Housing

Cities Are Addressing Sustainable Development

January 15, 2014 Mauro Small, www.triplepundit.com Create! Energy, Food and Agriculture, Housing, Sustainability

Planning for smart municipal growth is crucial for achieving long term sustainability. Affordable, energy efficient housing, and green spaces are components of sustainable cities in the future. In Paris, this vision is already taking shape at Parc Clichy-Batignolles, a 133-acre development in the 17th arrondissement. The city has reclaimed land formerly used as railroad freight yards to build a sustainable community. The central park features low maintenance plants, wind turbines, solar collectors and a rainwater harvesting system. Building sustainability into a city’s infrastructure creates long-term livability, jobs and increases the quality of life. Planning for a low carbon future, while preserving resources such as water and green space, is critical in terms of meeting the challenges of climate change and population growth.

Rise Of Women In Labor Could Save The Movement

January 14, 2014 Bryce Covert, www.thenation.com Resist! Housing, Women's Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

Even as the traditional labor movement falters, hitting a ninety-seven-year low in membership rates, female labor leaders like Jayaraman are on the rise and becoming highly visible. Women workers, who were all but shut out from unions in the 1930s, when the movement first gained real power, have been pushing into the top ranks. Mary Kay Henry is president of SEIU, one of the largest unions in the country. Randi Weingarten heads the American Federation of Teachers. At the AFL-CIO, Elizabeth Shuler is the secretary-treasurer and Arlene Holt-Baker recently retired as executive vice president. Lower-profile leaders are also making headway—and meeting with success. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, made headlines around the country when her members went on strike in 2012 and won important concessions. At the helm of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Bhairavi Desai secured a fare hike that benefits taxi drivers. And outside the traditional labor movement, in the so-called “alt-labor” sector, female leaders dominate: Jayaraman at ROC United, Ai-jen Poo at the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Caring Across Generations, Nadia Marin Molina with day laborers at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Sarita Gupta at Jobs With Justice, and Madeline Janis bringing workers together with other groups in Los Angeles through LAANE. These women are bringing new ideas and strategies to labor organizing, many of which are borrowed from the women’s movement—like making the connection between what workers face on the job and what they’re dealing with at home. They don’t only target corporate bosses but bring together a variety of stakeholders within communities to fight for change in the workplace and beyond.

#OpSafeWinter: Generosity Goes Viral

January 3, 2014 Caroline Contillo, www.theidproject.org Create! Housing, Human Rights

Inspired by the real-world experience and skill sets developed on the ground during Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sandy, folks involved in these two previous relief missions came together to address another problem threatening more and more people during the economic crisis: homelessness. An #OpSafeWinternyc contact describes mutual aid as a two-way street. Not only do the homeless and hungry receive relief in the form of coats and food, but those doing the relief are developing contacts and getting the chance to use their skills. Everyone gets an expanded sense of what's possible by learning to interact with their neighbors, homeless or not, in an informal setting.

Tradition Continues: 2014 Rose Bowl Parade Occupied

January 2, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org, Resist! Corporatism, Fracking, GMOs, Housing, TPP

Starting with the 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade, Occupiers have followed the parade with their own version to bring attention to important issues. This year, the official theme of the Rose Bowl Parade was "Dreams Come True." Occupy Rose Parade responded with the theme "#WakeUp2014." Occupy Rpse Parade floats and banners focused on the Tran-Pacific Partnership, fracking and home foreclosures. Occupiers came from San Diego, Venice, Los Angeles and Menifee. Moms Across America were present to protest GMOs and PETA was on hand to protest Seaworld's torture of orcas. Nineteen PETA participants were arrested and the Seaworld float was guarded by police officers as it passed along the parade route. In all, it was a very successful day. One occupy member, Donna Piranha, said, "The two questions I heard repeated all day were: 1. 'What's fracking?' & 2. 'What's the TPP?'" All signs indicate that 2014 will be a very interesting year.

