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Affordable Housing

We Need A Homes Guarantee — Now

September 27, 2019 By Linda Armitage, Otherwords.org , ,
I lost everything during the financial crisis. The government decided that the perpetrators of the crisis were “too big to fail” and bailed them out with our money. I was not bailed out. Today, a decade after the crisis, I’m part of a grassroots-led effort to ensure every person in the United States has safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing. I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I’ve gone through. After the crash, I had to change my whole life. I didn’t have a 401(k) retirement account to fall back on. I had to cancel travel plans. I had to find a place to live.

Gentrification vs. Revitalization: The Fight For Affordable Housing In San Francisco

September 19, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com , , ,
A close up look at the epicenter of the nation's affordable housing crisis: San Francisco. We sit down with local residents and activists to hear about the manifold problems that gave rise to this crisis, and the creative ways in which folks are fighting for their human rights.

We Need A Homes Guarantee. Now.

September 18, 2019 By Linda Armitage, Inequality.org ,
I lost everything during the financial crisis. The government decided that the perpetrators of the crisis were “too big to fail” and bailed them out with our money. I was not bailed out. Today, a decade after the crisis, I’m part of a grassroots-led effort to ensure every person in the United States has safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing. I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I’ve gone through. After the crash, I had to change my whole life. I didn’t have a 401(k) retirement account to fall back on. I had to cancel travel plans. I had to find a place to live.

The Solution To Homelessness Is Staring Us In The Face

September 16, 2019 Robert Scheer, Truthdig.com , ,
It’s no secret that homelessness in the United States, especially in California, has reached critical levels. That the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world is dealing with a crisis that stems so clearly from inequality and neglect should have its predominantly left-leaning residents up in arms. And to some extent, they are. Becky Dennison, executive director of Venice Community Housing in Los Angeles, who speaks with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” has dedicated her life’s work to helping address homelessness...

Austin Groups 3-D Print Tiny Homes To Help End Homelessness

September 15, 2019 Cindy Widner, Curbed Austin. , , ,
Community First Village, run by Mobile Loaves and Fishes to provide permanent, personal housing and services for homeless people in Austin, had quite the breakthrough day Monday. Partnering with Austin-based Icon and Cielo property group, it opened the second phase of its development with a 3D-printed prototype house that will serve as a welcome center for the community. The 500-square-foot building took a total of 27 hours to print. That was only the beginning, according to said Alan Graham, founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes: “ICON is pushing the envelope and is technologically laying out a new way of looking at how we build homes,” he said. “One of our desires is that this partnership with ICON will grow so deep that we’re able to leverage this technology to someday build all of our microhomes in future phases of the village.”

Gentrification vs. Revitalization: The Fight For Affordable Housing In San Francisco

September 12, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com , ,
A close up look at the epicenter of the nation's affordable housing crisis: San Francisco. We sit down with local residents and activists to hear about the manifold problems that gave rise to this crisis, and the creative ways in which folks are fighting for their human rights.

New York Took On The Real Estate Industry And Won. Illinois Could Be Next.

September 9, 2019 Max Budovitch, Inthesetimes.com , , , ,
On June 14, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law new housing legislation that guarantees the “strongest tenant protections in history,” extending rent regulation from New York City and adjacent counties to the entire state, finally closing rent control loopholes and eliminating the “vacancy bonus” that allowed landlords to hike rents once tenants moved out. Some form of rent regulation has been in place in New York City for nearly a century. But the laws that were meant to keep housing affordable and tenants in place by limiting rent increases had been run through with loopholes because they had to be re-legislated...

Northgate Apartments Celebrate 30 Years Of Resident Ownership, Affordability

June 15, 2019 By Courtney Kramer, Mychamplainvalley.com , , , ,
Burlington, Vt - Vermont's largest affordable housing community marked a special milestone Saturday with a neighborhood-wide celebration. The Northgate Apartments in Burlington's New North End is celebrating 30 years of housing affordability and resident ownership. "We're celebrating 30 years of ownership, resident ownership," said Linda Romeo, a longtime resident. Romeo has lived at Northgate for the past 48 years. She raised her family there and can remember a time when conditions were poor.

The Housing Affordability Crisis And What Millennials Can do About It

December 14, 2018 Steve Early, Counterpunch.org , ,
When millennials head home for the holidays this month, many who are city dwellers will be hosted by parents or grand-parents whose housing is far more spacious and financially secure than their own. Even guests with well-paid jobs in relatively stable rental markets will cast an envious eye at the benefits of baby boomer house buying decades ago. That’s because these holiday visitors belong to a “generation priced out” of America’s hottest urban markets for single-family homes, condos, and rental apartments. According to Berkeley author Randy Shaw, skyrocketing prices for all three forms of housing have created a generational divide, with major political implications for progressive city governments and advocates of affordable housing.

