Springer Capital is a real estate equity firm in Philadelphia, some 700 miles away. It owns properties along the eastern U.S., including two apartment complexes in Chattanooga.
Its assets: more than $1 billion.
Springer's website is beautiful, with images of big-city skylines, dreamy castles and crew boats rowing on misty rivers. Springer is run by three men, with degrees from top universities; in their website photographs, they look young, impressive, well-dressed and confident.
I wonder:
Do they realize the suffering they are causing?
I don't know these men; but I do know this: like all of us, they each have a mother.
What if their mothers were being evicted?
What if their mothers were sleeping in their car?
What if they - on Mother's Day - had nowhere to go?
In 2019, Springer bought Rainbow Creek apartments on Standifer Gap Road for $9.1 million, according to last week's report in the Times Free Press by Mary Fortune, Wyatt Massey and Sarah Grace Taylor.
Folks had lived there for years, some more than a decade. Many retired, elderly, some disabled. They were renting their way to the American Dream.
Then, last year, during the pandemic, the letters came.
Rent was increasing by some 40 percent.
Section 8 vouchers were denied.
Leases ending.
"We like the Chattanooga market and what is happening in this corridor," one Springer principal told the Times Free Press.
This Mother's Day, many Rainbow Creek mothers are headed towards homelessness.
They have nowhere to go.
That's their corridor.
"Mother's day is a celebration ... [yet] their main thrust is about surviving," said the Rev. Shelia Harris. "The celebration is about survival, finding somewhere to go."
Harris's St. James A.M.E. Church is nearby. For weeks, she's been ministering, offering help, funds, anything she can.
"The have-nots are on the outside, trying to peep in and get a little piece of space," she said. "I can't survive now because you have out priced the rent. There is no love, no respect, no charity, no care, no concern."
In 2020, our city saw more than $400 million in sales of apartment complexes, all to outside investors.
- California real estate investors paid $63 million for the Bluebird Row Apartments.
- Atlanta investors paid $46 million for Parc 1346 apartments.
- Virginia investors paid $44 million for Marina Pointe Apartments.
- In 2019, equity firms across the country spent more than $230 million buying rental properties in Hamilton County.
It's like a quiet coup: out of sight, unknown actors are orchestrating takeovers of our local apartments, causing instability, increased poverty and homelessness. This is the shadow side of years of accumulated tourism and Best City Ever attention.
Call it by its true name: wealthy people getting wealthier, poor people getting poorer.
"One of the seven deadly sins is greed," said Harris. "What I can get for me and my company, not our fellow man. Love thy neighbor as we love ourselves. If we are only making them relocate, then we are not showing them love. If we are going to be Christlike, we need to feed the hungry and shelter for the homeless."
***
This morning, after church, four Chattanooga men will load up their cars and drive into homeless camps, carrying flowers, cakes, gift bags.
They're looking for mothers.
"We are going into homeless areas to honor moms who have kids," said Troy Rogers. "We are going to embrace them, honor them, love them, laugh, smile, pray, whatever we need to do to put a smile on their face."
These men - Rogers, Tony Oliver, Bryant Ellis and Jamaine Akins - don't have a beautiful website. Or Ivy League degrees. They don't use words like "corridor." Some days, they work with gang bangers. One is a convicted felon.
And they are saints.
Last year, during the pandemic, they served more than 20,000 meals. Then, they gave away hundreds of coats, blankets, socks and gloves. Their investors? Many of you - $20 here, $100 there.
"We want to show gratitude to moms no matter what the situation is," said Rogers. "We want them to feel good about being moms no matter what their situation is."
These men don't want attention. (I had to convince Rogers to let me write about this.)
Instead, they want hungry people fed. Hurting people healed.
The homeless, housed. The passive ... now engaged.
"Gandhi said poverty is the worst form of violence," Rogers said. "Poverty takes no prisoners. Poverty is a prison-opener. Poverty is a father-taker. Some people fall into poverty and didn't even ask for it. Poverty is on their menu and they didn't even order it."
So what do we do?
"What do you do?" Rogers said. "You keep loving and serving."
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com.