Long ago, I came to the conclusion that our country is driven on materialism and lacking in an array of areas that would better maintain our health, sense of community, and overall happiness. That in itself is why I’ve always done some things different than mainstream.

As a side note, the Solution Series is now FREE! All 24 video episodes provide incredible, timeless solutions on a wide array of topics, so share it far and wide with friends and family.

I thought it might be helpful to put this into a bullet point format, broken into the following categories: finance, food, health and healthcare, technology, necessities, information, travel, and intuition and introspection.

Some of the things I do may not be the way for someone else, but I’m hoping by starting this conversation and sharing my approach, it may offer ideas, direction, or inspire others to make changes and share what works for them.

If you find this helpful, Download it in PDF format in The Bookshop for FREE >

How I Navigate

Finance

• I use cash everywhere possible. I do not use store discount cards that require your phone number and document your purchases and the location in which you purchased it at. I definitely do not use the QR code apps for discounts either. I like to minimize my data-scraped footprint, avoid being tracked everywhere, and not feed into their new systems they are implementing for more control over us – even if that means losing out on some discounts.

• I bank at a family-owned bank that I trust. Here is a great article Catherine Austin Fitts put together on How to Find a Local Bank.

• I refuse to own credit cards. If I cannot afford to pay for something outright, I don’t buy it. I do have a debit card I use for online purchases for necessity products that simply can’t be purchased in stores or locally.

• I live debt-free because I have no desire to own a bunch of material possessions. If I were to ever carry debt again it would likely be on a mortgage for a piece of land and a very small home because I wouldn’t be able to pay for it outright. I’ve owned a few homes throughout my life and have sold all of them. I’m a bit of a wanderer and don’t like to stay in the same place for long so this lifestyle suits me better. Most people prefer the same location and consistency, and that’s understandable. If I could afford 10 countryside or mountainous acres by a lake or river, that’s where I’d be (most of the time).

• I have a small amount of gold and silver because I believe it could be beneficial in the future. I’m all about bartering and helping one another out too. Though, I get the sense I may one day be stuck in the realm of crypto with little choice, I’m holding out as long as I can on that front.

• I don’t invest in the market, but for those who do I would highly recommend reviewing exactly where your money is invested and reallocate it to corporations who are not corrupt and working on building the control grid.

• Everything is negotiable. I negotiate pricing on everything from products to services, because – why not save where you can? Negotiating is especially beneficial when it comes to medical and healthcare needs if you do not have insurance. I’ve negotiated rent prices (because it’s always overpriced) and always convince them to allow for a dog, even though they stated “no pets.” I’ve yet to fail on that front. People shouldn’t take everything at face value. Have a conversation, work it out, and both parties benefit.

• A few years ago I had an attorney assist me with a Living Trust and Pour-over Will. Though I have little, what I do have, I want it to go into the right hands with ease. I think it cost me around $900 to have it all prepared. My attorney keeps a copy, I have one in a fireproof case, and I keep a copy with a friend. This was all very easy to setup. If you have a family, any property and assets should be protected in a Living Trust. This will provide quick and easy access to bank accounts, and will alleviate the need to go to court. Find a good local attorney who can assist you with implementing this. This will save everyone a lot of headache, and potentially money, in the long run.

There are two key Solution Series episodes where we discussed a Living Trust, Pour-over Will, and protecting your assets:

Protecting Your Home and Real Estate Assets with Marie McDonnell

Protecting Your Family’s Assets Through Wills and Trusts with Ann Christensen

Food

• I read food labels. Doesn’t everyone nowadays? If the list of ingredients is a mile long, it’s probably not a healthy purchase. That’s not to say I’m a beacon of health because I do have a bit of an addiction to sugar. Trust me, I know. I typically scan to the bottom of the ingredients where they always place the line that says “contains bioengineered ingredient.” That’s when it goes back on the shelf. It’s a pretty safe bet that all crackers, most cereal and cookies, a lot of candy, and other products now all state that.

• I get my beef shipped directly from a farm to my door and it makes me smile every time! Ribeye is my absolute favorite. In fact, I’ve been thinking about trying the carnivore diet and I could easily eat a few ribeye’s a week. I have total peace of mind knowing that these cows contain no antibiotics, hormones or mRNA, and they are raised with their moms and slaughtered right on location. So the meat literally comes from the pasture to my door with no shenanigans in between. I get my meat through Shopping Club Freedom where I also get my household necessities (see below).

• I can’t grow food where I’m currently at, but I certainly recommend it. In the past, I’ve grown a variety of herbs, cucumbers, strawberries, carrots, and beans. I even grew acorn squash once, which was delicious! I have several Solution Series episodes where you can learn a lot about growing your own food. I get all of my seeds from Seeds for Generations.

• I have a great list on my site of where you can find fresh food, raw milk, and meat. Check it out! I’ve personally used FarmMatch, which is great for finding local farmers. It’s such a cool collaboration that I partnered with them. So if you find a local source you like, and sign up, you can get 10% off your first order by using this link!

• I’ve gone to two Rogue Food conferences and for anyone looking to homestead, run food coops, or build relationships with a great network of people, I suggest heading out to one! I went to one in Florida and one in Tennessee. John Moody generally lets me know when they are coming up and I share an announcement on my site so people don’t miss out.

• If I go out to eat at a restaurant, I completely ignore the stupid order and payment screens sitting on the tables. I request a waiter for service, and I pay them directly with a generous tip.

• If you are worried about RNA in livestock, The Sharp Edge put together this great piece in June 2023, explaining what mRNA, DNA, and RNA are and what areas of livestock are already impacted.

Health and Healthcare

• I did not consent to wearing a mask or getting an experimental gene therapy for Covid. I continued to go into local grocery stores, hardware stores, and auto shops during that time, without wearing a mask. Some glared, some smiled, some asked me to leave. I smiled at everyone who looked me in the eyes and I only left one establishment one time when asked to leave, because they were super kind about it and I was ordering food to go anyway. One of the employees took a smoke break and chatted with me outside while I waited for my food, then he ran in and brought it out to me. I only put a mask on once for 10 minutes when I had to go into a doctor’s office to have blood drawn for something totally unrelated to Covid.

• I had to go to Quest Diagnostics to have blood drawn a couple of times over the past few years and when you walk in there is a fun little sign-in kiosk where everyone gets to smudge their fingers across a screen and then scan their driver’s license. Um, no. Read the small print where you have the option to click on “I do not consent” and bypass that scan.

• I try to avoid going to medical establishments at all, but when it’s necessary I answer very few questions on forms, never give my social security number or family history if it’s irrelevant to why I’m there, and limit my contact information. I never sign a HIPAA form because it’s for their benefit and does nothing to “protect” us at all. Yes, I get strange looks when I say that I’m not signing it, and I could care less.

• Because I don’t have health insurance, I use GoodRX or one of those other prescription coupon cards at the pharmacy to get a discounted rate on a prescription that I unfortunately have to acquire each month. It’s a fairly significant savings and you can easily find them online. There are several different ones out there. Once they have it on file, they automatically apply it each time.

• I pay in cash because I do not want my financial digits or banking info in anyone’s computer systems.

• I have not carried health insurance for a decade. I’m not suggesting people should drop theirs, but it would behoove people to do some solid research on a variety of health coverage options. Jennifer Walters provided a wealth of information and resources on this in our Solution Series episode which you can find here. Here are just a few resources Jennifer spoke about regarding alternative plans that are much more affordable. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page on that episode to grab all of the resources.

https://hsaforamerica.com/healthshare-faqs

https://www.medishare.com

https://www.samaritanministries.org

https://www.jointhewedge.com

• When I do need to have blood work done or am just curious as to where my levels are at on something specific, I go online to MyMedLab or WalkInLab and order the tests myself. Then, I print out the order and walk in to a Quest or other lab center and they send the results to my account. Whereas, I don’t care for this process being done online, it is far cheaper and I do like the advantage of not having to wait on and pay for a doctor’s appointment to check my own damn blood. In many cases I can assess what I need to do without even seeing a doctor. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years.

Technology

• I ditched Adobe years ago when they switched to subscription only and admitted to collecting data. I don’t like to be locked in to anything that sends updates through my computer and forces me to rely on their product if I can purchase it outright or find a different product. I utilize a very old version of Adobe Creative Suite. I’ve also downloaded GIMP, which is a free, open source graphic design software that was recommended to me by several people that use it regularly. I still have to school myself on it.

• I ditched Microsoft products years ago. I believe they are now subscription based as well. I downloaded LibreOffice which is a free, open source software bundle much like Microsoft. It was very easy to transition over to and I use it daily, saving on money, data collection, no longer funding the beast, and have peace of mind.

• I don’t use Microsoft Outlook or Apple’s email systems. Instead, I utilize Thunderbird and Protonmail. I also have a basic gmail account for the sole purpose of plugging it into forms that require emails when I don’t wish to give mine out.

• Here are some other free, open source software programs that come highly recommended, that I have yet to try myself, just in case you want to check them out:

https://krita.org/en

https://inkscape.org

https://www.blender.org

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

https://www.openshot.org

https://kdenlive.org/en

• I utilize a mix of methods when doing research, including using a VPN, Tor, private window, and different search engines.

• When I’m surfing the internet and those pesky “cookies” pop-up windows appear, I either click decline, click the x to remove it, or if those options aren’t available then I scroll and read around it. I’m stubborn like that.

• When an article has “vanished” from the internet, I go to the Wayback Machine and can generally located it there. Just copy and paste the url. This works with entire websites as well.

• I can spot scam emails a million miles away, even the tricky ones, but if there is a rare occasion where I suspect it could be legit, I never click on any links inside the email, and instead just type the url in myself.

• I have a nifty device I really like for checking out areas that may have high radio or electromagnetic frequencies. I actually used this device to write about a massive cell tower disguised as a flag pole. I take it with me when I travel. The one I purchased is a TriField EMF meter model TF2. A lot of places sell it so it’s easy to find. I highly recommend checking out my article on Camouflage in Your Backyard with Over 400,000 Cell Sites in The US. It has a great link in there where you can get all the details on every tower in your area. It’s pretty cool! Another great device is an EMP protector for both your home and your vehicle.

• I purchased a pair of Baofeng radios. I occasionally listen in and it’s peace of mind knowing I have them should I ever need them. There is definitely a learning curve on programming them. Of course, big Gov wants you to have a license to use them but in states of emergency it is not required, and you can still talk one-to-one in close range with a friend or family member, without a license. If you are interested in getting comms setup, we had two fantastic experts on the Solution Series:

Mastering Field and Radio Tactics with Matt “NC Scout”

Equip Yourself with Grid-Down Comms with John Jacob Schmidt

• A while back, I wrote an article called Loosen Technology’s Grip on Your Mind, which contains a big checklist of helpful tech tips.

Necessities

• I’ve been getting all of my household necessities through Shopping Club Freedom for well over two years now. It may even be three. I fell in love with their products because they have hundreds of non-toxic products and they are delivered right to my door. This is another company I partnered with because it’s such a brilliant solution to navigating all of the toxins and putting my money towards families rather than corrupt corporations.

• I keep a certain supply of food and medical supplies as well as ammo of course. A couple years ago I also purchased a Berkey water filtration system, which I really like. I got my awesome Kelly Kettle, for cooking anywhere, over at my camp store on my Partners page.

• There are a lot of places I no longer shop and support due to their tactics, policies, and involvement with ushering in the control grid. I refuse to give them my money.

Information

• I’ve never watched the news. In fact, when I was growing up I would walk out of the room if it was on. Obviously, I catch news clips here and there these days due to social media. I take it all with a grain of salt because there is so much propaganda. There are certain agendas I keep tabs on through online research. I try not to spend a lot of time on social media because I find a lot of it to be highly toxic and have no desire for my brain to be pounded with it. More recently, I’ve sort of created this rule of thumb for myself – when I post something that is on the “not so feel-good side” I try to post something that is “feel good” in order to create a little balance.

• This is how I filter through information. I wrote this back in 2020. It’s called “Confused? How to Compartmentalize Fact from Fiction and Plausibility.” This allows me to track important information while not getting overwhelmed or sidetracked.

• With the exception of a few articles, I do all of my own research and writing for my reports. That puts the accountability on me, which I prefer. There are a small handful of people who I collaborate with from time to time on certain pieces of information where they may carry a level of expertise I do not have, and sometimes just to have a fun conversation going down a rabbit hole with a like-minded person. Because of how in depth my research is, it’s very time consuming, so I don’t have a lot of time to read other people’s reports. When I decide I need to expose a specific agenda, I prefer to dig in from scratch, use my intuition, and pull on every thread I find. If I do come across a report that coincides with what I am writing about, and it is solid information from a researcher I’ve developed a level of trust and respect for, I cite their work and include a link to it. And of course, there are a few researchers who have written articles for Corey’s Digs. I have the utmost respect for them and their work.

Travel

• I avoid airports at all cost. They are crowded with anxiety-ridden people and have surveillance systems that are escalating by the year, including biometrics. By the way, to my knowledge, the airports that currently run the biometrics to “keep you safe” and “expedite” your airport experience, are OPTIONAL. Skip it!

• I could be gone from home base for months, and pack very little to take with me. It’s been a great practice to narrow down what’s really important, what things I absolutely need, and what I can live without. I find that my dog, computer and backup drives (can’t leave those behind!), tablet, camera, guns and ammo, cash, and one suitcase with clothes are really the only things I need. Oh, and my EMF detector. Ha!

• This is a super cool one! The Knowledge Pantry. This is a great tool for archiving important files, videos, ebooks, and documents onto a tablet, that don’t require the internet to access or run. This is very handy on so many levels. For example: I have tons of how-to videos for everything under the sun so if the internet ever goes down, I have an entire bank of information at my fingertips. I also have a road map of every state, but I also keep an Atlas in my truck for good measure. Code is provided for customizing as well. Be sure to thank Zack for creating this open source code for everyone for FREE!

Intuition and Introspection

• Keeping myself balanced and grounded is an ongoing process. It didn’t used to be – it used to come natural. But, with all of the research I do and everything I’m aware of, my lifestyle has become quite out of balance. So I make it a point to take my dog to the park, on walks, for swims, and get out in nature as much as possible. I also meditate, but not nearly as often as I should or once did. I used to do yoga 3 days a week for years, which went down to 2 days a week. Then I tore my knee (not from yoga) and had to switch to Yin style to take the pressure off my knee. Then the Covid scandal hit and all yoga shops closed up, so I was trying to do it at home, but gosh darn it I’ve been slacking! There is something about sticking to something that you have scheduled, especially if you’re going with a friend. Right?! Point is – balance is key. Take it from me. Don’t be glued to a screen every day. Get out and make some magic.

• I bring up “intuition” because I believe we are at a critical point where people need to get more in tune with themselves, understand this universal field of information we are all connected to (not the internet), and access that which is innate within us. I’ve been using my intuition since I was a child. It is a powerful tool and has helped me tremendously with my research and projections as well.

• I refuse to live in fear of the future “what-ifs” by maniacs who want to rule the world – despite knowing all that I know. I also refuse to hold anger in my heart. Not that I don’t get pissed off from time to time, but I don’t let it settle in. It will debilitate you so quickly. If you can beat the fear they push at you day in and day out, you are already ten steps ahead. It is their main tool against humanity. For those who will ask, “who is they?” I break that all down here.

• I’m seeing a lot of people suffer from depression right now. I deal with bouts of it myself from time to time. One of the things I do at night when I lay down in bed, is play affirmations with background music, and I repeat them in my mind. This takes about 15-20 min, then I turn on my ocean sound machine and go to sleep. I think of it as a healthy way to reprogram my brain.

• I find that we are all experiencing transitions internally and externally simultaneously, and at times, it feels like a collision course. As we grow spiritually and stronger internally, the outside world seems less and less significant. And while aspects of it remain significant, it doesn’t have to emotionally charge us. A healthy detachment is where I thrive.

I hope you’ve found some of these tips and resources to be helpful. I know I have! Please feel free to share what solutions and changes have helped you, in the comments below.

Download this article in PDF format from The Bookshop for FREE >

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post This Is How I Navigate appeared first on The Washington Standard.

This is an incredible resource for financial freedom, put together by Catherine Austin Fitts and her team at The Solari Report. I urge everyone to read this, download the full PDF and get in touch with your state reps immediately to put this in their hands. This work was a labor of love by Solari for the people of this country and Catherine continues to travel the U.S and meet with legislators to help protect financial freedom. In my book, the “hero of the year” is Catherine Austin Fitts.

By Catherine Austin Fitts

For well over a year, the Solari Report has been working to determine how state legislatures in the U.S. can revolutionize their state’s legal and financial infrastructure to ensure financial freedom and liquidity within their jurisdiction. The goal is to defeat the central bankers’ “omniwar” efforts to assert central control and instead buttress financial freedom—without which all other freedoms (such as food and health freedom) will perish—as well as ensure sovereignty at both the state government and individual levels.

We are now pleased to announce “What the States Can Do: Building the Legal and Financial Infrastructure for Financial Freedom,” a powerhouse collection of resources designed to help busy legislators make the most effective use of their time and sizable constitutional powers. The document presents an overview of steps that some U.S. states already have taken—along with steps that have been recommended or considered to preserve financial freedom and state sovereignty. We invite you to print out or download the PDF and mail and/or email it to your legislators.

Once legislators understand the breadth and depth of constitutional powers at their disposal, a wide variety of actions are possible. The contents of this comprehensive package summarize legislative actions (both passed and proposed) in 13 different areas, as well as providing a variety of additional resources:

1. Preserving Cash and Checks
2. A State Bank
3. Protection of Financial Integrity
4. Stopping the Digital ID
5. Private Currencies and Credit Cards
6. State Precious Metals, Precious Metals Reserves, and Bullion Depositories
7. Direct and Local Investment
8. Doing Business with the State: Banking, Reserves, Pension Funds, Contracting, and Digital Payment and Telecommunications Systems
9. Recommendations to Reverse Private Equity Damage
10. Taxation
11. Protecting Against a Land Grab
12. Constitutional Protections
13. Food and Health Freedom

Building an independent state infrastructure along the lines described in “What the States Can Do” is a vital step toward weakening the ability of the entities opposed to freedom (whether the federal government, globalist corporate interests, or international or nongovernmental organizations) to interfere with individual and state sovereignty and financial transaction freedom.

Read or download the PDF of “What the States Can Do” HERE.

Read “What the States Can Do” at the web presentation HERE. (subscriber content)

As a reminder, the companion document titled “Working Successfully with State Leaders Who Will Take Responsibility” can help you support your state legislators and state-level actions. This practical stand-alone document explains the benefits and “how-to’s” of building relationships with legislators and other state leaders. Access the PDF here; hard copies—for you as well as interested family, friends, and neighbors—are available at the Solari Bookstore.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post What the States Can Do: Building the Legal & Financial Infrastructure for Financial Freedom appeared first on The Washington Standard.

You think about all of the best players on your team, both offense and defense, then you start assessing the players on the other team and how you are going to out-maneuver them. Your team has built a solid strategy, run plays exceptionally together, you’ve won countless games and you know you got this in the bag. You are heading for the playoffs!

But then the coaches on the other team are informing everyone that they’ve already won, the news is spinning the same tale, and everyone is telling you that your team has lost even before the game began. People aren’t even planning on going to the game because they know the other team has already won – it’s all the buzz. Even your sponsors dropped you. People aren’t interested in cheering for the underdog because they are so distracted by the winners flooding them with information on how they beat everyone. You may as well not even play for there is no chance of winning – you will never make it to the playoffs – so you are told.

Suddenly you find yourself in doubt and start sizing up the players for defensive moves, and you feel drenched in defeat before the game even begins. Do you think you are going to win that game?

This is how the “you will own nothing and be happy” camp pump out their PR and marketing to serve their private equity and hedge fund masters. The art of false defeat is a powerful social engineering tool, and they use it well. They play both offense and defense. Team offense pushes out the fear-mongering and propaganda to get everyone worked up, in a panic, and believing they are totally defeated, while the private equity and hedge fund masters play defense, claiming none of it is true. Of course, no one is going to believe them so they hedge their bets on team offense. And, once this goes on long enough, team offense is no longer needed because the sheer defeat felt by people will naturally propagate more defeat while sounding the alarm and essentially becoming the “free-of-charge” marketing arm for the camp. We have all fed into this.

Similarly, the same camp manufactures both sides of catastrophes – swooping in to save the day. They are always playing both offense and defense with the goal of making people feel defeated.

This is what’s happening in the U.S. housing market. They want everyone to feel defeated, as though people already “own nothing and will be happy.” It’s a PR stunt that’s been ingrained in everyone’s head and widely used by the masses.

But the reality is, when it comes to the U.S. housing market, homeowners and small mom-and-pop investors are actually killing it! Everyone was told that BlackRock was buying up all of the homes in America, that the big institutional investors own it all, and there is no hope for our future, but this isn’t the case. This doesn’t mean that private equity firms aren’t pulling out all the tricks and trying to gobble up the housing market, or that you should take your eye off the ball, but it’s important to understand the true reality versus hyperbole.

After publishing my 42-page comprehensive report on “Who Really Owns The U.S. Housing Market? The Complete Roadmap” packed with hundreds of data points and charts, I ran 8 polls across social media platforms to see what people believed to be true. I already suspected the outcomes in advance, which is why I wanted to run these polls to make a point.

Between all 8 polls, across 3 social media platforms, 83-95% of people got every single one wrong.

This is what false defeat looks like.

Poll Results

1) Who do you think owns the most single-family homes in the U.S.?

Homeowners 10%
Mom-and-Pop Investors 3%
Institutional Investors 87%

90% got it wrong

The correct answer is Homeowners, then mom-and-pop investors, and last is institutional investors. The institutional investors account for those who own 100+ single-family homes. Mom-and-pop investors own between 1-19 homes and that includes the 6.5 million second-homeowners. The mid-size investors own between 20-99 homes and only account for 5% of purchases of existing single-family homes while the institutional investors only account for 2%. Mom-and-pops sit at 18% of purchases. See my full report for details on who owns what, how many, and an endless trail of other statistics.

2) What percentage of American homeowners own their home outright and are mortgage-free?

10 – 19% – 69%
20 – 29% – 18%
30 – 40% – 13%

87% got it wrong

As of 2022, 39.28% of homeowners owned their home outright, mortgage-free, with no liens. This is an increase of 6.5% since 2010. That’s nearly 40%!

3) How many single-family homes do you believe BlackRock has purchased?

0 – 2,500 – 5%
2,501 – 5,000 – 5%
5,001 – 10,000 – 90%

95% got it wrong (and possibly more)

The answer is zero. BlackRock hasn’t purchased any homes. They do not purchase single-family homes. Instead, they invest for their clients in the build-to-rent single family communities, in building companies, building material companies, multifamily properties, and mortgage securities. They’ve invested $120 billion into U.S. residential real estate. That said, they are the top shareholder in companies covering nearly every sector of the housing industry which gives them powerful voting rights and control to dictate the operations of a company, which gives them a monopoly and everyone can agree on, is not good. To see who IS buying up single-family homes to rent, read the full report.

4) From which foreign country do you think individuals & investors have purchased the most U.S. residential properties over the past 14 years?

India – 11%
China – 81%
Canada – 8%

92% got it wrong

The correct answer is Canada. The top five are Canada, China, Mexico, India, and the UK. Other investors are from Colombia, Brazil, Germany, Cuba, and Israel.

5) There are over 43,000 manufactured & mobile home communities across the U.S. What % do you think mom-and-pop investors own vs big investors and corporations?

Mom-and-Pops own:

25 – 45% – 70%
46 – 65% – 17%
66 – 85% – 13%

87% got it wrong

The mom-and-pops are killing it in this sector, holding 75% ownership. 25% is owned by a combination of private equity firms, hedge funds, and big corporations. Over 21 million Americans live in these communities and the private equity firms have no mercy on these people. Read the report to see what firms are buying them (such as Blackstone and the Carlyle Group) and Fannie and Freddie’s involvement.

6) What percentage of Americans do you think are homeowners as opposed to being renters?

40 – 55% – 70%
56 – 70% – 17%
71 – 85% – 13%

83% got it wrong

65.6% of Americans are homeowners. The homeownership rate has toggled between 62.9% and 69.2% dating back to 1965.

7) Foreigners own approx 43.4 million acres of 878 million acres of U.S. Farmland. Investors from which foreign country own the most U.S. farmland by a long shot?

Netherlands – 1%
Canada – 7%
UK – 5%
China – 87%

93% got it wrong – way wrong

Canada owns 32% of the 43.4 million acres of U.S. farmland, the Netherlands 12%, Italy 6%, UK 6%, Germany 5% and China owns less than 1%. China is often used as a propaganda scapegoat of sorts. The big investors need to create an enemy for people to focus on so that people aren’t paying attention to the billionaires like Bill Gates or the institutional investors who are buying up farmland.

8) The U.S vacation rental market is over $17.5 billion and half the rentals are single-family homes. Who do you think dominates this market?

Individual & Small Investors – 13%
Investors with 20-99 units – 9%
Big Investors with 100+ units – 78%

87% got it wrong

Once again, individuals and the small mom-and-pops rule this market, holding 70% of it. The mid-size investors hold 20% and the big institutional investors only hold 10% of the market.

Still Feel Defeated?

This isn’t to paint a picture that everything is all hunky-dory in the housing market, because private equity firms are on a fast track to build up single-family rental home communities, continue to build out multifamily homes, and expand on student housing, while they keep their sites on the manufactured housing communities. The big investors such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street most certainly have a seat at the table for voting rights and dictating how a company should operate, in many sectors of the housing industry. There is no doubt about it – these guys are trying to monopolize the real estate market and all assets, but they want you to feel defeated and paralyzed from making decisions, from buying or investing, and from seeing that they are not all-powerful.

On top of that, many states are jacking up property taxes, homeowners insurance, and of course general inflation across the board. Everyone is feeling the squeeze.

