Company started by Miami-Dade candidate trying to evict family during COVID emergency
In June, a real estate company formed by Miami-Dade County Commission candidate Kionne McGhee asked a judge to evict a Homestead family months behind in its rent, and argued the case shouldn’t be covered by a statewide moratorium on most evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m a father of five with nowhere to go,” William Collier wrote on lined notebook paper in a July letter to Judge Lawrence King, who granted the eviction order on Sept. 23. “I...lost my job and was unable to pay and the owner is tryna find any reason to put us out instead of helping us.”
Collier and his family remain in the single-story house off Twelfth Avenue on the western edge of Homestead, temporarily shielded by local and federal protections against residential evictions. McGhee, a lawyer and the outgoing Democratic leader of the Florida House, noted the eviction action won’t result in the emptying of the two-bedroom, one-bath house until government authorities allow police to resume removing people from their rented homes.
“The company hasn’t displaced this family from the rental property during this pandemic,” the statement read, “although tenants continue to destroy the property.”
DeSantis moratorium didn’t cover ‘damage’ evictions
The company, 631 SW 12th Ave LLC, filed the papers in June and cited alleged damage to the kitchen, bathroom and air-conditioning unit as justification for the eviction to go forward despite the moratorium in place at the time. The April 2 statewide order by Gov. Ron DeSantis only applied to evictions tied to overdue rent, not other lease violations.
Standing outside their front door on Wednesday evening, Collier and Jacette Williams acknowledged not paying rent. They said it made no sense for them to damage a house they’ve done their best to keep up for them and their children since February, when they signed a $1,300-a-month lease.
“We pay to keep the grass cut,” Williams said after a reporter showed up unannounced at their home off of 12th Avenue on the western edge of Homestead. “You can see it’s not overgrown.”
Their tussle with 631 SW 12th Ave LLC offers a peek into McGhee’s role as a real estate investor in South Miami-Dade, which he will represent if he wins the election against former Homestead city council member Elvis Maldonado for the District 9 seat.
Along with rental properties, the company McGhee formed in 2018 owns a small portfolio of vacant land purchased last year from Florida City’s redevelopment arm and there are more purchases on the horizon.
McGhee: Land deals will help fight gentrification
“Following the national trend set by athletes and community leaders on the Buy Back the Block Initiative, 631 SW 12th Avenue, LLC., was created to assist in the eradication of gentrification and creating economic empowerment by empowering African Americans to purchase property and remain in their communities,” McGhee said in a statement. “631 SW 12th Ave LLC, is currently in the process of obtaining other properties via public and published bidding that will assist in its mission...”
McGhee did not provide answers to some questions about the company he formed on July 5, 2018, days before it purchased the Homestead house at the address that gave the company its name.
The next month, 631 LLC won approval for another land deal, this one from Florida City’s Community Redevelopment Agency. The CRA board on Aug. 14 agreed to accept the company’s $160,000 offer to purchase eight vacant lots off of Northwest Sixth Avenue. The 631 LLC entity offered $8,000 more than the second-place bidder for the land, according to minutes.
Purchasing land from the Florida City CRA
“They were paying way more than we were willing to pay,” said Joe Lopez, a partner at Sovereign, a real estate company that stopped its bidding at $152,000 for the Florida City land. Zoned for duplexes, the property sits a few doors down from a District 9 field office, and next to a boarded-up building that the CRA didn’t own.
The transaction closed in March 2019. Records show 631 LLC borrowed the full $160,000 for the purchase from Florida Premier Mortgage Association, with a loan document McGhee signed on March 29.
County records show the interest-only mortgage remains in place, and comes due on April 1, 2021. The loan documents don’t show the interest rate, and the borrower is listed as inactive by the state for not filing an annual report in 2020. Jeffrey Leary, the Cutler Bay lawyer who formed Florida Premier, declined to answer questions about the status of the loan or the lender.
“Thank you for your below email regarding the current status of Florida Premier Mortgage Association, LLC,” Leary wrote in response to questions about the mortgage and the lender, including the lapsed Florida registration. “I will advise my client of this issue and am sure any issues will be addressed. With regards to any additional information, I am bound by duties of privilege and confidentiality and cannot and will not provide any further information.”
McGhee declined to clarify his role with 631 LLC. The outgoing state representative for Florida’s District 117 listed the company as his top asset in the financial disclosure form he submitted to Tallahassee in July 2019, covering his finances in 2018. The company was valued at $200,000 in that report, with a $51,000 loan from Boyd Management listed as a liability.
Boyd was the lender for a $61,000 mortgage on the property next door to the house where Collier and Williams live. The 631 entity purchased the other house at the end of 2018 for $81,000. The seller also owned the property where the couple lives, and it sold to 631 LLC on July 4, 2018, for $100.
Company moving in and out of financial disclosures
When McGhee filed the disclosure form needed to qualify for the District 9 seat in June, 631 LLC wasn’t listed. In his statement, McGhee didn’t address why the company wasn’t included in his June disclosure form, which covered his finances in 2019.
