Housing Justice Audit   Systems Study & High-Level Intervention

(check back as this will be updated regularly)

Mayor Cogswell,

We need to discuss Project 3500 specifically and your mission for more accessible housing in Charleston in general.

I believe we have a common interest in helping the vulnerable people of Charleston, SC better access housing. After all, the average rent is 57% of the average renter's income in Charleston. This is obviously not sustainable, and I applaud your intentions to do something about it with Project 3500.

At the same time, I have been contacting you since March 10, 2026 with an obvious and significant conflict of interest between the stated aims of Project 3500 and the private real estate practices of a commissioner who advises you on affordable housing.

And there has been zero evidence of any correction. I know these things take time. So I am tracking it for whatever size audience this builds until the correction is made. This is deeply important to me for reasons I will explain.

You recently stated in Washington that to solve Charleston's housing crisis,

"We must adopt an assertive approach. We cannot remain passive or continue with outdated methods, as they fail to tackle our challenges."

I agree.

You have also made it clear that your number one guiding principle for Project 3500 is ensuring that progress does not result in the displacement of current residents.

My wife and I agree entirely. We know what it is like to get displaced against your will. And I have mapped the mechanism that causes such unjust displacements. I know it well because I have experienced such a forced displacement in two different roles simultaneously:

1. As a Systems Thinking business consultant and creator of the Strategic Thought Leadership platform who is studying and reporting on the system of Housing Justice in Charleston, SC, and
2. As the Most Vulnerable Member (MVM) of the system of Charleston's housing and housing justice systems - the unrepresented tenant who experienced housing injustice and could not afford a lawyer so addressed it self-represented. A role I adopted intentionally for the purpose of studying the system "Undercover Boss" style

In the latter role, my wife and I were displaced in a heat wave, causing physical collapse in both of us, and in spite of being long term tenants in good standing who never ran late on rent in 5 years.

Our older blind Carolina dog, Rocket, was traumatized by being taken from an environment we had set up for his blindness. He got disoriented and ended up stuck under a couch for at least two hours before I found and rescued him, whimpering in pain and fear. That sound is stuck in my head because he had never made it before. I know it was at least two hours because I initially thought it was a bad AC bearing. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for not checking on him sooner.

We named the campaign for housing access for the vulnerable “Rocket’s Fight” in his honor.

And it doesn’t stop there. Not even close.

I could mention the mass syndicated publication of private images of our home life without consent (apparently to retaliate), the multiple misrepresentations of tenant-landlord law, the postal fraud, and more. But it has been so many infractions that this open letter would sprawl and be too hard to quickly digest, so we’ll stay focused on the forced displacement for the original harms.

After that displacement, I filed suit as the Most Vulnerable Member and, instead of being helped by the Charleston's Housing Justice system, I was punished by it with a dynamic I have come to call the "Ask<-->Harm Loop". What do I mean by "punished"? I have been harassed and gaslit (in the clinical definition of gaslighting, not as a casual pejorative) by multiple attorneys and law firms, along with IPG insurance - in a coordinated campaign funded by a family who is deeply tied in to Charleston real estate development and law communities in ways that undermine the credibility and potential effectiveness of Project 3500. I'll share a bit here now and you can look forward to future updates on this Open Letter as well, so keep checking back.

The Altman family funded the system we were displaced by. They also subsequently punished me for asking for justice, and escalated that punishment rather than attempting to make things right. And, believe it or not, one of them advises you on affordable housing. That member of your Homeownership Initiative Commission, Jonathan S. Altman, is a beneficial owner of the property at the center of this suit at 181 Gordon Street.

Mr. Altman also erased ~$350K from the property at 181 Gordon St. in sworn probate documents in 2021, as well as concurrently erasing ~95% of the stock value of his family's Charles Realty Company, Inc. from its value in 2006. 2006-2021 were boom years for Charleston Commercial Real Estate. Their properties include high value commercial real estate in the high growth areas of Upper King Street and Mt. Pleasant.

Jonathan has advised the city on affordable housing off and on since 2007 and since 2021 has benefited financially from the house at the center of this high profile tenant exploitation lawsuit while also committing documented probate fraud that depletes the stock of the federal funds you are asking for to pump into Project 3500.

I have offered Jonathan Altman the opportunity to help solve the housing crisis by changing the model I have identified as the root cause of not only our suffering, but also Charleston's housing crisis, and the housing crisis in general. He declined. Go figure. The harm has thus continued both to my family, and to those impacted by policies shaped by someone who believes you should hurt tenants who stand on their rights instead of helping them.