Financing The Future Of Cooperative Low-Income Housing

December 12, 2018 Zoe Sullivan, Nextcity.org , , ,
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York City went through a devastating financial crisis. Buildings in neighborhoods across the city were essentially abandoned by their landlords. In some cases, tenants banded together to take over managing their buildings. Clusters of such buildings emerged in some neighborhoods, including Manhattan’s Lower East Side, East Village, and Harlem. The city created the Housing Development Fund Corporation program, offering reduced property taxes to cooperatively-owned buildings reserved for low- and moderate-income residents, known as limited-equity cooperatives.

Gentrification: The New ‘Negro Removal’ Program

December 1, 2018 Dr. Ron Daniels, IBW21.org. , ,
Gentrification has emerged as a major threat to Black communities that have been centers for Black business/economic development, cultural and civic life for generations. Gentrification has become the watch-word for the displacement of Black people and culture. Gentrification is the “Negro Removal Program” of the 21st Century. There is an urgent need for people of African descent to mount a serious offensive to defend Black communities from this insidious onslaught. During the Civil Rights, Black Power era, the term “Negro Removal” was virtually synonymous with “Urban Renewal,”...

How The Ultrarich Can Help Fix The Affordable Housing Crisis

July 31, 2018 By Chuck Collins, Yesmagazine.org , ,
A growing number of people invest in real estate they never intend to occupy and push up prices for the rest of us. Cities should make them pay. Down the street from my office, a luxury residential tower is rising, the fifth such project in Boston in the last decade. The 61-story “One Dalton Place” is being marketed as “New England’s tallest and most luxurious residential building.” Across the coastal cities of North America, cranes are rising to construct similar stunning new glass towers of both residential and commercial properties. Real estate in existing neighborhoods is being bid up by investors and wealthy buyers, pushing up the cost of land and housing for everyone else. A high percentage of these housing units will sit empty or rarely occupied. In Boston’s luxury Millennium Tower, for example, only 25 percent of the units are considered the occupants’ principal residence.

Solar Is Saving Low-Income Households Money In Colorado. It Could Be A National Model

July 3, 2018 Dan Gearino, Insideclimatenews.org , , ,
Low-income households in Colorado are getting a new question during visits from energy assistance agencies: Have you considered solar panels? It's an innovative approach to solving two challenges at once: reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the effects of climate change appear across the state, and lowering low-income families' electricity bills. The results can make a big difference for residents like Joe Anderson, whose power bills have been cut by two-thirds since 13 solar panels were installed free-of-charge on his ranch-style house under one Colorado program. "I felt like I kind of got the luck of the draw," he said. Colorado is emerging as a national model for how to expand renewable energy to low-income homes. The state has been pursuing low-income solar programs since 2015, and it's on track to have 20 megawatts installed by the end of 2019 as those programs ramp up.

People Earning Minimum Wage Cannot Afford To Rent Anywhere In The US

June 16, 2018 Laura Paddison, Huffingtonpost.com.mx , ,
The figures are from the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual Out Of Reach report, which documents the affordability of rental housing to low-income families across the U.S. NLIHC arrived at its bleak findings by taking the cost of a modest two-bed rental home at fair market rent, as calculated by the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) based on an estimate of what a family moving today would expect to pay. It then calculated the amount workers need to earn for these homes to be “affordable” – meaning they spend no more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. The most expensive state is Hawaii, where the fair market rent for a two-bed rental is $1,879 a month, meaning workers need to bring in $36.13 an hour for rent to be affordable.

HUD Plan Would Raise Rents For Poor By 20 Percent

June 9, 2018 Juliet Linderman and Larry Fern, AP.org , ,
CHARLESTON, S.C.—Housing Secretary Ben Carson says his latest proposal to raise rents would mean a path toward self-sufficiency for millions of low-income households across the United States by pushing more people to find work. For Ebony Morris and her four small children, it could mean homelessness. Morris lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where most households receiving federal housing assistance would see their rent go up an average 26 percent, according to an analysis done by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and provided exclusively to The Associated Press. But her increase would be nearly double that. Overall, the analysis shows that in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, low-income tenants — many of whom have jobs — would have to pay roughly 20 percent more each year for rent under the plan.
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