However, homeowners and mom-and-pop investors dominate the single-family sector, vacation rentals, and the manufactured housing communities, with over 65% being homeowners as opposed to renters, and nearly 40% own their homes outright. When you read my full report, you will see how significant this is. There are nearly 100 million single-family homes (attached and detached) and investors, including the mom-and-pops (the largest bracket), only own less than 15 million. Furthermore, China does not own all of our farmland! They own less than 1% of all foreign-owned U.S. farmland. There are so many misconceptions out there, which is why it’s vital for people to review all of the actual numbers throughout this report.

The Reality of “Owning”

Many people will say that even those who own their homes outright and have the deed in their hand don’t really own their house because if they don’t pay their property taxes, their house can be seized. Whereas, I do agree that property taxes are unconstitutional and like a form of extortion, I don’t know that I agree with the blanket statement that they therefore do not own their homes. We could apply that same theory to almost any of their “systems.” Let’s take cars for example. Let’s say you pay for your car outright with cash. You now own the title. But in order to drive it you have to pay for a license plate renewal sticker, get emissions tests, and carry insurance. If you neglect to do any of those things and get caught out on the road, your car could be impounded. The only way to get it back is to pay fines and deal with the courts. So did you ever really own it? Sure, if you play by their rules and pay their fees.

What about having a dog or a cat as a pet? You buy or adopt the pet, get the papers, and officially own the pet. But what happens if you don’t follow the rules of having to get an abundance of rabies shots? Most vets, groomers, and pet shops won’t even give you access to their services, and if your dog gets attacked by another dog and animal control is called and they find out your dog doesn’t have its rabies, they can take your dog away. So was the dog ever truly yours to begin with? Only if you play by their rules and pay their fees.

One last example, and a very important one, is banking. You put the money that you own in a bank, but the bank charges fees for various services and many banks won’t let you take out more than $5,000 of your money, at a time. You have to put in an order to extract more out. What if there was an emergency and you are forced to wait as long as a week to get the money you “own” out of their bank? They are in the process of trying to move to a digital currency world and have already illustrated ways they can control your access to your money and how you spend it, which I have covered extensively. Are you going to extract all your cash out of the bank or are you going to risk keeping what you “own” in their system? If you do hand it all over to them, with all of the above conditions and possibilities, are you declaring that you do not “own” your money? So then, if this digital currency locks into place one day and they have control over how you spend your money and lock you out of your account, are you just going to let your money go because you are declaring that you don’t “own” the money anyway since they have imposed these restrictions on you? Or is this any different than the imposed property taxes to maintain the deed to your home you own?

Listen, if you haven’t realized by now that the global mafia (see my “Who is They” article) takes a slice of the pie in every single industry, and designed it that way, then you’re not paying attention. This doesn’t make it right, and that’s why so many people are battling against them and their systems they’ve put in place. But the bottom line is – you either focus on the positive and take action where you can, or you live in defeat and choose to see everything as doom and gloom. If you own your home and want to relinquish your ownership and claim to the world that your deed is meaningless because you have to pay property taxes, then live in defeat.

The fact of the matter is, while we are here in our short journey on planet earth, do we really technically own anything or do we claim ownership, buy and sell, move things around, play in their systems, and leave all material possessions behind when we leave this planet? Much of it is a matter of perspective. So in our short time here you can choose to live in defeat and feel that this global mafia has you by the balls, or you can appreciate the positive things and opportunities that come into your life and project that positivity outward so as to reject the negative BS trying to steamroll you. You can also come up with solutions, and there are many throughout this site. Bottom line – It’s a choice. Everything is a choice, and when you start claiming you have no choices, then you are playing into their victimhood scheme to keep you defeated.

The Point of This Article

We have far more skin in the game than they want you to believe. In fact, homeowners and mom-and-pop investors are the majority.

It’s critical to get to the truth and understand the actual numbers, rather than believing everything you hear or read. Sometimes our emotions get the best of us and when we know what these people are capable of it makes it really easy to believe propaganda at times. But we must stay focused and see the opportunities before us rather than just the gloom. There are opportunities for individuals and small mom-and-pop investors to expand on their skin in the game instead of accepting a totally false defeat. People can start taking action now on a local, state and federal level to squeeze out the monopolies of big investors. Use their game against them. They wanted this propaganda out there to put people in a state of fear, so instead, use the actual facts in this report to show your state representatives how these private equity firms are pulling rental increases, evictions, and other stunts to try to buy up real estate. The topic is already primed.

Recently in Maine, tenants of a mobile home community pooled together to buy their property so that big investors wouldn’t come in and snatch it up. New York, Connecticut and Maine have all passed laws allowing tenants of manufactured home communities to buy the land on which their mobile homes sit so that investors don’t buy them up, raise their rent, and give them the boot. This is a huge win and should inspire others to follow suit!

Whether you are looking to buy, sell, rent, invest, relocate, or just want to keep your eye on the ball, this report will act as a roadmap, showing where individuals, mom-and-pop investors and large investors monopolize different sectors of the housing industry and where the hot locations are. It is packed with hundreds of statistics and charts to provide both context and visual aids for a comprehensive view of how the landscape of America is shifting.

This is the most comprehensive report out there today and it’s free to read right here! It’s also available in pdf format in The Bookshop.

The Complete Roadmap:
• Single-Family Homes and The Rental Market: Homeowners Versus Investors
• The Top 6 Companies That Own Single-Family Home Rentals
• Build-To-Rent Single-Family Home Communities
• Foreign-Owned U.S. Residential Property
• Manufactured Housing Communities
• Vacation Rental Homes Market
• Student Housing Market
• The Affordable Housing Scheme
• Private Equity and Large Investors
• The Biggest Takeaways – Stats and Suggestions

READ the full report and share it with your family, friends, co-workers and across social media so that people know the facts and can make better decisions for themselves and their families.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post The Art of False Defeat in The Housing Market appeared first on The Washington Standard.

RFC in Texas!

Soaring food prices, radio frequency ID tracking of every animal in the country, bird flu to break raw milk demand, raids on food co-ops, vaccines in various vegetables…

Rogue Food was founded by Joel Salatin and John Moody to educate, equip, and encourage folks to say enough is enough, and do something to help restore food freedom and fairness to the food system. Are you a farmer, homesteader, or someone who eats on occasion? Most likely you are! Then come do something about what is happening to your plate.

We are bringing RFC to TX to help you help yourself or your farmers and homesteaders who feed you.

Join us this November to learn about creative circumvention and effective non-compliance, alternative food distribution like buying clubs and food churches, emotional support chickens, educational butchering options outside the meat inspection system, and so much more. Our special focus this November in Texas is stopping RFID (radio frequency ID) of animals and the bird flu scam that is targeting raw milk farmers around the country.

Learn from folks who have successfully fought the government and walked away winners.

Enjoy real food meals along with an array of attendee gifts from RFC sponsors and vendors, plus opportunities to expand your knowledge and your network to make food freedom a reality right where you are!

Use code “diggit10” for $10 off any one or two-day ticket!
Ticket info at https://roguefoodconference.com/rfc-tx/

Hot Tips from Corey’s Digs

If you’re looking for an incredible source for delicious beef with no mRNA, hormones or antibiotics, this is where I get my beef. The ribeyes are my absolute favorite! I’ve been getting all of my USA made, non-toxic household necessities from this one source for three years now, and the beef since it launched one year ago. I cannot say enough positive things about this single source. It has been a game changer for me. You can check it out here to get more information.

Fall planting is just around the corner. Seeds for Generations is where I get my seeds and some fantastic info. I love this family-owned business because they provide tips, free tools, and tons of free webinars and resources for how to grow your own food. They even have a free garden planning calculator and companion planting matrix so you know which crops to plant next to one another. And, they have canning supplies, a great variety of books, and a medicinal herbs kit. I highly recommend checking them out.

The post Rogue Food Conference DFW Texas November 8th & 9th! appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Whether you are looking to buy, sell, rent, invest, relocate, or just want to keep your eye on the ball, this report will act as a roadmap, showing where individuals, mom-and-pop investors and large investors monopolize different sectors of the housing industry and where the hot locations are. It is packed with hundreds of statistics and charts to provide both context and visual aids for a comprehensive view of how the landscape of America is shifting. There have been some big misconceptions and many of these statistics will surprise people.

The Complete Roadmap:

• Single-Family Homes and The Rental Market: Homeowners Versus Investors
• The Top 6 Companies That Own Single-Family Home Rentals
• Build-To-Rent Single-Family Home Communities
• Foreign-Owned U.S. Residential Property
• Manufactured Housing Communities
• Vacation Rental Homes Market
• Student Housing Market
• The Affordable Housing Scheme
• Private Equity and Large Investors
• The Biggest Takeaways

Download this full report in The Bookshop >

Increased mortgage rates that have reached as high as 7.79%, coupled with increased homeowners insurance, property taxes, utility bills, and the darn silverware in the kitchen drawers, has made it extremely difficult for people to afford homes. One of the bigger trends is build-to-rent communities. In fact, many private equity firms, real estate management companies and developers have been selling off inventory of single-family homes while the market has been hot and using the capital to expand on these communities. But make no mistake, there is also a growing trend of buying homes for cash and converting them to rentals. Is it the mega investors, the mom-and-pops or the small-to medium-sized management companies, and where do the shareholders fit into this action?

It’s important to cut through the fog and get down to specifics while comparing homeowners versus small investors, flippers, and mega investors to see where this housing market sits and where it’s headed. The reality is that individual homeowners own the majority of the single-family market and there are a lot of data points that will surprise people. There is also opportunity for individuals and mom-and-pop investors. However, private equity firms pretty much have their claws dug in to every sector of the housing industry from single-family homes to manufactured housing communities and student housing.

There are numbers flying all over the place and it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison by any means because numerous sources use mixed terms without specifying precisely the type of dwelling the numbers represent. Oftentimes, the percentages for investors’ stakes are reduced by lumping data on specific dwellings into the overall housing units market. In addition to this, certain data is only available up to 2022, where other data is current through first quarter 2024. Another big hiccup is that there is no universal definition of “institutional investor,” so multiple data sources will state numbers and percentages based on what they deem to be an institutional investor. For example, some break it up based on 1-10 homes being a small investor and mega investors own more than 1,000, while others will report numbers based on large investors owning more than 100 homes. And, there are also short-term and long-term investors, which obviously makes a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. Furthermore, most don’t dig deep enough to get a realistic picture of who the actual owners are. The data is inconsistent across the board, so comparisons and scrutiny are necessary when pulling data points.

After doing an immense amount of cross referencing, digging into dozens of data points, and running the math to get to the bottom of the actual numbers, this report reveals where homeowners, small investors and mega investors stand in the entire U.S. housing market.

Definitions for clarity:

• Single-Family Homes: include fully detached homes and semi-detached which are side-by-side dwellings making up row houses, duplexes, quadruplexes, and townhouses. If there are units above or below, they are not separate by a ground-to-roof wall, or they have shared meters for utilities they are considered multifamily.

• Multifamily Units: residential buildings containing units built one on top of another and those built side-by-side which do not have a ground-to-roof wall and/or have common facilities such as attic, basement, plumbing, etc. Townhouses and condominiums that do not meet the definition of single-family homes fall under multifamily. Typically, multifamily buildings consist of 5 units or more, but a single structure with 2-4 units can also be considered multifamily if it meets the criteria. Example: of the 450,000 completed multifamily units in 2023, only 12,000 were 2-4 units, 206,000 made up 5-49 units and 233,000 were buildings with over 50 units, with the largest volume built in the South.

• Housing Units: include all single-family detached and semi-detached homes, all multifamily such as apartments, a group of rooms, condos, prefabricated and modular units, mobile homes, and units in assisted living facilities. Excluded from statistics are: dormitories and rooming housing, barracks, transient hotels unless permanent resident, and nursing homes.

Single-Family Homes and The Rental Market: Homeowners Versus Investors

Homeownership rate has toggled between 62.9% and 69.2% from 1965 to April 30, 2024 where it sits at 65.6%.

As of 2022, 39.28% of homeowners own their homes outright and do not carry a mortgage, which is a 6.5% increase since 2010. Again, nearly 40% of homeowners own their homes outright and are mortgage-free! 38% of all homeowners are baby boomers so many have probably lived in their homes for a long time and paid off their mortgage, and some “homeowners” are investors who often don’t carry a mortgage. Nonetheless, it’s an impressive percentage.

For those who don’t own their homes outright, the largest mortgage originators by number of loans as of 2023 are United Wholesale Mortgage, Rocket Mortgage, Bank of America, Fairway Independent, CrossCountry, U.S. Bank, Navy Federal, Citizens Bank, PNC Bank, and LoanDepot.

Who are the top shareholders of the top three largest mortgage lenders in the U.S.?

The top shareholders of United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM Holdings Corp) are Vanguard, Fidelity, Platinum Equity Advisors, BlackRock, and Northern Trust Corp.

The top shareholders of Rocket Mortgage (Rocket Companies, Inc.) are Vanguard, Fidelity, Boston Partners, JP Morgan Chase & Co, and BlackRock.

The top shareholders of Bank of America are Berkshire Hathaway, Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street Corp, and Fidelity.

New housing builds have been on a steady increase since 2010, with a slight dip in 2022-2023. On average, there are close to 1.5 million house starts annually, with roughly 65% accounting for single-family homes.

In 2023, North Carolina had the largest number of privately owned housing permits per 1,000 residents, while Idaho, Florida, Arizona, South Dakota, and Texas saw good activity as well.

According to a May, 2024 release by the U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division on annual estimates of housing units for the United States, Regions, States, and the District of Columbia, there were 145.4 million housing units in the U.S., which was updated to 146.6 million in Q2 2024.

U.S. Housing:
Housing Units: 146,640,000
Occupied: 131,414,000
Owner occupied: 86,259,000
Renter occupied: 45,155,000
Vacant: 15,227,000

Approximate Housing Inventory:
90 million single-family detached homes
9 million single-family attached homes
23 million apartment units – 39% are 2-bedroom units & 87.2% of new apts. are built with 20+ units
17 million duplex, condos, townhomes and other multifamily units that consist of 2-9 unit structures
8 million manufactured and mobile homes

Vacancy Breakdown:
11,776,00 year-round – 3,451,000 seasonal
Over 8 million are single-family attached and detached
Over 5 million are apartments
Over 1 million are manufactured and mobile homes

Rental Housing Share from 2023 figures:
65% (29 million) apartments in multifamily buildings
31% (14 million) single-family attached and detached homes
4% (2 million) manufactured and mobile homes

So who owns all of the single-family homes?

According to John Burns Research & Consulting, investors (including second-home buyers) own 14.3 million single-family rental homes of which 11.4 million are detached and 2.9 million are attached. Based on the 99 million figure pulled from the Census Bureau, that would account for 14.4% of the single-family housing market. However, John Burns’ chart indicates 9.9% to represent the percentage of single-family rental homes owned by investors from the overall housing unit stock in the U.S.

Burns’ data shows that investors are purchasing 25% of homes, which includes second-home buyers. The following chart illustrates that the largest sector of investors are the smaller mom-and-pops who own between 1-9 homes making up nearly 18%, followed by the investors with portfolios of 10-99 units who account for roughly 5%. Big institutional investors who own 100 or more homes are buying less than 2% of all homes. Many of the bigger investors are invested in the build-to-rent single-family home communities, as documented further down.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the nation’s stock of second homes was at 6.5 million in 2022. Some of those folks rent their second home out, and therefore fall under the mom-and-pop category of the 14.3 million investors who own and rent single-family homes.

It’s also important to note that foreigners would also calculate into the single-family rental homes. Between April 2023 and March 2024, foreigners purchased 54,300 housing units in the U.S., of which 76% were a detached single-family home or townhome, the median purchase price was $475,000, and 45% use the property for a vacation home, rental, or both. The chart below just represents the top five foreign buyers. See the housing section further down for more details on foreign buyers of U.S. residential property.

According to Yardi-Matrix, In July 2024, they indicated that the large investors owning over 100 single-family rental homes owned roughly 800,000 – less than 5% of all SFRs. Some other highlights Yardi reported on were that 163,000 units were in communities with fifty or more homes as of March 2024, the occupancy rate of SFR communities was higher than multifamily at 95.4% nationally, and that renting has become more affordable than a mortgage.

• In an Urban Institute report, as of June 2022, there were 46.6 million total rental properties with 15.1 million being one-unit properties (single-family) accounting for 32.4% of the total rental stock. They suggest that the total institutional investor ownership (those owning at least 100 single-family homes) owned 3.8% of the one-unit rentals nationwide. That makes sense since there was a big buying period and then many investors sold off homes when the price was right and invested in the build-to-rent sector.

• According to a 2024 first quarter home sales report by Realtor.com, investors accounted for 14.8% of home purchases, whereby 62.6% of those purchases were made by small investors (10 or fewer homes). Realtor reports that this is the highest small investor share since 2001 when they first began tracking the sales. The large percentages being thrown around in media on investor-owned homes, are percentages of “home sales” for a specific quarter, year, or geographic location, such as this report by Realtor, not the percentage of all single-family homes owned by investors. It’s also important to note that the word “investor” represents single individuals who purchase second homes as well. As one can see in this Realtor report, 62.6% of the 14.8% “investor purchases” were small investors who purchased between 1-9 homes, meaning just 5.5% of homes were purchased by investors who own 10+ homes, and many of those are likely homes that are being flipped, not rented.

• Single-family housing currently makes up 75% of land that is zoned for housing, but many local and state governments have been working on changing zoning laws to allow for smaller housing and multifamily housing to consume portions of that land. They are also aiming to create affordable housing developments. The National Association of Home Builders’ 10-point housing plan includes overturning local zoning rules, removing permitting roadblocks, relief from environmental and community review requirements, and to pass federal tax legislation that will help expand affordable housing.

• In the multifamily sector, such as apartments, the numbers on ownership are a bit fuzzy. There are currently 45.1 million total rental units in the U.S based on the Q2 2024 Census data, of which roughly 30-31 million would represent multifamily. According to the National Rental Home Council, institutional investors owned 55% of multifamily rental units as of 2018. Fast forward to May 2022, and Savills reported that the institutional investors accounted for 40%. In the apartment arena, Greystar has taken the lead over MAA in owning and/or managing more than one million units in the U.S. In 2023, the top five largest apartment owners were MAA, Greystar, Morgan Properties, AvalonBay Communities, and Equity Residential, with three of the five supported by BlackRock and Vanguard. Here is the full 2023 list of the top 50.

Multifamily unit starts have declined the first half of 2024 from much higher levels in 2022-2023. See Fannie Mae’s full 2024 report on the multifamily construction pipeline update.

• The map by GAO below shows the hot spots that the mega investors in the single-family rental market are moving in on. Whereas the percentage across the country only equates to 2%, when isolating individual areas, one can see that number climb quickly.

• According to MetLife Investment Management, they believe that institutional investors could control 40% of the U.S. single-family rental home market by 2030. That would be an incredible increase from 800,000 homes, if they are referring to “institutional investors” as owning 100+ homes.

• The Urban Institute shows the top 20 locations where mega investors hold single-family rental homes versus where the smaller investors dominate, and several areas tend to overlap. These maps are based on 2022 records, but it’s pretty safe to bet that the locations are still prime for them.

• In a 2018 international study, RentCafe analyzed 30 countries to determine the share of owning vs renting. They discovered that in 29 out of 30 countries the majority were homeowners, with exception of Switzerland where more than half of the population rents. This is a great map they put together, covering 30 countries, to show where the renting vs owning market stood back in 2018.

In 2018, 36.2% of Americans rented vs owned. As of April 2024, the rental rate dropped slightly to 34.4%.

In 2023, 2.5 million households moved to a single-family rental home, meaning they either moved from a multifamily unit, were first-time renters, or sold their homes and opted to rent a home. In a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 14.3% stated they made the move because they wanted new or better housing, while 13.2% said it was for a job transfer and 10.9% wanted cheaper housing.

Since the percentage of renters actually dropped over the past six years, that survey would indicate that the market is likely shifting from multifamily to single-family rentals.

• Rent prices are increasing faster than home prices in two-thirds of the country, with an average investment return of 7.55% in 2024. Rents are also rising faster than wages in the majority of 341 counties that were analyzed by ATTOM. The interactive map created by ATTOM shows single-family rental returns in each of these counties, with some areas hitting in the teens.

Ownership Recap of Single-Family Homes:
• Investors own and rent 14.3 million single-family attached and detached homes
• Investors account for 14.4% of all single-family homes or 9.9% of all housing units in the U.S.
• Investors (including second-home buyers) are purchasing 25% of all homes sold
• Mom-and-Pops are leading the way (1-9 homes) – 18%
• Mid-Size Investors (10-99 homes) – 5%
• Big Institutional Investors (100+ homes) – 2%
• Big Institutional Investors currently own roughly 800,000 single-family rental homes

The Top 6 Companies That Own Single-Family Rental Homes In The U.S.

While individual homeowners account for the majority of single-family homes, investors of all sizes are purchasing 25% of single-family homes. Most of these investors are the mom-and-pops who own between 1-9 homes, but roughly 2% are big investors that own 100+ homes. Those are discussed in this section.

According to a 2024 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), based on a review of 74 studies regarding institutional investors in single-family rental housing, no single investor owned more than 1,000 single-family homes prior to 2011. (Side note: By 2013, Blackstone bought more than that in a single day for over $100 million.) That number skyrocketed to 170,000 – 300,000 homes owned by institutional investors by 2015, and by 2022, 32 institutional investors owned a combined 450,000 single-family homes, five of which accounted for 300,000 of those. The report emphasizes that even though the institutional investors only own 2% of the single-family rental stock, in some areas that percentage drastically increases, such as 25% of Atlanta, GA, 21% of Jacksonville, FL, and 18% of Charlotte, NC. Those are significant numbers.

GAO reported that there were 450,000 single-family rental homes owned by institutional investors as of 2022. However, in a report by the Urban Institute, they estimated that large institutional investors owned 574,000 single-family homes as of June 2022 and their report was also based on 32 institutional investors. But, the Urban Institute actually aggregated data on all legal entities of the parent company because these institutional owners often use other names as the owner. They based their report on large investors owning a minimum of 100 single-family homes and they pulled data from a national property records database. The 574,000 figure is likely more accurate than GAO’s and the difference is most likely due to aggregating all of the legal entities under the parent companies.

By 2024, the following top six owners of single-family rental homes corner the market, holding over 400,000 homes combined:

1) Progress Residential
Parent company: Pretium Partners
Private company
Number of homes: Over 100,000

2) Invitation Homes
Top shareholders: Vanguard, Cohen & Steers, BlackRock
Formed by Blackstone in 2012, went public in 2017, then sold its stake in 2019
Number of homes: Over 84,000

3) Tricon Residential and Home Partners of America
Parent company: Blackstone
Top shareholders: Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital World Investments
Number of homes: Over 62,000

4) AMH (American Homes 4 Rent)
Top shareholders: Vanguard, BlackRock, Norges Bank
Number of homes: Over 60,000

5) FirstKey Homes
Parent company: Cerberus Capital Management
Private company
Number of homes: Over 51,000

6) Amherst Group
Parent company: Amherst Holdings
Private company
Number of homes: Over 45,000

One example to show how this could impact an area would be what’s taken place in metro Atlanta. Almost 11% of the single-family rental market (over 19,000 homes) in metro Atlanta are homes that belong to Invitation Homes, Pretium Partners and Amherst Holdings. According to GSU professor Taylor Shelton and Rutgers professor Eric Seymour, all three of these companies used an “extensive network of more than 190 corporate aliases registered to 74 different addresses across ten states and one territory.” They point out that by anonymizing themselves it could protect them from legal liability or tenant accountability. One could also argue that it may sway people’s decision to rent a home from them if they assume they are renting from a small scale company as opposed to a mega investor.

Note that Vanguard and BlackRock have a stake in three of the top six. Due to this fact, some people might say that “BlackRock is buying all of the single-family homes in the U.S.” Technically, they are not “buying” them, but they certainly have a stake in the single-family rental home market as well as voting rights and control with these companies.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. got in on the action in a joint venture with AMH to develop 2,500 rental homes back in 2020, while Koch Industries invested $200 million in Amherst’s single-family rentals. The Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Mynd Management, and KKR are other big players in the single-family rental home market.

People should really consider not selling their homes to these mega investors and instead, sell to families in need of a home. If one is renting a home it’s important to carry out due diligence and trace the LLC to its origins, or better yet – make the decision to only rent from homeowners and small mom-and-pop investors. The property tax data is a good place to start and is typically available in most counties online through the tax assessor office.

Ownership Recap:
BlackRock and Vanguard have a large stake and voting position in 3 of the top 6 companies, which have a combined 206,000 single-family rental homes. Blackstone holds ownership of over 62,000. Blackstone, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac kicked Invitation Homes up the ladder. Pretium and Cerberus each manage over $50 billion in assets. AMH is climbing fast. These numbers only reflect the stake in the six biggest companies above.

Build-To-Rent Single-Family Home Communities

This trend really kicked off in a big way with government backing in 2008 during the financial crisis. The Biden administration has been giving it more fuel under the “Affordable Housing” scheme.

Why reduce mortgage rates and manufactured inflation for home buyers when you can just build single-family homes to rent, make a slew of money, and grab more control of the market? Roll in the necessity for “affordable houses” and roll out the red carpet for immigrants, while pushing HUD vouchers for government reliance?

Some of the biggest landlords, such as American Homes 4 Rent and Invitation Homes have actually sold some of their single-family homes while they could get top dollar, and then invested that money into the build-to-rent (BTR) single-family rental (SFR) home communities.

There is a big push for building new communities that are build-to-rent single-family homes. The Biden administration wants to build two million “affordable homes” costing $258 billion dollars to create more inventory, while 1.6 million (80%) of those homes are for rental purposes only. To understand how the “affordable homes” agenda is being used to usher in new funds, regulations, and assistance to shift the housing market from owners to renters, read the affordable housing section of Corey Lynn’s report titled University Migrant Smart Hubs, Private Equity and The Leveraged Buyout of America.