Talking Trash and the Climate Crisis

December 30, 2013 Martha Bayne, www.occupy.com Create! Housing, Reuse

Elise Zelechowski is executive director of the ReBuilding Exchange (RX), a Chicago-based organization that diverts used building materials – the source of 40% of America’s solid waste stream – away from landfills by promoting sustainable “deconstruction” practices which allow it to reclaim lumber and other raw materials from demolition and remodeling sites and make them available to the public for reuse. An initiative of Chicago’s Delta Institute, a nonprofit founded in 1998 to promote economically sound environmental policy, RX also offers workshops on creative reuse, forums for contractors and other professionals, and job training for people transitioning out of the criminal justice system. An expert on all things garbage, Zelechowski spoke about the need to rethink the waste stream, the economic and environmental impacts of creative reuse, and how making trash visible is key to making it manageable.

#WakeUp2014 is Theme of Occupy the Rose Parade

December 30, 2013 Lauren Steiner, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Fracking, Housing, Occupy, TPP

Occupy the Rose Bowl! In 2013 millions lost their homes to foreclosures, thousands suffered water and air pollution and other ill effects of fracking and more Americans are about to see their jobs outsourced, their wages reduced and their environmental and food safety regulations abolished by a secret trade deal poised to be fast tracked by Congress. The newly formed Awake Coalition plans to Occupy the Rose Parade with the theme #WakeUp2014. We don’t believe Americans can achieve the kind of change necessary to improve the live of the 99% by dreaming. We need awareness, strategy and action.

De Blasio Hires Goldman Sachs Exec To Make City More Affordable

December 23, 2013 www.gothamist.com Educate! De Blasio, Housing

For all his campaign bluster against the two cities New York has become, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio isn't exactly shying away from some of the people who helped make it that way. This morning, the mayor-elect announced that Alicia Glen will serve as Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, a newly created position that will aim to make housing more affordable, as well create living-wage jobs for New Yorkers. "We need to invest in key emerging industries and affordable housing so New Yorkers have a better shot at working their way into the middle class. Alicia has the record, fresh ideas and bold outlook to make that vision a reality,” said de Blasio at this morning's press conference. De Blasio discussed Glen's vast experience, but mostly skirted the topic of Glen's last position, as the head of Goldman Sachs's Urban Investment Group. While at Goldman, Glen worked with the Bloomberg administration on the public-private partnerships that Bloomberg championed throughout his reign.

Victims No Longer: Spain’s Anti-Eviction Movement

December 21, 2013 Carlos Delclós, www.opendemocracy.net Resist! Evictions, Foreclosures, Housing

The story of Spain’s economic, social and political crisis is one about property, need and value. And at the heart of that story lies a question that is familiar to the point of cliché: what makes a house a home? It may sound trivial, but in a country where families are sleeping in the street, entire building blocks are devoid of residents, and housing remains out of reach for major swathes of the population (despite the ubiquity of “For Sale” signs in the urban landscape), it is a question that remains largely unanswered by policymakers. For over four years, the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH or “Mortgage Victims’ Platform”, in English) have pursued a simple and poetic response to this question: people living together, for one another. Their campaign for mutual aid, solidarity and civil disobedience strike at the very core of Spain’s power structure, and despite an often overwhelming institutional blockade, they have received the support of up to 90% of the population.

The 1% are Still Stealing Our Homes

December 20, 2013 Staff, www.occupywallst.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Foreclosures, Housing

As the banks enjoy record-breaking profits and the 1% steal a bigger share of annual income than ever, the 99% have learned that this so-called economic recovery is nothing more than a big fat lie. Tens of thousands of people are still being evicted each month through foreclosure, and now private equity firms and hedge funds are executing a massive land grab in cities across the country. In some cities, like Phoenix, there are already Wall Street-owned homes on every single block by the hedge fund Blackstone. These Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms are pretending to help by renting out these vacant houses -- but we know that they are just trying to make more money off the banks of the 99%. One of these private equity firms has even released a new risky security backed by rental payments -- which is just like the mortgage-backed securities that destroyed the economy in 2008. The story of Laura and her family show how we must stop this land grab and demand that housing be enshrined as a human right, not a means to make a short-term profit.

