House with Chimaeras
Due to the steep slope on which the building is situated, it had to be specially designed out of concrete to fit into its foundations correctly. From the front, the building appears to have only three floors. However, from the rear, all of its six floors can be seen. One part of the building's foundation was made of concrete piles, and the other as a continuous foundation. Usually, these two approaches do not mix well but Horodecki somehow succeeded in overcoming this technical problem.
PACE financing
For consumers, PACE type programs have several problems. Because the financing is designed to stay with the property, eligibility is based primarily on property information rather than income and FICO scores. A homeowner’s ability to pay is currently based primarily on their mortgage and property tax payment history as well as the requirement that there are no recent bankruptcies. Most significantly, homeowners are financed for the home improvements without any assessment of whether the financing is affordable for the homeowner, though Senate Bill 242, currently being considered in California, would require PACE providers to conduct an income review. Because the PACE financing is structured as a tax assessment instead of a loan, the PACE programs historically have not had to provide to homeowners the same disclosures about the financing costs that traditional lenders must provide. In September 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB2693 into law, which required PACE programs to provide mortgage-level disclosures and some providers to conduct live recorded calls with the homeowner to confirm financing terms and obligation. In some cases, without either an assessment of affordability or these disclosures about the costs of the financing, homeowners depend on what the PACE program providers tell them when trying to figure out whether the financing is affordable. Homeowners have complained that PACE contractors are lying about the costs of financing as part of selling the program. These problems create a situation in which homeowners can suddenly owe far more in property taxes than they can afford to repay; this is especially true for retired and disabled homeowners on fixed incomes. PACE architects Cisco DeVries and Matthew Brown deny these claims as "isolated incidents."