This growing trend of “build-to-rent” single-family housing went from 81,000 units in 2022 to 90,000 units in 2023. In 2021, this sector of the housing market represented 5%, which doubled to 10% in 2023. By first quarter 2024, construction had already begun on 18,000 single-family build-to-rent homes, which was a 20% increase from the first quarter of 2023. Just in the past five years, roughly 41% of the country’s build-to-rent housing stock has been constructed.

• Builders, developers and investors want in on this action. In 2023, 27,495 build-to-rent single-family homes were completed in communities with at least 50 rental homes that are professionally managed. An additional 45,400 homes in these developments were under construction.

• Take a look in nearby areas and see if one of these communities has hit near home. They are typically cookie cutter style homes packed in tightly with small to average size yards, often outfitted with “smart home tech,” bike paths, a swimming pool, gym, dog park, and located near transportation and shopping. The sales pitch is affordability, no responsibility, and amenities. The term “build-to-rent” is often used as “built-to-rent” or “build-for-rent” or “build-to-rent.” Some reports will abbreviate and refer to this market as BTRs. Keep this in mind when searching locally.

• According to a WSJ article on the construction of rental homes, in 2023, developers completed 93,000 new rental homes which is a 39% increase from the prior year. This includes townhouses, duplexes, small cottages and detached single-family homes.

• According to a RealPage report, there were actually 104,160 build-to-rent units under construction by September 2023, with the South Region dominating. The mega investors align with these locations. See maps above. This consisted of single-family housing that is fully detached, semi-detached, row houses, duplexes, quadruplexes and townhouses that were built for rental purposes.

• As one example, AMH develops build-to-rent communities across 13 states with a heavy presence in Florida (48 communities), Georgia (25 communities) and Nevada (25 communities). Check out their site to see what these communities look like.

Based on units under construction in 2023, the top five builders were:

Cavan Cos.
Private company

Redwood Living Inc.
Private company

Taylor Morrison
Top shareholders: BlackRock, Vanguard, Dimensional Fund Advisors, State Street Corp

American Homes 4 Rent (AMH)
Top shareholders: Vanguard, BlackRock, Norges Bank, State Street Corp

NexMetro Communities
Private company

There are a multitude of companies financing these build-outs. Below are just a handful of examples:

All of the largest and best known private equity firms, such as Blackstone (see private equity section), Apollo Global Management, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Bain Capital, TPG Capital and Carlyle Group are all invested in build-to-rent single-family communities.

> Acres Capital provided a $28 million construction loan for Cavan Companies BTR bungalows in the Phoenix area.

> Arbor Realty Trust also finances single-family BTR communities. In 2020, Arbor provided a $32.1 million loan to AHV Communities to build a massive 250-unit community in San Antonio, TX.

> Berkadia financed a 72-unit BTR SFR community in Edmond, OK for $16.1 million.

> Corevest Finance has closed roughly $1.5 billion in loans for 10,000 BTR units.

> Freddie Mac and Berkadia closed an $11 million loan for TrueLane Homes in 2018 under a Freddie Mac pilot program specific for affordable single-family rental properties so TrueLane could expand into Atlanta, Cleveland, Columbus, Houston, and Oklahoma City.

> Pretium (parent company to Progress Residential) has financed over $2.5 billion in BTR SFRs.

> NewPoint Real Estate Capital launched a national BTR financing program for BTR single-family communities.

> Northmarq has completed more than $1.5 billion single-family rental transactions.

> Simmons Bank financed a 260-unit BTR to Middleburg Communities in Midlothian, Virginia. Middleburg has four build-to-rent developments under construction in Charlotte, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Wilmington, North Carolina, in addition to the Huntsville project and two developments in Richmond.

> Stockbridge Capital Group and MORE Residential partnered in a $4 billion venture to purchase newly built single-family rental communities. Stockbridge is also heavily invested in manufactured housing communities.

• The build-to-rent industry is taking hold in multiple countries, not just in the U.S. Australia, New Zealand and Europe are in on the game, and the UK recently surpassed 100,000 units with 54,000 under construction and another 112,000 in the planning stages.

In short, the build-to-rent market is becoming quite popular, on a rapid upward growth and will likely be one of the bigger markets to keep an eye on in the future. If you can’t buy them – build them.

Ownership Recap:
Private equity firms are all over this industry and BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Corp. have a big stake and voting rights with two of the top five developers of these build-to-rent communities, as well as some of the private equity firms.

Foreign-Owned U.S. Residential Property Stats

Source: National Association of Realtors

The chart above represents existing-home purchases from foreign buyers, but does not account for foreign investors and developers. Between 2014-2024, nearly 1.9 million U.S. homes (both single-family and multifamily) were purchased by foreigners.

Florida has been the top destination for foreign buyers for 16 years in a row, which accounts for 20% of all international purchases. Texas moved into second position with a 13% share, followed by California at 11%, Arizona at 5% and Georgia at 4%. Florida draws buyers from Latin America and Canada, while Texas buyers came from Latin America/Caribbean, Asia, Mexico and India. Chinese and Mexican buyers are drawn to California while Canadians are all about Arizona. Georgia is a mixed bag, drawing from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Between April 2022 and March 2023, foreign buyers purchased 84,600 properties worth a total of $53.3 billion, which decreased to 54,300 properties worth a total of $42 billion by March 2024. Believe it or not, this is the fewest number of U.S. homes purchased by foreigners since 2009. $22.6 billion of the $42 billion represents foreign buyers who resided in the U.S. as recent immigrants or who held visas. The remaining $19.4 billion represents buyers who lived abroad. 50% of homes purchased were all-cash deals.

Overall, foreign buyers accounted for 2% of the $2.1 trillion in existing-home sales between April 2023 – March 2024.

The chart below shows the top 10 countries of origin to foreign buyer purchases. Just as with foreign-owned U.S. farmland, Canada leads the way. In the case of U.S. homes, the top five in order of purchases for 2024 are Canada, China, Mexico, India and Colombia.

45% of foreign buyers utilize their U.S. home as a vacation home and/or rental property, and 79% purchased a detached single-family home or townhome, 16% purchased a condominium, 5% purchased residential land, and 4% fell under “other.” 45% of all purchases were in a suburban area.

For perspective, below are three graphs showing the amount of U.S. residential homes (single-family and multifamily) purchased by foreign buyers from Canada, China, and Mexico between 2010 and 2024. In comparison, Canadian buyers purchased 446,100 homes, Chinese buyers purchased 344,900, and Mexican buyers purchased 242,200.

Canadian foreign buyers purchased 446,100 U.S homes between 2010 – 2024.

Chinese foreign buyers purchased 344,900 homes between 2010-2024

Mexican foreign buyers purchased 242,200 homes between 2010-2024

Between those three countries alone, that’s over one million homes in the past 14 years. Foreign buyers accounted for 1.3% of 4.06 million existing home sales between April 2023 – March 2024.

Manufactured Housing Communities

This sector of the housing industry has taken a beating from private equity firms and hedge funds, which is why it was important to include it in this report. After all, over 21 million Americans live in 7 million manufactured and mobile homes, while 1 million remain vacant according to recent statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Bureau classifies manufactured and mobile homes as one in the same under “mobile homes” but manufactured homes are factory-built housing that looks like a small single-family home. Whereas some homes in these communities are in fact “mobile,” 80% are stationary.

71% (5 million) manufactured homes are owner occupied and 29% (2 million) are renter occupied. Whether they are owned or rented, manufactured home communities charge lots fees and often other fees for use of amenities and/or utilities.

There are presently over 43,000 manufactured housing communities with approximately 75% owned by mom-and-pops and 25% owned by private equity firms, hedge funds, and big corporate chains.

In 2020 and 2021, Institutional investors purchased 23% of all manufactured home sales. Residents at manufactured home communities have reported that they’ve endured as much as 60% rent increases when private equity-owned landlords took over.

As author Bredan Ballou described in his book Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, “They targeted, not those with the most money in America, but those with the least. Nowhere was this clearer than in the case of mobile home parks. And all of this was accomplished with the active support of the government, whose sponsored entity, Fannie Mae, helped to start the fevered rush to acquire homes.”

Almost half (49%) of private equity-owned parks were financed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac as compared to only 9% of all the manufactured home parks in the entire U.S.

According to extensive research by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, one in seven manufactured home parks in Michigan is owned by a private equity firm, accounting for 121 parks with 34,258 lots. Florida and Texas are in the top three states, alongside Michigan, with private equity firms owning 2% (124) of Texas parks and 5% (197) of Florida parks. More than 80% of Blackstone’s lots are in Arizona and Florida and almost all of Carlyle Group’s are in Arizona and Florida as well.

Twelve private equity firms own 1,232 manufactured housing parks in the U.S. with over 250,000 lots, as documented in this chart the Private Equity Stakeholder Project published. Those are just the ones that they tracked. All communities by name, addresses, and ownership of the 1,232 parks they tracked can be viewed here.

Appollo Global Management (Inspire Communities), Blackstone (Treehouse Communities), and The Carlyle Group all own manufactured housing portfolios and happen to be three of the four largest private equity firms in the U.S. Many of the private equity firms in the chart above are also involved with the build-to-rent single-family communities, as documented in the build-to-rent section above.

Private equity firms know that their return on investment is huge. They swoop in to these low-income communities, jack up the rent and fees, forcing people to work extra hours to cover the increase because moving a manufactured home is very costly, then they turn around within a few years and sell it for a big profit. There are horror stories about how they treat these communities and the lack of care. Meanwhile, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are backing these private equity firms that are exploiting the residents, and have done little over the years to protect tenants, nor have they set a limit for rent increases.

So while the private equity firms and other big institutional investors cry out that they are all in the real estate market to bring “affordable housing” to help the people of this great country, don’t be fooled. They are in it for one thing and one thing only – money.

For those currently living in a manufactured home community or looking to buy a home in one, the information on this site is invaluable and also provides an entire section on protecting residents and calls to action.

Ownership Recap:
Whereas the mom-and-pops still hold the majority ownership in manufactured home communities at 75%, private equity firms, hedge funds and corporate giants have been playing the game of driving up rents to later flip them for a lot of cash.

Vacation Rental Homes Market

The vacation rental industry has been on an upward trend, with millions of single-family homes and apartments for rent on a short-term basis. Vacation rental homes are outpacing hotels by a 24% growth rate between January and May 2023, while hotels remained at 0% growth. Many homes are second homes that people utilize as vacation rentals for themselves when not renting them out. There are over 1,700 vacation rental companies pulling in more than $1 million in revenue.

The Top Four Vacation Rental Companies with Revenue in The Billions:

1) Bookings Holdings
2023 Revenue: $21.36 B
Top shareholders: Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Capital World Investors and State Street Corp

2) Expedia Group
2023 Revenue: $12.83 B
2023 VRBO Division Revenue: $3.3 B
Top shareholders: Vanguard Fiduciary Trust, BlackRock, State Street Corp, JPMorgan

3) Airbnb
2023 Revenue: $9.92 B
Top shareholders: Vanguard Group, Fidelity, BlackRock, Capital Research & Management

4) Tripadvisor
2023 Revenue: $1.8 B
Top shareholders: BlackRock, Vanguard Group, Ameriprise Financial, Fidelity International

It’s no shock that once companies hit the billions, Vanguard and BlackRock will be two of the top shareholders.

It’s interesting to point out that in December 2020, Airbnb launched Airbnb.org for hosts to provide free and discounted housing to refugees. Since its inception, Airbnb states that more than 210,000 refugees and asylum seekers have received free, temporary housing.

Some of the largest short-term rental property managers are Vacasa, Evolve, Sonder, Casago, Hosteeva, Vtrips, and iTrip, as of 2022. However, this is a fluctuating industry with new growth every year. Vanguard is invested in Vacasa and Sonder, and Vacasa has partnered with Marriott.

In the U.S. alone – the largest vacation rental market – 60 million people stayed in a vacation rental in 2022. It’s a big industry with 7 million active listings on Airbnb alone. The North American market revenue share accounted for 24% and is expected to hold through 2030. The U.S. vacation rental market was estimated at $17.5 billion in 2023 and is forecasted to grow to over $21 billion by 2030. The global vacation rental market size was at $89.3 billion in 2023 and is forecasted to grow to $119 billion by 2030.

Single-family homes make up nearly half the vacation rental market in the U.S.

The distribution of vacation rental companies by the number of units managed shows that 70% account for 1-19 units, while only 10% account for 100+ units. The mega investors are likely more apt to invest in online platforms and large management companies, while not getting their hands dirty with all of the day-to-day logistics required to manage and turnover vacation rentals.

Even Marriott got in on the action and launched “Homes & Villas by Marriot Bonvoy” in 2019, offering vacation rental homes. Of course, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are top shareholders of Marriott.

Ownership Recap:
Once again, BlackRock and Vanguard dominate this sector by being top shareholders to all four top vacation rental companies. The difference here is that these companies do not own housing stock, they get a slice of the pie from renting (or providing a platform to rent) the homes on behalf of the owners.

Student Housing Market

The student housing market is a huge market worth mentioning here because private equity firms, such as Blackstone, are heavily involved, and it gets much worse than that. Read Corey Lynn’s report titled University Migrant Smart Hubs, Private Equity and The Leveraged Buyout of America, for an in depth look at what is happening at colleges and universities as it pertains to student housing and illegal immigrants. This report also documents the land grabs as well as buildings being converted to student housing across the country.

This chart indicates the value (in billions) of investment transactions in student housing in the U.S. from 2014 to 2023. 2022 was exceptionally high due to Blackstone’s acquisition of American Campus Communities.

Below shows the distribution of investment activity based on properties and portfolios of $2.5 million or greater as of February 2024.

Over eight million students require student housing near campus in the U.S. and studies have shown they want single occupancy with all the mixed use amenities and smart features, which is a perfect fit for micro smart cities. Roughly 22% of university students live in on-campus dorms and residence halls, 23% live in off-campus student housing, and 55% choose nearby rentals.

In addition to Blackstone recently acquiring the largest student housing company in the U.S., the industry itself appears to be booming. The top five largest student housing real estate companies in the U.S. are American Campus Communities (recently acquired by Blackstone), The Scion Group, Greystar Student Living, Cardinal Group, and Asset Living. Other big ones in the running include Landmark Properties and Harrison Street Capital. Blackstone’s top shareholders are Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital World Investors, and State Street Corp. Blackstone is covered at length in the report linked above.

In a 2021 National Multifamily Housing Council white paper on The Future of U.S. Student Housing Demand, they stated that “the ability to relocate and quarantine students will become increasingly important as the role of buildings in public health policy gains renewed emphasis and is supported by new technologies.” They also stressed the need for public-private programs to improve building quality and projected that student housing will grow from 8.5 million beds in 2020 to 9.2 million by 2031.

According to a 2023 Berkadia report, effective rent growth across the top universities rose 7.9% between August 2022 and August 2023, which is more than three times the rate of market-rate rent growth across the country.

2024 is expected to be a solid year for the student housing sector, with an average occupancy rate of 95% across the top universities, and an expected enrollment of 19.25 million students.

Foreign investors also play a role in U.S student housing – investors such as London-based Global Student Accommodations, GFH Financial Group out of Bahrain in the Middle East, Abu Dhabi Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia-based company Riyad Capital, and Singapore-based CapitaLand Investment Limited whose parent company is Temasek.

Ownership Recap:
Blackstone is leading the way in the student housing market with BlackRock and Vanguard as top shareholders. Foreign investors play a sizable roll in the student housing market as well. Greystar just became the largest apartment owner and/or manager with over one million units in the U.S.

The Affordable Housing Scheme

The “Affordable Housing” push over “lack of homes,” increased mortgage rates and property taxes, skyrocketing homeowners insurance in some areas, and overall inflation, was all manufactured for home, land, and commercial real estate grabs by big financial firms to bring in a new wave of build-to-rent home communities and mixed use apartment complexes, more affordable off-campus student housing, and housing for illegal immigrants. Ultimately, this was done for the purpose of moving people into a control grid enslavement system where you own nothing and are “happy,” while they own everything.

One of the biggest pushes for affordable housing is lack of homes. Are there? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population is allegedly at 337.1 million people, made up of 131.3 million households with the average number of people per household at 2.5, which accounts for 328.2 million people, leaving 8.9 million people unaccounted for. Yet, there are 146.6 million housing units in the U.S. which would technically house 366.5 million people. Housing units include all housing whether single-family or multifamily so long as they have their own entrance. This includes manufactured & mobile homes which nearly 21 million Americans live in. Dormitories, barracks, transient hotels, and hospitals are not included as housing units. 1.9 million students reside in dormitories and hundreds of thousands of service members live in military barracks. That accounts for 2.5 million people. In 2023 there were roughly 653,000 homeless people. This leaves us with roughly 5.7 million people unaccounted for and 15.3 million housing units still available to accommodate over 38 million people (based on 2.5 avg per household). Of course, there are over 6.5 million second homes owned by people in the U.S. that might not be rented out, so that figure could be reduced to 8.8 million available housing units. If they are not homeless and do not have a housing unit, who exactly makes up the 5.7 million mystery people? Technically, transient hotel goers would fall under homeless because there would be no way to track that. Could it be the millions of immigrants that have come through the borders over the past five years?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 2024 report on residential vacancies, they calculated that 6.6% of rental housing and 0.9% of homeowner housing sat vacant in the second quarter of 2024, which totaled 15.2 million vacant homes (of that 3.5 million were seasonal vacant), which is almost right on the money with the figure of 15.3 million calculated above. So are there a lack of homes? No. Are there a lack of affordable homes? Pretty much everywhere, due to manufactured inflation, rental rate increases and mortgage rates. That goes for darn near everyone. Are there a lack of homes in geographic locations where the population is more dense? Perhaps.

The Biden administration wants to build two million “affordable homes” costing $258 billion dollars, to create more inventory, while 1.6 million (80%) of those homes are for rental purposes only. A new bill was recently introduced by Reps. Adam Schiff and Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., to convert unused government buildings into affordable housing, which includes a grant program “to help state and local governments convert properties into qualified residential rental projects.”

There are a lot of “affordable housing” plans in the works with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Forest Service, United States Postal Service, HUD, and the Department of Transportation to repurpose public land, buildings, and forests to create affordable housing. They’ve had an incredible jumpstart with all of this, ever since the manufactured destruction of buildings across America with riots after the George Floyd scandal, during the tyrannical Covid lockdowns so they could buy up all the shuttered real estate.

Bank of America Community Development Banking (CDB) provided $7.1 billion in debt and equity financing in 2023 to build and preserve 11,000 affordable housing units. They are committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (the Great Con). CDB focuses on mixed use developments that incorporate “health and well-being” programs and onsite-care.

The “Affordable Housing” scheme is covered more in depth in Corey Lynn’s report titled University Migrant Smart Hubs, Private Equity and The Leveraged Buyout of America.

Housing vouchers and rental assistance is on the rise, which is covered more in depth in the above linked report. The low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) federal program that awards tax credits to housing developers for reserving a portion of rent-restricted units for lower-income households, and housing choice vouchers, are the largest rental assistance programs. The vouchers alone assisted 2.3 million renters in 2022.

Invitation Homes, one of the largest single-family rental home companies, with top shareholders being BlackRock and Vanguard, helped more than 15,000 residents obtain $116 million in federal rental assistance in 2022 alone. They also partnered with over 150 public housing authorities to serve thousands of their residents who received housing assistance as well as HUD’s Housing Choice Vouchers. Firstkey, Blackstone’s Tricon Residential, Progress Residential, and all of the other big companies accept vouchers as well. Even the small mom-and-pops are doing it. Why not? It’s guaranteed pay. But there is a bigger picture people need to keep in mind when it comes to government “assistance.”

Private Equity and Large Investors

Private equity firms and mega institutional investors are heavily involved in real estate and carving out new industries to capitalize on. The single-family rental homes and build-to-rent communities are definitely on par to see major growth in years to come. If you can’t buy up the homes – then build them – wait out the baby boomers and pick up those homes down the road while moving the younger generations into the single-family rental home communities stocked with smart home tech and amenities.

Catherine Austin Fitts of The Solari Report provides an excellent description of exactly what private equity is. She explains, “It is equity investment that is managed privately by investment companies that buy, reengineer, and sell companies, principally with funds raised from both institutional and retail investors. Instead of a company financing in the stock market with public equity, it is owned in large part or in whole by an investment company. Often, this occurs when a private equity company buys a public company and then takes it private—not infrequently with the use of debt to finance the purchase (in what is known as a “leveraged buyout”). Increasingly, the large private equity firms finance in the public equity markets and trade on the stock exchange. One of the reasons that the number of companies traded on the U.S. stock market has diminished is as a result of the growth of private equity firms.”

In Brendan Ballou’s book Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, Ballou shows how private equity firms KKR, Carlyle and Blackstone own more companies than every business listed on the U.S. stock exchanges combined. He also points out that roughly one in five large companies acquired through leveraged buyouts go bankrupt in a decade.

Ballou’s book covers how private equity firms are destroying America and goes into specifics about their involvement in the housing industry, health care, nursing homes, retail, and prisons while providing insight into case studies, finances, the courts, local governments and Congress, pension funds and retirement savings, and special tax treatments these private equity firms benefit from. Ballou dedicated an entire section on what we must do and an agenda for reform. It is a highly recommended book. Ballou is a federal prosecutor who has served in the National Security Division and as Special Counsel for Private Equity in the Antitrust Division at the U. S. Department of Justice.

In 2017, despite 136 nonprofits opposing it, Fannie Mae injected $1 billion into a 10-year loan originated by Wells Fargo, in a first time government-sponsored enterprise to a large institutional operator of single-family rental properties – Invitation Homes, owned by Blackstone at that time. This catapulted Invitation Homes into what it is today. After running two-year long single-family rental pilot programs, Fannie and Freddie exited the single-family rental market.

But that’s not when private equity firms made their single-family home debut with Fannie and Freddie. Not long after the 2007 housing market collapsed when millions of Americans lost their homes, instead of reselling the homes to families, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (regulator of Fannie and Freddie) and Federal Reserve thought creditors could make more money on renting than selling properties. Private equity firms didn’t previously contain single-family homes in their portfolios, but come 2012 when the FHFA began auctioning off bundles of homes to be converted to rentals so individuals couldn’t get in on a single home, big investors utilized special software that cued them in to which properties would make the most money, and bought up hundreds of houses at a time. Colony Capital purchased 970 properties in California and Fannie jumped into a partnership with Colony to operate, lease, and manage over a thousand homes.

In just two years, private equity firms and hedge funds purchased roughly 350,000 bank-owned homes. Fannie sold out American homeowners to big investors. Lack of rental control, increased rents, added fees to tenants, lack of maintenance, forced evictions, and eventual lawsuits ensued against some of these private equity firms. Even til this day the lawsuits continue, while these firms buy up and build out more rental homes. On August 23, 2024, the Department of Justice and eight states filed a lawsuit against RealPage, a real estate software company owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, for enabling collusion among landlords to engage in price fixing and raise rents for millions of Americans. Numerous large private equity firms, including Blackstone, the largest landlord in the country, uses RealPage’s software, YieldStar, to set rents for nearly 350,000 rental housing units in the U.S. alone.

Over the past few years, Blackstone has invested $9.5 billion into the single-family rental market, including the acquisition of Tricon Residential for $3.5 billion. Blackstone has bought up apartment blocks, student housing, single-family housing rental companies, senior care homes, offices, hotels, logistics warehouses, data centers, mobile home parks, and film studios, with over 350,000 units of rental housing in the U.S. Blackstone claims to own less than 1% of rental housing in the U.S. Blackstone’s real estate business has $337 billion of investor capital under management. However, in April 2024, Blackstone announced acquiring AIR Communities valued at $10 billion, which finalized on June 28, 2024. AIR Communities portfolio boasts 77 communities across 10 states totaling 27,385 apartment units.

BlackRock ($10.6 trillion), Vanguard ($9.3 trillion) and State Street Corp ($4.4 trillion) have a combined $24.3 trillion in assets under management. They control 74% of the equity ETF market and have a huge amount of voting rights and control over how companies are run. Sure, they are investing for their clients who own the stocks, but make no mistake, the money they are making and the control they wield is astronomical.

From residential to commercial, industrial, building supplies, manufacturers, distributors, cell towers, cable and wifi, storage, software, and marketing – BlackRock, Vanguard, and typically State Street hold the real estate sector in the palm of their hands when it comes to voting rights and control. Just to name a small handful: American Tower Corp. (cell towers), BlueLinx, Builders FirstSource, CubeSmart, Ferguson, Home Depot, Invesco, Lowe’s, Redfin, Zillow, plus numerous others already mentioned throughout this report. Here is a list of 100 top real estate stocks.

Technically, BlackRock is not “buying up” single family homes, but they certainly have top voting rights and control over some of the top companies in the industry. BlackRock got so hammered on this topic that they put together a response on their website. Their response states that they are a significant investor in mortgage securities, they are invested in several programs that provide financing to build new homes, they invest in multifamily properties, apartment complexes, and other residential real estate, and most recently began investing in construction of for-rent housing developments with a focus on single-family rental housing. According to BlackRock, they have invested $120 billion into the U.S. residential real estate market on behalf of their clients but do not buy individual single-family homes. Their key geographic locations for real estate investments are North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

Corey’s Digs has reported on BlackRock and CEO Larry Fink in numerous reports. For those who aren’t familiar with BlackRock – you should be. They are involved at the highest levels of this attempted financial takeover, the going direct reset, climate hoax, ESG, and digital control grid. BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world with over $10 trillion in assets under management. BlackRock and Vanguard are top shareholders of one another, so it’s quite the powerhouse.

The Biggest Takeaways

The great news is that individual homeowners are holding the majority of the housing stock in nearly every sector except for multifamily units. Mom-and-pops are in strong force in the single-family rental homes, vacation rentals, and manufactured housing communities and mobile home parks, beating out the mid-side and large investors.

Though there has been a misconception as to how many houses are actually being bought by the big investors, it is quite clear that the big institutional investors are making bold moves and engineering the industry to work in its favor. From policies to regulations, zoning, affordable housing programs, tax credits, lobbying, fraudulent land grabs, and big money – they are on a trajectory to one day monopolize the entire real estate market unless swift action is taken on the local, state, and federal level. That said, individuals and the smaller mom-and-pops are still very much in this game and can continue to build on their own real estate investments.