The explanation may lie in the timing.
The form, filed June 5 with the county’s Elections Department, outlines McGhee’s assets and debts as of Dec. 31, 2019.
State records show that at some point before June 2020, McGhee removed himself as president of 631 LLC and named Andrea King as his replacement.
King appears to be a relative: a record of email addresses she has used identifies her as a former Andrea McGhee, as does a county registry of marriage licenses. King and McGhee used to live at the same address in Homestead. A person who opened the door there this week said King was McGhee’s sister. She could not be reached, and McGhee did not respond to a request for contact information for King.
The filings don’t show when King became president of 631 LLC. On Dec 13, McGhee filed papers adding King as a manager of the corporation.
Whatever his formal status on the corporation papers, McGhee remains a go-to person for 631 LLC. Last month, he signed a mortgage document for an extension on a $61,000 loan for the house next to the one Williams and Collier rented. In his statement, McGhee suggested he’s back to counting 631 LLC as an asset because it would be listed in his next financial disclosure form.
“All business dealings beginning on Jan. 1, 2020 related to 631 SW 12th Avenue, LLC, will be disclosed on the 2020 Financial Disclosure form,” the statement read.
McGhee’s name doesn’t appear in any of the filings for the eviction action that 631 LLC began on June 23, and Andrea King signed the eviction papers sent to the tenants. Later court papers showed the couple hadn’t paid rent, and would eventually owe $9,100.
The company opted not to cite back rent in the initial eviction action, which would have triggered protections under the statewide moratorium on evicting tenants facing hardship from COVID-19.
Instead, the eviction filings cited alleged lease violations by the tenants, including breaking kitchen cabinets, plumbing and an air-conditioning handler, having extra people live there and the “smoking of illegal marijuana” on the premises.
A company lawyer, Kevin Diaz, added a letter to the filing reminding court administrators that the eviction action “does not concern non-payment” and so was not covered by DeSantis’ Executive Order 20-94 protecting tenants who can’t afford rent because of COVID.
A contractor hired by 631 LLC filed an affidavit describing a May inspection that he said revealed the damaged kitchen, a bathroom floor ruined by overflowing water, a clogged sink and toilet and evidence of “an attempted removal of the A/C handler.”
In his July 1 note to the judge and in an interview, Collier denied the claims he damaged the house. “I have five kids living there,” he said. “Why would I break anything?”
The house is a backdrop for the couple’s YouTube channel, Leaf of the Family, a mix of family meals and comedy videos, including a segment where Collier and Williams take turns spraying each other with Coke after putting mints in the bottle.
“We know we’re making a mess,” Williams said. “We’re going to mop it up.” An Easter segment had Williams cooking shish kabobs and rice after organizing an egg hunt for the children while Collier was at work.
Collier, 31, said he lost his job at Coca-Cola in 2020, and hasn’t been able to pay rent. He said he’s counting on the eviction moratorium to keep him in place until a judge tells him to leave. “I don’t have a safety net,” he said.
Eviction protections still in place, for now
David Winker, a Miami lawyer who has represented tenants fighting eviction during the coronavirus emergency, said property damages have been a way for landlords to circumvent the DeSantis moratorium before it expired on Oct. 1. “It’s a harder way to get rid of people,” he said. “I haven’t seen a lot of success with it.”
Last month, 631 LLC amended the eviction action to include unpaid rent. Judge King issued a removal order on Sept. 23, and the court sent it to Miami-Dade police for service. But county police haven’t been processing eviction actions since March under orders by Mayor Carlos Gimenez, and there’s also a federal evictions moratorium by the Centers for Disease Control in effect nationwide.
One oddity about the eviction filings is it appears 631 SW 12th Ave LLC hasn’t owned the property for most of 2020. While that company is named on the lease and is listed as the plaintiff in the case, property records show the firm sold the house to King for $112,000 on Feb. 13. That was about two weeks before Collier and Williams signed the lease, and four months before 631 LLC filed the eviction case.
The sale was an in-house transaction — King signed the sales papers for 631 LLC to sell the property to herself — so it’s not clear why the transfer happened. The court filings don’t show proof of ownership but name 631 LLC as the owner of the house.
Diaz, the lawyer in the eviction case, declined to comment or to answer emailed questions about the ownership status. King could not be reached.
Winker, the tenant lawyer, said the eviction suit wouldn’t go forward if a tenant could show the plaintiff wasn’t the owner of the home. The tenants in this case did not have representation. Winker also questioned why the eviction went forward, given there’s a federally backed mortgage on the property that should have kicked in tenant protections under the CARES Act.
Standing on the front stoop, Collier and Williams said they knew they’d have to leave the house if they couldn’t pay rent. They said they don’t want to be tagged with damaging a rental property.
“I want to get that off my record,” Collier said. “It’s not true.”
