Click to read transcript
Alan Stock 0:00
And a good morning, great to have you with us on this Thursday morning, and if it's Thursday, it's got to be Nevada News and Views Thursday, which it is. Nevada News and Views, a great resource for information and news and issues and commentaries, the best you're going to find, and of course, you can always find them. And then look at local issues, you know, statewide, national issues and Chuck Muth has done a great job with Nevada News and Views. To find out more about Nevada News and Views, go to Nevada News and views.com Joining us this morning is Amy Groves. She's a candidate for Nevada's 19th assembly district. And Amy, thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate it.
Amy Groves 0:40
Hey, thanks so much for having me, Alan.
Alan Stock 0:43
First of all, you write for Nevada News of Views. I want to talk about one of the issues you wrote about quickly, and this is an unfortunate area to talk about and start out with, but you talk about a Southern California man who decorated his house for many, many years with patriotic displays of flags and placards and obviously MAGA and pro-Trump type of posters and things like that, he was suddenly attacked about a week ago, less than a week ago, some guy came over, a neighbor, and just punched him, and when the guy went down, he kicked him, I guess, in the face. Anyway, the guy was horribly disfigured, and did wind up passing away. This is a 69 year old veteran who lived in Escondido, north of San Diego, and this is an incredibly disheartening story that you wrote about.
Amy Groves 1:42
No, it's absolutely tragic that you can't on your own property do your own views and not have someone come onto your land and kill you over it or fight you over. I mean, this could be my husband. My husband is the retired soldier that did Vietnam that puts Trump flags everywhere, right? You should be allowed to have your own opinion, whether or not you agree or not, with your neighbor. You can still respect, and you can still be kind about it. You absolutely, it should not be allowed to hurt your neighbor over this. And I really hope the charges are tremendous against this guy who did the fighting.
Alan Stock 2:19
and I'm going to say this. Some people are going to disagree with you. Just don't see this coming from the right to the left. You don't see Trump people going over it when they see somebody with a, you know, a pro-choice sign, or a pro-trans sign, or, you know, leftover pro-Harris signs, or Biden signs, you don't see Republicans or people representing Trump in any way or supporting Trump going over and trying to smash other people. I mean, it doesn't have that. Yeah, there are some crazies occasionally on both sides, but more often do you see people from the left who are initiating this kind of vitriolic violence because they just don't like anything patriotic or anything connected with Trump,
Amy Groves 3:12
Correct and it is terrible, because I do believe the people on the right, we'd rather have a conversation about it, and let's still be friends, right? We can agree to disagree, but on the left it's just not happening. This visceral anger, anger, and they cannot even be in the presence of someone that disagrees with them. It's definitely, you can see it on the left and the right, and it's getting worse. It seems every day that the left just won't even converse with the right, and the right just wants to have a conversation. We're not fighters over here on ideology.
Alan Stock 3:42
So let me ask you a question, then we'll change topics here. Have you lost any friends or any relatives that won't talk to you now because of your political stance?
Amy Groves 3:54
Sadly, yes, I have lost brothers, I've lost my entire high school group, I have lost over 20 people that have been close to my circle in the last, we'll call it four, probably six years, literally won't have anything to do with me over political beliefs that I don't even go around talking with them,
Alan Stock 4:13
They just know you're conservative, and that's it.
Amy Groves 4:16
Yes, yeah,
Alan Stock 4:17
I've had the same exact thing, no, no conversation. I just know you know that you're supporting Trump, and Trump, we know, is Hitler, so therefore I can't talk to you anymore. I mean, I've actually, actually, actually had that happen, so I would be pretty surprised if you said to me you didn't have that happen to you. You wrote a great piece about a woman who scammed landlords in Florida. I want you to briefly tell me about that, because this is going to relate directly back to what's going on here in Nevada. What happened down there?
Amy Groves 4:54
So you know they have someone that's doing renting a house and they go in with a not the – A fake ID, if you will, and fake social – everything matches when you run the credit. They look good, they have their first month's rent and deposit, they move in, and then they stop paying, and you still don't even know that this isn't the person's name, or it could be their real name, but it's a strategy. And then you spend months, if not 234, months, getting them out, and in the meantime, they've damaged your property, you've got no rent money, you're out 1000s and 1000s of dollars, and then before you can finish that eviction, they just move on to the next house. So you have people that are doing this as a lifestyle that will do this for decades, and there is nothing in the law that prevents it. And what concerns me here in Nevada, you know, I was in eviction court two weeks ago, and I could see it happening with two of the cases – there were like eight cases that day, and the judge literally tells all of them, if you move out before the constable shows up, come back to court, and I will seal the eviction, so even these people are getting away with it, because the courts are sealing the eviction, so when we go to run them, their credit and their rental history is hidden from us. And if we knew someone had 10 evictions in the last, you know, six years, right, we wouldn't rent to them. But the courts are actually taking that ability to let us know this information, and I think it's terrible, Florida does it, Nevada does it, California does it, quite a few states.
