The headline that hit hardest this month illustrates a much bigger problem: a major home-renovation roll-up filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in November 2025 with under $100,000 in assets against as much as $500 million in debt (per the Delaware bankruptcy petition filed 11/3/2025). Thousands of working-class households who paid deposits or relied on these companies are now facing financial losses they never imagined. As former president of the local remodelers association, I know how this will hurt their businesses.
This isn’t an isolated failure. It reflects a long-term shift away from regulated, government-backed credit, community banks, the SBA, and specialized agencies that once supported small businesses without predatory terms. As those options dried up, private-equity and private-credit lenders filled the gap with high-leverage financing that prioritizes investor returns over local jobs and local families.
I see the consequences every day. More small business owners are coming in with debt problems tied directly to aggressive, opaque financing. Their situations are growing more severe, and their options are shrinking. From my vantage point, the risk to working class folks now is even greater now than when I left Wall Street in 1987 at the height of the leveraged buyout era.
Our own working waterfront community is a perfect example. After Superstorm Sandy in 2012, we were never able to secure the recovery funding that used to exist for small coastal communities and businesses. I turned down private-equity solicitations because I’ve watched what happens to owners who sign those deals. Now, instead of receiving support, we’re facing government enforcement pressure over properties that have sat unrepaired for more than a decade. Government spent more prosecuting the small businesses and residents here at the Money Island Marina community in the decade since Sandy than they did in helping us recover from the losses. This creates a perfect opportunity for predatory financiers.
This is what the private-equity era looks like on the ground: working people carrying the losses while financiers walk away.