Envy Apartment

SEMINOLE HEIGHTS — When Mary Myles became program manager of The Graham Home 25 years ago , 30 adults with special needs occupied 65 square-foot apartments. "It was tough on Mary when the place closed," said Gracepoint project manager Susan Morgan . "She'd be the one putting a bucket out when it leaked." Today, a partnership between Gracepoint and DDA Development has brought about a suitable replacement for the senior living facility . The Graham reopened last month and now Mary Myles sits in a corner office on the same property, overlooking a community garden and lush landscape. The 80 residents now occupy 646 square-foot apartments. No need for a bucket. "We wanted to create something better for them," Myles said. Gracepoint privately funded the project, the first affordable housing units Gracepoint built from the ground-up using low income housing tax credits and a loan from the state of Florida. "Mary had been making do with nothing,...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...

Juan Parras gives one hell of a tour of Houston’s east side. He’s charming and funny. Wearing a beret, he strikes an old-world look, like he might lead you to a cafe on a plaza. He doesn’t charge a fee for his services. After all, you’re on a “toxic tour,” and Parras is on a mission. Parras grew up in 1950s West Texas . He remembers segregated schools, the restaurants that wouldn’t serve him, the unpaved roads, and the people who lived closest to the local refinery . Those experiences led him to a career as a social justice advocate . The resident of Houston’s heavily industrial east side has worked in a city housing department , for a union, for a law clinic, and on a campaign that stopped a PVC factory from being built in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” For the last decade, he has served as executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (better known as t.e.j.a.s.). Part of his work is leading tours past the heaping piles of scrap metal along Houston’s Buffalo Ba...