One key factor in play is the financial control system that “they” are attempting to rollout, which could potentially assert control over people’s bank accounts in the future, how they spend their money and when they get access to their money. That’s a play that would essentially impact every person across every industry.

This report provides a roadmap for people to make better choices as to whether they want to sell their home, buy a home, rent a place, live off grid, invest in real estate, and what locations would be the smart move. Jurisdictions are very important to take a close look at. Check out local and state plans, zoning and development, the “sustainable 2030 agenda,” mixed use structures going up, and so on.

Top Stats:

• Homeownership is at 65.6% and nearly 40% of Americans own their homes outright with no mortgage!

• There are 45.1 million rental units in the U.S. and 11.4 million account for single-family rental homes (31%), with roughly 65% of 1.5 million new annual housing starts making up single-family homes.

• On average, investors are purchasing 25% of existing single-family (attached and detached) home sales. The mom-and-pops (including the 6.5 million second-home buyers) account for 18%, investors with portfolios of 10-99 units account for 5%, and big institutional investors who own 100+ homes are buying less than 2% which accounts for roughly 800,000 single-family homes. In total, all investors account for roughly 14.4% of all single-family attached and detached homes.

• Single-family housing makes up 75% of land zoned for housing, but they are aiming to change that to expand on multifamily and smaller housing with mixed use.

• Some of the biggest hot zones for big investors of single-family rentals are: Atlanta, GA, Jacksonville, FL, Charlotte, NC, Phoenix, AZ, and other pockets along the sunbelt states.

• In 2018, 36.2% of Americans rented vs owned. As of April 2024, that dropped slightly to 34.4%.

• The build-to-rent communities are doubling by the year. Just in the past 5 years, 41% of the country’s build-to-rent housing stock has been constructed. In 2023 alone, over 27,000 homes were completed in build-to-rent communities with at least 50 rental homes that are professionally managed, and an additional 45,400 homes were under construction. Private equity firms are heavily involved and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped them out.

• Between 2014-2024, nearly 1.9 million homes (single-family and multifamily) were purchased by foreigners. The biggest buyers were Canada, China, Mexico, India, and Colombia, and the biggest destination was Florida, accounting for 20% of all international purchases. 45% utilize their home as a vacation home and/or rental property and 79% purchased a detached single-family home or townhome.

• Over 21 million Americans live in 7 million manufactured or mobile homes. 71% of those are owner-occupied and 29% are renter occupied. There are over 43,000 manufactured housing communities with approximately 75% owned by mom-and-pops and 25% owned by private equity firms, hedge funds, and big corporations.

• Almost half (49%) of private equity-owned parks were financed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac as compared to only 9% of all the manufactured home parks in the entire U.S. Michigan, Florida and Texas are their top states of choice, although more than 80% of Blackstone’s lots are in Arizona and Florida and most of Carlyle Group’s are located in those two states as well.

• The U.S. market size of the vacation rental market was at $17.5 billion in 2023. Single-family homes make up nearly half of the vacation rental market. 70% of vacation rental homes are owned by individuals and small investors with 1-19 homes, while mega investors (100+ homes) account for only 10%. The largest companies providing a rental gateway to these homes, are all backed by mega investors as top shareholders.

• Blackstone dominates the student housing market. Over 8 million students require housing near campus. Roughly 22% live in on-campus dorms and residence halls while 23% live in off-campus student housing and the remaining 55% choose nearby rentals.

• In 2021, the National Multifamily Housing Council stated in a white paper that “the ability to relocate and quarantine students will become increasingly important as the role of buildings in public health policy gains renewed emphasis and is supported by new technologies.”

• According to the U.S. population statistics, there are 5.7 million mystery people who are unaccounted for as homeowners, renters, living in dorms or barracks, or homeless – meaning, either 5.7 million immigrants are unaccounted for (and likely far more than that), or the homeless numbers are way off.

• The “Affordable Housing” scheme cannot be overlooked, as it is one of the biggest scandals of all time to move people from homeownership into rentals while loosening regulations for developers and guaranteeing them profits.

• Foreign-owned U.S. farmland is covered in a separate report here, but it felt important to include a few statistics in this report. There are roughly 878 million acres of farmland in the U.S., or 39% of all U.S. land. That is a decrease of 66 million acres since 2000. Foreigners own 43.4 million acres with Canada owning 32% of those, the Netherlands 12%, Italy 6%, UK 6%, Germany 5% and China owning less than 1%.

Suggestions:

• Do you buy, hold, sell, or invest? The maps in this report show where the smaller and bigger investors are buying and building to rent, with a special interest in the sunbelt. It also shows where foreign investors are buying. Do you want to be in the middle of that or outside of that? Study this report and utilize the information wisely.

• When renting a home, be sure to do your due diligence on who the owners and/or landlords are. For starters, run the parcel through the local tax assessor’s office online. It’s always best to rent from and support homeowners as opposed to institutional investors. Reviews, fraud, rent increases, and eviction stats prove this point.

• There is clearly a booming market for both short-term rentals and build-to-rent homes and communities. Individuals and small mom-and-pop investors may want to consider jumping into these markets and staving off the mega investors from grabbing up additional properties. It could even be a very small-scale community with a dozen small homes, located in a fantastic area. Communal gardens would be a great addition as well!

• Those two markets above also create niche markets that coincide with them that other individuals might consider capitalizing on, such as marketing, cleaning services, management of turnover, stylizing the interiors, and so on.

• Teach children about construction at a young age and as they get older teach them about plumbing and electricity, and how to build homes. High school’s should incorporate building tiny homes. Once they are old enough, they can purchase their own land and build their own home.

• Keep an eye on local markets to see what is being purchased and built. Be sure to look into the many affordable housing schemes taking place as well. It’s important to know your neighbors, who owns the neighborhoods, and what zoning and development changes are being made.

• Talk with your local and state representatives about your concerns over private equity firms buying up properties, land, and building out rental communities. If you are selling a home, do everyone a favor and sell to a family rather than a big investor.

• For those currently living in a manufactured home community or looking to buy a home in one, the information on this site is invaluable and also provides an entire section on protecting residents and calls to action.

• As always – cash is king, bank with smaller local banks you have researched and interviewed, and consider who is controlling your portfolio and who you are investing in.

Own and be happy – rent and be happy – invest and be happy – but never take your eye off the ball.

This report was sponsored by The Solari Report.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post Who Really Owns The U.S. Housing Market? The Complete Roadmap appeared first on The Washington Standard.

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1) “Wikileaks Just Released A Massive Dump Of Files!”

No, they really didn’t.

Wikileaks did not “just” release a massive dump of files, so when you see a hyped up post on social media claiming “OMG! Wikileaks just released a massive data dump on Clintons and…..,” it’s untrue. The link people are sharing is Wikileaks main index file page to all links on their site, which has always been there, and there is a mountain of information to sift through.

For added confirmation, simply pull up the index file page archived from 2014 (ten years ago) and a character count, excluding spaces, will show 92,797 characters. In comparison, the current index page shows 93,252 characters. The difference? Over the course of ten years, 455 characters have been added, which wouldn’t account for more than a small handful of files added since 2014. Furthermore, all of their leaks show the release date on their site.

2) “Deagel Is A Deep State Military Site Claiming The U.S. Population Will Be At 99 Million In 2025!”

Totally false.

Deagel is not the same as Deagle, as in Edwin Deagle. The posts, articles, and videos that have been circulating for over a decade are drawing people’s focus to a man that has absolutely nothing to do with Deagel.com. Nor is the site run by deep state. A quick glance through the website itself is a good indicator of that.

Though it is currently set to private, a search through the archives shows that the website was registered on August 31, 2003 from an address in Spain by “Gas Deagel.”

The website posts updates on various military related projects and equipment with links to the source sites they found the info on. They also post a chart of each country’s population. At one time the site was posting projected populations into the future, such as their 2007 forecast about 2017, or their 2019 forecast about 2025. This is why the viral posts began in the first place, because the site suggested the U.S. population would drop significantly as the years ticked by, and even had 2025 at a population of 99 million.

They had a short disclaimer at the top of the page stating, “There are 179 countries listed with a forecast for 2025. Click on the icons to sort the list. This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions.” They also had a more lengthy disclaimer at the bottom in pink which comes with type errors and no affiliation to military. It’s a whole lot of nonsense, which is probably why they removed it from their site, not to mention the fact that they’ve been way off with their “forecasts.”

This site is nothing but an aggregator of military news from other sites, that published an absurd “population forecast” based on a whole lot of nothing. After reviewing this and digging into it, I came across James Corbett’s report on it and gave it a quick listen. He drew the same conclusions.

There are numerous articles, social media threads, videos, and even claims in books that have been telling folks for years that Edwin Deagle is behind this website, all because of the spelling of his name – which is incorrect from the domain name and registrar. There are no other data points linking him to this website.

3) “China Is Buying Up All The Farmland In The U.S.!”

That’s quite an exaggeration.

Though China has indeed purchased U.S. farmland, and even schemed with lawmakers to purchase acreage in Missouri (more on this below), Canada owns over 14 million acres, whereas China owns less than a half million acres of U.S. farmland.

There are 880 million acres of farmland in the U.S. Investment firms and individuals of Canada own more U.S. farmland than any other foreign country. In total, 43.4 million acres of U.S. forest and farmland, or 3.4% of ag land, is foreign owned as of Dec. 31, 2022.

Of the 43.4 million acres that are foreign owned, here are some of the top ones:

Canada = 32%
Netherlands = 12%
Italy = 6%
UK = 6%
Germany = 5%
China owns less than 1%

According to the USDA, Brazos Highland and Murphy Brown LLC, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, are the two biggest Chinese-owned companies that own land in the U.S. Brazos Highland accounts for 102,345 acres, and Smithfield owns 97,975 as of December, 2022.

The top five states with the biggest Chinese holdings are Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Utah and Virginia.

For perspective, from 2021 to 2022, there was an increase in 2.58 million U.S. ag acres acquired by foreign countries. These charts provide a good visual for all U.S.-owned ag land as of 2021.

None of this dismisses concerns over Chinese-owned companies or citizens acquiring U.S. farmland. Quite the contrary. In fact, in a 2020 report by Corey Lynn, there is a section specifically on Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world. What’s most concerning is the fact that it was acquired by the Chinese company WH Group back in 2013, which included Premium Standard Farms in Princeton, Missouri, yet at that time Missouri law banned all foreign ownership of land. Curiously, just one week prior to this acquisition Missouri legislature amended the law to allow for 1% of Missouri farmland to be owned by foreign investors (roughly 289,000 acres), clearing the way for WH Group to acquire 40,000 acres. Before WH Group took on its new name, it was called CDH, founded by Wu Shangzhi, former senior investment officer at the World Bank Group’s IFC, and boy is it a twisted tale of connections that people must read. WH Group is also the majority shareholder in Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Co. which is China’s top meat producer.

Hence, is this case, it would seem the food supply – specifically pork – may just be more of a concern than U.S. land holdings itself.

On another note, a lot of people believe Bill Gates owns more U.S. farmland than any other U.S. citizen, but his 260,000 acres of U.S. farmland doesn’t even put him close to the top 20. According to the Land Report’s top 100 U.S. landowners, Bill Gates falls in 42^nd place, while Jeff Bezos sits in 25^th place. This doesn’t negate the fact that no one is happy about Bill Gates owning so much farmland in the U.S. because he’s always up to something nefarious.

4) “China Owns TikTok! We Need To Ban It Now!”

China does in fact own a stake in TikTok, but it’s American private equity and venture capital firms that hold the cards.

Catherine Austin Fitts explained in a Solari Report titled Netanyahus Mass Atrocity Machinery: What Will You Do?, as follows:

“The real stories of mass atrocity in Gaza keep sneaking out on TikTok. American private equity and venture capital firms, including KKR, own approximately 60% of ByteDance, the company that owns the TikTok app. The Congress—filled with legislators alleged to be dual-passport citizens—is now trying to make sure that the criminal syndicate can assert control over ByteDance, which will allow them to squeeze out the Chinese founders and investors by picking up their much smaller 20% equity position for cheap.

The criminal syndicates love to use the Chinese foreign bogeyman as a stalking horse. They love to use politicians to lower the price at which they can buy—and raise the price at which they can sell. Those capital gains fund political contributions and kickbacks.”

5) “China Owns The U.S.! They Hold All Of Our Debt!”

Sure, China holds a lot of U.S. debt – $770.7 billion in Treasury holdings as of April 2024, but why doesn’t anyone ever mention the fact that Japan holds far more U.S. debt than China, to the tune of $1.15 trillion in Treasury securities? Or, why doesn’t anyone mention the fact that the United Kingdom is trailing just behind China at $710.2 billion? Luxembourg and Canada hold the 4^th and 5^th largest U.S. debt. Don’t people want all the facts, or do they just like to scream “China, China, China!”?

Who is actually the largest owner of U.S. debt? That would be the U.S. government. They hold Treasury securities in government accounts and pension funds.

As of June 28, 2024, the U.S. national debt was at $34.83 trillion. That is an increase of nearly $12 trillion since 2019, just before the Covid plandemic hit. In fact, between 2019 and 2020, it jumped $4.7 trillion.

But who’s counting? Certainly not the Pentagon who has failed six consecutive internal audits. Over $21 trillion has gone missing from U.S. federal accounts at HUD and the Department of Defense.

Be sure to read “Who Are THEY?” by Corey Lynn, to understand the depths and complexities of just how deep this corruption is and who is behind it all.

6) “Tom Hanks, Bill Gates, And Hillary Clinton Were Executed!” (And if not, they must be in GITMO!) And, “JFK Jr. And Jeffrey Epstein Are Still Alive!”

This is an all time favorite clickbait because it’s just amazing how many people concur and share it with the world as though it is 100% fact, and will spend hours debating people on it. The information was assuredly passed through a high-up military insider that leaked it to a friend and they passed it on to another, and another, and another. It doesn’t matter if any of them are seen in person or on television because those would be immediately dismissed as either clones or deep fakes.

The reality is, a lot of people will believe what they want to believe if it induces a specific emotion they wish to feel, or if it gives them a sense of hope or “winning” as many like to put it. Yet, they have no solid proof and state it as fact. They expend time and energy on pondering it, fantasizing about it, debating people over it, and sharing it with others. What does this accomplish? What does it achieve? If they are in fact dead – has anything changed for the better because of those outcomes? No. So why the big debate and distraction?

The same goes for JFK Jr. and Jeffrey Epstein being alive. Despite all of the evidence pointing to their deaths, some people are adamant that they are alive, without a shred of proof. It’s one thing to discuss such things, it’s another to declare it as fact. Sure, there are plenty of bot farms that fuel these tales, but there are plenty of regular folks who have jumped on the bandwagon to give it more life – or death.

Tips And Tactics

How do you want to spend your time? Do you want to feed the enemy instead of feeding your soul? Human beings have 24 hours a day, 8,760 hours a year to enjoy life, minus 2,920 hours required for sleep alone. According to a Datareportal Global Overview Report in January, worldwide internet users between the ages of 16 to 64 spend an average of nearly 7 hours a day online, across all devices. The U.S. is even worse, exceeding 7 hours per day. The report states that “Scientists have measured the amount of data that enter the brain and found that an average person living today processes as much as 74 GB in information a day (that is as much as watching 16 movies), through TV, computers, cell phones, tablets, billboards, and many other gadgets. Every year it is about 5% more than the previous year.”

In Corey Lynn’s 2021 report titled Covid-19 Pt. 5: Psychologists, Scientists and The CIA Tell Us Fear is The Real Killer, the report goes in depth on the following topics:

• Capitalizing on Fear
• Fear’s Effect on The Brain and Health
• CIA Documents on Brainwashing and “Learned Helplessness”
• Expert in Deception, Psychological Operations & National Security Speaks to Cadets at West Point

This is an incredibly important read to understand the psychological games, how the brain works, and more importantly – how brainwashing works. Once people have reached a point of exhaustion, which most have at this point, the mind becomes far more suggestive and it’s easy to fall into clickbait traps.

A few quotes from a CIA document covered in this report:

“When reduced to extreme dependency and confusion, the individual is ready to react favorably to any person or idea which promises to end his painfully confused state. At this point, the re-education begins.”

“The process of brainwashing is essentially one in which two paths are being followed. One is the demoralizing process, the result of which is to reduce the victim’s critical faculties to the point where he no longer discriminates clearly between true and false, logical and illogical. The other is the reorganizing process, in which he is required to construct his confessions, elaborate it, defend it, and believe it.”

“Communist control of the individual and the masses is little different from controls exercised by virtually all absolute forms of government, past and present.”

Here are two helpful articles Corey Lynn wrote to assist people with discerning truth from lies:

• 10 Fake News Tactics

• Confused? How to Compartmentalize Fact from Fiction and Plausibility

Corey’s Digs hosts an extensive list of resources for fact checking and deep research. There are well over 100 free resources to explore and get to the bottom of things.

Perhaps the best way to stay on top of things is to narrow time spent online, narrow the focus to the important things, and then narrow those things down by researching the facts before drawing conclusions based on emotional reactions. All industries are taking a hit or a twist from food supply to financial, technology, surveillance, housing, farming, and many others. Maybe selecting two or three of those that seem to have the most impact in one’s life, is a simpler approach to wading through the gigabytes of information one’s brain is downloading on a daily basis.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post 6 Viral Misconceptions & Clickbait appeared first on The Washington Standard.

There are several terms people use to reference these bad actors, such as the “deep state,” “global cabal,” “illuminati” and “shadow government.” The individuals orchestrating this attempted global takeover operate covertly within the government to alter public policies and laws while shaping culture and narratives. More recently, many of these bad actors no longer operate covertly – it’s more an in-your-face style these days. They are all in, desperately trying to cull the masses through their playbook, and although they would seem to have a plan a, b, and c for every agenda, people are fighting back and seeing through their manipulation tactics. It’s true that it is creating quite a field of cognitive dissonance, but with each month that passes, more and more people are becoming aware of the game being played on humanity, and they refuse to tolerate it.

This is the Great Con and they can only pull it off if you believe in it, if you fall for it, if you accept they have power over you, and you allow yourself to become the obedient slave they want you to. That is the biggest dose of truth. They need everyone to believe they are the authority, they have your best interest at heart, and what they are telling you is truthful. They want you to feel powerless and dependent on them. That is their biggest hurdle and that is what you should never give into.

The further back one goes, the more difficult it is to track them. Why? Because the wealthy bloodlines tend to intermix, often changing their names and spellings, their backgrounds, and their family connections. To make matters worse, there are hundreds of psychological campaigns running simultaneously, coming out of multiple countries and sources to further confuse people. One thing is for certain – these folks have been planning this ultimate takeover for a very long time, have all of their minions and useful tools coordinating for them, have brainwashed millions of people with their schemes, are savvy and calculated with their methods and far more intelligent than most would care to admit.

This report will provide over 1900 names of individuals and companies involved in crimes against humanity and the control grid enslavement system.

People want names, so let’s start here. This is a big part of the hierarchy, leaving some unknowns hidden behind the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). In Corey Lynn’s 3-part report on Laundering with Immunity, it explains in explicit detail as to how and when BIS came about and how BIS and 63 central banks devised a plan to hold immunities and privileges. Shortly thereafter, in 1945 the UN was manifested by some of the plotters for this grand takeover, and immunities and privileges came right along with it the following day. This was the beginning of the control framework and how they would be able to carry out their agendas while operating entirely outside the law. All arms of the UN have these immunities and can extend them to organizations working with them. Long before the UN being established, the Organization of American States (OAS) was created. They too were the first to receive immunities and privileges, alongside the UN, as they work in conjunction with one another. And, they too can extend these immunities to organizations they work with. In addition to the banks, the UN and OAS, the Global Fund, Gavi, and WEF were also given these immunities, and numerous other key international organizations as well. In total, there are 76 international organizations that hold these immunities and privileges, and that’s on top of BIS and the central banks.

Whereas the UN and OAS hold treaties with a slew of countries giving them ironclad layers of protections, the other international organizations hold immunities, privileges, and headquarters agreements independently with each country who opted to do so, and there are many! The U.S. set the stage for this, doling them out to 76 organizations throughout every presidency except for Trump and Biden.

Read Laundering with Immunity to grasp the full scope of what these immunities and privileges entail. For starters, all of their archives are inviolable, their property and assets are immune from search and seizure, they are exempt from every kind of tax regular people pay, including property taxes, officers and employees are exempt from legal suits, employees and their family members can travel the world without checks from customs, military and police are not allowed to enter their headquarters, and much more.

Once people understand that THIS is the control framework – the structure that was created nearly 80 years ago so that they can operate outside the law and never be held accountable, it’s easy to see how all of the other pieces fall into place.

Who is THEY? That alone is the key list of 76 organizations, BIS, and 63 central banks at the top of the pyramid, bearing in mind there are wealthy, strategic players behind this pyramid whose names we may never know. Those leading these organizations are the key names purposefully put in a position of power to carry out specific agendas. Those key players move around within that group of organizations and sometimes head up affiliated organizations in order to maintain their strategy. Some of those agendas come straight from the pyramid organizations, while others are contracted out to their affiliates at NGOs, corporations, universities, lawmakers, governments, 3-letter agencies, news media, and private equity firms. For example, CIA agents often move into news media positions, FDA directors often move over to big pharma, CDC directors move over to Rockefeller Foundation or Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and so on.

They keep their key players in positions they need them in at specific times and then move them around to other leadership positions when they need certain actions carried out. Jim Yong Kim is a prime example of this, from co-founding Partners in Health to advising the Director-General of the WHO and Director of HIV/AIDS department, then fulfilling outcomes required at Harvard in various positions, on to President of Dartmouth College then to President of the World Bank – coincidentally resigning early in 2019, and now a partner at Global Infrastructure Partners. Kim has been instrumental in nefarious actions in Haiti, the AIDS agenda, vaccines, Covid contact tracing, pressuring countries in order to receive funding from the World Bank, and the climate agenda, and each position was timed right. It is no coincidence that BlackRock is acquiring Global Infrastructure Partners in the 3^rd quarter of 2024. You can read more about Jim Yong Kim’s connections and involvement in Corey Lynn’s reports here, here and here. They have done an incredible job trying to bury his childhood and family. CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, also went above and beyond to hide his family connections and childhood, with a father who would appear to be a ghost. It’s understandable to want to keep family from the public eye when in high profile positions, but there is far more than meets the eye with these cats.

There are countless smaller companies who have had good intentions to provide great products and services to people or the land, but as they began to grow and gain attention, these corrupt organizations stepped in trying to co-opt them and eventually acquiring them. Whole Foods being gobbled up by Amazon is a good example of this. These organizations, including so-called billionaire philanthropists, are behind every major industry and “reimagining” it to essentially cut out everyone else from financial prosperity so that everyone can fall prey to their planned enslavement system.

Ultimately, Congress needs to revoke these immunities and privileges. Any lawmaker saying that the U.S. needs to defund the WHO (part of the UN) or the UN itself, clearly isn’t aware of this control framework because if they were, they would know that defunding isn’t going to solve anything.

How “They” Operate and Lists of Who “They” Are

Within each agenda (and there are many), the same players can be seen carrying them out. That’s a pretty big indicator of who’s running this theater. It’s important to note that there are also key players in countries whose names may not be mentioned although, their companies may have made these lists.

The Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates in 2010, is a real quick way to see a list of over 240 billionaire “philanthropists”, many of which are involved in agendas against humanity. Everyone from David Rockefeller to Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Michael Milken, Sam Altman, Edgar Bronfman, Victor Pinchuk, Richard Branson, Marc Benioff, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Musallam Bin Ham Al–Ameri, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and countless others are part of this group whereby they have committed “to give the majority of their wealth to address some of society’s most pressing problems.” That is, to create a problem and then claim to save the day by establishing new industries and wiping out others.

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals is completely inverted and portrayed as helping the earth and humanity, when in fact it is the exact opposite and a total con. It is the primary scape goat used for every agenda they are attempting to carry out. From climate change to poverty, food, health, education, industry and economic growth, it is the playbook narrative for each action they take. The PR is pushed by the World Economic Forum who plot and plan how these actions should roll out and who should take the reins. These players often meet in private by invite only through secret societies and organizations. The universities pump out whatever so-called studies are needed to validate their actions so as to obtain government funding and so media can hype it up. Therefore, it’s important to understand how their language works in order to read between the lines, and recognize that “convenience” means convenient for them because they can track you, “safety” means you will be told what you can do, what you can say, what you have access to, and how you can spend your money, “inclusion” means you will be part of their enslavement system, “equity” means everyone will be on universal basic income and healthcare so that they can hold control over you, “protect marine life around the world and use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development” means they are mining the oceans for resources under the guise of climate change while decimating entire ecosystems that could destroy all marine life. You get the idea.

Government grants, using taxpayer dollars, is one of biggest ways they move taxpayer money into the hands of the corrupt. Over 20 U.S. government agencies distribute these funds, such as DHS, DOD, DOE, DOS, HUD, USAID, USDA, for example. These funds go directly into corrupt organizations and foundations hands, or through ministries in other countries where the money seems to disappear or achieve little results, or in cases such as war they may funnel it through the World Bank, which of course has full immunities and privileges so no one will ever truly know where the money went. The Pentagon has failed audits six years in a row. Mind you, they self audit. Over $21 trillion has gone missing from U.S. federal accounts at HUD and the Department of Defense.

In Corey Lynn’s report on 17 Goals Toward Enslavement: Exposing The Real Agendas Behind The 2030 Agenda, it gives a full breakdown of these so-called goals with attached reports uncovering evidence to the contrary. There are a myriad of additional reports on Corey’s Digs that also directly pertain to these agendas. Here are some key reports with lists of individuals and companies involved in these schemes:

• The Global Landscape on Vaccine ID Passports is a 4-part report, and available in paperback with a bonus chapter on solutions, that shows how blockchain, digital identities, and digital currency are one of their major end games in order to control what people do and how they can spend their money. It is packed full of hundreds of cited sources providing key evidence. Under the guise of health and well-being, this con ticks off 9 of their 17 goals. Part 4 reveals a list of 287 individuals and companies involved in this agenda.

