Envy Apartment

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...

Palo Alto Jane Huang, 29 Huang moved to Palo Alto with her parents at the age of four. She attended local high schools and Stanford University. Yet despite her hard work, the Palo Alto housing market is too challenging for her to foresee a future in her hometown. “I went to Stanford, I work as a software developer, I make a six-figure income, and I still have to live with three roommates,” Huang said. “What more can I do?” Huang isn’t worried about not being able to pay her rent, but she is worried about doing anything that might upset her landlord. “Landlords have a lot more power here than they used to,” she said. “They know how impossible it would be for their renters to find anything else locally.” While her concerns for herself are real and serious — “With the current housing market , I’m afraid I’ll have to live with roommates for the rest of my life” — she’s equally concerned about what the housing market means for the many Palo Altans who weren’t fortunate enough t...

Last year, the Miami- Dade County Commission shot down a plan that would have forced local developers to include some affordable apartments in every new project. Commissioner Javier Souto claimed the idea was "social engineering," one of the most profoundly stupid things said in South Florida politics this decade. According to the study, almost two-thirds of Miami's poor are stuck spending more than half of their income on rent or living in roach-infested hellholes. "These households are defined as very low-income renters who do not receive government housing assistance and who paid more than one-half of their income for rent, lived in severely inadequate conditions , or both," HUD's researchers write. "High rents in proportion to renter incomes remain dominant among households with worst-case needs, leaving these renters with substantial, unmet need for affordable housing." Larger cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, techn...

It’s no secret that the U.K. has a housing problem—traditional home construction is simply insufficient to meet demand. But London’s housing-conscious mayor, Sadiq Khan, is tackling the issue head-on, with a new investment of more than £25 million ( $32 million) to finance the construction of high-density, compact apartments. The money is being pumped into Pocket Living, a developer specializing in 400-square- foot modular apartments that rent for roughly 20 percent below market rate. At least 1,059 homes will be built for first-time buyers with low incomes by March 2021, and the apartments will be required to remain affordable in perpetuity. The mayor’s cash infusion will be used to finance the purchase of small brownfield sites in London that will be developed into housing, and the money will be paid back in full by 2030. “The housing crisis is the biggest challenge facing Londoners today and I have been honest from the start that we won’t be able to turn things round overnight ,...

There was a time, and it wasn’t long ago, when Mission Valley was farmland. Black and white photos from the 1960s show rows of turnip plants and herds of grazing dairy cows owned by farmers. “I remember the stories of how they would take the cows under the freeway after they built Interstate 8, or 80 back in those days,” said Rob Hutsel, a fourth- generation San Diegan . “The deal with the landowner was he still had to get his cows to the river. And so they left a tunnel under it so they could take their cows down to the river to get their water... I always wonder whatever happened to the tunnel.” The completion of the I-8 freeway around 1960 was the beginning of the end of an era in valley. The Mission Valley mall was built, and the valley became a suburban shopping destination . Now, another shape shift is on the horizon. Hutsel is president of the San Diego River Park Foundation and a member of the city’s Mission Valley Planning Group . He sees opportunity in Mission Valley . “...

Last week, we sponsored the 11th annual Points Summer Book Club , a community discussion of Matthew Desmond's piercing Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City . We debated the causes of eviction, the effect on children, how to view landlords' role, and what this discussion means for a city like Dallas. The book club also included an event with the author, in a partnership with Southern Methodist University 's SMU Reads program . On Thursday, Desmond spoke to a crowd of more than 900 people, laying out his research and his experience with evictions' damaging effect on people's safety, family, jobs and mental health. "When you add all that up, we have to conclude that eviction -- which used to be rare in this country, which used to draw crowds — it's not just a condition of poverty, it's also a cause of it. And it's making it worse. It's leaving a deep and jagged scar on the next generation — which means that we can't fix poverty in A...

A new article about the department of Housing and Urban Development called “Is Anybody Home At HUD?” says: “HUD has long been something of an overlooked stepchild within the federal government. Founded in 1965 in a burst of Great Society resolve to confront the “urban crisis,” it has seen its manpower slide by more than half since the Reagan Revolution.” The piece, co-published by New York Magazine and ProPublica, profiles HUD Secretary Ben Carson and outlines how pending cuts to the agency will affect programs that serve millions of Americans on the brink of poverty. Journalist Alec MacGillis writes : “For a White House that swept to power on a wave of racially tinged rural resentment and anti-welfare sentiment, high on the demolition list might be a department with “urban” in its name. The administration’s preliminary budget outline had already signaled deep cuts for HUD. And Donald Trump had chosen to lead the department someone with zero experience in government or social p...

DETROIT (CNNMoney) - This is Detroit, not Hobbiton. Just like the tiny homes of the hobbits in the "Lord of The Rings" series, the Cass Community Center Tiny Homes Project looks cute. But its small buildings house big hopes . Four years ago, Detroit became the biggest American city in history to file for bankruptcy, brought down by a snowballing financial crisis that followed huge layoffs at the city's major employers General Motors and Chrysler. Today, Detroit is in a period of economic recovery, yet many of its hardest hit residents still don't have adequate housing . The homeless population is around 2,000 and dwindling, according to city authorities. But uncertainty hangs over low-income earners, who struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living. "Purchase prices and rents are increasing faster than people's incomes," says Earl Poleski, executive director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority . "That's a manifestatio...

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...