Affordable Housing

Adults With Roommates At Highest Level In Decades

SEATTLE — Having a roommate as an adult may be fairly common in the first years out of college, but more older, single Americans are opting against living alone. In fact, one-third of adults now live with roommates, a byproduct of rising rents, a new study finds. Researchers at Zillow, an online real estate database, analyzed figures from a 2016 U.S. Census Bureau survey and recently interviewed more than 13,000 Americans, asking them about their experiences with renting and homeownership. With rents jumping in many major cities, the number of single adults in America living “doubled-up” with roommates is at its highest since at least 1990. One component of their inquiry looked at doubled-up households, which are those in which two or more working-aged adults — none of whom are romantically involved — live together.

Affordable Housing Movement Rises From Foreclosure Crisis

December 3, 2017 Michael Arria, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Affordable Housing, Housing, renter's rights

By Michael Arria from In These Times. Over the last few years, housing activism has boomed—a trend that transcends the issue of rent control through its focus on halting gentrification and protecting low-income people of color from displacement. This work is even more important in the era of Trump, as the GOP is actively pushing a tax plan to benefit the richest members of U.S. society. House Republicans just passed a tax plan that will cut corporate rates down to 20 percent while increasing taxes for households that make between $10,000 and $30,000 a year. The movement has taken hold throughout the country, and it’s recently chalked up a number of important victories. After activists staged a hunger strike in San Jose, lawmakers approved some of the strongest renter protections in the nation. Seattle’s city council was pushed to end housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated individuals. Earlier this year, New York became the first city to guarantee attorneys for low-income renters facing eviction.

March At Baltimore City Hall Demands Affordable Housing Funds

November 10, 2017 Staff, therealnews.com Create! Affordable Housing, Baltimore

By Staff of The Real News Network - TAYA GRAHAM: This is Taya Graham reporting for the Real News Network in Baltimore City, Maryland. Baltimore City activists have finally said enough is enough and are demanding that the city give residents money to invest in their community, not wealthy developers. A quick survey of the Baltimore City skyline reveals in stone and mortar what public tax incentive can produce. But the problem with this rising tide of gleaming towers is that the new construction is only widening the gap between the rich and poor, says community activist, Destiny Watford. DESTINY WATFORD: This tool will allow us to keep wealth in our neighborhood. It would allow us to build the things that we need in our neighborhoods because no one else in Baltimore knows what we need more than the people that live there. TAYA GRAHAM: Incentives funded by residents who can't afford to live in the buildings their tax dollars produced. BONNIE ORRAVENLEE: I'm here because I am pissed off and I am outraged because people are dying in the street every day. TAYA GRAHAM: And who are now demanding change. TARELL ASKEW: We need for our city leaders to be more than leaders at the podium. We need for them to join us and this great cause of building the city into a better place to live and building us all into better people to live in it.

Tiny Homes Banned In U.S. As Govt Criminalizes Sustainable Living

November 7, 2017 Staff, daily-curiosity.info Create! Affordable Housing, Housing, Legislation

By Staff of Daily Curiosity - As the corporatocracy tightens its grip on the masses – finding ever more ways to funnel wealth to the top – humanity responds in a number of ways, including the rising popularity of tiny houses. These dwellings, typically defined as less than 500 square feet, are a way for people to break free of mortgages, taxes, utility bills and the general trappings of “stuff.” They’re especially attractive to millennials and retirees, or those seeking to live off-grid. But government and corporations depend on rampant consumerism and people being connected to the grid. Seeking actual freedom through minimalist living should seem like a natural fit for the American dream, but the reality is that many governments around the country either ban tiny homes or force them to be connected to the utility grid. “As of now, few cities allow stand-alone tiny houses. Most communities have minimum square footage requirements for single-family homes mandating that smaller dwellings be an “accessory” to a larger, traditional house. Many also have rules requiring that dwellings be hooked up to utilities, which is a problem for tiny-house enthusiasts who want to live off the grid by using alternative energy sources such as solar panels and rainwater catchment systems.”

