A lack of housing policy ideas in the State of the Union, a theater chain weighs closing more locations, and a city loses millions on consulting fees around a failed museum project. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Feb. 23-27
Miss: Extremely Passive “Aggressive.” On Dec. 17, 2025, President Trump declared, “In the new year, I will announce some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history.” Well, anyone who sat through his State of the Union speech on Tuesday might wonder where those “housing reform plans” are, aggressive or otherwise. There was a remark about his plans to “ban” institutional investors from the single-family housing market (which is not what his executive order on the subject seeks to accomplish). But otherwise, Trump did not offer any new idea designed to make housing more affordable. In fact, he repeated his desire not to lower prices because he felt it would jeopardize the equity that today’s homeowners enjoy.
Miss: A Misuse of Trust. Gwendolyn Westbrook, the former CEO of United Council of Human Services, a San Francisco nonprofit focused on helping the homeless, was arrested this week on charges of misappropriating more than $1.2 million in public funds, grand theft, and filing four years of false tax returns. The San Francisco Standard reports Westbrook made unauthorized self-payments, improper cash withdrawals, and fraudulent reimbursement practices that diverted the public funds for personal use between 2019 and 2023. She is also accused of directly stealing $91,000 from the organization. Considering the severity of the homeless situation in San Francisco, these accusations are disturbing and shameful.
Miss: Putting the Why in Wyoming. Among the most curious property tax-related stories we’ve run this week involves a new bill that would reduce the property taxes owed by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the state’s wildlife agency, by over $400,000 annually. The department paid $850,000 in property taxes last year, but it is facing revenue declines from a downturn in hunting licenses. There’s nothing wrong with cutting property taxes, of course, but the big question is why this state government agency is paying these taxes in the first place. After all, government buildings are traditionally exempt from tax collection. The answer, it seems, is that nobody knows. “I’m sure there was a valid reason, but it was way before my time,” said Ken Gill, a Department of Revenue property tax administrator.
Miss: The Last Picture Shows? AMC Entertainment could be closing more of its movie theaters this year. Seeking Alpha reports CFO Sean Goodman told investors in a post-earnings conference call this week that there’s “a significant opportunity” for the cinema chain to continue closing its underperforming locations. AMC has the option to renew or terminate roughly 85 leases a year, which is roughly 10% of its locations. “We’ll be closing more theaters than we open; the new ones that we open are generating significantly more profit than the ones that we close,” Goodman said. “Each time these leases come up for renewal, we have that opportunity to improve our theater economics.” While Goodman said a few new AMC theaters are planned for this year and the near future, CEO Adam Aron added the company prefers the less costly strategy of making “spot acquisitions” of existing theaters rather than constructing new venues.
Miss: An Artistic Failure. One of the most bizarre investigative pieces of this week was published in the New York Post. That article detailed how the City of Jersey City, New Jersey, wasted $20 million in a failed attempt to open a US branch of France’s Pompidou modern art museum in a 58,000-square-foot historic 1912 trolley station. An unnamed source confided the proposed Pompidou x Jersey City was weighed down with hefty fees paid to about 30 different consultants. Said the source: “Elevator consultants, lighting consultants, sound consultants, food consultant, three roofing consultants, a French lawyer from Paris; all related to a building site that was abandoned by the city after state funding was pulled.” But perhaps Jersey City got off lucky – the project was initially estimated at $200 million (including taxpayer funding) and budgeted with $34 million in annual operating costs, but with only $4 million in projected annual revenue. Sacre bleu!
Hit: A Strong First Year. Congratulations are extended to Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum, which was named as one of the nation’s best new museums by USA Today. Block Club Chicago reports the museum, which opened last April, ranked third on the USA Today list behind the National Medal of Honor Museum in Texas and Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University in New Jersey. “We’re very proud of the accomplishment,” said Associate Director Tiff Beatty, whose facility traces the history of public housing in the US. “To actually have a space where people can come and really see the full vision, and all of the exhibits and stories we’ve been working on with residents and preservationists to pull together to create the museum, it’s definitely been a big year for us.”
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
