What happens when a nonprofit created to provide safe, affordable housing helps purchase and finance properties, but the deeds end up in privately owned companies?
What happens when that nonprofit makes seller-financing payments, operates the housing, and later faces eviction from properties it helped support?
Who gets the equity? And what happens to the people those properties were supposed to help?
Here’s why this matters.
Imagine New Foundations acquires a building, rehabilitates it, provides affordable housing, and eventually moves on to another project.
If the nonprofit owns that property or retains its rightful financial interest, the accumulated value could potentially help finance the next building, the next rehabilitation, and the next group of people needing safe housing.
But what if the property is held in a private LLC instead?
The nonprofit’s housing program could end, the building could change purposes, and the equity could remain with the private owner. Unless the nonprofit’s rights were protected, the resources that could have supported future housing might never return to the mission.
Now look at 500 Chapel Street in Falmouth, Kentucky.
New Foundations originally held the purchase rights. Those rights were assigned to Highland Hills Holdings, an LLC connected to Ross Shively. A different development called Verti-Grow followed, and the property eventually passed through city ownership before being sold to a church.
What happened to the original community-benefit restrictions? What financial interests were preserved? And who ultimately benefited from the transactions?
I’m investigating similar questions involving seller-financed housing properties associated with New Foundations.
These arrangements aren’t automatically illegal, and the records don’t yet establish that the nonprofit was deprived of ownership. But they’re important questions worth answering.
❤️ This isn’t about stopping development. It’s about supporting safe, affordable housing and protecting the resources that could help people today and generations into the future.
If you know the history, worked on these properties, or have records that can help explain the transactions, please reach out.
Because when a community invests in helping people, we should be able to trace what happened to that investment.
#AffordableHousing #SafeHousing #FalmouthKY #NewFoundations #CommunityInvestment #FollowTheMoney #PublicAccountability
