VALLEJO (KPIX 5) – Earlier this month, KPIX 5 reported about leaders of a Bay Area church embroiled in an alleged illegal real estate scheme. The victims: all parishioners, who said they were brainwashed into investing their life savings.

Since the story aired, we heard from other former members, some who admit they took part in the alleged scheme.

Robert Clark still remembers his first day at General Assembly’s former church in Berkeley 26 years ago. The building now belongs to a different congregation. “It was 1986 and I was 12 years old,” he said.

Clark said as General Assembly grew its leaders Lacy Hawkins and later on Michael Parker became more controlling. “It was a subtle stroking of your conscience until you bend,” said Clark.

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Clark said he was talked into leaving his successful real estate job to use his skills in a new church venture, called Stellar Enterprise, run by Parker. “It was extremely secretive,” he said.

Meetings were held after church services and behind closed doors. Clark says his job was to buy and flip properties.

The money came from hundreds of parishioners, who mortgaged homes and drained retirement accounts on the promise of generous returns and even salvation.

Clark admits at first, he profited. “I began to make money, and lots of money,” he said.

But he believes when Parker realized how much the commissions were, he changed the rules and put Clark on salary. “I went from receiving an average of $20,000 a month in commissions to $1,600 every two weeks, in the form of a paycheck,” he said.

Clark admits he was suspicious but kept quiet. Other employees also grew suspicious.

“The books were only open to a select group,” said Stanley White, also a former church member.

White was hired to pump up business in the congregation. But White said even he could never get details on investment properties, such as the so-called Woodlands of Ascension project in Louisiana. “It was nothing saying ok here is the address you can take a look at it,” he said.

According to White, construction work on the mystery development never started. In an earlier interview with KPIX 5, church elder and stellar CEO Michael Parker said, “Hurricane Katrina happened.”

But the Army Corps of Engineers said part of the Louisiana property was a swamp even before Katrina. Parker said he paid close to $3 million for the property.

Former employees said that failed investment was Stellar’s last. In 2006, the company suddenly shut down, leaving investors with nothing.

“Eventually the gimmick of shuffling real estate and receiving new investments to pay your old investments, the game stops,” said Clark.

He left General Assembly in 2007. “I felt angry, I felt unclean,” he said.

In a twist of fate, Clark has discovered he is a victim as well. He owes close to $1 million in taxes on real estate commissions that he said church leaders pocketed in his name.

“I really feel taken,” he said.

Attorneys for the church leaders confirm they switched Robert Clark from getting real estate commissions to getting a salary, but they claim he was being paid at competitive rates.

Whatever their explanations, state investigators have been looking into their finances: A judge has issued a ruling on the case and we could hear the results any day now.

Sources also told KPIX 5 the state Attorney General is also looking at possible criminal violations, something the AG’s office has neither confirmed nor denied.

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Article source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/15/ex-bay-area-church-members-describe-alleged-real-estate-scheme/

The study by Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology, released Tuesday, adds transportation costs to the usual measure of affordability – housing prices. It concludes that the average Bay Area household spends 48 percent of its income on housing and transportation. And while it probably doesn’t seem like it – especially at the gas station – the cost of transportation in the Bay Area is the second lowest among major metropolitan areas, behind only New York.

Affordability, according to the study, is a combined housing and transportation figure below 45 percent.

Scott Bernstein, the center’s president, said the affordability index aims to provide planners, decision makers and everyday folks with information about the true costs of choosing where to live. This year’s survey, based on figures from the Census’ American Communities Survey, has been updated to include about 89 percent of the nation’s population.

Often, Bernstein said, people in search of more affordable housing will head to the distant suburbs where real estate is cheaper but won’t always consider that transportation is costlier because driving distances are longer and public transportation is often unavailable.

“You think you’re buying a cheap house 30 miles out,” he said, “but it’s 10 o’clock at night, and you need a gallon of milk. You have to get in your car, drive out of your subdivision down a two-lane road, get on the freeway and drive 10 miles. You just spent a gallon of gas to get a gallon of milk.”

The study allows visitors to the center’s website, www.cnt.org, to see and compare the costs in 180,000 neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, denser communities with access to public transportation fare better than far-flung suburbs.

In the Bay Area, for instance, San Francisco households spend 39.5 percent of the average income in the region on housing and transportation compared to 41 percent in Oakland, 43 percent in Berkeley, 50 percent in San Rafael, 51 percent in Antioch and 59.1 percent in Brentwood.

Jennifer Yeamans, a lifeline and equity planner for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, has used affordability data from earlier versions of the study and compared it against Bay Area foreclosure data, finding far more foreclosures in areas with high transportation costs. She also points out that the parts of the Bay Area in which real estate prices have remained most stable are those with walkable neighborhoods and better access to transit.

Bernstein said he hopes planners will use the study information to help design better communities that don’t require households to own multiple cars.

“I would really be thrilled,” he said, “if someone would wave a wand and require that these numbers be listed right next to the sales prices of homes.”

The research should be used, Yeamans said, to help people realize the trade-offs in choosing where to live, not to drive everyone toward settling in an urban community with a BART station down the street.

“This is an opportunity for people to truly understand what their preferences cost,” Yeamans said. “Some people prefer to live in low-density areas, some prefer to live in walkable neighborhoods. That’s not to say everybody should do this or everybody should do that.”

What it costs to live in Bay Area

The typical household spends this percentage of the average Bay Area income on housing and transportation combined:

San Francisco: 39.5%

Santa Clara: 47%

Alameda: 47%

Napa: 50.7%

Contra Costa: 52.8%

San Mateo: 53.3%

Solano: 54%

Sonoma: 55.2%

Marin: 56.3%

Source: Center for Neighborhood Technology

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @ctuan. mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page C – 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/28/BATV1NDJAQ.DTL