Envy Apartment

Nearly 45 percent of the millennials living in Milwaukee are having trouble paying for rent, according to a recent report by the apartment listing-service ABODO. The report looked at how much in rent people were paying in 100 cities throughout the U.S.; researchers said that people were struggling to afford rent if they were spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. Nationally, 46.5 percent of those in the millennial generation struggled to afford rent. The city where millennials struggled most was Honolulu, where nearly 69 percent spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Meanwhile, the metro area that was most affordable to millennials was Omaha-Council Bluffs in Nebraska and Iowa. “When compared to the rest of the 100 largest cities in the country, Milwaukee is home to the 68th most cost-burdened group of Millennials in the entire U.S.,” Sam Radbil, a spokesman for ABODO, said in an email. Various observers have said members of the Millennial generat...

September 27, 2005 | By Joe Newman, Sentinel Staff Writer When Lesley Brown got her first job out of college, she figured it was time to move out of the cramped house she shared with three other people. But finding something Brown, 22, could afford near the Lockheed Martin facility on Sand Lake Road was another matter. At $950 a month, even a small one-bedroom apartment was out of reach for the University of Central Florida graduate . At that price, she would have been spending much more than a third of her salary on rent. "I was definitely surprised by the prices," Brown said. "The market soared out of my reach." Finding an affordable rental in Central Florida is becoming a Herculean challenge. Two of every five renters in Orange, Seminole, Polk and Volusia counties spent 35 percent or more of their monthly income on housing in 2004, according to a recent U.S. census report. The bureau did not track Osceola County . More than half of all renters in Orange, Semi...

It is one of the necessities in life, finding shelter. But who actually enjoys taking the time to search all over town for a perfect place that mandatorily fits into a budget? Anchorage isn't exactly the most expensive city around, but it's certainly not the cheapest. In a search for almost anything these days, most will likely turn to everybody's favorite modern resource , the Internet. Unfortunately, the online listing for Anchorage apartments is slim, and the information available for those apartments is even more feeble. The best and probably most accurate aid in an apartment search is an Apartment Finder catalogue , the small, detailed pamphlets found all over town in stores like the local supermarket and other retailers. The Apartment Finder names a variety of complexes citywide, lists apartments within most everyone's budget, and even provides maps for easy directions. And it can be acquired for every consumer's favorite cost: p...

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...

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...

The whole point of having a job is to be able to afford housing, food and the necessities so you can keep on keeping on, right? So it would make sense for salaries to rise with housing costs, but that's not always the case. In many areas, rent prices move on up without giving wages a chance to catch up, and it especially varies when you factor in the industries people work in. A recent study from Apartment List broke down post-rent wages in 82 metro areas, across three industries: blue collar, knowledge and service. According to the findings, in most metro areas, rent prices increase steadily while wages stay stagnant , disproportionately affecting blue collar and service workers . As you can see in the chart above, from 2005 to 2015, post- rent wages fell 4 .6 percent for blue- collar industry workers , and 6.7 percent for service industry workers , while they increased by 5.7 percent for knowledge industry workers . While knowledge industry workers typically see wage inc...

If you are new to the property game and have recently decided that it’s time to move into a place of your own, then you will have likely asked yourself the question “Do I want to rent an apartment, or purchase a property of my own?” Well fortunately, this article aims to help you answer that question, by offering insights into why it might be a better idea to rent or purchase for your current situation, as well as other factors that you may not have considered yet. Renting Provides Flexibility while Purchasing Offers Stability In a recent article by EnlightenMe, they shared insight when they mentioned that one of the primary factors to consider when deciding whether to purchase a condo or rent an apartment, was the fact that renting offers flexibility , whereas buying offers stability . For example, if you are an entrepreneur or are still finding your footing within your career, you will need to decide whether you can realistically settle down. If you are expecting to be relocated with...

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...

If true, the allegations against Lorena Loren, the former director of the St. Clair Housing Commission , are disturbing on a number of levels. Federal investigators allege Loren embezzled more than $300,000 from the housing commission between 2008 and 2016, when she retired. Most heartbreaking is that the money that Loren allegedly misdirected into her own pockets and those of some of her family members was meant to help low income people afford decent housing . Stealing from poor people is a special kind of despicable. Stealing from low- income families to buy a range of goods worth $165,000 and ranging from beauty supplies to alcoholic beverages, which investigators say Loren did with a housing commission credit card , is lower than despicable. Beside abusing the credit card, investigators say Loren abused Section 8 housing vouchers to pay herself and family members rent for apartments and tenants that didn’t exist and to pay themselves to live in their own dwellings. What bot...

The average market rent for a one- bedroom apartment in San Mateo County is $2,053 per month, according to new rental data released by the San Mateo County Department of Housing. This reflects an 8.2 percent increase from last year. This is devastating news for anyone looking for affordable rental housing and comes on the heels of other unsettling trend data for the county, housing officials said. United Way's 211 referral line for  San Mateo   County  reports taking significantly more calls for housing related services than for any other service. Additionally, according to the county's new Health and Human Services Agency report on homelessness, the county's homeless rate has risen 12 percent since 2011. "People can't afford to live here, and not just people who are poor," said Kate Comfort Harr , Executive Director of HIP Housing, a  San Mateo   County  nonprofit specializing in affordable housing programs including Home Sharing . "Anyone maki...

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...

NEW YORK, NY — It's one of the oldest rivalries in American migration: New York vs. Los Angeles. For the better part of a century, residents of the nation's two largest metro areas have been defending their chosen kingdom and dismissing the other on an endless loop of judginess between kitty-corner coasts. Ew, the traffic! But the sunshine! But the subway! But the garbage! But the skyline! But the coastline! But the bustle! But the chill! In this tireless war of words, a clear winner has yet to emerge. But it's harder to argue against the numbers. Thousands of working professionals have relocated to Los Angeles County from New York City in the past year and a half, according to a series of monthly "workforce reports" released this spring and summer by the job- networking site LinkedIn (and spotted by LA Weekly). And it's not exactly a two-way street. Since early 2016, according to LinkedIn, around seven or eight out of every 10, 000 site users in LA report...