All good things must come to an end

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37 N Porchuck, currently priced at $4.250 million, is finally under contract. It’s owner tried selling it back in 2012 at, first, $5.495 million and finally at $4.295 before giving up and renting it out. She brought it back on last September, once again trying for $5.495, but it same the same market indifference and the price has been dropping since. One final decline when the sales price is reported, and the process is done.

Well, why else would they do it?

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NGOs Making Bank on Border Crisis

David Strom:

Would you like to make more than half a million dollars a year without having any discernable skills?

Well, the easiest way is to become a music therapist for migrant children. Christy Merrell was paid $533,000 in 2021 to soothe the savage breasts of migrant children in 2021 by the government-funded nonprofit "Endeavors."

Personally, I would prefer to go that route rather than make more than a million dollars a year as the CEO of Southwest Key Programs, another NGO that the Biden Administration is shoveling ungodly amounts of money toward. Being a CEO requires work and subjects you to some legal liability. 

Strom: “It makes you want to cry. Even some Democrats are appalled by the amount of graft.”

“The amount of taxpayer money they are getting is obscene,” Charles Marino, former adviser to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, said of the NGOs. “We’re going to find that the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money will rival what we saw with the Covid federal money.”

“I can believe that. Here in Minnesota, a Somali gang walked off with hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen COVID aid money that was supposed to feed school children who were part of the school lunch program. Since the kids weren't going to school, the money was given to nonprofits to feed them. 

They never did. And that's just one state. 

We see the same thing happening with the border crisis.”

The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them—the chief executive of Southwest Key—making more than $1 million.

Some of the services NGOs provide are eyebrow-raising. For example, Endeavors uses taxpayer funds to offer migrant children “pet therapy,” “horticulture therapy,” and music therapy. In 2021 alone, Endeavors paid Christy Merrell, a music therapist, $533,000. An internal Endeavors PowerPoint obtained by America First Legal, an outfit founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, showed that the nonprofit conducted 1,656 “people-plant interactions” and 287 pet therapy sessions between April 2021 and March 2023. 

I could see this going to multiple bids

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No showings until tomorrow, but 190 Lake Avenue has been brought to the market at $5.995 million. Built in 1900 for use as, I think, the Rosemary Hall’s Head Mistress (if that’s the proper term, and if this was her house — there were two, side-by-side homes built here as part of that school) and recently renovated. It sits on a full-acre in the R-12 zone and although it’s right on the road, the backyard is very special, and private. I was impressed while touring it back many years ago, pre-renovation, and it can only be better now.

Not for everyone, but I’d think this will have great appeal to more than one (rich) buyer looking for something close to town, but not cheek-by-jowl with the great unwashed next door.

"Progress"

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“Just three more tricks tonight, my dear, and then you may have tomorrow off.”

Belgium decriminalizes prostitution and grants the working girls (and anything else in the trade) a lot of goodies, like so:

In one sense, why not? If only the United States required welfare recipients to show up for work 8 out of 10 days; instead, we give the permanently retired (at 16) a monthly stipend, free medical care, permanent maternity leave, and old age payments when they’ve worn themselves out overseeing their children’s early morning street activities. If Belgium wants to see its ladies of the night perform at the dictates of their pimps, well, who are we to intervene? That’d be like telling Israel how to conduct its own self-defense, for instance, or a third world country to eschew cheap energy and fertilizers and embrace starvation.

But this still strikes me as somehow dehumanizing and grotesque. It’s back to reeducation camp for me, I suppose.

Good money after bad

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The owners of 230 Taconic Road paid $8.750 million for it in 2006 and tried to resell it in 2019 for $9.5. When that didn’t work, they pulled it from the market, renovated it, and put it back up for sale in January 2023 for $11.475. Today it was marked down to $8.850.

And in a totally-unrelated story, this:

‘Money Pit’ movie mansion finally sells for enormous discount

The Long Island mansion from the 1986 flick “The Money Pit” has become a real-life money pit.

This Nassau County home — which played the role of a falling-apart Gilded Age property that Walter (Tom Hanks) and Anna (Shelley Long) buy for a suspicious bargain — has sold for $3.5 million after five years on the market. That’s 76 percent less than its original 2014 asking price of $12.5 million.

Sellers Rich and Christina Makowsky invested $5.9 million in renovations after buying the North Shore spread for $2.12 million in 2002, according to Fox Business.

Realtor.com shows a lengthy pricing history for the listing, in the village of Lattingtown near Locust Valley. From the $12.5 million price tag five years ago, the eight-bedroom property underwent about seven price chops before landing on its most recent $4.5 million asking price.

The new owner of the 5.5-acre spread, who couldn’t be fully identified, is a Long Island resident, reports Newsday, adding the purchase had nothing to do with the home’s Hollywood history. The home was only used for exterior shots in the film. As is typical in television series and movies, interior shots took place on a sound stage.

But in reality, as in the movie, the place was in need of some work.

After their purchase in 2002, the Makowskys added new appliances, a pool house and 9-foot gates at the entrance. They also installed a cedar roof and upgraded the plumbing. The facelift took more than a year. Other features of the spruced-up house: a roomy chef’s kitchen with a mahogany center island and a media room with a refrigerated wine wall.

Just sayin’.