This guy is advising you, Mayor Cogswell, so this belief system has surface contact to the Project 3500 that you propose as a solution for fair housing access for the vulnerable.

Are you starting to see the disconnect?

Can you agree that these "extraction-based" private investment practices directly conflict with his public mandate to create and preserve affordable homeownership for low-income residents in Charleston?

Before I get too far, I should also clarify that there are two Altmans involved. The other is Charles S. Altman, Jonathan's uncle, who is the registered agent of the shell company SAC 181, LLC that owns the house and that was created with a $5 flash transfer the same day he and his two siblings inherited the house in 2007 from their mother, Edith Altman. It had been the Altman family home for over 50 years. One of these siblings was the now-deceased Samuel H. Altman, Jonathan's father.

It was for his father Samuel's estate that Jonathan made the questionable valuations in probate court. Samuel passed his 1/3 share in SAC 181, LLC to Jonathan, along with his daughter and wife, as documented in those same probate filings.

Speaking of questionable acts, Charles S. Altman paid off his 7-8 year old home mortgage January 12, 2026, during active litigation. He probably thinks these things go unnoticed. He should also be a defendant in this litigation as an individual, as well as being Registered Agent of defendant SAC 181, LLC, but the court has not granted leave to file the Second Amended Complaint we filed October 24, 2025 in spite of zero opposition by defense. And this type of motion, per SC law, is "granted freely when justice so requires". The national average of granting such leave less than 30 days. It only takes a judge's signature.

So, one could be forgiven for entertaining the belief that the Housing Justice System in Charleston is protecting a real estate and law insider at the expense of extending the suffering of an innocent tenant family. I know you can't direct the court to do your bidding, Mayor Cogswell, but I am utilizing the opportunity of this Open Letter to shine light on this anomaly with the second "Count Up" clock up top.

I wrote Charles A Altman, the uncle, and Jonathan S. Altman, the nephew, an Open Letter as well. You can read the Open Letter to the Altmans here.

I also created a countdown clock to give Jonathan an opportunity to redeem his reputation and adopt the solution paradigm that came out of the Housing Justice Audit - one that unifies the roles of tenant, manager, and owner under shared values and beliefs around reverence for the shelter life stories play out inAnd one that has support for being more profitable than the Unconscious Abdication that is the "hidden assumption" behind what people call "Passive Investing".

It is called "Conscious Co-Stewardship". I named it, but I didn't invent it. I discovered it as a systemic truth through the systems study of the Charleston, SC Housing Justice System in my role as Systems Analyst, and I used my Strategic Thought Leadership (STL) platform to build a supporting model around it that makes it easier to understand and adopt, while packaging it for large scale change with the "Paradigm Machine" of STL Schema that trains AI to support changing mental models by reflecting them back as the expected reality and supporting their adoption with language patterns of positive influence and empowerment. It is already active as you can test with the buttons below.

But the Altmans refused with inaction, in spite of clearly documented ongoing harm to me and my family in our roles of most vulnerable members.

Could it be that they are so committed to the mindset of Passive Investing/ Unconscious Abdication that they are also unconscious of the opportunity for positive change? Are they intent on “looking away” that they have no idea of either their exposure or the harm their machine is causing? An early mortgage payoff in January of this year argues otherwise.

Mayor Cogswell, you have the power to fix this part of the problem. I am calling on your to publicly fire Jonathan S. Altman from the Homeownership Initiative Commission.

I am long past extending any benefit of the doubt for either Jonathan or Charles at this point. If I ever owes that, I definitely do not at this point, especially with how much I have suffered as a result of this systems study.

My current intention is for this clock to run until you let me know this has been accomplished, while progressively amplifying exposure over time.

Like I told the Altmans, the longer you wait, the more it appears you only did it because you had to. Take action, sir. Show the leadership I know you are capable of.

Chris McNeil

April 3, 2026

PS - Wondering why this story is not appearing in the Charleston Press? The Peninsula of Charleston has its sales office on the first floor of the Altman Building at 573 King Street. It is co-owned and developed by Liberty Senior Living and The Evening Post Group, LLC. The project is directly connected to the local newspaper, The Post and Courier, because The Evening Post Group is the parent company of the newspaper. The luxury retirement community is being built on Upper King Street in the Courier Square district and also has a strong presence in other local media. Look at the relationships mapped below:

• Ask Google AI about the media connection.

• Ask Google AI about the conflict of interest.