• By now, it should no longer be a mystery that Visa and Mastercard are playing a critical role in the digital identity control system.

• Elon Musk deserves his own bullet point. Though many have held him high up on their hero worship pedestal, Musk’s history speaks for itself. In Corey Lynn’s report Space: The New Frontier For The Central Control Grid, it provides an abundance of evidence about what is transpiring and Elon Musk’s involvement which should raise the hair on the back of anyone’s neck who can’t be fooled. In addition to Elon Musk, there are other key common players involved in this scheme, such as U.S. Space Force, Morgan Stanley, WEF, UN, BIS, central banks, Deloitte, and others listed throughout this report.

• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust funnels money to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) who then grants money to the Global Fund and Gavi, both of which Bill Gates is co-founder of. The BMGF also grants billions to sectors of the UN and countless NGOs owned by friends. Then, some of the money gets funneled back in through the Global Fund by some of those same NGOs and other branches of the UN. It’s a revolving door. Additionally, billions in grants from the U.S. government and other countries funnel taxpayer dollars through the Global Fund and Gavi. They are washing the money right in front of everyone’s eyes, all through non-profits, most of which have full immunities and privileges. Here is an in depth video Corey did covering just how this works and showing the organizations involved.

• The food industry is monopolized by 10 companies. Talk about population control. These companies crank so much sugar and bioengineered ingredients (genetically modified and gene-edited) into their foods to keep the population sick. Many of them also work closely with the organizations listed throughout this article. Understand that these companies are willing to take a hit in order to move agendas forward, such as shutting down during Covid or some of their food processing plants going up in flames.

• Who controls everything regarding what is put in people’s mouths, from seeds to pesticides to the food itself? Codex Alimentarius does. It was established in 1963 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), both are arms of the UN with full immunities and privileges. Their sole purpose is to set the standards and guidelines for all food that is consumed by human beings. Once those decisions are made, countries take those “standards” and implement them, creating regulations and laws. The USDA is a driving force for not only adhering to the standards, but making certain that other countries follow in lock step. China runs the pesticides committee and Monsanto has a seat at the table. See Corey Lynn’s report on this here.

• In Corey Lynn’s report, The New Controlled Food System is Now in Place and They Will Stop at Nothing to Accelerate Their Control, it reveals the new wave of indoor vertical growing facilities popping up with many of these same players founding them, funding them, or purchasing from them. Though this may be a positive solution for small farms or individuals, unfortunately these conglomerates are utilizing gene-edited seeds for much of this. Imagine food being locked in enormous facilities while states give them tax breaks and Monsanto/Bayer is preparing seeds. This report exposes over 150 players in this agenda, with overlapping names already documented in this article, including key shareholders. This ticks off a whopping 10 of the 17 goals to enslave humanity. And, another report by Corey Lynn exposes additional names involved in the lab grown meat arena. There are numerous other reports pertaining to food supply, agriculture, and livestock that can be found on Corey’s Digs under the Food Supply category.

• In a 9-part report on Obedience Training from Cradle to Grave, it takes an in-depth look at the education system from PreK to Adults and exposes the incredible ways they are carrying out indoctrination, brainwashing, social emotional learning, augmented virtual reality, and their goal to push ideologies through the education system into the corporate world as lifelong mandatory obedience training. This con ticks off 5 of their 17 goals. Part 9 documents an extensive timeline going back to 1903 and a list of over 580 key players involved, and 50 of them are also involved in the digital identity agenda.

• Universities have long played a vital role in shaping “the science” and producing desired results of research projects to generate outcomes the deep state players require. This in turn provides both grants and funding to the universities while signaling to big gov that grants should go out to organizations and foundations that need to further the studies, implement clinical trials, or proceed with their projects. What most people don’t realize is how involved universities and colleges are with the immigration agenda as well. In Corey Lynn’s report University Migrant Smart Hubs, Private Equity and The Leveraged Buyout of America, it breaks this all down while providing a list of over 200 colleges involved in this, dozens of organizations assisting, and private equity firms such as Blackstone playing a major role.

• Partners in Health (PIH), founded in 1983, is perhaps one of the most critical non-profits that seems to have flown under the radar for decades. From the founders to those connected, the funders, governments, and activities, there are hundreds of names attached to PIH. The list of partners reads like a who’s who of the global mafia. Corey Lynn published an explosive report in May 2020, regarding contact tracing surveillance and a $100 billion scandal that went down with PIH, IL Rep. Bobby Rush, EcoHealth Alliance, former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and more. The report lists over 75 companies and individuals involved. Additionally, Partners in Health, along with the Clinton Foundation, Planned Parenthood, and Ivy League Schools have all been instrumental in the abortion agenda.

• The transgender agenda is a big one, wanting everyone focused on their “identity” while disassociating from who they truly are. It’s all about the external rather than the internal. In Corey Lynn’s 4-part report on Exploiting Transgenders, Part 1 reveals an extensive timeline of those carrying out this agenda. Part 2 covers the origins of the medical engineering and who was behind it. Part 3 shows who the funders and profiteers are as well as a short list, plus over 50 care clinics for youth involved in this. Part 4 provides a list of those behind this agenda.

• To understand the mindset of these deep state actors, it’s important to get a grasp on their thirst for eugenics – a term that dates back to the late 1800s. In Corey Lynn’s 6-part report on Eugenics, Infertility & Population Growth Crisis, it dives deep into the history, the players, the funders, and the actions carried out against humanity throughout the years. The report begins with a timeline dating back to 1901, and it is a vital report that shows the attack on people’s health, bodies, minds, and desire to control the population through manipulating DNA, sterilizing to prevent births, and in some cases, murder. Dozens of names of individuals and organizations involved in eugenics and the future goal of transhumanism are documented throughout this report, and many of those names will not only be familiar, but are seen in numerous other reports regarding other agendas as well. That’s the consistency of their playbook at work.

• Over 30 articles and reports specifically on Covid, document a mountain of evidence along with names and organizations involved in carrying out the most hellacious, coordinated agenda against mankind. Those articles are best sought out through the Library Catalog with direct links to each report.

• Under the guise of “climate change,” the governments of 26 islands have worked with public and private partners to funnel primarily U.S. government funds through clean energy infrastructure on these islands. Many of the partners are also involved with building up so-called tourism in these locations as well. Partners such as the UN, Organization of American States, World Bank Group, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Clinton Foundation, Rocky Mountain Institute, The Nature Conservancy, Tides, and many more including Breakthrough Energy Coalition which is a group of 28 high-net-worth investors including George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Tom Steyer, Jack Ma, Reid Hoffman and more. In total, there are 26 islands, 12 public sector partners and 34 private partners. Throughout the entire 4-part report, there are numerous additional names and countries involved in this as well. In Corey Lynn’s 4-part report on Shipwrecked on Ten Islands with Clintons & Branson, she shows how this all began, the funding, nefarious activities, and how it quickly escalated to include 26 islands. Where did the money really go?

• Everyone is familiar with the Clinton Foundation, but most people are completely unaware that the Clinton crime family actually has 51 foundations, LLCs and shell companies that they utilize to carry out their shenanigans. Of course, some have non existent addresses. Corey Lynn dug through endless pages of tax returns and filings to build this list and has reported extensively on the Clinton’s involvement with AIDS, vaccines, abortion, child trafficking, Haiti here, here, here, here, and here, 26 islands, fraud in Arkansas, political tax scandals, plus Jeffrey Epstein here, here, and here.

• Though there aren’t a ton of names listed in this report (a couple dozen), it contains significant information pertaining to Protecting U.S. Bulk-Power Supply and Technology from Bad Actors. The connections are quite staggering, especially three players who all worked in high-ranking positions at the World Bank with overlapping time frames, including one president, two of whom are from China and one from South Korea who all attended prestigious colleges in the U.S. The intertwining history of these three alone is mind-bending, showing where they began, what they were involved in, their U.S. connections, and where they are now. This report was publishing in 2020 and these men are still active in vital roles.

• Shareholders play a key role in controlling companies from the top down. If the majority shareholder has voting shares, they can dictate the direction of the company. The top two shareholders of nearly every major company are the The Vanguard Group and BlackRock. State Street Corp. often takes 3^rd position. Just pick a company, any decent size company and search “top shareholders of (company name)” and you’ll see it nearly every time, and if on rare occasion they didn’t make it in the top two, they made it in the top five. Here is an example of BlackRock voting on three Pfizer resolutions in 2021, as BlackRock is Pfizer’s largest shareholder.

That’s a pretty good start to set people on the right path of the actual history behind all of this corruption and the goals the deep state is trying to fulfill. This report was intended to highlight some of the larger lists compiled over the past eight years of investigative reporting on Corey’s Digs. There are so many names of individuals, companies, organizations, and non-profits that work in lock step with one another to achieve these agendas against humanity, covered in over 200 reports and articles produced on Corey’s Digs, that a Quarterly Library Catalog is published to make it easier to find specific reports by topic. There’s much more to the story and the history, but this is a good baseline.

Be FearLESS, don’t be conned, and never be obedient to those who don’t have your best interest at heart.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post “Who Is THEY?” appeared first on The Washington Standard.

When you combine U.S. universities and colleges with Blackstone, private equity firms, Middle East investors, the UN, illegal immigrants, student housing, innovation districts, affordable housing, Jeffrey Sachs, college protest smokescreens, ECAR, Welcome Corps, corrupt billionaires, and mainstream news, you have a recipe for disaster – one that can only mean one thing – money is moving, the stage is being set, the infrastructure is being built, and control is shifting evermore into the hands of those who wish to destroy America.

This report will be broken down into 9 sections that all connect to show the bigger picture of this power grab:

• The Story in A Nutshell
• Trickery of The “Affordable Housing” Trend for Illegal Immigrants, Students, and Families
• Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR)
• Colleges and Universities Housing Illegal Immigrants
• Blackstone Acquired Largest Student Housing Company in The U.S., Partners with Over 100 Colleges and Universities and Plans to Hire 2,000 Refugees
• The U.S. Student Housing Market – Including Foreign Investors
• College and University Endowments Captured
• The Smokescreen: Israel-Hamas College Protests
• What’s The End Game?

Download this full report in PDF format from the Bookshop >

The Story in A Nutshell

This is a very short, cliff notes version to summarize the overall situation, while expanding on the evidence and details in the following sections. No detail should be overlooked in this entire report, as it covers several agendas that are all converging.

Illegal immigrants have been flooding into the U.S. for years, currently costing American taxpayers over $150 billion a year to assist them with housing, food, medical needs, in-state tuition, and more. That translates to every taxpayer contributing nearly $1,000 per year for this invasion. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2024 report suggests that between 2005-2019 the government spent $457.2 billion on refugees and asylees. And people wonder why their property taxes and state taxes are going through the roof. Where are all of these illegal immigrants staying? How many were trained before coming here?

Most people are aware of city buildings, hotels, sports complexes, government compounds, or shelters where migrants have been bussed to, but there has been little talk about where some of them may permanently settle in. Over 65,000 Americans have signed up to sponsor immigrants in their homes, but that doesn’t even put a dent in it. When you have millions of people who need beds, that becomes a bit tricky.

It is estimated that well over 15 million illegal immigrants are now living in the U.S. and over 75,000 Special Interest Aliens (SIAs), who pose a national security risk to the U.S., have been released into the population. However, a Yale study that assessed the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. between 1990 and 2016 estimated over 22 million, so the actual numbers could be well over 30 million at this point. Where are they all housed?

Many of the immigrants are single men between the age of 18-24 – college and military age – traveling alone or in small groups, and many have ditched their IDs at the border before sneaking through. How easy it would be to blend in around college campuses. How many have made it into unchecked off-campus student housing to assist with protests, chaos, or future war tactics?

Colleges and universities decided long ago that it would be a great idea to create resettlement campuses for refugees on college campuses. In fact, Guilford College in North Carolina kicked it off in the U.S. under the establishment of “Every Campus A Refuge” (ECAR), which now has dozens of colleges and universities involved. This of course is compounded by sanctuary campuses, cities, and states, the Welcome Corps, Fair Housing laws that don’t allow landlords to ask if they are legal immigrants, or the fact that some states allow undocumented immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition. Add to that the new “innovation districts” or “smart cities” that are developing around major universities and it creates quite a compound, while they all vie for satellite campuses in the heart of D.C.

Many college and university campuses have been utilizing their dorms, gyms, or off campus student housing to house illegal immigrants and refugees, so much so, that the House passed the H.R. 3941 Students Not Shelter Act that was introduced on June 9, 2023, to prevent federal funding to K-12 schools and colleges who provided support and housing to migrants. It never would have made it past the Senate or Biden.

Let’s not forget the billions going into affordable housing, vouchers, section 8, rental assistance, built-to-rent homes, and sponsorship push that has been rolled out by the Biden administration over the years. The number of agencies, organizations, and “helpers” throughout the country (and outside the country) serving this agenda is just staggering.

What’s equally concerning is the fact that colleges and universities began divesting in higher education long ago while focusing their endowments on real estate and big equity partners. Over the years, this landscape has increased rapidly. When Blackstone acquires the largest student housing company in the U.S. with over 140,000 beds across 190 properties, that is a huge red flag, especially considering all of the other evidence. And when universities like the University of California Regents decides to give Blackstone $4 billion dollars for investments in real estate and student housing, that too raises concern. Hundreds of colleges and universities are tied in with Blackstone through investments, joint ventures, or “education” related. Harvard is about to take on Blackstone’s CFO to help steward their $50.7 billion endowment, beginning this July. When the Middle East is investing in U.S. student housing, that too is a huge red flag. And remember, off-campus student housing doesn’t necessarily mean the renter is actually attending the college.

While the Israel-Hamas war rages on, they strike while the iron is hot and rollout the necessary smokescreens to accomplish one of their major goals – to take more control over endowments, academics, campuses, real estate, policies, and install the key players they need to make this all happen and eventually create new legislation in their favor. The smokescreen? College protests making demands that the schools divest in Israel. This isn’t to say that protests aren’t warranted or that students are a part of this smokescreen, though there are some well-funded student organizations involved. You get all of the donors to call in and complain about how this is being managed and have mainstream media flood the news with protests everywhere, taking it across over 100 campuses in a single sweep, while big donors threaten to suspend funding. Begin with Columbia University, where Economist Jeffrey Sachs sits prominently on his SDGs platform preaching for his UN cohorts, only later to go on Tucker Carlson and spin a tale about how universities need more oversight because of research labs and funding due to the U.S. government’s inability to call for peace and their desire to rule the world. Using the word “neocons” 13 times while taking jabs at Victoria Nuland, who served under George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden in various positions, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, knowing those names would spark the fuel in everyone wanting to cheer him on for his so-called disclosure and “awakening.” And before you know it, schools are agreeing to hold meetings to discuss their investments and figure out solutions. See how that works?

None of this is about the war for these power thirsty maniacs. None of this is about peace. This is all about controlling the money flowing through every college and university, housing control, changing policies all the way up the ladder to reach legislation for further control, building smart city campuses and indoctrination camps, potentially establishing a strategic home base for illegal immigrants within campuses to assist with future events off campus, and dominating the U.S. After all, according to Jeffrey Sachs, everyone should be in fear of a nuclear war caused by the power hungry U.S. “neocons” in government, as well as the next plandemic. They certainly shouldn’t be concerned about Blackstone, BlackRock, Vanguard, BIS, Central Banks, his UN buddies, WEF, hundreds of corporations, and corrupt billionaire families that are the ones pulling all the strings. No, these will be the folks that come to “save the day.”

In simple terms:

1) Create resettlement camps for illegal immigrants

2) Buy up shuttered real estate near campuses as well as student housing companies

3) Create smokescreens to carry out agenda

4) Build innovation districts otherwise known as smart cities

4) Keep people distracted from the money moving around and smart city campuses expanding

5) Reconfigure oversight of endowments, change policies, academics, and eventually legislation

6) Control the indoctrination camps, immigrant camps, and money while implementing control grid

The Breakdown

Trickery of The “Affordable Housing” Trend For Illegal Immigrants, Students, and Families

This is an important aspect that ties into this entire scheme. The “Affordable Housing” push over lack of homes, increased mortgage rates and property taxes, skyrocketing homeowners insurance in some areas, and overall inflation, was all manufactured for home, land, and commercial real estate grabs by big financial firms to bring in a new wave of built-to-rent home communities and mixed use apartment complexes, more affordable off-campus student housing, and housing for illegal immigrants. Ultimately, this was done for the purpose of moving people into a control grid enslavement system where you own nothing and are “happy,” while they own everything. They become the landlord kings. And boy is it moving quickly. And, quite possibly to strategically house as many as 30 million illegal immigrants. Imagine that kind of power – to house and feed a person, provide safe passage and anonymity from police and ICE, tell them who to vote for, demand them to carry out whatever acts they may require or else – they get shipped back to their country.

The Biden administration wants to build two million “affordable homes” costing $258 billion dollars, to create more inventory, while 1.6 million of those homes are for rental purposes only. A new bill was just introduced by Reps. Adam Schiff and Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., to convert unused government buildings into affordable housing, which includes a grant program “to help state and local governments convert properties into qualified residential rental projects.” They’ve had an incredible jumpstart with all of this, ever since the manufactured destruction of buildings across America with riots after the George Floyd scandal, during the tyrannical Covid lockdowns so they could buy up all the shuttered real estate.

Even shuttered schools are turning into “affordable housing apartments.” According to Forbes, converting abandoned schools into affordable apartments “is a trend a number of states and cities are embracing,” and Chicago seems to be leading the way in those efforts.

There has been a surge in new apartment complexes being developed across the U.S., which began in 2021 and is going stronger than ever. 2023 marked a 36-year high with 440,000 apartment units completed and 2024 is expected to complete another 670,000. Dallas, Phoenix, Austin, Denver, and New York are the top five cities planning big developments, with Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, Los Angeles, and Newark not far behind. Greystar just moved into first place for the largest apartment owner in the U.S., and they also come in fourth place for holding the most student housing units.

Who to watch for in the single-family rental homes market, as far as the largest companies based on number of rental homes: Tricon Residential and Home Partners of America (parent company: Blackstone, top shareholders: Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital World Investments), Progress Residential (parent company: Pretium Partners, private company), Invitation Homes (top shareholders: Vanguard, Cohen & Steers, BlackRock), American Homes 4 Rent (AMH) (top shareholders: Vanguard, BlackRock, Norges Bank), Amherst Group( parent company: Amherst Holdings, private company), and FirstKey Homes (parent company: Cerberus Capital Management, private company). Those alone account for over 400,000 rental homes and Invitation Homes intends to buy up thousands more this year. It’s best to rent from individuals who maintain ownership of the house rather than large corporations who don’t have people’s best interest at heart.

On April 13, 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the availability of $30.3 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program for 2023, with a historic $2.9 billion (10.5 percent) increase over the prior year. Six months later, HUD expanded more rental assistance to 800,000 households across 65 metropolitan areas, including higher-rent neighborhoods, to give voucher holders a wider selection of homes to choose from.

On May 7, 2024, HUD “revitalized” the Housing Voucher Program with a new rule to reduce barriers in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) and Project Based Voucher (PBV) programs, while also reducing regulatory burdens on Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) to rapidly increase Affordable Housing supply. HUD states that “PHAs can tie long term federal PBV rental assistance to specific units or developments rather than to a tenant and project owners can secure additional private and public financing by leveraging the PBV assistance.” They can also pair PBV assistance with manufactured housing. How much does the U.S. spend on housing vouchers? The federal government spent $67 billion on housing assistance in 2023 alone. In 2021, it spiked up to $90 billion. Whereas vouchers may be helpful to those in need, it should be noted that the underlying intention is to make people reliant on the government to one day move everyone to a universal basic income and healthcare so that choices and decisions are no longer available to individuals, and all spending and actions become monitored and controlled.

Here is a 49-page HUD document containing the complete list of all public housing authorities by name, with their 2024 prorated eligibility after offsets, for housing choice voucher contract renewals. Here are just a few samples of HUD announcements on billions of dollars going out to states in January, February, and two from May, just to provide a few reference points.

How do you work affordable housing into student housing to move everyone onto vouchers, be able to cover the cost of housing illegal immigrants, merge everyone into being reliant on the government for universal income, education, housing, and healthcare? One way is to jack up the rent at student housing facilities so high that “advocates” come in to argue their case so new policies, regulations, zoning and development, and legislation can fall into place. That’s what’s happening in real time right now on the student housing scene. Some of the largest student housing companies have been sued for inflating rent, drawing attention to this issue.

Some states have passed laws allowing community colleges to build affordable housing for students. Due to housing insecurity for college students, increasing after the plandemic, it seems many community colleges are looking to build student housing.

Under a new law in California, community colleges and churches can now bypass local zoning regulations and build affordable housing units. NBC News reported that “Rev. Zachary Hoover of faith-based group LA Voice says about 20 congregations have already expressed interest in building some 2,000 apartments on their land,” who also suggested that this needs to be done so communities won’t have to deal with encampments. That’s guaranteed money in their pockets.

States and the federal government, via taxpayer dollars, are subsidizing this massive Affordable Housing trend that includes everything from rezoning to a myriad of housing vouchers, Section 8, rental fees covered for illegal immigrants in some states, built-to-rent homes, converting shuttered schools and office buildings into affordable housing mixed-use apartments, and so on. Once you get enough people reliant on the government and plugged into the control grid, it’s all down hill from there.

Every Campus a Refuge (ECAR)

According to the United Nations, “resettlement campuses are the future of higher education.” ECAR, Every Campus A Refuge, was founded at Guilford College in North Carolina, by Dr. Diya Abdo, in September of 2015, after being inspired when Pope Francis called on every European parish to host one refugee family. At least, that’s how the story is told. According to ECAR’s website, they would like to see every college and university in the world partner with local refugee resettlement agencies to house refugees on campus grounds. Their website states, “the idea is that university and college campuses have everything necessary – housing, food, care, skills – to take in refugees and support them as they begin their lives in their new homes.” Essentially, they refer to them as “small cities,” which of course are loaded up with smart tech.

Guilford College and Every Campus A Refuge were invited to be part of the United Nations’ Together Campaign and its Summit held on January 9, 2018, which focused on how colleges and universities around the world can take action to aid in the global refugee crisis. Nine colleges and universities (from the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, Cyprus, Humboldt University in Germany, and the University of Science and Technology in China), along with Guilford College, signed the UN Together Campaign Action Charter pledging active support for refugees and migrants’ safety and dignity. UNICEF, UNHCR, and IOM were of course part of the panel. ECAR’s site indicates that just six months later, at the second UN Together Campaign Summit, “39 other institutions attended, sharing practices on supporting refugees and migrants with a special focus on UN Sustainable Development Goal # 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” Watch the founder of ECAR speak about how college campuses can help house and assist refugees in the short video on their page, here. In one photo they show the University of Massachusetts and Amsterdam University College on their “projects to promote SDG 16 Case Studies” slide. In another, they show the University of Pennsylvania along with universities in Greece and Spain.

The Together Initiative launched on September 19, 2016 when all 193 member states of the UN committed to strengthening the “social contract between host countries and communities, and refugees and migrants.” The goal was to run until mid 2018 when all member states were expected to adopt two Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants.

ECAR provides a handy map (below) for colleges and universities to find their nearest refugee resettlement agency. Now, in some cases these are actual refugee families who are welcomed at the airport by a resettlement agency, temporarily housed (5-8 months) in campus houses or apartments with free rent, utilities, Wi-Fi, food, use of the facilities and support, and then moved to off campus housing. But who really determines who is going where and who is getting in? And, in the case of floods of illegal immigrants bussed into cities, who is considered a refugee?

According to ECAR, they have created a 16 credit minor where minor students will learn about “what creates refugees, centralize refugee voices and experiences, train in how to organize around and advocate for refugee issues, create and implement projects that assist refugees, and work with refugees hosted by ECAR.” In other words, these colleges and universities that are housing refugees and migrants are training and conditioning students on how to assist them and advocate for them.

Since its inception, ECAR has campuses actively hosting refugees, including Lafayette College, Wake Forest University, Old Dominion University, Russell Sage College, and Siena College among others, with more mobilizing to do so. ECAR has 19 colleges and universities that have formed chapters across 14 states, an additional 25 colleges and universities are interested in ECAR, and 7 colleges and universities that have not signed a licensing agreement with ECAR are also providing resettlement campuses, including Arizona State University, Eastern Michigan University, Nevada State College, and Notre Dame University. See the full list here.

The Obama Administration’s U.S. State Department certainly assisted with their “Toolkit for Universities Helping Refugees,” which highlights ECAR. And, the 2016 college protests for sanctuary campuses increased the odds as well.

None of this is to say that there aren’t legitimate refugees that need assistance, or that people in the U.S. shouldn’t help those families, but there are major agendas at play and nefarious actors involved, and this isn’t about a few thousand families, it is about a massive invasion with as many as 30 million illegal immigrants.

Colleges and Universities Housing Illegal Immigrants

Some might recall the uproar in 2022-2023 when multiple public school gyms and colleges and universities began housing illegal immigrants in dorms, gyms, conference centers, student housing, or anywhere they could accommodate them, whether school was in session or not. The news may have fizzled out but the assistance sure hasn’t.

Tuition fees have gone through the roof over the past couple decades in the U.S., making it difficult for many to attend college, especially in a time of manufactured inflation. Additionally, since 2016, over 100 private non-profit and public colleges and universities have either closed, merged, or announced plans to, while over 50 for-profit colleges and universities have closed or were acquired just between 2016 and 2018. What will become of those campuses that closed?

408,000 unauthorized immigrants attend college in the U.S. Of course, each state has their parameters as to what qualifies them for in-state tuition and the history of this evolvement is quite complex. Once considered to be a resident, while still undocumented, it opens the floodgate for state financial aid and grants to assist with room and board, tuition waivers, stipends, scholarships, and beyond.

