Envy Apartment

Mark Painter (Photo: (c)Pamela Ebel) Mark Painter served as a judge for 30 years. He is the author of six books and a member of the Enquirer’s Board of Contributors. In 1965, I lived in a basement apartment in Corryville. It was a vibrant neighborhood – a doctor’s office, two delis, an actual mom-and- pop dry cleaner , and perhaps the best bar and restaurant ever – the original Lakewood Tavern at Jefferson and Lakewood. What’s there now? The entire tax-paying environment was destroyed to build the Environment Protection Agency . Not that it couldn’t have been built on empty land nearby – UC and the Feds just wanted it as close to the university as possible. It’s sterile and ugly to boot. The small businesses were gone. The homeowners gone. Tax- paying property replaced by non-taxpaying property. Population lost. When you destroy a neighborhood, you tear the fabric of the community. Connections lost. Roots lost. And so it goes. Buy Photo Several dozen houses in Avondale -- abandoned ...

BANDON — Ten years ago this month, Eugene residents Rex and Carla Smith opened Bandon Crossings Golf Course just south of here on the site of a cattle and sheep ranch a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Nothing in their backgrounds prepared them for the venture. He is a podiatrist, a golf lover who walks the course and plays to a 16 handicap. “As it turns out you don’t have to be a good golfer to own a golf course,” said Carla, a former computer programmer who is at most a social golfer. They thought they would make money, and they haven’t, but they say the course breaks even, not counting their initial investment, which they don’t disclose. They dramatically overestimated the spillover traffic they would get from world- famous Bandon Dunes Golf Resort north of town. “We really thought it was going to be a good economic venture ,” Rex Smith said. “We were wrong about that part.” The plan had been for Rex to retire relatively soon after the opening and run the golf course. “Then once we ...

Rent-wise, it's pretty good (but then again, the less amenities, the lower the rent). Landscaping looks decent and is well maintained. No central a/c (it's also old-looking, and the air flow is poor), no swimming pool (the owners had it covered). Old kitchen unit. The only ceiling fan is in the dining room. Apartments have aluminum windows (doesn't help much when it's hot outside). The tenants are nice, the complex is mostly noise-free (this apt complex is not ideal for people who like to party and be loud). Unfortunately, maintenance employees aren 't around all the time and it could sometimes take more than a day for them to fix any problem you might have. Floor level apartments seem to have lizard and cockroach problems (I'm on the 2nd floor and have only seen a couple of spiders, and a house centipede). Office employees rarely answer their phone. I'd recommend living here, only if you plan on having a fan or two in each room and don't mind any of t...

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...

Employees at We-no-nah Canoe are used to working on boats. They don’t usually have to use them to get to work. The morning of Aug. 19, 2007, We-no- nah Canoe workers had to paddle to the Bundy Boulevard facility . The canoe finishing area and warehouse were underwater. So was much of Winona County . The floods claimed seven lives in Winona and Houston counties and damaged thousands of homes in the region. Dozens of roads and bridges were impassable as a result of high water, downed trees and mudslides. Starting late Saturday night , Winona County authorities began evacuating residents from Stockton, Elba, and campgrounds near Whitewater State Park . Areas of St. Charles, Goodview and Minnesota City were evacuated as rainwater rushed out of the bluffs and hills, turning creeks into torrents that washed away whatever was in their paths. Winona County Assessor Steve Hacken ’s office reported to the state in October 2007 that Winona County ’s flood-related property losses totaled $28.4...

The Oasis Terraces housing complex in Singapore and the original cast of “Rent” How to tell if one has made it in America? See if they own a home. For decades, homeownership has been one of the cornerstones of the American dream, and the U.S. housing market was the envy of the world. But that’s changed. The federal mortgage subsidy complex , which turned (white) America into a nation of homeowners in the postwar decades and helped build the world’s largest middle class , is no longer doing what it’s supposed to. Faced with stagnating wages and ballooning property prices , fewer Americans can afford to buy their own homes. The mortgage interest deduction and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are turning into regressive subsidies, channeling taxpayer money to rich homeowners and driving up housing costs while a growing group of middle-income renters must fend for themselves. Rent-stabilization laws have become weaker over time. And New York is dealing with a crumbling public housing infrast...

Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com Ann Arbor’s Hidden Valley Club apartment complex is a local example of a $ 70 billion national real estate problem : Securitized commercial loans that are in default. A foreclosure notice on the 324-unit complex near Briarwood was filed in late April, despite months of ongoing conversations initiated by the owner to modify the loan. The loan itself - which totals $18.1 million - is complicated, since it’s one among billions in real estate investments that were repackaged and sold to Wall Street investors during years of peak real estate prices . So are the circumstances behind the loan default, said Hidden Valley Club co- owner Jeff Starman . The most obvious is the drop in the property’s value as rental rates fell below levels to cover loan payments . Other factors include a national real estate climate in which banking consolidations after the lending crisis and the sheer volume of properties in securitized loans - known as Commercial Mortgage B...

One day in August, 2016, the financier Carl Icahn made an urgent phone call to the Environmental Protection Agency . Icahn is one of the richest men on Wall Street, and he has thrived, in no small measure, because of a capacity to intimidate. A Texas- based oil refiner in which he had a major stake was losing money because of an obscure environmental rule that Icahn regarded as unduly onerous. Icahn is a voluble critic of any government regulation that constrains his companies. So he wanted to speak with the person in charge of enforcing the policy: a senior official at the E.P.A. named Janet McCabe . Icahn works from a suite of offices, atop the General Motors Building , in midtown, that are decorated in the oak-and-leather fashion of a tycoon’s lair in a nineteen-eighties film. During that decade, Icahn made his reputation as one of the original corporate raiders , pioneering the art of the hostile takeover and establishing himself as a human juggernaut—a pugnacious deal machine ...