National Low Income Housing Coalition On Tax Proposal

November 4, 2017 Diane Yentel, www.popularresistance.org Create! Affordable Housing, Housing, Tax cuts for the rich, Taxes

By Diane Yentel for Natinal Low Income Housing Coalition. WASHINGTON, D.C.- The tax reform legislation proposed by House Republican leaders takes a historic step in directly revising the mortgage interest deduction (MID), a $70 billion annual tax expenditure that primarily benefits higher income households—including the top 1% of earners in the country. The Republican tax proposal makes sensible reforms in lowering the amount of a mortgage against which the MID can be claimed to $500,000 for new home loans and doubling the standard deduction. This change to the MID would impact fewer than 6% of mortgages nationwide and would save an estimated $95.5 billion over the first decade.

Newsletter – Greater Austerity Coming Unless We Act

September 30, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Affordable Housing, Austerity, Education, Health Care, Taxes, Wars and Militarism, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. As one of the world's richest nations, the US stands out for having the greatest wealth divide and high levels of poverty. Over the past 40 years, wages have stagnated and, as Lynn points out, "the richest one percent took more than half of all income growth since 1979." Currently, the top 0.1 percent have wealth equal to the bottom 90 percent. It isn't a matter of whether the US has enough money to support basic necessities like health, education and housing, but who has the wealth in the US and where our tax dollars are being spent.

9to5 Colorado Fights For Renter’s Rights, Affordable Housing

September 21, 2017 Staff, www.9to5.org Resist! Affordable Housing, Housing, judicial system, renter's rights

By 9to5 Colorado. Colorado - Community members from Denver, Aurora, Westminster, and Commerce City came together to participate in the National Renter’s Week of Action alongside other affiliates of the Right to the City Homes For All campaign. These impacted community and non-profit organizations behind the following local actions are all part of a statewide coalition called Colorado Homes For All, which was formed as a response to the national and local housing crisis. Colorado kicked off the National Renters’ Week of Action here locally with “Evicting THE EVICTOR,” an action that exposed the Tschetter, Hamrick and Sulzer Law firm that represents 80% of corporate landlords across Colorado.

Baltimore’s Push To Solve Its Affordable Housing Crisis With Community Land Trusts

September 11, 2017 Kevon Paynter, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Affordable Housing, Baltimore, Land, Land trusts, New Economy

By Kevon Paynter for Yes! Magazine - Men and women huddle inside the St. John’s United Methodist Church in central Baltimore. The air conditioning in the church is inefficient on a day when the outside temperature is over 100 degrees. Cold water bottles get distributed, along with paper towels to wipe off sweat. Many of these people are homeless or formerly homeless. Others are longtime residents struggling to afford their rent, and they are here to advocate for an affordable housing solution that could bring relief as well as fix Baltimore’s blight.  They want Mayor Catherine Pugh to dedicate $40 million in the upcoming budget to fund community land trusts. Across the U.S., cities struggle with expanding income inequality and tight housing markets that drive up rent. These factors result in an extreme shortage of affordable housing. For every 100 low-income renters, there are 31 affordable units, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.  Over the years, solutions have emerged. In Burlington, Vermont, and Boston, for example, community ownership of land through nonprofit community land trusts has had decades of success turning vacant lots into affordable housing.

Renter Nation Assemblies 2015

August 15, 2017 Staff, www.homesforall.org Organize! Affordable Housing, Boston, Housing, Rent, renter's rights

By Staff of Homes for All - Hundreds gathered and gave direct testimony about the citywide displacement crisis. Grassroots activists also planned strategies and tactics for passing Just Cause Eviction, breaking down by city council district, and they shared a variety of organizing approaches to the displacement crisis through interactive and cultural presentations. Topics included inclusionary development policy, community land trusts and community control of public land, creation of neighborhood stabilization zones, and struggles for local hiring and community benefit standards. The Right to Remain Assembly culminated in a massive citywide action cosponsored by Boston Tenant Coalition, Right to the City Boston, Alternatives for Community & Environment, Boston Workers Alliance, Chinatown Resident Association, Chinese Progressive Association, City Life/Vida Urbana, Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation, Dominican Development Center, Dorchester People for Peace, Fairmount Indigo Community Development Collaborative, Jamaica Plain Progressives, Neighbors United for a Better East Boston, New England United for Justice, SEIU 32BJ.

