U.S. Rep. Allen West managed to sound relatively sane for the first hour of his town hall meeting in Palm Beach last night. He used lots of pie charts and graphs to outline bedrock GOP talking points about slashing spending and cutting down on the national debt. Then a woman…
Thursday, Allen West appeared on Glenn Beck for a chat with Judge Andrew Napolitano — a true libertarian and genuinely good guy, who nowadays earns his keep as Fox’s answer to Harvey Fierstein and/or Bee Arthur. The subject under discussion? The government shutdown that may occur should Congress be unable…
Lauderdale Lakes cannot balance its budget without aid, though it’s still unclear how this aid will take shape. In November, the Juice reported that the city was behind on its payments to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, and last week, the Sun-Sentinel reported that the city is “teetering on the…
In this week’s feature, we tell the story of Mark Guerette, who saw a glut of empty houses and people with no place to go and decided to take the matter into his own hands. After moving more than a dozen families into foreclosed houses and collecting rent for a…
Our feature article this week is about Mark Guerette, who decided to take advantage of an old squatter’s-rights law called “adverse possession” to move low-income families, some with checkered pasts, into empty foreclosed houses around Broward County. Mark was eventually charged with fraud because he charged rent for property that…
Looks like South Florida’s spring break this year isn’t going to be just where the boys are. Fort Lauderdale will also be the locale for some bonds gone wild with the top guns of Wall Street. LDV Capital Management will party with its own series of weeklong celebrations at its fourth Growth…
I’m standing in my underwear in a neighbor’s Lake Worth living room, trying to wiggle into a pair of navy, pin-striped trousers. There’s a bottle of red wine on the coffee table, next to a platter of hummus and chips. Coldplay strums from hidden speakers; candles glow on the bookcase…
Need a house for free? Luckily, you’re in South Florida, which exists for the sole purpose of providing lots and lots of people with houses. Recently, a lot of those houses have turned up empty. So why not just take one?Starting in early 2009, mortgage broker Mark Guerette cruised through North…
You can’t say the guy’s not trying. Florida’s favorite baldheaded former fraudster, Gov.-elect Rick Scott, has been tossing off bits of a new economic plan. Not surprisingly, most of his talking points involve limiting government involvement and letting us little guys pull like mad on our bootstraps.Scott may be eliminating…
Early this year, the Broward State Attorney’s office sent Detective Joe Roubicek out to find families who had rented homes from Mark Guerette. The homes had been left empty and neglected by foreclosures, and Guerette didn’t own them.Instead, he filed claims of “adverse possession,” a form of squatter’s rights. But…
The State Attorney’s Office has wrapped up its case against Mark Guerette, the guy written about in the New York Times and here on the Juice for his work leasing empty, foreclosed homes to families in need by way of an antiquated squatter’s-rights law.Guerette found around 100 foreclosed homes that…
A year ago, Fabian and Jocelyn Ferguson found themselves with no place to live. Thanksgiving was a few days away and they needed a place to go with their two young children for the holidays. They, like many South Florida families, had lost their own home to foreclosure.So Jocelyn went…
A tipster sent us word that Lauderdale Lakes has a very thin wallet these days — so thin that the city hasn’t paid the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in months, leaving the police no choice but to reduce services. It turns out our tipster is right: Lauderdale Lakes is in…
The region’s economy has been shaken in recent years by the housing slump and by the collapse of Ponzi schemers like Madoff and Rothstein, but South Florida is still home to at least 20 billionaires, according to the most recent Forbes list of the richest Americans.Micky Arison of Carnival Cruises…
Though it sounded like a good idea a month ago, the City of Sunrise does not appear poised to stage a benefit concert to raise money for residents in foreclosure.”There has been no discussion of a benefit concert, nor has the board ever voted for a benefit concert,” says commissioner…
When the Juice gets a call about the horrible standards set by the competition, we usually turn a deaf ear, since complainers and haters roam unchecked, like backyard iguanas. Plus, most reporters we know are too busy trying to dodge a pink slip to fall afoul of ethics. But the…
That’s the opening two minutes of an ambitious documentary premiering tonight on public television station, WPBT-2. It’s called Imagining a New Florida, a more elegant title than Paradise Gone to Hell, which may be more appropriate.Of course, if the expert who says that Floridians are selfish transplants with no stake…
Earlier this week, I reported on how Jeff Greene was smarter than you when the housing market collapsed and how somehow he thought that meant you should vote for him. If you liked that one, Florida, you’re going to love this one: Greene is currently being sued for allegedly defrauding…
When we last left Wellington resident Rob Van Winkle, he was jumping a motorcycle over a monster truck filled with drunken fans. Now the man known to the world as Vanilla Ice is embarking on a quintessential South Florida venture: real estate. Always a lover of vintage cars — he…
Tamarac homeowner LeRoy Browne moved from Washington D.C. to Paradise Estates in the 1980s because he was looking for, well, Paradise. But now his heavenly retreat is threatened: Browne’s house sits directly on a golf course that the city wants to rezone. The plan is to pave Browne’s Paradise and…
Considering that Bernie Madoff built himself a cabbage patch of investors, it’s fitting that his former Manhattan penthouse would be purchased by the couple who made their millions from the Cabbage Patch franchise of dolls, Al and Patsy Kahn, who talked to the Times of London.And you’ve gotta love this…
Somewhere, someone must be wagging a finger and announcing, “You’re fired.” The saga surrounding the Trump International Hotel & Tower on A1A in Fort Lauderdale just keeps getting worse. Last spring, dozens of buyers filed suits alleging they were duped into believing the marketing hoopla that the Donald was the…