To move things along, On July 6, 2023, the Welcome Corps announced its launch of the Welcome Corps on Campus. The Welcome Corps is a U.S. private sponsorship program that the U.S. Department of State launched in January 2023 for refugees that came through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). In a first-of-its kind program, the Welcome Corps on Campus, through USRAP, allows colleges and universities to enroll refugee students in degree programs to provide a permanent legal status in the United States, all while fostering more “diverse and inclusive campuses.” Their announcement goes on to state, “The Welcome Corps on Campus builds on that tradition and increases the United States’ resettlement capacity while leveraging campus ecosystems as welcoming communities, where refugee students have access not only to education, but also essential resettlement services including housing, healthcare, and social services…Through the Welcome Corps, sponsor groups welcome refugees into local communities and directly assist refugee newcomers as they build new lives in the United States.” They provide a complete list of the 149 “diverse institutions and organizations” that will help provide an “education pathway to citizenship for refugee students.”

The list includes:
African Communities Together
Agnes Scott
Airbnb.org
Alight
American International College
Antioch College
Arizona State University
Augsburg University
Bard College
Bennington College
Berkshire Community College
Broward College
Bryn Mawr College
Bunker Hill Community College
California State University Fullerton
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Center for Migration and the Global City, Rutgers University-Newark
Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies at Virginia Tech
Central Washington University
Cerritos Community College District
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU)
Church World Service
Clovis Community College
Colby College
College of Saint Mary
Colorado College
Colorado State University
Colorado State University Global
Colorado State University Pueblo
Colorado State University System
Community Sponsorship Hub
Connecticut State Colleges & Universities
Contra Costa College
Contra Costa Community College District
Cornell College
DePaul University
Diablo Valley College
Dominican University
Eastern Connecticut State University
Educational Testing Service
Elena’s Light INC
Elon University
EnglishUSA
Ethiopian Community Development Council
Every Campus A Refuge
Exodus World Service
Five Together Foundation
Foothill College
Foothill-De Anza Community College District
Georgetown University
Grand Valley State University
Guilford College
Hamilton College
Hello Neighbor
HIAS
Home for Refugees USA
Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Institute of International Education
International Institute of St. Louis
International Refugee Assistance Project
International Rescue Committee
IRIS – Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services
Ithaca College
Jefferson Community and Technical College (JCTC)
Jesuit Refugee Service/USA
KenSAP
Lewis University
Los Medanos College
Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants
Loyola Marymount University
Loyola University Maryland
Marymount University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Metro State University
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Middlebury College
Middlesex Community College/MA
Montgomery College
Mount Holyoke College
Mt. Hood Community College
Muina International Solutions Inc
NAFSA: Association of International Educators
National Association of System Heads
New York University
Niskanen Center
Northern Arizona University
Northern Essex Community College
Oklahoma State University
One Refugee
Pace University
Pairity
Pomona College
Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration
Queens University of Charlotte
Rainbow Railroad
Re-Imagining Migration
Refugee & Migrant Education Network
Refugee Congress
Refugee Council USA (RCUSA)
Refugee Welcome Collective
Refugees International
RefugePoint
RewirED
Rochester Institute of Technology
Roosevelt University
Rutgers University-Camden
Rutgers University-Newark
Saint Joseph’s College of Maine
Salem State University
Salt Lake Community College
Salve Regina University
School for International Training
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Seattle University
Southern New Hampshire University
St. Edward’s University
Stockton University
Suffolk University
SUNY Cortland
Tarjimly
TESOL International Association
The University of Connecticut
Towson University
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC)
Trinity College
UC San Diego
University of Michigan – Dearborn
University at Albany, SUNY
University of Dayton
University of Denver
University of La Verne
University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
University of Redlands
University of San Diego
University of the District of Columbia
University of Tulsa
USAHello
Virginia Wesleyan University
We Are All America
WeaveTales
Welcome.US
WelcomeNST
Welcoming America
World Education Services
World Learning
World Relief
World University Service of Canada

In addition to this, numerous states have provided rental assistance to migrants for “temporary housing.” Illinois, for example, has provided $9,000 over a 6-month period to cover moving, rent for an apartment or house, and furnishings. Catholic Charities, one of the biggest organizations to provide assistance to illegal immigrants across the U.S., assists with securing the housing. While people see massive property tax hikes across Illinois, Gov. Pritzker has allocated billions toward assisting illegal immigrants. The question is, which apartments or “affordable homes” are housing them?

Meanwhile, over in Brunswick, Maine, they are building apartments for migrants to live in free for two whole years. By January, 2024 they had already completed 24 units with a plan to have 60 in total. Maine’s State Housing Authority implemented this program. A 52-unit complex in South Portland was also providing housing.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) distributes billions of dollars to cities receiving migrants. It’s tough to even keep up with the press releases. DHS’s notice of funding opportunity for fiscal year 2024 Shelter and Services Program, provides a list of those receiving funds from a $300 million award. Under the allocations column, Catholic Charities across multiple states accounts for over $40 million of the pie. World Hunger and United Way are also on the list.

A Snapshot of Just a Handful of Colleges and Universities Housing Illegal Immigrants that don’t fall under the new student refugee program to obtain citizenship:

It’s probably safe to say that nearby, off-campus student housing of illegal immigrants may not be publicized, and would be handled more discreetly. For example, Kent State University in Ohio is hoping to become an ECAR campus, but in the meantime, they are in talks with local landlords and apartment complexes close to the university, to find pro bono spaces for refugees. Off-campus student housing buildings and apartment complexes are owned by big financial institutions and private developers, typically not the schools. Therefore, tracking how many illegal immigrants may be getting “pro bono spaces,” utilizing vouchers, or behind the scenes exchanges and shenanigans, is difficult to do. That said, the public-private partnership between universities and developers has been increasing over the years to where some companies are developing new student housing facilities and operate the facilities on a partnership fee while the universities handle the finances, leasing, and marketing.

• American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan, New York, received a $109 million multiyear contract to move students out of its dorms to make way for asylum seekers. At least 600 single immigrant adults were placed in the dorms in June of 2023. They later transferred those migrants to another shelter and moved 50 families into the dorms to remain throughout the school year. By September, 2023, NYC Health and Hospitals had committed almost $2.2 billion in contracts pertaining to migrants. Since April, 2022, over 180,000 migrants have arrived in New York, as far as what they have actually tracked.

• The University of Massachusetts stated last August that they too were going to provide shelter to migrants, offering up dorms and a conference center. As of August, 2023, over 80 communities were housing migrants in Massachusetts.

• Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts is also housing migrants, costing $237K a month, which may extend through 2025. Massachusetts project it would spend $932 million in 2023 and $915 million in 2024 on shelter-related services.

• Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts is housing migrants as well, in its South Campus. Thousands of migrants have arrived in Massachusetts just in the past two years.

• Chicago housed hundreds of migrants at Wilbur Wright College and Richard J. Daley College. Many of those migrants were eventually moved to the American Islamic College Campus in Uptown, which can house between 500-600 people. The American Islamic College is looking for a new campus in Chicago and the building where migrants are being housed is to eventually be turned into high-rise apartments and senior living. Since August, 2022, Chicago has welcomed over 42,000 migrants by bus or plane, which doesn’t include those arriving independently.

• The University of California San Diego is helping to build a massive long term shelter for migrants in Northern Baja, California. The facility will have housing, kitchens, educational programs, job training, and recreational facilities, as well as provide jobs for migrants on the property.

This isn’t just happening in the U.S. Other countries are fulfilling the same playbook. In the UK, students were forced out of their luxury housing block because the Home Office decided to rent the development for migrants. Over 400 asylees moved into Huddersfield student accommodations, leaving 150 students to find alternative places to stay. Of course, the UK is also seeing students protest at university campuses over the Israel-Hamas war. Between mid 2019 and mid 2023 over 100,000 migrants had crossed the Channel into the UK. In Ireland, over 3,000 refugees were housed on college campuses at one point, and it seems the battle is still going on over housing migrants in student housing on college campuses and potentially purchasing buildings to repurpose for migrants. These are just a few examples.

Blackstone Acquired Largest Student Housing Company in The U.S., Partners with Over 100 Colleges and Universities and Plans to Hire 2,000 Refugees

On April 19, 2022, Blackstone Group, the world’s largest alternative asset manager with more than $1 trillion in AUM, acquired American Campus Communities (ACC) for $12.8 billion dollars, which is the largest student housing company in the U.S. ACC currently boasts 205 properties in 71 leading university markets including Arizona State University, California – Berkeley, Florida State University, and The University of Texas at Austin. They account for over 144,000 beds. ACC owns, manages, and is a developer of student housing communities. They are not simply a management company. ACC is currently in the process of developing six new student housing communities opening this year, plus four more in 2025. They are heavily focused on ESGs (environmental social governance), diversity, equity & inclusion.

Blackstone is the world’s largest landlord. They have bought up apartment blocks, student housing, single-family housing rental companies, senior care homes, offices, hotels, logistics warehouses, data centers, and film studios, with over 300,000 units of rental housing in the U.S. Blackstone is known for jacking up rents, causing evictions, and being a poor landlord. Just this May Blackstone acquired Tricon Residential’s 38,000 rental homes, increasing its inventory of single-family rental homes to 66,000 in the U.S.

It should come as no surprise that the Blackstone Group’s top three shareholders are Vanguard, BlackRock, and Capital World Investors. BlackRock was originally under the same umbrella company as Blackstone Financial Management, founded in 1985, but in 1988 BlackRock separated from the parent company. Corey’s Digs has reported extensively on BlackRock’s history and involvement with ESGs, digital IDs and blockchain, financial takeover, CEO Larry Fink, and most importantly on August 22, 2019, BlackRock’s white paper on “Going Direct,” which reveals that the central bank has been moving funds directly into the hands of public and private sector spenders (meaning equity investors), in a laundering scheme. The plan injected more than $5 trillion into the U.S. financial system. The following month, the U.S. Federal Reserve began a repo loan bailout program by “Going Direct” to the trading houses on Wall Street, and in March 2020, hired BlackRock to help implement the “Going Direct” plan.

Blackstone partners with the Tent Partnership for Refugees (known as TENT), founded in 2016 by Chobani owner Hamdi Ulukaya. Over 400 companies across the globe partner with TENT to commit to hiring and integrating 36 million refugees. Through this partnership, in 2022, Blackstone committed to hiring 2,000 refugees across its global portfolio companies and real estate properties by the end of 2025. Blackstone stated that they “will continue to partner with its portfolio companies, third-party property managers and joint venture partners to support refugee hiring efforts.” As a side note, Starbucks committed to hiring 10,000 refugees over the course of five years between 2017 and 2022. Surely, everyone can guess who the top shareholders of Starbucks are – Vanguard and BlackRock.

Blackstone’s LaunchPad, a program run by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, has worked with 78 campuses since its inception, produced $62 million in grants, and 40,000 students participated in 2023 alone, according to their site. They provide both in-person skills-building programs as well as online. While they teach growth mindset, creativity, and critical thinking and leadership, they also bring them under their wings or their partners’ wings to mold them and build relationships through their internship programs across Blackstone’s network of portfolios. Blackstone works with dedicated campus directors and faculty to run these programs.

Washington State University, who is part of ECAR, is working with Blackstone on 10-week 2025 internships where students can learn all about ESGs and “fully immerse themselves in Blackstone’s culture.”

After a close 15-year relationship with Blackstone, and having already invested $2 billion with them, the University of California partnered with Blackstone’s Real Estate Income Trust on January 3, 2023 with a $4 billion dollar investment with a focus on student housing, staff and faculty housing, and affordable housing. More on this under the Endowments section.

The University of California system of schools is a common theme throughout this report, as they plug into nearly every section pertaining to Blackstone, endowments, student housing, protests, and illegal immigrants. In addition to California becoming a sanctuary state in 2017, as well as the many ways California has worked to benefit illegal immigrants over their own homeless population, in 2023 a coalition of undocumented students requested that UC ignore a federal law (INA Section 1324a) that prohibits employing undocumented foreign students. After UCLA law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy decided that the law doesn’t apply to state universities, on May 18, UC said they would put out the “now hiring” sign. In January, 2024, student activists launched a hunger strike because UC had yet to hire undocumented students.

Last year, Blackstone-owned Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) was embroiled in a child labor scandal, employing more than 100 children to clean equipment at meat packing plants across eight states. Some of the children were as young as 13, tending to brisket saws, bone cutters, and skull splitters at JBS Foods, Tyson Foods, and Cargill. Blackstone paid $1.5 million in fines to the Department of Labor for oppressive child labor. Some folks may want to think twice about purchasing meat from these big corporations, all of whom have been covered in Corey’s Digs reports. Supporting local farmers is always best.

The U.S. Student Housing Market – Including Foreign Investors

The chart above indicates the value of investment transactions in student housing in the U.S. from 2014 to 2023.

In addition to Blackstone acquiring the largest student housing company in the U.S., the industry itself appears to be booming. The top five largest student housing real estate companies in the U.S. are American Campus Communities (owned by Blackstone), The Scion Group, Greystar Student Living, Cardinal Group, and Asset Living. Other big ones in the running include Landmark Properties and Harrison Street Capital. After Blackstone acquired 19 student housing properties in a joint venture with Greystar back in 2018 for $1.2 billion, on April 25, 2024 Blackstone sold them to KKR & Co Inc. for $1.64 billion. The over 10,000-bed portfolio comprises 19 student housing assets located in 14 four-year public universities across 10 states.

A lot of real estate transactions go down in the student housing market. There is a steady flow of building, acquiring, and selling taking place. One example is Harrison Street recently sold 37 student housing properties across 19 states and 31 universities to a UK company (GSA) and others in a joint venture. Back in 2018, they sold 22 properties to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and a Singapore company. Oh yes, foreign companies are very interested in U.S. student housing real estate.

Nearly eight million students require student housing near campus in the U.S. and studies have shown they want single occupancy with all the mixed use amenities and smart features, which is a perfect fit for micro smart cities. Roughly 22% of university students live in on-campus dorms and residence halls, 23% live in off-campus student housing, and 55% choose nearby rentals.

In a 2021 National Multifamily Housing Council white paper on The Future of U.S. Student Housing Demand, they stated that one-third of Americans rent their housing and 15% live in an apartment. In regards to student housing, they stated that only 4% of the units built over the past decade were double occupancy and that it will be important to have smaller units going forward for purposes of isolating individuals if necessary. They expressed that “the ability to relocate and quarantine students will become increasingly important as the role of buildings in public health policy gains renewed emphasis and is supported by new technologies.” They also stressed the need for public-private programs to improve building quality and projected that student housing will grow from 8.5 million beds in 2020 to 9.2 million by 2031.

According to a 2023 Berkadia report, effective rent growth across the top universities rose 7.9% between August 2022 and August 2023, which is more than three times the rate of market-rate rent growth across the country.

2024 is expected to be a solid year for the student housing sector, with an average occupancy rate of 95% across the top universities, and an expected enrollment of 19.25 million students.

In January, 2023, the Student HOMES Coalition was created by higher education advocacy organizations and students from colleges and universities across California, to fight for “affordable, accessible, and abundant student housing opportunities.” They are currently advocating for four California Bills: Senate Bill 312 would allow for public colleges and universities to bypass the state’s strict environmental review process when building student housing. Assembly Bill 3116 would allow both schools and developers to get around development restrictions in order to build larger, low-income student housing. Assembly Bill 2785 would put a cap on rental application fees and receive a refund if not selected. Assembly Bill 2801 would ensure that landlords use security deposits on reasonable damages rather than upgrades when a renter moves out.

On June 6, 2024, the University of California Berkeley won a Supreme Court ruling to build new student housing at Berkeley’s 3-acre People’s Park. The $312 million housing complex will be able to accommodate 1,000 students AND up to 125 for homeless, low-income residents.

Not to state the obvious, but California has a host of programs to help illegal immigrants, aside from the sanctuary campuses, cities, and state.

Foreign Investors Buying and Building U.S. Student Housing

Below is just a handful of foreign investors expanding their real estate portfolios in the U.S., with eyes on the student housing sector. Is this a good investment or is there more to it?

• In 2021, London-based Global Student Accommodations (GSA) and Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing announced a joint venture to become leaders in the student housing market. GSA had an existing portfolio with close to 15,000 beds across 21 states. In 2022, through their joint venture, they purchased five additional student housing properties from Harrison Street, adding another 1,600 beds and expanding to a total of 23 states.

• In July, 2022, GFH Financial Group, a Middle East investment group out of Bahrain, and its subsidiary Student Quarters, based in Atlanta, GA, acquired a $300 million student housing portfolio in Michigan, Missouri, and Texas through U.S.-based SQ Asset Management (SQ). They later acquired a majority stake in SQ. GFH’s goal in the student housing market is to focus on the top 150 public universities in the U.S.

• Middle East investors are not just focused on student housing, they are also buying up medical clinics, office buildings, and other real estate in the U.S.

• In August, 2022, U.S.-based Landmark Properties announced a build-to-core joint venture with Abu Dhabi Investment Fund, to build student housing next to the largest universities in the U.S., after creating a $1 billion venture together in March to purchase existing student housing properties.

• In 2022, Saudi Arabia-based company Riyad Capital, partnered with The Ascott Limited to develop student housing properties in the U.S., under the name Student Accommodation Development Venture (SAVE). The Ascott is owned by Singapore-based CapitaLand Investment Limited, whose parent company is Temasek. Their first investment was to build a new 779-bed student housing community near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Corey’s Digs has reported on Temasek in four previous reports. Temasek is involved with Bill Gates and others who are invested in lab grown meat, partnered with Monsanto/Bayer to launch a $30 million startup called Unfold to develop vegetable seeds for vertical farms, and are part of a $3 trillion WEF initiative with Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Foundation, United Nations, Wellcome Trust, Bezos Earth Fund, and more, to tackle climate change.

Public-private partnerships between universities and developers of student housing have also been growing. They negotiate deals where developers get an ongoing cut from student’s payments. There have been a lot of scheming and scams with some of these partnerships. During the plandemic when they kicked students off campuses, this resulted in a lot of students getting stuck paying on a lease because the developers wouldn’t let them out of them or refund them, and the universities had no say in the matter. Some universities settled these issues but took a hit.

There have also been plenty of lawsuits against student housing and management companies price-fixing rents, among other schemes.

College and University Endowments Captured

It was 1988 when hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer convinced David Swensen, Yale’s endowment manager, to invest $300 million into Steyer’s new fund, Farallon Capital, that forever changed how endowment funds were managed. Other universities began investing in private equity and real estate hedge funds. Billionaires and alumni contribute their tax-deductible donations to pump up these investments by universities who are primarily tax-exempt. Between 1990 and 2021, the average endowment value grew by 423%. The plandemic served as an opportunity to increase endowment size by 35% alone during 2021, due to the booming stock market.

Between 2018 and 2023, 49 four-year private schools of higher eduction and 16 four-year public institutions have purchased office buildings because the rate of available office buildings jumped to 24% after the plandemic, and were far more affordable to scoop up. Colleges and universities have also acquired hotels and other real estate.

Priorities shifted, and instead of higher education for students being a top priority, it became all about making a return on investment. Wall Street has been lining their pockets, billionaire donors have been calling the shots, and in the end – the students lose.

The system has been rigged for a long time. Their are countless books and reports on how higher education institutions have been utilizing their endowments to make money that benefits the donors, Wall Street, and others, while leaving little to assist the students students or their education.

As of 2023, the top 20 largest endowments for higher education institutions in the U.S. were:

Table: Natalie Schwartz/Higher Ed Drive – Source: 2023 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments

College “Innovation Districts” or Strategic Migrant Campuses?

Billions from these endowments are going toward real estate. In many cases, universities are buying up shuttered nearby office buildings, but instead of converting them as an extension of the campus for academia, they are turning them into retail space to create “innovation districts,” or “innovation ecosystems.” It’s the equivalent of a 15-min city with all the bells and whistles of smart tech for a digital control grid. As the Brookings Institute put it, they are “the ultimate mash up of entrepreneurs and educational institutions, start-ups and schools, mixed-use development and medical innovations, bike-sharing, and bankable investments – all connected by transit, powered by clean energy, wired for digital technology, and fueled by caffeine.”

By “wired for digital technology,” they are referring to all public places in the “innovation district” being “created or re-configured to be digitally-accessible” with wireless networks, top notch fiber optics and internet, and computers and digital displays embedded into spaces. They also suggest streets being “transformed into living labs” where they can test out new fun digital technologies and fancy street lighting. And, they emphasize the need for governance of each district. Of course micro-housing and any needed rezoning is all part of the package. And all of this includes expanding into neighborhoods and the broader metropolis.

Universities have been gobbling up commercial real estate and partnering with developers for some time. In fact, universities are the largest employers in two-thirds of America’s 100 largest cities.

Some folks will look at this, especially many from the younger generation, and think “how convenient,” as they walk around their surveilled prison blocks.

These hubs are already taking shape at the University of California at Davis, the University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Washington, just to name a few. They are creating the hubs around higher education institutions in cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cambridge, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Diego. This is a global agenda, with “innovation districts” already underway in Barcelona, Berlin, London, Medellin, Montreal, Seoul, Stockholm, and Toronto.

Deloitte likes to refer to them as a “Smart Campus – The next-generation connected campus,” which essentially reads much like the Brookings Institute paper. Deloitte’s 2019 paper emphasizes that “smart banking, smart retail, smart digital workplaces, and smart venues like hospitals and stadiums could be extended to higher eduction campuses.” Deloitte defines these campuses as a paradigm shift that creates a digital culture to collect data, provides digitally augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, drives revenue streams, and acts as a model for testing so as to improve upon it and expand to surrounding communities and cities. They’re baking quite the cake, and the icing is that they want to deploy RPA, blockchain, location intelligence, venue analytics, and chatbots. It sure sounds like a fun campus!

An excerpt from the Smart Cities Association states that “essentially, college campuses are becoming must-watch landscapes for trends that resemble those of smart cities. Like many local governments, a growing number of colleges and universities have hired Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to coordinate smart, secure innovation and technological systems throughout campus. Northwestern University, Boston College and Dartmouth College are among the many schools that have CIOs, and Stanford University just created a CIO position this year.”

Here’s the real question: Are they focused on building “innovation districts” or “15-minute cities” for purposes of the digital control grid, and eventually expanding out to cities and regions, while also housing illegal immigrants and continuing with the indoctrination of students, or is it for the purpose of blending trained illegal immigrants into campuses at strategic locations across the country for future actions since they make the perfect micro cities to operate from and blend into? Or, is it a combination of both? No matter the case, one thing is for certain – endowments have long been used as another transfer of wealth while escaping taxes, partner with private equity firms, and continue to buy up real estate – all while students remain the least of their concern.

According to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project’s 2019 partial list of Blackstone investors, the following colleges and universities invested with Blackstone that year:

Aga Khan University Foundation Endowment
Berkeley Endowment Management Company
Clemson University Foundation Endowment
Colby College Endowment
Colgate University Endowment
Denison University Endowment
Indiana University Foundation Endowment
Michigan State University Endowment
Nevada System of Higher Education Endowment
Regents of the University of California
University of Houston System Endowment
University of Michigan Endowment
University of Missouri Endowment
University of South Dakota Foundation Endowment
University of Texas Investment Management Company Endowment
University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation Endowment
University of Washington Endowment

UC Investments’ Strategic $4 Billion Venture with Blackstone

In January, 2023, the Regents of the University of California (UC Investments) and Blackstone announced a strategic long-term (6-year hold) venture with a $4 billion commitment from UC Investments in Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, Inc. (BREIT) class 1 common shares. In doing so, Blackstone then contributed $1 billion of its BREIT holdings as part of a venture with UC Investments. UC Investments has held a 15-year-long partnership with Blackstone and had already invested $2 billion. This of course provides ample cash flow for Blackstone. Though this only adds up to $6 billion, as reported by other sources, according to a recent statement by UC’s Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher, they’ve actually invested $8.6 billion with Blackstone, to date, as well as nearly $2.3 billion with BlackRock.

UC Investments’ co-heads of real estate intend to work closely with Blackstone portfolio companies, with a focus in student housing, staff and faculty housing, and affordable housing in California.

Shortly thereafter, UC contributed an additional $500 million to Blackstone, and received backlash from the university’s union for investing in corporate landlords who drive rent up and increase evictions. In an open letter signed by all of the major unions to UC’s CIO Jagdeep Singh Bachher, they stated, “As one of the largest landlords in California, the University of California already bears significant responsibility for this crisis. However, through this new partnership with Blackstone Inc., the University will become a major driver of this affordability crisis for the UC community and the rest of California.” The letter is a must read, as it documents the major issues and concerns with private equity firms, such as Blackstone, buying up homes and student housing, and taking hold of the rental market. When you combine this manufactured crisis with the affordable housing scheme it becomes quite evident that this is a coordinated play for full control over all housing, because – “you will own nothing and be happy.”

Several of UC campuses, including UC Irvine, also outsourced portions of their student housing to American Campus Communities, which Blackstone acquired in 2022 as documented above.

Here is a 35-page 2023 list of the University of California’s Real Property Report which includes the dates, land, structures, and costs of all property owned, going back over a century, for those who may be interested. Here is the 2022-2023 annual report on the university’s private support.

Outsourcing Management of Endowments is The Name of The Game

Harvard’s endowment is the largest in the country and will likely only get larger after tapping Blackstone’s chief financial advisor, Michael S. Chae, who will become a member of the Harvard Management Company’s (HMC) board of directors beginning on July 1, 2024. The board currently consists of 10 members which are responsible for managing Harvard’s $50.7 billion endowment. HMC is led by CEO N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, who joined in 2016 after being CEO at Columbia University since 2002, and by 2017 launched a new strategy to outsource assets to external managers. Narvekar had carried out the same strategy at Columbia. Harvard began outsourcing management of most of its endowment by mid 2017. They laid off half of their investment staff and utilized the endowment’s direct real-estate team as an external manager. In 2018, Harvard sold its portfolio of over 100 warehouses to Blackstone.

