On September 27th, news broke over a planned expansion of the Cordova Inn in downtown St. Pete. The expansion will involve the demolition of the Stanton Hotel and historic Stanton Apartments, permanently removing 49 housing units from the downtown area. What's more is that these are some of the last housing units left downtown which are still actually affordable for low income earners. Three days after the expansion was announced, tenants were issued notices to vacate, giving them either 15 or 30 days to leave depending on their lease type, along with a crude list of "resources'' including a hyperlink to the Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas.
The current owner of the Stanton Apartments and Stanton Hotel, Terence J. McCarthy, is set to make a huge profit off the sale of these properties to the owners of the Cordova Inn.
So who exactly is this man?
Mr. McCarthy is the founder of TJM Properties, a real estate company which buys, sells and leases many different kinds of facilities including hotels, senior living facilities, multifamily buildings and more. According to the company's website, TJM has acquired more than 900 properties all along the eastern United States since its inception in the late 1970s.
McCarthy himself is worth millions. He personally owns a $2.7 million condo at 400 Beach in downtown St. Pete, as well as a $4 million mansion on Gulf Blvd. in Redington Beach. His success in business, however, has come at a great expense to our community and to the taxpayers.
Through his former company, Southside Contractors, McCarthy began buying up homes throughout St. Pete at low cost in the late 1980s, doing minor repairs and flipping the homes for double to unqualified buyers. In order to do this, McCarthy would falsify information on the loan applications. Many of the buyers would ultimately lose their homes through foreclosure, leaving HUD on the hook for paying off the loans and taking possession of the homes, often worth much less than they were originally sold for. In 1992, McCarthy pled guilty on federal charges in order to avoid indictment for his crimes. It is estimated his fraud scheme cost taxpayers up to $1 million.
Walking away from Southside Contractors with a small slap on the wrist, McCarthy would continue to expand his wealth and generate controversy. Three years after his guilty plea McCarthy racked up fines related to deplorable conditions at a downtown St. Pete hotel he owned at the time. In 2007, a mentally ill woman wandered off from a senior living facility owned by McCarthy and was later found dead. In 2013, he raked in over $200 million from the sale of 15 senior living facilities and would go on to secure major acquisitions such as Harrah's Tunica, a former 2000-acre resort in Mississippi, and the Atlantic Club Casino and Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ, which was later sold.
During the pandemic, McCarthy took out 23 separate PPP loans for TJM Properties and it's various affiliates, totaling more than $8.7 million altogether. Nearly $3.8 million has been fully forgiven by American taxpayers so far according to SBA records. TJM hardly appears to be a small business which these emergency loans were intended for. Many large well off companies, such as TJM, gobbled up loans and sucked the program dry while many genuinely struggling small businesses were never able to access the funds.
Some of the loans taken out on behalf of TJM affiliates, such as TJM Tunica, LLC which holds several parcels of land in Mississippi, appear to be passive businesses. These sorts of companies were generally ineligible for PPP money.
It is unclear whether or not any of these loans were procured by McCarthy in violation of federal rules, but considering his history of fraud, it's something that is not outside the realm of possibility. Our organization plans on reporting all of McCarthy's loan activity to the Small Business Administration.
McCarthy is clearly no struggling small landlord, but rather an up and coming real estate fat cat with money to burn. It should be noted that McCarthy donated $15,000 to mayoral candidate Robert Blackmon's campaign through TJM properties and 5 of it's affiliate LLCs the day before residents at the Stanton were issued notices to vacate. We are calling on Robert Blackmon to return the money to McCarthy, and to use his public platform to demand McCarthy instead use the money for relocation expenses for tenants at the Stanton.
Terence J. McCarthy, along with the New Hotel Collection, should be responsible for rehousing the all tenants at the Stanton. So far TJM properties has offered a measly $500 to tenants after they move. To put that in perspective, an average month's rent for a 1 bedroom apartment is around $2,000. Earlier this week we sent both McCarthy and the owners of the Cordova Inn a letter signed by the majority of residents at both the Stanton Apartments and Stanton Hotel with a set of demands, which includes giving residents until the end of the year to move and $6,000 for each household to aid in relocation.
We will continue to fight alongside residents of both the Stanton Apartments and Stanton Hotel, and are prepared to organize any action we find necessary to ensure their right to shelter is not violated.
We are also calling on the city council to immediately introduce an ordinance requiring landlords to cover rehousing costs for tenants forced to move due to exorbitant rent increases, as well as relocation costs for tenants directly displaced due to renovation or development. Our elected officials have a duty and responsibility to ensure this sort of injustice never transpires here again.
To all greedy profiteers here in the Sunshine City, our message is loud and clear: our lives are more important than your profits. We're done putting up with your exploitation and abuse. Clean up your act or get the hell out of our community.
✊All power to the tenants! All power to the workers! All power to the people!🔥
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