This distinction controls whether you can claim all your current rental losses against your W2 income.

If the top floor becomes climate controlled storage, is that good enough to consider the building a 4-family?

Unless you invest via an LLC owned by the IRA, you will not have checkbook control over the funds which means you need to run transactions (e.g. income, expenses, etc.) through the trust company who will need time to process the transactions and generally charge fees for each transaction.

My goal would be to get that BRRRR "under control" during that period, see what I missed, lessons learned, etc., before I run off to the next one anyway...

I've been reading up on rent control and I see that according to new laws, I can only raise the rent up to 8% max to account for the 5% increase and inflation. 

As things are occurring now, the bank is being paid, so they have no interest in property seizure or foreclosure, as it is a performing note, so the FIL currently has the opportunity to conduct control of it in the same way a normal person would, which should allow him to pass this via normal methods (living trust for example) to heirs, provided the payments on the note have no interruption.Am I off on any of that?

California is a rent control state.

For me it has ti be first hand and un my control

Also in the broker relationship model one would be dependent on someone else vs trying to control their own destiny. 

If the virus is not controlled for a few more months, people will die, lives will be disrupted and the economy will be affected.