The Rise of Corporate Homeownership in Davenport

Can we all agree that a single-family home is defined as a detached residential structure attached to owned land that is designed to house one family unit? And that duplexes, townhouses, mobile homes, and multi-unit residential buildings do not fall under this definition? Can we agree that corporations should not be owning structures that are being specifically built for families?

Good!

Then let me tell you this:

• On November 25, 2025, there were 1,818 LLC- and corporate-owned homes in the City of Davenport, specifically in zip 33837. (Source: Polk County, Florida, property appraiser’s online database.)
• On New Year’s Day 2026, we had 1,834, an increase of not much; regardless, going in the wrong direction.

For each snapshot in time, those numbers represent upwards of about $3-billion in home value owned by entities other than human beings.

• In 2023, CNBC reported on the issue as having started with the 2008 foreclosure boom, a boom for wealthy entities, certainly not for the rest of us.
• In 2024, the Tampa Bay Times published an interactive map to lead their readers to identifying some of those corporate owners. They included the Davenport area.

Back in September 2025, a Davenport resident, named Kristen, addressed Davenport’s Board of Commissioners during their Public Comment period. She did so with a level of urgency and a few key facts that caught their attention. Below is a copy of the Kristen’s speech.

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In that speech, Kristen sadly told Davenport commissioners that rentals are now “the new American Dream.” Not one person in that room gave any of their hearts out to tell that poor woman that this is the plan. This is the GOP-MAGA plan for Americans. Don’t believe me?

Below is a 2025 movie by world renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese. It was put out shortly after Trumpstein’s inauguration. It explains what has happened to the American Dream. It delves into the housing crisis, the massive concentration of wealth and the massive expansion of poverty and the exponential increase of invasions to our privacy, the threat of AI, the rise of a dictator in America, et cetera … all in the name of Progress. It talks about the GOP-MAGA plan to redesign America into a feudal system of governance: landowners in control of everything coupled with an extraordinary concentration of wealth.

The rest of us? Slaves to them.

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Allowing corporations to buy homes in family communities artificially inflates home prices and therefore rents. It is nothing less than permitting non-human entities to take away our American Dream while they’re profiting off the imposed misery of homelessness on us. These are homes that would otherwise would be in the hands of people (except for those who take out mortgages because we know by now that mortgages are nothing more than a way of saying “the bank owns my home.”).

Written into every mortgage contract is the demand call, the banks’ way of saying, “We can demand our entire loan back anytime we feel like it, for personal reasons or no reason at all.” It’s what happened en masse during the 2008 foreclosure crisis.

As I’ve said for years, if corporations were people, they’d be psychopaths. Now I also say that people who suffer from wealth hoarding are also psychopaths. Take Elon Musk and, even, the American POTUS. Does any normal person actually believe that either of these two boys are also normal?

Housing shortages are nothing less than corporate immorality imposed on the American people. Between corporations owning homes that should be owned by families and wealth hoarding Americans who own two, three, maybe, four mansions a piece, guess what?

It doesn’t matter how many houses, duplexes, townhouses, and multi-units are built in America, there will never be enough unless Congress does something about both corporations and the obscenely wealthy. Congress can and must find a way to ensure the rest of us, the 90% of us who could really use stable housing, have it.

It can start locally by communicating with our commissioners that something must be done about this matter. On Monday, January 5, commissioners will meet at City Hall at 7 PM. Shortly thereafter they allow the public to comment on anything they want for up to five minutes. Be there. Say something.

If you can’t do that, send them an email. If you can’t do that, call our city manager, Kelly Callihan. He’s a friendly dude.

The bottom line is that Davenport commissioners can do something about this matter. “Will they?” is altogether another subject. But, for now, make them start thinking about it by pressuring each of them with your opinion on this matter.