About

About Mark Adams

During the last 25 years, Mark Adams, President of California Receivership Group (CRG), has been at the forefront of using health and safety receivership to remediate nuisance conditions at slum properties, abandoned properties, and various other types of dilapidated properties in California. He remains the most experienced health and safety receiver working in the state. Adams has been appointed as receiver by 179 different state and federal judges to rehabilitate more than 360 properties in 36 counties and 126 cities. Adams is branching out to other states, including Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin.

A receivership, under the Health and Safety Code, is the most effective solution when traditional code enforcement agency tools have failed to correct the problem. A receivership resolves the financial and physical aspects of the nuisance abatement problem at no cost to taxpayers. In receivership, the property itself pays its own repair cost. This is possible by utilizing the courts’ statutory authority and equitable discretion.

Adams deals with various health and safety issues at various distressed properties, including homes, hotels, apartment buildings, and commercial properties. His areas of expertise include remediation of problems related to unpermitted construction; fire, hillside stability, and seismic damage; rampant crime and repeated calls for service; abandoned and unsecured structures; unsafe but inhabited buildings and relocation of occupants; accumulation of junk and debris, including hoarding situations; hazmat abatement, pest infestation, asbestos, and mold; structural inadequacy or complete failure; properties without heat, electricity, and running water – and many more.

Adams: The First Receiver Appointed under the California Health and Safety Code

In 1999, Mark Adams became the first receiver ever appointed under the California Health and Safety Code to address a 66-unit apartment complex and remedy the deplorable conditions at the building after an 11-week-old baby died. The child was living in the severely dilapidated apartment building, caught a respiratory infection, and tragically passed away from the illness.

While the remedy was available under California’s Health and Safety Code for a number of years to address substandard properties, this incident marked the first time it was used to tackle a nuisance abatement issue. On learning of the remedy from a local professor in the early 1990s, MarkReceiver felt this was the answer for nuisance properties where no other code enforcement strategies had succeeded.

Adams was frustrated with the number of dilapidated properties in his community, and this tragic incident propelled him to establish California Receivership Group (CRG) as a complete turnkey solution to abate dangerous properties. CRG was founded with the goal of providing relief to the community surrounding a problem property, which has to live with the ripple effects that it causes every single day.

During the last 25 years, Adams has become the most experienced receiver operating in the field.

In 2022, Loyola Marymount University (LMU) gave Adams the “Distinguished Entrepreneurial Alumnus Award,” and the Los Angeles Business Journal recognized CRG as an outstanding family-owned business. 

Co-founded the Blue Ribbon Citizens Committee on Slum Housing

Before establishing CRG, Adams was the driving force behind—and served on—then-Mayor Riordan’s Blue Ribbon Citizens Committee on Slum Housing. He co-founded and helped administer the committee from 1998 to 2000, which was the catalyst for the City of Los Angeles to expand its slum-housing inspection program substantially.

The committee’s findings showed that slumlords put off significant repairs for years without the fear of city inspections or the threat of prosecution. They ignored leaking roofs, stopped-up toilets, rat infestation, a lack of heat and hot water, broken windows, and other conditions that made apartments unsafe, unhealthy, and unlivable. In fact, 1995 census data found 156,000 substandard apartments in Los Angeles, with the situation worsening in the San Fernando Valley, Westside, Hollywood, and inner-city neighborhoods.

Adam’s experience with the Blue Ribbon Citizens Committee and his decades-long real estate finance career provided the backbone for his initial receivership work.

Over the past 25 years, Adams has led CRG as the firm honed its approach to health and safety receivership work, gaining vast experience managing the financial, political, social, and economic intricacies that accompany this extraordinarily unique enforcement tool. He innovated the use of super-priority receivership certificate financing to rehabilitate nuisance properties. In his work to remedy code violations at red-tagged properties, CRG has funded over $56 million in health and safety receivership financing.

A Mentor to Health and Safety Receivers

Adams of California Receivership Group has mentored or trained most other health and safety receivers operating in the Golden State. He is a sought-after speaker at state and national housing conferences. 

Adams submitted an amicus curiae brief in the California Supreme Court’s landmark ruling supporting the health and safety receivership remedy, City of Santa Monica v. Gonzalez 43 Cal. 4th 905 (2008).

Adams’ Bespoke Career

Before establishing CRG, Adams was a principal at Civitas Housing Company and Senior Vice President of De Miranda Management, responsible for affordable housing management activities for 4,400 apartment units in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. He also worked with various clients to arrange bank financing for real estate projects.

Adams also managed the Los Angeles operations for a nonprofit housing developer. They served as Director of Public Affairs at Fannie Mae, where he was responsible for congressional relations in the nine Western states.

His career included four years as an attorney consulting on corporate and housing finance work for clients, including the California Housing Finance Agency and Great Western Bank. Adams founded and managed a mortgage banking company, Callie Mae, Inc., which sold over $500 million in home mortgage loans to California public pension funds and other institutional investors.

Mark Adams, Receiver, also worked in the policy development arm of California Governor Jerry Brown’s office from 1978 to 1982. He once wrote a law review article for the Hastings International and Comparative Law Journal on Governor Brown’s conception of what later became known as NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). 

His career began as an attorney with Ball, Hunt, Hart, Brown, and Baerwitz, where he was an associate in the litigation department. Former California Governor Pat Brown—the father of Former Governor Jerry Brown—was Adams’ supervising partner at the law firm.

Adams graduated magna cum laude from LMU and then graduated from Georgetown University Law Center.

A Dedicated Family Man

Born in Chicago, Adams grew up in Los Angeles, where he and his wife Janis raised their three children. They will be celebrating their 35th anniversary next year. Two of his children went to Harvard. His son entered the prestigious university 100 years after his paternal grandfather emigrated from Greece as a 15-year-old who received his citizenship by serving in the American army during World War I. Adams’ last name was anglicized after the immigration officer at Ellis Island asked his grandfather his name. When the officer heard “Soterios Adamopolous,” he said, “Sounds like Sam Adams.” The rest is history.

His daughter attended Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a John F. Kennedy scholar.

Adams is a fan of major league baseball and the Los Angeles Dodgers. His fandom also extended to his daughter’s high school volleyball games. The team presented him with an award as its most loyal fan. Adams jokes that his tombstone will read, “He watched 3,000 games…”

A devoted grandfather of six, Adams sent his granddaughter a knock-knock joke every day for 14 days while she was at her first stay-over camp.  She lovingly used her grandfather’s jokes in the camp’s talent show.

Paying It Forward

Adams’ dedication to the communities in the Golden State extends beyond his work at CRG. From 2016 to 2022, Adams served on the National Board of Directors for the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, a nonprofit group that serves the needs of the poor and marginalized.

His monthly donations to St. Monica’s Catholic Church and Loyola Marymount University contribute to supporting various communities. Mark was a founding director of the Chrysalis Center, now a well-established homeless services provider in Los Angeles.

Adams’ charitable work goes back decades. In 1986, Mark recruited an army of volunteers to raise $10,000 for Ethiopian Famine Relief for the Red Cross by passing around a hat at the state Democratic convention.

He has been the president of the LMU Alumni Board and a member of the University’s Board of Regents.