Alan Stock 6:24
How can they prevent you from finding out this information? I mean, what is it? Why is it they're protecting them and not allowing this information to get out? I guess that's one question. The other is, is how can it be that someone can just just sit down and occupy a place that's not theirs, and tell the world to go to hell, and say, “I'm not moving.”
Amy Groves 6:46
No, it's terrible. So, you know, I was in eviction court two weeks ago, and I had someone that moved in in January, paid the first last month's rent, and the deposit. Come february 1, she stopped paying, and she's like, “You can't do anything to me. So I evict her, and she does a bunch of appeals. We finally get to eviction court. The judge says it's granted, and then she's appealed it two more times since then. And so she ended up staying within three and a half months, and there was nothing I could do about it, because the courts say tenants have more rights than the property owners, and the poor tenant just needs more time to find a place to live, but that's really unfair to the person who actually owns the property and pays the taxes and takes care of it. But we need to strengthen our laws, so that you don't pay your rent just because you don't want to pay your rent. You should not be able to save four months.
Alan Stock 7:36
And I gather she doesn't have a lawyer, she's just doing this on her own, right?
Amy Groves 7:42
Correct. And they're even more sympathetic to that. Sometimes they'll go to the free legal aid, and our taxpayer monies will give them an attorney or give them advice, and that's right there in the courthouse. They can get free legal advice, and they're very sympathetic to tenants.
Alan Stock 8:00
Wow, if you get elected to the assembly, what would you do to help turn that around?
Amy Groves 8:07
I would, I would strengthen it that if your excuse for not paying rent is you just don't have the money, I need the judges to say yes, you're evicted, and we will not seal it, even if you leave before the constable, we're not going to seal it. There needs to be some kind of consequence for your action, and I would absolutely make it much harder for squatters, you know. I've evicted, evicted two squatters already this year, and it's breaking and entering, and I would make that a breaking and entering. I don't care about your fake lease. If the owner says you broke in and there's proof you broke in, it's a crime. I would make the laws stronger.
Alan Stock 8:44
I just saw there are professional anti-squatter people now out there. There's some TV show that's that's going on about a guy who, who evicts squatters on behalf of landlords. I mean, that's –
Amy Groves 8:57
I love that
Alan Stock 8:59
I haven't seen –
Amy Groves 9:00
Yeah he basically waits for the squatters to leave, and then he breaks in, and when the squatters come back, he's like, ‘It's my house now.” It had to be done.
Alan Stock 9:11
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I'm waiting for the courts to tell him that he's violating, you know, the rights of the squatters who actually were breaking the law to begin with, I mean, anyway, I haven't seen the show yet, but I've heard about it, and I know we'll try to catch it and see what's going on
Amy Groves 9:29
It's great.
Alan Stock 9:30
All right, well, stay with me. I want to find out also what you're focusing on, and what would focus on. I focus on, if you get up to Carson City, the legislative is coming up next, what, next spring, we have a legislative session. Yeah, and I want to find out what you would look to do. So, we'll come on back in a moment with Amy Groves, Director of the Coalition for Housing Freedom, and we're going to continue in just a moment, right here on Vegas at eight. And a good morning, great to have you with us on this big three. Thursday morning, the 28th day of May. Joining us on the Vegas today KXNT Live Line is Amy Groves, candidate for the 19th assembly district here in the state of Nevada. Amy, thanks so much for being with us this morning. So, I know you're involved, obviously, in real estate, and you want to become our next assembly person from the 19th assembly district, when you get up there, how would you, what would you do to focus on the issue of affordable housing? Everyone's talking about that, and that's kind of in your wheelhouse.