Tax The Rich To House The Poor

August 2, 2017 NLIHC, www.popularresistance.org Create! Affordable Housing, Housing, Poverty, Taxes

By the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Washington, DC - The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released the “Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction: How Tax Reform Can Help End Homelessness and Housing Poverty” report today calling for Congress and the Trump administration to use mortgage interest deduction (MID) reform to end homelessness and housing poverty in America. The report identifies solutions to the homelessness and affordable housing crisis in America that would incur no additional cost to the federal government, those proposed by the NLIHC-led United for Homes (UFH) campaign. The report and UFH campaign call for modest reforms to the mortgage interest deduction (MID)—a $70 billion tax write-off that primarily benefits higher income households—and for reinvesting the billions in savings in affordable housing for the lowest income families with the greatest needs.

Chicagoans Say ‘Yes In My Backyard’ To Affordable Housing

July 27, 2017 Derek Robertson, www.wagingnonviolence.org Create! Affordable Housing, Chicago, New Economy

By Derek Robertson for Waging Nonviolence - Andrea Mitchell knows a dog whistle when she hears one. In the ongoing struggle against housing segregation, they come in the form of chants of “No Section 8.” The fear of a voucher holder’s “miscreant cousin, nephew, brother, son” doing damage in the community. Calls for the children of low-income housing applicants to be screened for criminal records, to rapt applause. For Mitchell, a homeowner in the almost-suburban, majority-white Jefferson Park neighborhood in Chicago, those dog whistles were heard in early February at a neighborhood meeting regarding the proposed construction of a low-income housing development at 5150 N. Northwest Highway, and she decided she had to do something about it. “I just didn’t want the rest of the city to see that and think that’s what my neighborhood is like,” Mitchell said. “I thought to myself, there should be another voice — we’re homeowners, too.” Mitchell and a small group of like-minded residents launched the Neighbors for Affordable Housing in Jefferson Park, or NAHJP, Facebook page in support of the development on Valentine’s Day, just four days after the heated meeting. Leah Levinger, director of the Chicago Housing Initiative, or CHI, a coalition of low-income housing activists, reached out soon after, and within just a month a new activist group was born.

Are You Unable To Afford Decent Housing?

June 19, 2017 Ijeoma Oluo, www.theguardian.com Educate! Affordable Housing, Housing, New Economy

By Ijeoma Oluo for The Guardian - The affordable housing crisis is becoming inescapable. We have now reached the point where a minimum-wage worker can only afford to live in about a dozen counties in the entire nation. Even those with college degrees and wages above minimum wage struggle. This problem doesn’t just impact countless poor Americans any more. Now it hits middle class families, too. For many, it’s outrageous that this crisis is no longer is confined to the bottom of the income ladder. ‘What do you mean that someone earning $20 an hour in LA wouldn’t be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment?’ gasp those in the middle class. When it was in the news that you’d have to earn $24 an hour in order to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle, where I live, I finally saw community members talking more seriously about housing density and rent controls. But for those of us who have been locked into a housing crisis for generations because of race, gender, class or disability, we are left wondering why so many are just now paying attention to an issue that has already destroyed countless lives.

Income Sharing Could Save Our Lives

October 23, 2016 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com Create! Affordable Housing, Cooperatives, Democracy

By Matt Stannard for Occupy.com. “Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away,” Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi wrote in a personal blog post over a decade ago. “Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house... Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise... Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap... Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.” Economic insecurity is the American nightmare. It kills us earlier, messes up our mental health, saps the life out of us. Since Scalzi’s 2005 post, we’ve learned that more than 60 percent of us can’t afford a $500 emergency – which roughly translates to hoping the toothache goes away. That’s a pretty raw deal in exchange for an economic system that’s also killing the planet. And only rarely can we count on others to help us out. They’re either broke themselves, or profiting from our financial instability.

Chicago Renters Back ‘ROOTS’ As Solution To Affordable Housing

October 2, 2016 Chloe Riley, www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org Create! Affordable Housing, Chicago, Housing, renter's rights

By Chloe Riley for Equal Voice for Families. CHICAGO – In Roxanne Smith’s kitchen, a framed excerpt from Barack Obama’s 2008 Grant Park presidential victory speech hangs for all to see. “America, we have come so far,” it reads. “But there is so much more to do.” Smith, 60, has come a long way herself in recent years. In 2013, she faced potential homelessness after the Northwest Side apartment where she lives with her 35-year-old son was foreclosed upon. At the time, the downstairs neighbors in her two-flat apartment complex had accepted a payout and left the building. But Smith, whose son Roget lives with a developmental disability, couldn’t afford to leave. Sitting in the dining room of her two-bedroom apartment, Smith holds tight to a green plastic bag, which was left on her door over a year and a half ago.

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