Mr. Daniel Silverie's hometown newspaper recently published a flattering profile of the builder, after his company had been dogged for months by the issues covered elsewhere on this website.
Monterey Herald claim: DSIII, Inc. built “Plaza Grande,” a Salinas low-income housing project for “free.”
Daniel Silverie III, Inc.'s website valued the project at $5.7 million . Sounds like a remarkable charitable contribution, right?
Scratch beneath the surface!
» Daniel Silverie told the Salinas City Council that he owns 100 percent of Plaza Grande, LP., which owns the housing project.
» Plaza Grande, L.P., is entitled to a federal tax credit of $868,453 for each of ten years.
Ten years x $868,453 = $8.7 million.
» The Monterey County Housing Authority and the Salinas Redevelopment Agency extended to Plaza Grande, LP a grant and below-market-rate, deferred loans worth nearly $1 million.
» Mr. Silverie, speaking in 2000 to Salinas public officials, said that “there is not much profit” in the Plaza Grande plan. He did not say “there is no profit” to be made from Plaza Grande.
To whom do Plaza Grande profits go?
Add it up. Consider these facts and the construction quality issues we raise elsewhere on this site about this project.
Do you think DSIII, Inc. built Plaza Grande for “free”?
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Would DSIII exaggerate “good works” claims for marketing ends?
DSIII claim:
Monterey Herald: What's Builders Without Borders?
DSIII: I started it three years ago. It's a non-profit corporation specifically set up to help projects in third-world countries… The one we're working on now is in Romania . It will be a 40,000-square-foot multi-housing facility for 500 orphans…
Scratch beneath the surface!
The Carpenters Union searched for the nonprofit corporation that Mr. Silverie claimed to have founded. We were unsuccessful.* ( search for yourself here and here ) Mr. Silverie, his wife, and Daniel Silverie III, Inc. did contribute $15,000 in 2002 to Assist International (AI), a non-profit corporation that describes itself as the “primary” U.S. connection to the Romanian orphanage in question, publicly available records show. AI directed nearly $3 million to the orphanage effort that year. Neither DSIII, Inc. nor “Builders Without Borders” appears on AI's list of “partners. ” Mr. Silverie is credited as “ one of several individuals who donated or helped procure donated materials ” for one phase of the orphanage's expansion. An individual licensed contractor other than DSIII, Inc. reportedly supervised that phase's construction.
* www.builderswithoutborders.org is unrelated to Mr. Silverie, a representative said in response to a Carpenters query. |
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