Amy Groves 10:35
Oh, it is. I mean, I think we have to look at regulations on housing, because when now you know 35 40% of every new build is a regulatory expense. Maybe we need to look at, are they all really necessary? Because if we can reduce, reduce some of the regulations, the housing prices could actually go down, and I think that would be huge. I mean, we clearly want to see interest rates go down, but interest rates at 6% I've seen as low as four with some buy downs. They're not the worst in our history. We've had way worse, but the regulations on a house 10 years ago that cost was about 10% of every new home. Now we're above 30% So I don't think the regulations are making a better house. So we need to dial back and see what we actually need to make a better house and reduce regulations. We'll get better pricing for sure.
Alan Stock 11:23
Yeah, also I think there's a need to be able to, and again, this is part of the federal representatives have to deal with this as well, and that's to get some of that land released from the federal government. They control 85 plus percent of the land here in Nevada, and to be able to develop that as well,
Amy Groves 11:44
That would be amazing, right? The taxpayers should be owning a lot more of this land than the government.
Alan Stock 11:50
Absolutely, Nevada should be in more control of the most of the land, but again, the feds control more land here, I think, than all the other states put together, federal land. Tell me about the issue of homelessness. Also, this is something that you see out there, and there are people trying to address this issue, but we still got a significant homeless problem, not like LA and other places, Chicago, but nonetheless, we do have this problem here.
Amy Groves 12:24
We do, and any other used to be in years past consequences for say open drug use, right? My office is on the corner of Russell and Pecos, and last week there was a guy, literally with a needle in his arm, sitting at the red light with his little shade and shopping cart, right? He's not going to go to the homeless shelter because they don't allow drugs, but there's no consequence for open drug use. So, if we can enforce some rules, get some people there, there, there, help for their substance abuse, the mental, you know, help that comes along with having a substance abuse problem. If not, there needs to be consequences for it, not just throwing more money at more shelters, more food, more enablements, right? The free needles, please don't let us ever be like Portland with free needles, but we need to have some consequences for these actions, while absolutely having empathy and helping them with their substance abuse program, and we also have to understand not everyone wants to get out of it, but the reality, unless we fix their, their abuse problem, their substance abuse, there's, there's no way they're ever going to not be homeless. And you know, when you look at the underneath the sewers, I get off the freeway at Russell in 95 and head down Russell, they're right at Mountain Vista, is an there's an underpass, and every month the junk people come out with the police, and they remove all the stuff from the people living under there, right? They're living in terrible conditions, and as it gets hot, people are going to die from this, and we want to prevent that, but we need to prevent it very empathetically in helping solve the problem, which is the drug use, right? So we need stricter crime, stricter punishments on actual drug dealers, people selling drugs, people even using drugs. There is a solution, and it's not going to look pretty, but we need to actually stop the problem.
Alan Stock 14:10
There is a solution, and about 99% I would say, of all homeless issues relate back to either some form of addiction, alcohol, and or drugs, and mental health issues, and that's about 99% of all the homeless issues we, and those who don't want help, as you said, if they want to stay out in the street. I mean, there are cities, such as Carlsbad in California. I happen to have friends that live in Carlsbad, and I said to them one day, talking, how's the, how's the homeless problem there? We don't have a homeless problem, because you've got one in San Diego. Why don't you have one in Carlsbad? Because Carlsbad has a no camping without permit ban, you. Can't camp out without a permit, and of course that's what these homeless people are doing, camping out there. So, if they see someone camping out, you know, sleeping on the street or the sidewalks, or whatever, they stop and they say, what's what? Do you have a permit? A permit. All right. Well, you know, I mean, listen, you've got a choice to either move on out of the city or will take you to a to a shelter that will help you know a triage your situation. I mean, this is how they handle it, and it's been successful, and it's been successful. So people can't say to me, you're dreaming pie in the sky. No, no, this is being done successfully in the city of Carlsbad, if they can do it in Carlsbad, you know what we can do it here in Las Vegas, Clark County, and throughout the entire state of Nevada. Amy Groves, Director of the Coalition for Housing Freedom for here in Nevada, also a writer for Nevada News and Views, candidate for the Nevada Assembly District 19. Want to thank you for joining us. If people want to find your campaign, how can they do it?
Amy Groves 16:05
VoteAmyGroves.com and on there is my cell phone, email. I will answer all of it directly. VoteAmyGroves.com
Alan Stock 16:13
Amy, I appreciate you taking time to join us. I look forward to talking to you more, and good luck in this campaign. We hope you're able to be successful. Okay.
Amy Groves 16:23
Thank you very much.
