properties are halfway houses.”
Page 264:
* “...she wanted her investments to do some social good”
* “Pretty idealistic.”
* “When Mary believed in something, she got very focused.”
* “...the subsidies the state was offering”
* “...was concerned about tenant damage”
* “I also told her I could get equal or better subsidies on what seemed to be safer investments—senior citizen housing, historic properties, where, if you respected the integrity of the structure, you could get three separate funding sources.”
* “On top of that, the state mandated supervision by parole officers and provided in-house managers and security guards.”
Page 265:
* “The funding’s ironclad—long-term state grants that get renewed easily—and the properties can be had dirt cheap because they’re always in fringe areas. You’re not going to stick a building full of criminals in Bel Aire, right? So there are no NIMBYs, no zoning problems, and once you get past financing the part the state doesn’t cover, the rents are great. And listen to this: On a square-footage basis, the income’s close to Beverly Hills, because your’re not talking multi-room apartments, it’s all single rooms. And as opposed to a senior citizen situation where the tenancy-terminating event is death so your occupancy is uncertain, you go in knowing the tenants are there on a short-term deal but they’re always going to be replenished.”
* “No shortage of bad guys.”
* “And turns out there are fewer repairs. The bathrooms are all communal, so the plumbing’s centralized, there are no kitchens in the rooms, all the tenants get is hot plates. And their use is restricted to certain hours. There’s some paperwork, but nothing I haven”t seen before. And, let’s face it, the state wants you to be a success.”
* “Define “success.” The residents stay put and don’t roam out in the community to hurt or kill someone.”
Page 266:
* “I’m not a warden. I just own the building, and the state runs it.”
Page 269:
* “He came to me through a leasing agent. In the past they’d been reliable...It’s not as if his rent is prohibitive. I keep all my rents reasonable, want the turnover low.”
Page 271:
- “I like to keep a low profile. That way I can come home and relax and not have tenants calling me up for repairs.”