Congress Pays IFHC to Litigate Small Businesses
6 Mar 2012 | 1 Comment | posted by jacobgrant | in Fair Housing
The professed purpose of the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc. is “…to eradicate discrimination through, among other things, education on the fair housing laws…” As you have read in past posts, Richard Mabbutt, CEO of Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc., prefers successful lawsuits against small business owners rather than joining with the industry to educate and eradicate discrimination. Why?
Continue Federal Funding
The reality is that even a federally funded “non-profit” corporation has to survive. IFHC does this by proving a need and proving effectiveness to the United States Congress. All of this is done through data collection. Need is determined by number of discrimination reports and effectiveness is proven with number of litigations, number of actions, and fines collected. Every time IFHC crushes another small business they prove themselves effective to congress.
Bonus For Crushing Small Business
Every time IFHC successfully litigates or intimidates a small business owner into paying a fine, IFHC receives a bonus! Being a “non-profit” organization (cannot report corporate profit), it is likely that Richard gets a fat little bonus every time they successfully sue or fine a small business. Richard Mabbutt and the Intermountain Fair Housing Council has been hired by Congress to take out small business all under the guise of “eradicating discrimination.”
Eradicating Discrimination
Discrimination is as insidious as it is real. Discrimination is not reduced by litigating, suing and bullying. Discrimination is reduced with exposure, education, and relationships. There are times that lawsuits are likely the only solution, but Richard has no motivation to educate or even reduce discrimination. He is the incentivized predator of small businesses and our recovering economy.
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Real Purpose of Fair Housing Suits Unfold
5 Mar 2012 | No Comments | posted by jacobgrant | in Fair Housing
This timeline will show that there is a discrepancy between Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc. professed mission of eradicating discrimination and their true goal.
- March, 2011 Jake Durtschi invites Richard Mabbutt to come and train Jacob Grant Property Management staff along with other real estate professionals in the area to begin an alliance to reduce discrimination. See actual flyer Jake created.
- March-April, 2011 Jake Durtschi markets event to local Real Estate Agents, Idaho Housing, property managers, apartment communities, and other housing professionals. Approximately 30 real estate professionals attend.
- December 6th, 2011 Richard Mabbutt organizes sting operation on Jacob Grant Property Management.
- January, 2012 Jake Durtschi calls Richard Mabbutt to organize second annual training for local professionals in the real estate industry and to continue an alliance to reduce discrimination and racism (no mention of the claim).
- February, 2012 Richard Mabbutt calls Jake Durtschi to re-organize plans for the “training.” (no mention of the claim).
- February 27, 2012 Jacob Grant Property Management receives certified letter describing discrimination claim.
What is the Motive to Turn Down an Alliance?
Why would Richard Mabbutt turn down an alliance to reduce discrimination and racism through education? The mission of the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc. (IFHC) declares, “The [IFHC] attempts to eradicate discrimination through, among other things, education on the fair housing laws…”???
Did you notice the small print in the complaint? “As a result of the Respondent’s failure to comply with the requirements of the Fair Housing Act, [IHFC] has had to divert resources from other fair housing activities throughout the State.” This is Richard’s justification for imposing a fine.
Why does an agency professing to be in a holy war against discrimination turn down the opportunity to create an alliance to educate???
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Building Company Culture
4 Mar 2012 | No Comments | posted by jacobgrant | in Community, Company Information
Last week I went to a property management conference in Las Vegas. My friends at BMG Rentals and I took a break and went to do a tour of Zappos. Zappos is a company that started out selling shoes and eventually many other products. Zappos is famous for there company culture and intense sense of family that they have built around employees, vendors, and customers. I strongly recommend the book “Delivering Happiness,” written by their leader, Tony Hsieh.
The one thing I took away from the book and the company is that every company already has a culture. The questions I asked were, “What is our culture? What are we doing to actively create the culture that we want? Beyond survival, What is our goal?” One of Zappos’ values is to Create “Wow” through service. Their goal is to create WOW with employees, vendors, customers, and anyone else that comes through their door. They created WOW for us by: giving a free tour, providing free transportation to and from the hotel we were at, giving each of us 2 books (culture book and a book of our choice from their “culture library”). Can you say WOW?
Jill, Melanie, Dan and myself joined for a meeting to specifically focus on our company culture. It made sense to me that we would start with a written mission statement. Once we started brainstorming and coming up with words and values it became evident that we were not ready for a mission statement or anything too official. We decided to give some time to search out “Who are we?” and “Where are we going?”
Though we do not know exactly where we are headed, we know we want to learn, and move in that direction with purpose. Each person on our team is going to do one thing next week to improve our culture.
Dan will organize a coffee spot in our office so we can get together once per week to have coffee. Melanie is going to bring some paints and we are going to meet up and personalize our own coffee mugs to be kept at the coffee mug spot. Jill is going to organize and schedule birthday events, and Jake (I) will bring nerf guns for everyone in the office because everyone at some time needs to be put in check 
.
We celebrated after we 1 way each of us could improve our company culture.
As you can see it doesn’t take much to motivate us to be weird (Wyatt, Chad, Jake, Clint, Joe BMG Rentals). Thanks Zappos!
This is their conference room.
Thank you for sharing Zappos! WOW!