As far back as 2015, universities such as Yale, Harvard, University of Texas, Stanford, and Princeton were all spending more of their endowment on private equity fund managers than they were on their students. Yale, for example, paid $480 million to private equity fund managers while only spending $170 million on tuition assistance, fellowships and prizes on students in 2014. That following year, co-founder of Blackstone, Stephen A. Schwarzman, pledged $150 million to Yale for a new student center. This has become a concerning trend among colleges and universities.

Billionaires have been funding and steering university endowments for years. Between 2010 and 2020, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation granted over $11.6 billion to 471 universities and higher education institutions in 66 countries, with over 70% going to U.S. universities. The top five in order of funding were: University of Washington, John Hopkins University, Emory University, University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Oxford. Bill Gates is merely one example.

Outsourcing management of endowments isn’t the only game in town. The plandemic brought on an onslaught of billions of dollars in outsourcing to for-profit companies to manage everything from online courses, enrollment and recruiting, tutors, research, manage IT, dorms, classrooms, labs, parking, and even student unions. Getting the big picture?

It’s not just the private equity firms eating up these endowments. In 2020, the University of Illinois System invested almost $160 million of their endowment to become the first investor in BlackRock’s new environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy, which goes along with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, furthering these agendas.

Location is Key: Satellite Campuses in D.C.

In addition to buying up real estate surrounding campuses, many colleges and universities are expanding their campuses to other cities as satellite campuses, with over 50 already in Washington D.C., the prime location they all seek. Millions of dollars are going into these expansions.

According to James Birkey, senior vice president for education at real estate company JLL, universities have established satellite campuses for a long time but “what is new is the competitive tenor of it.” Birkey explains that “there are key institutions that are looking for very specific space in specific strategic places, and the economics are currently in their favor to find it.”

In 2018, Arizona State University opened its new center just four blocks from the White House, and expanded to another nearby building the following year. Not long after, the University of Arizona acquired space just two blocks from the White House.

Just in 2023 alone, new outposts and expansions took place by Texas A&M, Purdue, Princeton, and Johns Hopkin’s who spent $372 million to acquire the former Newseum building for its new Bloomberg Center.

The University of Southern California recently purchased an office building on Dupont Circle in Washington D.C. to convert to a satellite campus. USC President Carol L. Folt said, “the idea of creating a campus structure in D.C. came up pretty recently. It really came to fruition quickly.”

Small private schools and large public schools all want the D.C. action, including New York University,

Middlebury College, Florida International University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Hillsdale College, just to name a few.

In order to accommodate all of these students, more housing will be needed, which means purchasing office buildings or other real estate to convert into student housing.

It goes without saying that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is 100% for these satellite campuses and wants to expand university uses, reimagine the downtown, add a large tech hub and office to residential conversions, plus add an additional 15,000 residents downtown.

The Smokescreen: Israel-Hamas College Protests

Whereas many students are protesting because they are truly disturbed by this war and the mass murder of thousands of adults and children, there are aspects of these protests that have been coordinated for a different cause so as to create a massive smokescreen while the universities and billionaires move pieces into play, and professionally funded agitators are part of their game. From new “hate crime” legislation to a changing of the guard at universities and further capturing their endowments and controlling policies, from land grabs to housing illegal immigrants and strategizing next moves – everything is on the table. Meanwhile, thousands are being slaughtered abroad and the invasion at the U.S. borders continues while the media is primarily focused on the protests. Smokescreen.

Most people know by now that protests popping up across the globe at hundreds of universities is not organic. Organizations and groups are trained activists and are well funded. Some students have been trained to be a part of it, others are trained agitators to kick them up a level. And sure, there are many students that follow suit because they feel it is a just cause. War is certainly going to stir emotions and create rage and passion in people, and with good reason, but there is much more going on than meets the eye.

Over 100 colleges and universities have protested in the U.S. alone, some involving encampments. The message heard around the world at universities is the same – “divest in Israel.” It’s a key message that likely originated with activist groups funded by big players, because it points the finger at endowments and more importantly, who manages those endowments, in order to shake things up and move key people into place.

Two organizers of protests on multiple campuses are IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, which are both supported by the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation supports all kinds of nonprofits working for social change, and are funded by George Soros. A spokesperson for George Soros’ Open Society Foundation said that it “has funded a broad spectrum of US groups that have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel.”

David Rockefeller Jr. has given almost $500,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace through the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and funds the Tides Foundation as well. Susan and Nick Pritzker fund a foundation that is supporting groups involved in pro-Palestinian protests.

But the bigger picture is the billionaire philanthropists and big donors to university endowments who have been threatening to cease their funding over these protests. Columbia University has already seen millions suspended by big donors. This has been one of the bigger focus points of the media frenzy, stirring things up on the financial scope and management of endowments. When donors can dictate how a university should act, respond to situations, hire or fire top personnel, and spend its funding, the university’s priorities are not about the students, and it’s been going on for a very long time.

When Clinton friends such as Lawrence Summers turns on his own in a public display, it’s always a good idea to pay attention. His job was to focus on targeting Harvard for not condemning a statement made by pro-Palestinian students. The following day, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman also put on a public display requesting that Harvard release the list of members who were involved with the statement to ensure that no one would ever hire them. This of course put the newly appointed president in the hot seat, bringing a pile-on from many directions, including a congressional hearing, in which Harvard President Claudine Gay later resigned. M. Elizabeth Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania also resigned just a few days after she appeared before Congress, and hedge fund manager Ross Stevens threatened to withdraw a $100 million donation. Columbia University’s president managed to hold her position despite Columbia professors, lawmakers, and students calling for her resignation.

But it was American Economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs’ appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show that revealed the underbelly of their agenda while setting the stage for the destruction of America. For those who believe it was anything but trickery, they are not familiar with Jeffrey Sachs. Few people are as connected as Jeffrey Sachs, or as involved as he has been in agendas against humanity. From his Harvard leadership in the rape of Russia to the creation of the Global Fund which has full immunity, and Sachs himself called for $10 billion a year just ten days before the first alleged Covid case hit the U.S., he spearheaded the bogus Harvard Consensus Statement on antiretroviral treatment for AIDS, his coziness with Pope Francis, his decades-long relationship with the UN and belief of “human-induced climate change,” are pretty good indicators of where Sachs is coming from. Just take a look at an older Columbia University archive of his 40-page resume of accomplishments to glean how long Jeffrey Sachs has been in this game. He’s no dummy, nor is he naive, as he pretended to be in this interview.

Jeffrey Sachs spent an hour and forty-five minutes mystifying people with digs at universities, government, war, Victoria Nuland, and the Clintons, while simultaneously suggesting nuclear war is on the horizon, and that he was speaking out about all of this because of his concern for his children’s futures. This, coming from a man who has plotted with the best to bring America to its knees. Yet, people bought into it because he hit on the key words that resonated with everyone’s frustrations and anger. Sachs is a very useful tool. Let’s break it down:

• Nothing Sachs said is new information. This wasn’t a disclosure of any kind.

• He pushed the threat of nuclear war twelve times to ensure he invoked a state of fear while listeners clung to his every word, making them more vulnerable to any hopeful tidbits he tossed out.

• He intentionally appeared humble, acted naive – even calling himself naive several times, and even frightened.

• He made it a point to complain about how universities and big donors are all part of this corrupt system, despite the fact he was and is a big part of this system and has carried out incredible agendas against humanity.

• He targeted the U.S. government and used the term “neocons” thirteen times while leaving out the obvious bad players and declaring that the UN is about bringing peace, when in fact, they are about control and enslavement. He also targeted the Clintons and Nuland to make it more believable.

• He dodged Tucker’s question about the pandemic treaty and instead stoked more fear around Covid and about a future pandemic, which is all convenient for the UN. As chairman and leader of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission, he has distracted and mislead Congress and citizens about Covid and pushed for mass vaccination, universal health coverage with pandemic preparedness plans, a new Global Health Fund for more money, and to achieve the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

• This quote by Sachs is two-fold. “We got a shit show going on in this country right now. If a university thinks it can do whatever it wants, and if NIH has a different opinion and we have no rules and they’re doing work on dangerous pathogens. Yeah, we’re going to have another pandemic.” What he is doing there is opening the door for more oversight and changing of the guard over universities and their endowments, while at the same time trying to manifest more fear in people around a pandemic.

• Once again, another quote by Sachs dogging universities shows the need to better oversee their financial management and opens the door for a rearranging of oversight so as to put in key players, alter policies, create new legislation, and so on. “I mean, it’s not a shock to tell you, but all of these special organizations, the think tanks or university special departments or research units, they’re funded by the U.S. government. They’re funded by the security state. They’re funded by large donors that are all part of this story,” said Sachs. This is comical coming from Sachs.

• Coincidentally, Columbia University was center stage for the protests, encampment, and even arrests over the Israel-Hamas war, drawing a lot of attention and inspiring other universities to follow suit. Over 100 faculty members from Columbia and Barnard protested in support of students, condemning their suspensions and arrests.

Deescalation and Negotiations

To deescalate the situation and shut down encampments, several schools such as Brown University, Northwestern University, and Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, made agreements with students regarding a review of their investments with Israel without promising divestments. Other schools followed a similar strategy including Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota and the University of California, Riverside. Some schools also pledged aid for Palestinian students and the improvement of space for Muslim students on their campuses.

Students at the University of California called for the university to divest in weapons manufacturers, Blackstone, BlackRock, companies that support Israel, and a couple dozen other companies. This request would amount to one-fifth of the system’s assets, equating to $32 billion, according to UC Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher. UC Regents said it’s not so simple.

Students at several universities are calling for divestment from Google, Amazon and Airbnb for profiting from “Israel apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.” If anyone believes that any university would divest from Google or Amazon, they are mistaken. In August, 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest $7.2 billion in Israel, launching its Amazon Web Services data centers so that Amazon’s cloud services could assist with Israel’s government applications, local data centers, and workloads.

The same message echoes across the world at other colleges. Protesters at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands were sharing banners on social media stating their demands to “disclose, boycott, and divest.” The same message carried through to the University of Amsterdam where 120 protesters were arrested when violence broke out. Protesters at the encampment at the University of Toronto in Canada called for the same transparency of investments and divestment from Israeli weapons companies. The University of Calgary protesters had their encampment removed by police after a barrage of tear gas and flash bangs.

Sanctuary Campuses and Comparative Maps

The map seen below shows over 80 colleges and universities who were protesting for Sanctuary Campuses back in 2016. This proposed that schools will not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers onto campus without a warrant or share student immigration status with ICE, police are not allowed to enforce immigration law, providing tuition support to students with DACA status, expanding policies to include medical, and more. The American Association of University Professors urged colleges and universities to adopt sanctuary policies and endorsed this movement on November 22, 2016.

Portland State University and Reed College were the first to declare their campuses a sanctuary campus. Other higher education institutions followed suit by self-declaring their campuses a sanctuary, including New York University, Columbia University, Wesleyan University, Oregon State University, Pitzer College, Santa Fe Community College, University of Pennsylvania, Connecticut College, Drake University, and Swarthmore College. Numerous other schools declared protective policies for illegal immigrants, including Rutgers College, California State University, Iowa State University and Haverford College. The UK and Ireland have also followed suit at some of their schools.

Now imagine, sanctuary campuses, which would include student housing, essentially housing and protecting illegal immigrants with absolutely no law enforcement aware that they are even located there. Then throw in sanctuary cities and states. Whether or not any of this is legal doesn’t seem to matter to politicians and presidents of universities.

Now take a look at the sanctuary cities, counties, and states map below.

And finally, look at the map below of colleges and universities protesting the Israel-Hamas war as of April 2024. Green represents colleges that have had encampments and blue are non-encampment protests. Here is additional information and some updates on some of the campuses as of May 2024.

See the pattern?

What is The End Game?

That’s the million dollar question. Evidence shows that colleges and universities across the U.S. and other countries have students running protests, and in some cases encampments, demanding that they divest in Israel while at the same time big donors are threatening to suspend funds from these schools. This is putting a lot of scrutiny on how endowments are managed and where the money is going, which will ultimately lead to a shake up consisting of installing key players, a money grab that will be called “oversight,” policy changes and eventually legislative changes – all to benefit billionaires and private equity firms.

Evidence also shows that there is a lot underway regarding illegal immigrants being housed at colleges and universities, sanctuary campuses and cities protecting their anonymity, private equity firms such as Blackstone running the biggest student housing company in the U.S., Middle East and other foreign countries investing in U.S. student housing, the Welcome Corps setting up shop to provide assistance with housing, food, education, and medical needs, and big Gov operating with the UN to drive the immigrants through the border. It wouldn’t be hard for all of the single men ages 18-24 who are coming through the border to blend in around college campuses. This isn’t to stoke fear in anyone, and it wouldn’t make sense to carry out any violent activities near a campus if that is a strategic “home base,” but it is important for people to be vigilant and observant and acknowledge the potential of what is being created here. As previously mentioned, many have also been housed in hotels, shelters, converted retail, and government compounds.

In addition to this, they have been working on “innovation districts” or “smart cities” that are being built out around universities to eventually expand into cities and regions. Are these cover for strategic migrant housing for future events or do they intend to build these out beyond campuses? Clearly, colleges have been buying up real estate for mixed-use in and around their campuses, and they all want a satellite campus in D.C.

Part of this sure seems like another major transfer of wealth, whereby the billionaires continue to donate and dictate to the schools, the money gets funneled off through private equity firms, oftentimes investing in what the billionaires are already invested in themselves. Contributions to endowments are tax write-offs and universities are non-profits so there are no capital gains taxes. Billionaires are billionaires because they know how to work the system, move money, setup their own non-profits, dictate demands that benefit them to those they donate to, and funnel money overseas. They have long had a stranglehold on higher education and have created indoctrination camps – camps that they intend to turn into micro smart cities with augmented virtual reality and full digital control and surveillance. The bottom line is, they want control of all assets, information, and people.

Private equity firms are also buying up hospitals and the top student housing companies also own and/or manage senior housing, single-family rentals, and medical clinics. Jeffrey Sachs wants everyone on universal healthcare. Just imagine what that would like in a world where they already obliterated the healthcare industry during the plandemic.

The affordable housing situation, albeit helpful to some families in need, is a trap to get everyone reliant on big Gov and they are expanding it at a rapid pace. The “build-to-rent” platform has investors coming in from every angle and with the local and federal governments expanding on vouchers, changing zoning and regulations, the entire housing industry is shifting, which we’ve long warned about.

There is a book I have yet to read, however, I am told it is excellent, and it really hits the nail on the head with what this report is talking about. The book Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou, breaks down how firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, and KKR are among the largest employers in America and hold assets that rival those of small countries. He explains how private equity has reshaped American businesses while reducing quality and cutting jobs, and how they buy up companies and real estate using little of their own money while leaving many companies bankrupt. The book covers everything from how private equity uses other people’s money, how they profit, the end of homeownership, poor care in nursing homes and health care, and much more. He also explains how arms of the government are assisting with this takeover. Part III consists of how to stop them, what we must do, and an agenda for reform.

Hopefully this report shines a light on several agendas taking place while smokescreens and distractions are carried out at enormous scale. This provides the groundwork for future observations and evidence. People should do their due diligence in determining who to invest with and what to invest in and stop financing the criminal syndicate that has been running Israel. Those selling homes will hopefully sell to a family rather than these big firms trying to buy them up, and those renting homes should rent from individual owners rather than management companies. College students should be aware of their surroundings, pay attention to who their neighbors are, and not get sucked into the indoctrination and technological “districts” being built so they can be lab rats for the rest of the world.

Forewarned is forearmed. Stay vigilant, stay strong, and stay sharp. Above all, don’t feed the enemy – feed your soul.

Download this full report in PDF format from the Bookshop >

This report is sponsored by The Solari Report.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post University Migrant Smart Hubs, Private Equity & The Leveraged Buyout of America appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Goal #1: Programming

Mind conditioning and programming have always been the game. I could write an entire report just on the letter “X” and how it’s been used to condition minds. Instead, I’m just going to share a couple that have been on my mind. One took place back in 2018. Remember when the red X went viral on Twitter? Everyone was saying, “put a red X next to your screen name if you have been shadow banned and censored to show everyone we are united against this.” I saw thousands of people quickly add a red X next to their name, and I warned that it was a ploy. At the time I wasn’t sure what it was all about, as it could have been an attempt to build a list of people against the narrative, and it likely had a multifaceted approach. I just knew that following along would not be wise. I now believe that one of the goals was to get everyone to place the X for purposes of conditioning their minds to believe “X” is a good, powerful, united symbol. Five years later, Twitter became X. This may seem silly and insignificant, but when multiple campaigns are running simultaneously to program individuals, every little seed planted adds branches in the brain and forms beliefs. Then, when evidence is brought forth showing the trap, the brain refuses to accept it, and instead is stuck in the “united” belief system, and hero worship ensues. In this case, people believe Elon Musk is their champion.

Another fine example of preprogramming, which also so happens to include “X,” is Madonna’s May, 2019 televised performance of everything burning to the ground while singing her song “Future” from the album “Madame X.” I brought attention to this back then because the entire display was an obvious preprogramming to reach millions. The seeds planted included Madonna’s X eye patch, X across her front, an upside down cross on one side of her outfit with a serpent on the other, a devil’s head backdrop, New York burning to the ground, and gas masks, followed by couples walking up stairs arm in arm with the last couple having small flags pinned on their backs from Israel and Palestine, concluding the show with the words “Wake Up” plastered behind Madonna. Of course, the chorus to the song is about how “not everyone is coming to the future, not everyone that’s here is gonna last.” We have since seen all of these events unfold.

Goal #2: Identity

How many people got caught up in the “Transgender Day of Visibility” that Biden established for March 31st on an annual basis, which so happened to coincide with Easter this year? It’s like watching a drunk in a bar trying to goad people into a fight. Someone falls for it, fists start flying, and next thing you know there is an all out brawl in the bar. This is the intention. They push out hundreds of things all at once to keep the chaos rolling, maintain distraction, and build rage so that people cannot accomplish anything but spinning their wheels on things that are out of their control. If people had laughed, gone on with their celebrations and enjoyed their day, eventually this type of tactic would become ineffective.

I once believed that the corrupt want to obliterate everyone’s identity, make everyone genderless and force them to use digital IDs, but I’m beginning to realize that “identity” is exactly what they want everyone focused on. When you get people hyper focused on their own identity and the identity of others, be it sexual preference, appearance, fashion style, personality types, and all of the other fun labels that go with it, people are ultimately trying to define themselves by external nonsense that gives them an “identity,” rather than focusing on their inner spirit, their soul, and direct line to God. It’s one of the biggest and longest standing distractions.

Goal #3: Panic, Fear and Paranoia

Bad actors have been stoking fear and paranoia for eons because it serves their agendas well. When you keep people in a constant high beta state it creates incoherence and confusion. Eventually, this builds into paranoia. The saying “trust no one and question everything” has become the foundation for cognitive dissonance. Trusting no one creates isolation, while questioning everything keeps one in a constant state of analysis as opposed to trusting in their own intuition. Intuition is the most powerful tool for humans, yet people are finding it difficult to even trust in themselves.

Soon, this paranoia emerges into a single belief that everyone is bad and no one is to be trusted. Everything seems plausible and grasping at every bit of information that comes out is quickly twisted to fit this belief. Intuition goes out the window, research is skipped over, and analysis comes from a place of paranoia and confusion.

The recent solar eclipse is a good example of this. It only took a few key seeds for people to get in a frenzy, gather those seeds, and proclaim doomsday was on the horizon. The seeds were schools closing, stocking up on food and water, the National Guard, NASA, and CERN. Quick research and logic would tell anyone that some of this was also done in 2017, towns were packed, hotels booked up, supplies ran short, schools closed, the National Guard was on the ready, etc.

Yes, the National Guard, NASA, and CERN are all going to raise red flags for people, and could an isolated event have taken place somewhere? Sure. Does anyone have any control over that? No. So does it make sense to make assumptions and project fear onto the world of an impending apocalypse coming, stop living your life, and live in a state of fear, or does it make more sense to make observations, be aware of your surroundings, but continue to live your life in a state of joy? We are here to experience, not to hide. It’s one thing to point things out and raise awareness, yet another to spread hysteria without having clear facts and evidence. They want everyone in a constant state of survival so they become paralyzed.

This is why expanding ones intuition is so vital during these times. The mind can only process so much and clues are often hidden, but intuition can quite literally save ones life. Faith, prayer, and knowing go hand-in-hand with intuition. Fear and ego cloud discernment.

Goal #4: Planting The Seed for Division

Once people are in a constant state of panic, fear, or paranoia, planting the seed for division can more easily be achieved. This is one of the biggest goals which requires minimal rollout because influencers can pick it up and make it go viral, doing all of the work for the corrupt without even realizing it. I’ve witnessed this time and time again. In order for these strategies to work, they first have to instill enough fear and paranoia that the campaigns will take hold because confusion becomes more and more prevalent. The most important component to these campaigns is that they put people in crossfire with one another by planting a seed from behind the scenes. This way, all influencers are subject to accusations and assumptions even if they had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, or no real connection to bad actors. Everyone then assumes they are part of some big operation trying to share false information and take advantage of people or walk them into a trap.

The corrupt players sit back and relish in the chaos, division, and confusion all being created among individuals and influencers pointing fingers at one another, while achieving their end goal. The reality is, the majority of influencers and individuals on social media are not part of a psyop (not including bots of course), but rather have differing opinions, lack of knowledge, were misguided, or simply didn’t have all of the information. There is no margin for error on social media, for you will be burned at the stake if you get something wrong. Suddenly, everyone is sketchy, everyone is involved in an “operation,” and accusations are flying. People become consumed with “who’s who” rather than “who am I.”

For over eight years I have observed this targeted energy suck, and it has gotten us no closer to combatting agendas against humanity, it has only served as entertainment for those who prefer to get caught up in drama and let their anger out on social media because they haven’t found a more constructive outlet.

I’ve witnessed so many good journalists and researchers get doxed, targeted, or said to be part of a bigger operation, none of which was true. Oftentimes, both sides accuse each other of being part of an operation, when in fact neither is. Everyone feeds into this drama and it stokes more division, but more importantly – it causes everyone to focus on external distractions rather than internal momentum and using their gifts and skills to actually make an impact for themselves, their families and their communities. And THAT is the prime goal of the corrupt.

On the social media stage, the corrupt are winning, hands down. They are syphoning off every last drop of energy people have to give as though they are already living in a virtual reality because they are inside the box more than inside themselves. But, take to the streets and make observations, get to know people, and most turned off the news long ago. Most are more interested in building a life, having a community, and showing compassion. That said, the number of worldwide users on social media has hit an astounding 5 billion, and whereas many of these users are there to share info and photos with friends and family, it’s become near impossible to be on social media without seeing political propaganda and fear porn.

People will undoubtedly comment on this and say, “but my neighbor is so woke” or “my family is so lost and have no clue what’s really going on.” Yes, there is that as well, and that too is part of the intentional division. But, aside from being unaware of events and agendas, are they good people? Were they good people before you knew what you now know? If shit hits the fan, will they step up and help others when it counts? Can you love them unconditionally?

Feeding The Enemy Instead of Feeding The Soul

There comes a point where “waking up” takes on a whole new meaning – when people are feeding the enemy instead of feeding their soul, and when people are forcing their knowledge and beliefs on others instead of being compassionate and lifting them up – it creates a repetitive landscape of turmoil drenched in misery. Standing by and waiting to pounce on every word, every symbol, and every post made by corrupt individuals, is feeding the enemy a five course meal every single time, while depleting your plate to a mere crumb.

The constant churning of events and campaigns to distract and divide will continue to amp up. The wild thing is, it’s much like a swimming pool. You can choose to jump in the deep end and tread water all day long utilizing every last ounce of energy, only to drown in despair. Or you can choose to step into the shallow end, maintain solid footing, and conserve your energy for areas in life where you can take action while living your life without fear and constant stress. You can take a family adventure into the wild and camp for a week as the world around you continues to move as it may. You can choose to find joy in all the little things, focus on family and community, and live in a state of faith. You can choose to plant a garden, run for local office, or learn a new skill. You can choose to spend your time building your intuition, going within, bringing yourself a sense of peace and stability while opening the doors for opportunity. You can choose to create and manifest the reality you want. You can choose love and watch the ripple effect take hold across the universe.

The options are endless and the choice is yours. This journey is for the soul and it is an individual opportunity for each person to find their path while having compassion and non-judgement toward others. Other people do not determine what lies in your heart, how you feel, what you believe, or your personal connection to God. It is an internal experience that the external world only sees a glimpse of. It is powerful and should be filled with joy rather than rage, with love rather than hate, and with faith rather than fear.

Feed your soul instead of feeding the enemy and you will feed all of humanity. The energetic effect of this is a powerhouse.

Helpful Tool:

Please check out my article called FearLESS which provides my ultimate “list of lists” containing alternative resources, solutions and tools to navigate outside the corrupt system. From finding sources of fresh food to producing your own food, healthcare resources, financial, tons of tech tips, comms, networking, and so much more! Equip yourself, empower yourself and be FearLESS!

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com

The post Feeding The Enemy Instead of Feeding The Soul: You Are Being Played appeared first on The Washington Standard.

In simple terms, the Bank For International Settlements’ (BIS) blueprint proposes that all private property in the real world, such as money, houses, cars, etc., would be “tokenized” into digital assets within an “everything in one place” global unified ledger. Of course, smart contracts on a “programmable” platform with rules on how each asset can and cannot be used is the key ingredient.

By using fear of cyber attacks on any single institution, big Gov and financial institutions want everyone to believe that by consolidating all data and assets of a person’s life into tokens under a Digital ID will somehow protect them from attacks by having everything in one location.

Though many are under the impression that the battle is against the ushering in of CBDCs, it would seem that all of the appropriate financial rails and interoperability are already in place, or darn close to it, to expand on the mountain of identity verification processes already dialed in, to initiate the all-in-one Digital Identity and lock those dominoes into place.