U.S. Can Prosecute Wells Fargo Exec For Mortgage Fraud

December 16, 2013 Jonathan Stemple, www.chicagotribune.com Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Housing, Wells Fargo

Lofrano would be the first individual targeted in the lawsuit, which was originally brought in October 2012. The U.S. Department of Justice accused Wells Fargo of misleading the Department of Housing and Urban Development into believing many of its loans qualified for federal insurance, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Wells Fargo had questioned why the government waited a year before pursuing Lofrano, suggesting it might be in retaliation for the bank's late October decision to end settlement talks. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman nonetheless concluded that the government could add Lofrano and amend its complaint, substantially for the reasons it cited.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Time To Fight For Our Human Rights

December 13, 2013 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Education, Finance and the Economy, Housing, Human Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

This week marked the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What would it be like if people in the United States knew they had these rights and demanded to have them realized? We believe it would be a very different world – one that is more humane on every front. Instead, this week an annual report of Credit Suisse ranked the US as the most unequal of all advanced countries. Harriet Tubman once said, “I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” Similarly, we have human rights and our rights are being violated every day, yet many are not aware of this.

Time for a Renters’ Revolt!

December 11, 2013 Diana Olick, www.cnbc.com Educate! Housing, Wall Street

Since the housing crisis began in 2008, approximately 4.6 million homes were lost to foreclosure, according to CoreLogic. The vast majority of those homeowners became renters. Even as housing recovered, credit tightened, pushing even more potential buyers out of homeownership and into rentals, both apartments and single-family rental homes. There are now 43 million renter households, or 35 percent of all U.S. households, the highest rate in over a decade for all age groups, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies; 4 million more renters today than there were in 2007. For those aged 25 to 54, rental rates are the highest since the center began record keeping in the early 1970s.

Anti-Eviction Protestors Block Google Bus In San Francisco

December 9, 2013 Jamilah King, www.colorlines.com Resist! Corporatism, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Housing

The Google Bus means so many things. It means that the minions of the non-petroleum company most bent on world domination can live in San Francisco but work in Silicon Valley without going through a hair-raising commute by car - I overheard someone note recently that the buses shortened her daily commute to 3.5 hours from 4.5. It means that unlike gigantic employers in other times and places, the corporations of Silicon Valley aren’t much interested in improving public transport, and in fact the many corporations providing private transport are undermining the financial basis for the commuter train. It means that San Francisco, capital of the west from the Gold Rush to some point in the 20th century when Los Angeles overshadowed it, is now a bedroom community for the tech capital of the world at the other end of the peninsula.

Criminalizing Homelessness

December 7, 2013 M Caulfield, www.exposingthetruth.co Educate! Housing, Human Rights, Poverty

Recently, one family in Atlanta, Georgia decided that they were going to turn their unlucky situation into a beautiful one: to be a blessing to the lives of others by doing something good for those less fortunate in their community. Carol and Willie Fowler’s daughter Tamara had planned to get married at the Villa Christina catering hall, but the wedding was unexpectedly called off just 40 days before the event was slated to take place. At the initial news, the family was understandably upset that the planned celebration was not going to happen. But, then they had an idea, they didn’t want to let all of their planning and money to have to go to waste. So they decided to invite 200 of the cities homeless to feast on the four-course meal which had been planned for Tamara’s wedding reception.

Nelson Mandela Passes Away — His Struggle Continues

December 6, 2013 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Educate! Housing, Mandela, Neoliberalism, Poverty, South Africa, Worker Rights and Jobs

Mandela’s country remains torn apart by grinding poverty, rampant inequality, murderous crime, a deadly AIDS epidemic, pervasive political corruption, and a resurgence of brutal state oppression. The story of post-apartheid South Africa, and the mixed legacy of Mandela’s heroic struggle for freedom, must certainly qualify as one of the most authentic tragedies in modern history. As I wrote in a lengthy essay during a visit to Johannesburg last month, a pernicious form of socio-economic apartheid continues to segregate the country into two polar extremes. The newfound vanities of the emerging interracial upper class are mirrored only by the nauseating proliferation of slums on the outskirts of the cities. Apart from the right to vote, not much has changed for the average black South African. Today, 47% of South Africans live in poverty, more than in 1994 when Mandela came to power and made his “unbreakable promise” to eradicate poverty and secure “housing for all”. Two decades later, the amount of South Africans living in slums has doubled.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources