Days after Bobby Brown's sister Tina gave pictures and
personal accounts of Whitney's crack addiction to the National Enquirer
and The Sun tabloids, Fox411 entertainment columnist Roger Friedman
has written of new details surrounding Whitney's downward spiral,
including the singer's dire financial state and the whereabouts
and welfare of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina.
Also, Cherelle of "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" and
"Saturday Love" fame is suddenly in the picture, having taken
Whitney in for a period of time at her townhouse, Friedman reports.
According to Friedman, who has known Whitney since her
"You Give Good Love" days, the entertainer is not only on crack,
but dead broke "with no current income and huge expenses."
Friedman says Whitney's generosity was ultimately her
financial undoing, as she has spent most of her earnings taking care
of her own family and her husband's. She her assets include a five-acre
estate in posh Mendham, N.J., assessed in 2005 at $5.6 million;
her current Alpharetta home, purchased in 2003 for $1.8 million,
almost all of which was borrowed, writes Friedman.
"The Mendham property has become to Houston what Neverland
is to Michael Jackson: a bank account against which she can
draw loans, but unlike Jackson, however, Houston
does not have investments like the Beatles catalog to fall back
on now that she's in trouble. Public records show Whitney has
borrowed millions of dollars and taken out many staggering mortgages
in her time enough to give Michael Jackson a run for his money"
Freidman writes.
For some reason, Whitney left the Alpharettacrib last fall andmoved in with Cherelle, but the two were
recently evicted from Cherelle's townhouse, reportedly for making
too much noise, keeping the place dirty and failure to pay rent.
Friedman writes: "A local Atlanta lawyer told me that he recently
had housemates Whitney and '80s pop star Cherelle
(real name Cheryl Week Norton) evicted from the luxury townhouse
he'd rented to the latter last fall. Houston's name was not on
the lease, but the landlord says she was living there and has
witnesses to back him up."
According to Freedman, the landlord claims the two ladies owe him
about $17,000 in back rent and about $8,000 in damages for leaving
the place a complete mess. "That includes carpets and furniture
ruined by burn marks and broken windows. When the landlord
went to speak to Houston about the noise
and filth emanating from the townhouse, he told me the singer
appeared 'disheveled' and her voice was gravelly. On the plus
side: 'She was very pleasant," Friedman writes.
According to sources Whitney and Cherelle abandoned the
townhouse and moved into the Buckhead section of Atlanta, but
Houston has since returned to her Alpharetta mansion, as has
Bobby, after his own partying stint in Los Angeles, Friedman writes.
"There, Brown told friends alternately that Houston was
pregnant and that they were divorcing."
Friedman, who calls Whitney's disastrous fall from grace
"the worst kind of show business tragedy," says that Bobby Brown
may have been behind Tina Brown's decision to sell the story to
the tabloids so that he could get a cut of her fee which could be as high
as $200,000, Freidman writes.
Ironically, sources say Whitney took care of Tina Brown's children
all six of them when Brown went into rehab herself. Houston's
friends tell Friedman that she always tried to keep Bobby's
relatives happy, even when she was at her worst.
"There are 30 members of the Brown family and they've all
sponged off of Whitney," says an insider.
While her generosity and real estate expenses have contributed
to her alleged financial ruin, Friedman says a huge factor also comes
from receiving poor money advice throughout the years. Because
Houston doesn't write her own songs, she does not profit from the
royalties provided by owning one's own publishing, as do
singer/songwriters Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Madonna. This is
why Houston is reportedly broke despite all of her
platinum-selling hit records.
"It's kind of surprising that Houston fell into this trap, she's
watched both her mother, Cissy Houston, and cousin,
Dionne Warwick, neither of whom wrote their own hits, tour
endlessly every year and work to keep up with their expenses.
You'd think she would have learned something from their
experiences. Depending on just record sales to get her through
bad times was a mistake. While Houston had many bestsellers,
they are well in the past. Simply singing a hit record is not enough if
you're not going to save your money" writes Friedman.
As for Bobbi Kristina, she is reportedly staying with her
Uncle Gary and Aunt Pat (Whitney's brother and sister-in-law)
close to Houston's home in Atlanta. But Friedman believes
that the Enquirer story will inevitably lead to an investigation
by Child Protective Services in Alpharetta.
"If 50 percent of the [Enquirer/Sun] report is deemed true,
Houston and Brown could easily lose their daughter for good,"
Friedman writes. "One wonders if that will be enough of a wake-up
call for the singer who once represented the best of America's youth."
1 comment:
Was surfing the net loking for some ski report for vermont and I came upon your site and I was impressed by the quality of content you have. Keep up the awesome job. I will be bookmarking you right now.
Post a Comment