This digital world they intend to manifest is being fashioned to look like a convenient and necessary way everyone must live, and as they build these “rails” of prison cells, consumers are sinking further into debt and relying more and more on credit cards. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a report noting that credit card balances in Q4 of 2023 increased by $50 billion to a record high of $1.13 trillion, while also reporting a rise in delinquencies. The report states that credit card delinquencies increased over 50% in 2023. Total household debt also rose by $212 billion reaching $17.5 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the report.

Visa and Mastercard are at the forefront of this takeover and if they succeed, the monitoring, tracking, and control will be immeasurable and there will be no going back. Consumers need to think twice before using credit cards and use cash as often as possible, while state legislators need to get on board with implementing creative legislation with independent systems that not only provide protection for the citizens of their state, but build strong financial freedom with the ability to operate utilizing cash, precious metals, and unique structures as pointed out in this article.

“I get why China would be interested. Why would the American people be for that?” – Neel Kashkari, President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, ‘The Threat of Financial Transaction Control,’ the Solari Report, February 24, 2024.

Brief History on Visa & Mastercard

Visa

The first major credit cards emerged from the 50s to mid-60s. Bank of America issued the first consumer credit card with revolving credit in California in 1958, expanding their network through licensing agreements with banks throughout the nation by 1966. The network spread out internationally by 1974, prompting a rebranding in 1976 of the BankAmericard to Visa, an internationally recognized term that conveys universal acceptance.

By 2007, several regional Visa businesses from around the globe merged to form Visa Inc., and the following year, on March 18, 2008, the corporation went public. Visa’s initial public offering (IPO) sold 406 million shares at $44 per share totaling $17.9 billion, one of the largest in U.S. history. Then on March 20, 2008, the underwriters of the IPO, which included JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi, HSBC, Merrill Lynch, UBS Investment Bank and Wachovia Securities, exercised their over-allotment option by purchasing an added 40.6 million shares, raising the overall IPO shares to 446.6 million for a total of $19.1 billion.

Their Board of Directors include current and former CEOs, CFOs, and COOs of Carney Global Ventures, Rite Aid Corporation, PepsiCo, Gap, Stanley Black & Decker, Visa, and The Clorox Company.

Over the decades, Visa has faced a myriad of legal actions and disputes concerning anticompetitive practices and high fees. As recently as 2019, a settlement of $5.5 billion was reached in a class-action lawsuit by merchants alleging that Visa and Mastercard engaged in price-fixing practices with regards to swipe fees charged to merchants and the credit card networks unfairly interfered when merchants encouraged less expensive forms of payment such as cash or checks. Additionally, the Department of Justice launched an antitrust probe against Visa in March of 2021. The investigation has remained ongoing according to Visa’s SEC filing in mid-2023.

Mastercard

Competitors to Visa arose in 1966 to form the Interbank Card Association (ICA), which later became Mastercard International. The original bank members were United California Bank, Wells Fargo, Crocker National Bank and Bank of California. The group introduced the Master Charge card which ultimately became known as Mastercard in 1979.

The ICA expanded their network globally, merging with Europay International in 2002 and then converting from a membership association into a private share corporation in preparation for their initial public offering that commenced in 2006. The IPO of 61.5 million shares, priced at $39 per share, raised $2.4 billion. Goldman Sachs coordinated a group of four joint book-runners that included Citigroup, HSBC, and JPMorgan. Co-managing underwriters included Bear Stearns, Cowen and Company, Deutsche Bank, Harris Nesbitt, KeyBanc Capital Markets, and Santander Investment.

Their Board of Directors is made up of current and former CEOs as well as other high level positions from US Bancorp, The Carlyle Group, Mastercard, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, and BeyondNetZero.

Similar to Visa, Mastercard has been plagued by a number of scandals and legal actions over the years. A 2018 report noted that Mastercard brokered a secret multimillion dollar deal with Google to share credit card data for targeted advertising purposes. Then in 2019, as mentioned above, Mastercard and Visa settled a class-action suit worth $5.5 billion for anticompetitive practices. Furthermore, an SEC filing disclosed that, like Visa, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division initiated an investigation into Mastercard in March of 2023.

Visa & Mastercard Play an Integral Role in Digital IDs & CBDCs

Visa

• In 2019, Visa launched B2B Connect, which is a platform that uses blockchain to offer financial institutions a streamlined cross-border payment process. The Visa B2B Connect network is designed to offer digital identity solutions and a “centralized system of record for each and every payment.”
• Visa has applied for 159 patents related to blockchain which include more secure transactions by using biometric identity verification.
• In 2020, Visa filed for a patent to create a digital currency using blockchain, which is designed to replace cash. They aim to act as a central entity computer which creates a digital currency by using a serial number and denomination of physical currency. The patent applies to all digital currencies including: Ethereum, CBDCs, pounds, yen, and euros.
• Visa also partnered with Ethereum in 2020 to connect its payment network of 60 million merchants to the U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) developed by Circle Internet Financial.
• In September of 2020, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, introduced a Visa debit card which automatically converted users’ crypto assets into local currency. Since August of 2023, both Visa and Mastercard stepped back from their partnerships with Binance to offer crypto debit cards amid regulatory scrutiny.
• 55 out of 106 of Visa’s recent investments were in Fintech – their biggest industry sector for investments.
• In May of 2021, Visa announced the expansion of their Fintech Partner Connect program, matching banks that issue Visa cards with fintech companies that offer digital tools to enable their seamless transition toward “the ultimate goal of accelerating adoption of digital-first innovations” which incorporates digital identity verification. Their fintech partners include: Entrust, Alloy, Global Data Consortium, Idemia, Jumio, Neuro-ID, and Onfido (each outlined in more detail below.)
• In June of 2021, Entrust, a partner of The Good Health Pass, which was contracted by the UK to produce digital Covid certificates, announced its Visa Ready certified partnership and Visa Fintech Partnership.
• Visa’s fintech partner, Alloy, is a “global end-to-end identity risk solution” for banks that “enables instant digital identity verification and document verification.”
• Global Data Consortium, which was acquired by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) in April of 2022, is another Visa fintech partner. The acquisition by LSEG was specifically designed to “expand its global range of digital identity solutions.” LSEG offers global identity verification supported by biometric and document verification.
• Another Visa fintech partner, Idemia, is a “world leader in biometrics” that provides governments with IDway, which is a “suite of digital identity solutions,” that incorporate several components into a unified system. These components, which include civil registries, ID cards, passports, and welfare registries, work together “as a unified system solution to efficiently manage the identities of a country’s population.”
• Jumio is yet another Visa fintech partner that claims to be “the leader in online identity verification” and “way ahead of the game in digital identity as well.” Jumio offers solutions to enable their customers to “issue and verify digital identities from trusted sources,” which include smart wallets.
• Visa is also partnered with the fintech company, Neuro-ID, a pioneer “in the field of behavioral analytics,” which launched “breakthrough digital identity products” in February of 2022 that incorporate behavioral data.
• Onfido, an additional Visa fintech partner, offers a “Real Identity Platform” for digital identity verification powered by AI, which incorporates both biometric and document verifications.
• In January of 2022, Visa partnered with the blockchain technology company ConsenSys to offer central banks a platform to test Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and Visa products. The platform can enable a system “for central banks to issue and distribute CBDC.”
• In December of 2023, Visa partnered with TECH5, an “innovator in the field of biometrics and digital identity management,” to implement a “digital ID-based payment infrastructure and services on a national level.”
• On February 19, 2024, Capital One, a major issuer of both Visa and Mastercard, announced it would acquire Discover in an all-stock deal worth $35.3 billion. If this deal goes through it would make it the largest card issuer when measuring outstanding card loans.
• Visa is at the forefront of what they call “the token transformation,” offering “diverse tokenization technologies,” to merchants, regional networks, banks and central banks to “build, manage and control their own tokenization capabilities.” The goal to tokenize all assets, information and people into one global unified ledger is one that the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has been looking at closely, as evidenced by their 2023 report entitled, “Blueprint for the future monetary system: improving the old, enabling the new.” CBDCs would be “core to the functioning” of this tokenized digital space, serving as the reserve currency on the unified ledger, as noted in the BIS report.

Mastercard

• Mastercard markets the safety and convenience features of a range of Digital Identity Services they offer, which includes their digital ID network, for access to “everything from financial and government services, to healthcare, education, travel, shopping,” and more in what they describe as the “digital transformation.” They have published a number of white papers outlining a variety of use cases for their digital identity services on their site.
• 61 out of 115 of Mastercard’s recent investments have been in Fintech – their biggest industry sector for investments.
• Mastercard and Paypal have a global strategic partnership, providing several services to Paypal users, while Paypal is one of the frontrunners to move the needle on digital IDs considering they are the largest digital wallet company with 69% of Americans using their services.
• In 2016, MasterCard and Visa were both part of the multi-stakeholder workshop for the World Economic Forum’s “A Blueprint for Digital Identity: The Role of Financial Institutions in Building The Digital Identity.” On page 41 they describe “identity” as “a collection of pieces of information that describe an entity” such as “age, height, date of birth, fingerprints, health records, preferences and behaviors, telephone metadata, national identifier number, telephone number, email addresses, and assets,” for starters. On page 95 they explain how new capabilities for financial institutions would include: digital identity attributes tied to payment tokens, digital tax filing, and tracking total asset rehypothecation. Mastercard and Visa are both “strategic partners” of the WEF.
• In 2018, MasterCard served as one of twenty experts on the UN’s “high-level panel on digital cooperation,’ co-chaired by Melinda Gates and Jack Ma, which produced the report titled “The Age of Digital Interdependence.” The report states that “The immense power and value of data in the modern economy can and must be harnessed to meet the SDGs” (UN sustainable development goals). On page 10 of the report it states “McKinsey & Company studied seven large countries and concluded that digital ID systems could add between 3 and 13% to their gross domestic product.”
• In December, 2018, Mastercard partnered with GAVI with the purpose of “efficiently delivering vaccines to millions of children, tracking identity and immunisation records in a digitised manner and incentivising the delivery of vaccines,” by deploying the Mastercard Wellness Pass chip card to those in various countries. It utilizes tokenized biometrics to “adhere to vaccination cycles.” It officially launched in December 2021. Mastercard has made over $50 million in commitments to assist with deployment of the COVID-19 jabs and to carry out the Wellness Pass projects with GAVI.
• In March of 2019, Mastercard introduced their new framework for the evolution of digital identities, with their platform operating at the center. Mastercard’s framework envisions their role as a central coordinator bringing together “stakeholders” including banks, governments, and individuals to issue and verify digital identities as a condition for accessing goods and services. In their report, Mastercard says, “we are uniquely positioned as a user champion for digital identity,” considering their “experience in governance and operating networks,” as well as their focus on financial inclusion, data privacy, and investments in a “global infrastructure.” Mastercard says they “will facilitate the service platform and network,” which incorporates “core technologies” such as blockchain and biometrics.
• Mastercard representatives contributed to the World Economic Forum’s January 2020 report entitled “Reimagining Digital Identity: A Strategic Imperative,” in which digital identities are central for access to healthcare, financial services, food, travel, humanitarian aid, online activity, government services, phone services, and smart cities.
• In September of 2020, Mastercard announced the launch of their CBDCs testing platform for central banks to simulate the “issuance, distribution and exchange of CBDCs between banks, financial service providers and consumers.”
• Mastercard collaborated with the Good Health Pass initiative to “develop a blueprint for organizations to adopt and implement” digital health credentials, otherwise known as Covid passports, in 2021.
• In April of 2021, Mastercard acquired Ekata for $850 million for the purpose of advancing their digital identity efforts “through AI-powered identity verification.” Ekata is described as a “global leader in digital identity verification solutions that provide businesses worldwide the ability to link any digital transaction to the human behind it.”
• In June of 2021, Mastercard launched their E-Livestock digital ID for the cattle supply chain. Digital proof of provenance, which is essentially a digital ID for agricultural products and livestock, is becoming more common. The World Bank, of which the former CEO of Mastercard now heads, promotes digital identities for farmers to receive financial assistance as well as to increase tracking of the food supply.
• Biden nominated Mastercard’s Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global Public Policy, Richard Verna, to be Secretary of State for Management and Resources in December of 2022.
• The new president of the World Bank, also nominated by Biden in February of 2023, is the former CEO of Mastercard, Ajay Banga. As President and CEO of Mastercard, Banga led the company “through a strategic, technological, and cultural transformation. Over the course of his career, Ajay has become a global leader in technology, data, financial services and innovating for inclusion,” the White House announcement states.
• Mastercard’s President of Cyber & Intelligence, Ajay Bhalla, has said, “To truly make the digital world work for all, we must rethink traditional notions of digital identity and break down artificial barriers. We need a new model that starts with the commitment to the fundamental individual right – ‘I own my identity and I control my identity data.’ And we need businesses, governments, NGOs, and others to forge partnerships and invest resources in support of a common framework, principles, and standards.”
• In April of 2023, Senior VP of Digital Identity at Mastercard, Sarah Clark, outlined Mastercard’s integral role in digital identities globally. She explained that countries are implementing “trust frameworks” to define the roles of digital identity networks like Mastercard’s. The networks then work to become “accredited” under the “trust framework.” Once “accredited,” Mastercard’s network would integrate with “government ecosystems when it comes to digital identities, digital credentials, as they are brought online.” Each country is unique in their “trust framework.” She said, “In the US it’s a state-based approach,” that is “tethered to the existing driver’s license ecosystem,” which Mastercard is looking “to plug into.” Clark added that government-issued digital identities would not be broadly accepted in some countries due to “the fear of government overreaching and tracking everything you do,” which is why Mastercard advocates for “strong public-private partnerships,” such as theirs, to accelerate public acceptance of digital IDs.
• In August of 2023, Sarah Clark elaborated on Mastercard’s progress in the digital identity space, stating that they have been “on the leading edge of the paradigm shift that we can all see is happening today with respect to identity.” She noted that Mastercard’s digital ID network is live in two markets – Australia and Brazil. In Australia, legislation, regulations and the Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF) have paved the way for Mastercard’s digital identity network to be implemented. In June of 2022, Mastercard became the first private organization to receive accreditation under the TDIF. She added that Australia is a “template for other parts of the world” and that Mastercard’s digital identity network has “done pilot activities and prepared for launch in two other markets – the UK and the US.”

Are CBDCs Necessary to Lock in The Digital ID Control System?

Are Visa and Mastercard a driving force for the Digital ID control system? Absolutely, as evidenced above! Are CBDC’s necessary in whole or in part for this control system to lock in place or are bank and credit card structures in an all digital system enough to pull this off? That’s the real question. According to the Bank for International Settlements (the bank for the central banks) and the World Bank, it seems plausible and they’ve already made great strides.

Before delving into those facts, a visual diagram of how choices and access to food could be prohibited under the Digital ID “smart contracts” scheme, may shine a light on how these “helpful tools” would operate in all industry sectors.

Below is a snapshot of Illinois’ plans for digital currency, Digital ID, entitlements, smart contracts, and “healthy eating tokens.” They have several other charts in their strategy document, including drones and other fun stuff. Notice that in this diagram below, when the welfare applicant uses their Digital ID in conjunction with their benefit wallet at a grocery store, the smart contract processes the order while the healthy eating token disallowed a burger from being purchased. Now let your imagination run wild.

One thing people need to realize is that they already have everyone’s data, it’s just a matter of merging it into a single ID that routes to a unified ledger that is integrated with other ledgers so that they all communicate the rules and regulations to one another, giving people an undesired outcome.

In this 2022 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report they make a very significant statement on page 13 regarding whether a system could be carried out without the use of CBDCs:

“It needs to be noted that many of these features can, in isolation, be offered by other payment innovations, and many gaps could be addressed through regulation and sound oversight arrangements.” CBDCs may not be necessary because “combining different payment innovations such as open application programming interfaces (APIs), fast payment services, contactless chips and QR codes could achieve many of the same goals.” They go on to state, “This is particularly true when accompanied by robust regulatory and oversight arrangements that public authorities can use to catalyse private sector players, enforce sound governance arrangements and foster required coordination and collaboration.”

They sum it up with this: “What is truly different about CBDC is that it is a direct claim on the central bank. It is an open question for central banks whether CBDCs or other policy interventions are the best fit for their jurisdiction.”

In a 2021 World Bank report, they state that a “CBDC network and a fast payments network do not necessarily have to compete. One potential option in this space would be using a CBDC as a settlement currency for a fast payment system. This may be particularly attractive in a cross-border context, where settlement risk is high today due to slow and inefficient processes for cross-border payments.”

Currently, over 60 countries have a “fast payment system” (FPS) in place, and several others have announced their plans to go live. According to the World Bank, “the basic principle among all the countries remains the same — that is, to provide a real-time, 24/7 fund-transfer facility.” The progress and specifics of the FPS systems in each country can be tracked on the World Bank’s global tracker.

In an August 22, 2023 report on BIS’ site titled ‘Financial stability risks from cryptoassets in emerging market economies‘, BIS concluded that “Authorities face a number of policy options to address risks in crypto assets, ranging from outright bans to containment to regulation.”

Also covered in this report, they state “Recently, the industry has been giving more thought to how this technology could be integrated with Fast Payments. For example, some players in the industry believe that connecting the latter to existing distributed ledgers would facilitate programmable Fast Payments.”

This is where the QR codes come into play. If this technology can be programmable, that means central banks can control what you buy, not to mention governments. This was covered in depth in the book titled The Global Landscape on Vaccine ID Passports, by Corey Lynn.

The BIS Innovation Hub is in its fourth year, with five concluded projects and 21 in the works, with 15 of the 26 projects focused on CBDCs. One particular project called Nexus focuses on cross-border payments with the ability to connect all of the Fast Payment Systems so countries can add the Nexus gateway. They ran a 12-month proof of concept between the Eurosystem, Malaysia and Singapore to show how Nexus can accelerate the growth of instant cross-border payments. In their 2023 report they stated that this “opens the door to other alternative payments infrastructure, such as CBDCs, to connect to Nexus.” This was followed up with a report on September 28, 2023 showing the successful test on cross-border wholesale CBDCs that was tested through BIS and central banks of France, Singapore and Switzerland. They state that “this could form the basis for a new generation of financial market infrastructures.”

Once they have the Fast Payment Systems connected across countries through a single gateway, utilizing the ISO 20022 messaging system for transactions that has the ability to carry a lot of data, and has assigned a QR code to individuals as a Digital ID that has already migrated each persons information into one convenient digital location, is it plausible that banks, industries and institutions could rollout smart contracts on services and purchases to facilitate this Digital ID control system without the need for CBDCs? It sure seems plausible.

Mastercard has been working diligently to assist banks all over the world so that they are operating on the new ISO 20022 data standards for transactions, which are to be compliant with messaging for cross-border payment systems by November 2025. They pitch that their “50 years’ experience running and operating technical infrastructure and a scheme, to enable success for other payment ecosystems,” and go on to state they “worked with The Clearing House (TCH) to launch its RTP Network®, which uses ISO 20022 data standards.” Mastercard also brings attention to the fact that “in some markets, such as the United States, mobile person-to-person (P2P) payments have been adopted as an early use case to help grow the scale and reach of real-time payment systems.”

Mastercard points out:

“With ISO 20022 there’s the potential to carry more data across the entirety of the payment itself, whether that is the expanded data fields, associated risk score(s), device analytics or other verifiable metrics that can be used to increase the certainty of a genuine transaction, thus reducing false positives and time-handling exceptions.

The adaptability of the message means there is plenty of scope for customization and localization. This is another potential benefit as it enables different markets to adapt the message to support the specifics of their authority, regulatory regimes and other data requirements.”

Breaking The Bank

Consumers are in over their heads with credit cards, while credit card companies are pulling in billions. Delinquencies are off the chart. Small businesses are bleeding with balances they can’t pay. All of this is hurting communities while furthering the goal of these players. When a customer pulls out a credit card instead of cash, the small business owner loses money and the credit card companies win. The system is fractured and every swipe counts because it continues to give power to the bankers instead of individuals and communities.

These statistics are astounding:

• Visa and Mastercard are the two largest credit card networks today, followed by American Express and Discover (which are both credit card networks as well as issuers.) Visa and Mastercard make the majority of their revenue through fees charged to institutions that issue their brands of cards. The revenue from interest charged goes to the institutions issuing the cards.
• Both Visa and Mastercard stocks have done well since done since the Going Direct reset was voted on by the central bankers in August of 2019.
• Among the networks, Visa leads with a market share of 52% and purchase volume of $2.09 trillion as of the first three quarters of 2022, according to Nilson Report data. Mastercard follows with a market share among networks of 24% and purchase volume of $967 billion during that same time frame.
• Visa’s annual revenue for 2023 was $32.653 billion, a 11.41% increase from 2022. Their annual revenue for 2022 was $29.31 billion, a 21.59% increase from 2021, and annual revenue for 2021 was $24.105 billion, a 10.34% increase from 2020.
• Mastercard’s annual revenue for 2023 was $25.098 billion, a 12.87% increase from 2022. Their annual revenue for 2022 was $22.237 billion, a 17.76% increase from 2021, and annual revenue for 2021 was $18.884 billion, a 23.42% increase from 2020.
• The top issuers of general purpose credit cards by purchase volume in the first half of 2023, according to the Nilson Report, are: Chase ($602.1 billion), American Express ($547.6 billion), Citi ($287.2 billion), Capital One ($272.6 billion), Bank of America ($244.2 billion), Discover ($105.8 billion), U.S. Bank ($98.8 billion), and Wells Fargo ($90.6 billion).
• Credit card purchase volume in 2023 generated $5.82 trillion, an increase of 6.8% from 2022, as indicated by Nilson Report data.
• As of 2022, the number of credit card accounts rose by 32 million from the previous year to nearly 530 million, according to Experian data, and 82% of adults in America had a credit card that year, per the Federal Reserve. According to a 2023 survey, 32% of Americans primarily pay for purchases with physical credit cards, and another 4% primarily pay with virtual credit cards. Physical credit card purchases were the second largest form of primary payment among survey respondents next to physical debit cards.
• The profitability of credit card companies is derived from two main sources of revenue: the transaction function (fees) and the credit function (interest). According to the Federal Reserve, the credit function “makes up approximately 80 percent of the credit card profitability,” with interest income as the “main source of revenue.”
• “In 2022 alone, major credit card companies charged over $105 billion in interest, the primary cost of credit cards to consumers,” according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Their report states, “Over the last 10 years, average APR on credit cards assessed interest have almost doubled from 12.9 percent in late 2013 to 22.8 percent in 2023 — the highest level recorded since the Federal Reserve began collecting this data in 1994.” The CFPB adds that, “In 2023, excess APR margin may have cost the average cardholder over $250. Major credit card companies earned an estimated $25 billion in additional interest revenue by raising APR margin.”
• Despite the accelerating cost of credit, consumers are leveraging their existing credit lines more than ever to cover the high costs of goods and services due to inflation, according to a Q3 2023 Transunion report. The report noted that the average balance per consumer jumped up 11% in Q3 of 2023 over the previous year to $6,088, representing the highest average balance per consumer in the last decade.
• According to data provided by JPMorgan Chase, “the median revolving balance among small business credit cards averaged slightly more than $7,000 in 2022. In other words, for cardholders who failed to pay their balances in full each month, $7,000 was the average balance carried.”
• “Serious delinquencies,” which refer to credit card accounts that are 90 days or more past due, hit their highest level since 2009, according to recent Transunion data.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a report noting that credit card balances in Q4 of 2023 increased by $50 billion to a record high of $1.13 trillion, while also reporting a rise in delinquencies. The report states that credit card delinquencies increased over 50% in 2023. Total household debt also rose by $212 billion reaching $17.5 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the report.

State Legislators & Consumers Need to Step Up

As outlined in this report, credit card companies – particularly Visa and Mastercard, are deeply embedded in the scheme to transform the financial landscape into a weaponized transaction control grid through the implementation of digital identities and central bank digital currencies. Their role in this agenda is paramount due to their investments in the global infrastructure, which are necessary to facilitate the transition, and are already in place.

These credit card networks are well aware of the public’s lack of trust in government-issued digital identities, and openly offer their services in a public-private partnership capacity for the rollout of digital identities to aid in widespread public adoption. As the dominant forces in the credit card network space, Visa and Mastercard are uniquely positioned to accelerate the transition towards total financial transaction control, through their strategic public-private partnerships with governments and globalist organizations.

Visa is actively onboarding banks through partnerships with fintech companies, to enable the implementation of digital identities before the financial reset. Meanwhile, Visa is presently offering a platform for central banks to issue and distribute CBDCs, as well as technologies to tokenize assets, information and individuals, a scheme that the Bank for International Settlements is looking at closely. Mastercard currently has a well-established digital identity services division that is already live in two markets and is preparing to launch in the United States. They have also offered a platform for central banks to prepare for the issuance and distribution of CBDCs.

Needless to say, the threat to our financial freedom by these major credit card networks and their partners is imminent and it requires immediate, decisive action. Individuals have the power to take simple steps in their daily lives to ensure their financial freedoms, as outlined in the Corey’s Digs report, “TAKE ACTION: Steps to Secure Financial Freedom.”

State legislators have a duty to make this initiative a priority by taking bold action to pass legislation in their states to: ban Digital IDs and CBDCs, protect the use of cash, establish sovereign state banks and bullion depositories, and offer alternatives to the large corporate card networks through independent debit cards tied to bullion depositories. Offering digital systems using Visa or Mastercard run the risk of simply linking into the greater digital control systems, especially if and when they use bullion that is scarce in the states but plentiful in the central banks.

While several states are leading the charge to secure financial freedom, many others are woefully behind. State representatives must take action without delay to model new bills after successful legislation in other states to secure financial freedom and block the tyrannical takeover. Failure to act by state legislatures, not only to block the implementation of this weaponized financial system, but also to offer legitimate alternatives, would be devastating to their constituents.

This report is sponsored by The Solari Report.

Article posted with permission from Corey Lynn, originally published at CoreysDigs.com.  The Sharp Edge contributed to this article.

The post Visa & Mastercard: The Real Threat To The Digital ID Control System appeared first on The Washington Standard.