Jeremy Bronfman spent $29.4 million on a Santa Monica mansion for him and his wife, Stephanie Beck Bronfman.
Bronfman, 34, is one of 24 grandchildren of the late billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr., and the son of Matt Bronfman, the Manhattan-based investor, who is half-brother to Clare and Sara Bronfman of Nxivm fame.
Jeremy is the third of nine children born to Matt Bronfman and is Clare and Sara’s nephew.
Jeremy Bronfman
The Bronfman half-siblings and their offspring are apparently not close to Clare and Sara.
None of the five children of Edgar and Ann Loeb – Matt, Edgar Jr., Samuel, Adam, or Holly [or their children] – were known to have attended any of the criminal court hearings for their half-sister – including the all-important bail hearing.
Not one of them, despite their wealth, prestige and importance in the world of finance, entertainment and philanthropy, wrote a letter of support for Clare to her sentencing judge.
Clare and Sara’s mother was Georgiana Webb who married and divorced Edgar Bronfman twice; both marriages were short-lived and Clare and Sara did not grow up with their half-siblings.
According to a source close to the family, the half-siblings were none too pleased with the scandal and notoriety Clare and, to a lesser degree, Sara brought to the Bronfman family for years due to their association with Nxivm.
This became exacerbated after Clare’s arrest in 2018 in connection with the Nxivm so-called ‘sex cult” made worldwide news. Sister Sara somehow escaped prosecution. She left the USA prior to her sister’s arrest and is reportedly living in Portugal.
Life Goes On
According to Dirt.com, the mansion Jeremy bought was built in 1925, a Spanish Colonial, with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. It has 8,000 square feet of living space.
The walled and gated compound sits on 1.1 acres, on a hill above the Riviera Country Club, where the initiation fee is reportedly more than $250,000. Members include Adam Sandler, Mark Wahlberg, and Larry David.
A long driveway leads past formal lawns and a bocce court before reaching the parking area with room for a dozen or more automobiles; there’s also a three-car garage.
In the back, there is a swimming pool and spa. Beyond that, a flight of stairs down a hill leads to a tennis court next to the Country Club’s golf course.
There is a view of the surrounding mountains, an outdoor kitchen area, gardens, and fountains, mature trees and the lot cannot be seen from the street because of walls and hedges.
The mansion sold in 2006 for $10.5 million, and was owned by fashion designer Moise Emquies and his wife, Carol Ann Emquies, who recently divorced and sold the place to Bronfman as part of their divorce settlement.
According to Dirt.com, Carol Ann purchased a $6.1 million home in L.A.’s Bird Streets neighborhood, while Moise paid $13.5 million for the John Woolf-designed Beverly Hills villa of Phil Collins’ daughter, the actress Lily Collins.
Prior to buying their own mansion, Jeremy and Stephanie were renting another Santa Monica mansion for the last four years. They were paying $30,000 per month in rent.
Living Affordably
Ironically, while Bronfman now lives in one of the most expensive homes in the USA, his business is developing and managing taxpayer-funded affordable housing.
He is CEO and Managing Partner of Lincoln Avenue Capital, which he describes as “one of the nation’s fastest-growing developers, investors, and operators of affordable housing.”
One of the biggest money-makers in development, government-incentivized “affordable housing” is only affordable to the subsidized tenants. Taxpayers get soaked to the bone. Through various, perfectly legal programs sponsored by HUD, the IRS and other agencies of the federal government, as well as state and local government who offer grants or property and sales tax abatements, developers can build inexpensive residential properties and charge top dollar to build and rent them, provided a percentage of the apartments are offered to qualified, usually government-subsidized low-income tenants.
The developments are often funded by well over 100 percent of construction costs by a series of tax credits, financing and paper transactions. The on-paper costs to build are usually hyper-inflated so that the developer/builder can take profits upfront and often without investing a dime of his or her own money.
Private sector developers have noted that the cost of building a luxury hotel or mansion with marble floors, brick and stone exterior and lavish appointments throughout is often cheaper per square foot than the on-paper costs of thin-walled, vinyl-sided government-approved affordable housing with its low-grade linoleum flooring, hollow doors, indoor-outdoor carpeting and bedrooms no bigger than a closet.
Cheaply built affordable housing units [formerly known by the politically-incorrect term “the projects”] are essentially HUD schemes created by lawmakers and aided by HUD bureaucrats to enrich developers.
Helping the poor is a secondary consideration. And best of all for developers, none of this is illegal.
Some call it HUD’s version of the Pentagon’s $400 hammers, $640 toilet seats, $37 screws, and $7,500 coffee makers.
Clare Now in Affordable Housing
Speaking of affordable housing, at last report, Clare Bronfman resides in Philadelphia at the Federal Detention Center Philadelphia, a normally temporary/in-transit Federal prison facility used to house inmates prior to or during their court appearances.
She is living there rent-free. It is not known how long she will remain there.
Clare Bronfman leaves court after being charged criminally in a federal case. The last time she was in court was when she was sentenced – and she’s been in federal custody ever since.
She was sentenced to 81 months by Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis and she has served six months already. Her lawyers have appealed her sentence. Meantime, she lives frugally. The maximum spending limit for the commissary is $320 per month.
There was a time when Clare spent millions per month just to please her mentor, Keith Raniere, who also lives rent-free in Tucson Arizona, in a US penitentiary operated primarily as prison housing for sex offenders, something that Raniere is designated as in the US prison system.
Clare Bronfman with Keith Raniere during a happier time. Both are currently receiving “three hots and a cot” from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
