Latest news with #Lesperance
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Manchester sober house seeks variance to house more residents
The owner of a Manchester sober house for women will go before the city's zoning board this week, seeking a variance to allow the property to house additional residents. The variance request for 117 Ramsay St., sought by Persephanie Lesperance of Grandmaison Recovery Homes, appears on the agenda for the Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting this Thursday at 6 p.m. at City Hall. Grandmaison Recovery Homes already operates a sober house for women at the site, with each unit allowed to house four unrelated individuals — accommodating up to eight residents. 'However, to better address the growing need for safe housing for women in recovery, we propose adjusting the occupancy limits to six residents in apartment one and seven in apartment two,' writes in a letter to city officials that accompanies her application. In the variance application, owner Alicia Grandmaison says increasing the number of residents 'won't be disturbing anyone.' 'Residents are typically out at work, school or therapy during the day — there is a curfew and rules are enforced,' Grandmaison writes. 'Sober living contributes positively to the community. Our homes help women reintegrate into society, promoting stability and decreasing the burden on local social services.' Lesperance says supporting the change will enable Grandmaison Recovery to offer 'safe, supportive housing for women protected under the Federal Fair Housing Act.' 'The women live and function as a family, sharing responsibilities for chores and family dinners and holding weekly meetings to discuss community topics,' Lesperance writes. Operations and house managers ensure resident support through regular drug and alcohol screenings and weekly check-ins. All residents must be employed and participate in a 12-step recovery program. 'Our primary goal is to foster a positive community for women in recovery,' Lesperance writes. 'Our top priority is maintaining a good neighbor policy. We remain focused on keeping our property clean and well-maintained. We discreetly screen our smoking area with shrubs and adhere to a regular landscaping schedule. We also encourage residents to ensure they clean up after using the playground when their children visit, fostering personal responsibility and enhancing curb appeal for our neighbors' enjoyment.' Grandmaison warns without the variance, 'it can cause individuals in recovery to be forced into inadequate housing, or exacerbating their addiction due to lack of support.' 'We firmly believe this reasonable accommodation will benefit the city and our residents,' Lesperance writes.
Axios
14-03-2025
- Business
- Axios
The Trump migration is prompting the wealthy to move
Trumpism is causing Americans to start moving out of red states and even America itself. Why it matters: The wealthy tend to have the greatest ability to move, which means that such outmigration can have a disproportionate effect on state and local taxes. The big picture: The pandemic caused a generational change in the ability and willingness of many high-income professionals to move. Having done it once, or seen their peers do it, they're more likely to act upon similar impulses this time around. Some folks are moving in response to Donald Trump's election. Others are fleeing red states with abortion bans. (More on that below.) Flashback: From 2020 to 2021, large U.S. urban areas lost more than $68 billion in taxable income, per the Economic Innovation Group, with Manhattan alone accounting for more than $16 billion of that sum. That $16 billion in taxable income was spread across 37,000 returns, which means the average departing Manhattan household had taxable income of more than $425,000. Where it stands: " A lot of the movement that we're now seeing of Americans moving to the U.K. would be people who who don't want to live in Trump's America," says David Lesperance, a lawyer who deals with ultra high net worth families. London in particular is attractive because of its language, schools, cultural institutions, and general safety, he says. Anecdotally, there has been a spike not only in Americans applying for U.K. passports — which they can only do if they've already lived in the U.K. for at least five years — but also in Americans buying houses in the U.K. and newly applying for leave to stay, which is what they do if they want to move to the U.K. from the U.S. Knight Frank, a U.K. real estate consultancy, told a U.K. industry trade publication that "many super-rich Americans are buying up London properties to escape Trump." Zoom in: Lesperance was retained by seven families in just nine days after Trump signed his executive order targeting trans youth receiving gender-affirming care. "People who feel in danger tend to seek me out," he says. That includes families who want to ensure uninterrupted medical care for their children. Zoom out: The desire to move is much stronger than it was in 2017, according to Lesperance, who says he has seen a ninefold increase in interest compared to the first Trump administration. Not only did the pandemic radically change perceptions of how difficult it is to do so, it also created a whole new market in "digital nomad" visas and other ways for people to live and work abroad. The fear of how far Trump is willing to go has also risen significantly since January 6, 2021, and since the spate of executive orders he has signed so far this term. Head north: The U.K. immigration system works faster than Canada's, where there's something of a backlog. Nevertheless, Vance Langford, a president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Financial Post that he now gets about five calls a week from Americans looking to move their businesses to Canada, up from roughly one per week. Between the lines: Many Americans who fear being targeted by Trump are urgently seeking other passports, Lesperance says. While it's extraordinarily difficult for the U.S. government to strip an American of citizenship, it's very easy for the Secretary of State to cancel a passport. Without a valid passport, it's effectively impossible for an American to leave the country or to obtain a foreign work permit or residence. The bottom line: The very rich are used to taking precautionary measures. Nowadays, those measures increasingly involve foreign residence or even citizenship.
