Envy Apartment

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Orlando tourist strip known most for attracting conventioneers and thrill-seeking visitors — International Drive — is getting another identity. In recent years, thousands of full-time residents have moved into apartments built on the southern end of the 11-mile corridor, which has been renowned for industry gatherings, shopping and attractions. Plans call for thousands more renters — and schools. "It's kind of the rebranding of I-Drive right now," said Luann Brooks, executive director of the I- Drive Business Improvement District . "We've turned into a live and work environment, which has never been seen here before." The I-Drive area has been a permanent address for renters — and also homeowners on Lake Willis — for years. But a transformation is underway with more than a half-dozen multi- story apartment complexes , some upscale and trimmed in stacked stone with resort-style pools. The south-central area of Orlando that includes ...

House-flipping hit its highest levels last year since before the recession as investors seek to capitalize on rising home prices and a seller’s market with tight inventory. But the process is nothing like what you see on TV, where it looks like a home can be bought, gutted, renovated and resold in less than an hour – not including commercial breaks . The truth is often much messier, real estate professionals in Charlotte said. “It’s a lot easier to lose money in this business than it is to make it,” said Jeff Johnson, owner of NewPath Properties , which specializes in buying and rehabbing distressed properties . Still, that’s not deterring people from giving it a try in Charlotte. First-quarter figures from Attom Data Solutions show flips – defined as the same property selling twice in a 12-month period same year – made up more than 6 percent of sales in the Charlotte region, or 540 sales. House-flipping increased almost 4 percent from a year ago, though it remains well below the cit...

Short-term rentals of private residences would be sharply curbed under a proposed ordinance drafted by San Diego City Councilwoman Barbara Bry , whose district includes the La Jolla area. Her proposal, released Monday, arrives a few months before the full council is expected to take up yet again the contentious question of how to regulate vacation rentals , which have mushroomed in popularity with the growth of the online home-sharing platform, Airbnb. The city planning department already is at work drafting alternative measures based on three options it released earlier this year, which at the time ranged from the most permissive to one that would effectively ban such rentals. The city is hoping to hear the matter Oct. 23, said Planning Director Jeff Murphy . It will mark the sixth hearing at City Hall in two years to consider the issue of short-term rentals. Under Bry’s suggested regulations, homeowners would be allowed to rent out only their primary residences on a short-term bas...

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...

Chris Kraus remembers the late writer, in life and in death. Kaucyila Brooke, Untitled #94 from Kathy Acker’s Clothes , 1998/2005, color photograph. From the cover of After Kathy Acker . Like everything in the past, everyone remembers it differently, and some of the people involved hardly remember at all. We’re talking about something that happened more than seventeen years ago . But on January 23, 1998, which was a Friday, friends of the late writer Kathy Acker drove from San Francisco to Fort Funston, about twenty-five minutes away, to scatter her ashes. She’d died two months earlier at an alternative clinic in Tijuana, where she received palliative care for late-stage, metastasized cancer. The ash scattering—like the wake at Bob Glück’s house on December 13 and the memorial reading at Slim’s Bar where Michelle Handelman was booed off the stage for no reason she can recall—devolved into a kind of black comedy, the way these things often do. I remember Cookie Mueller at Jackie Cur...

Balancing the needs of the residents who live here and the tourists who come to visit requires political will and leadership. After years of discussions and failed proposals, it’s time for clarity on an issue central to San Diego’s housing and tourism markets — short- term vacation rentals . Through a March 15, 2017 memo, City Attorney Mara Elliott opined that short-term rentals are illegal under the current City zoning laws . The City is now awaiting regulatory guidance from the City Council before taking any action to enforce the City Attorney ’s memo. My proposed regulatory framework respects the rights of property owners, upholds current zoning laws and creates a workable compromise. I will present a draft ordinance for community review at a public Town Hall meeting 6 -7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 30, at the La Jolla Community Center . My proposal protects the rights of homeowners who wish to participate in home sharing by renting out a room in their home to help make ends me...

The city of Tampa is on the cusp of a total makeover. With billions of dollars in investment and dozens of new apartment, condo, office and cultural buildings in the pipeline, the city's skyline and surrounding communities are poised to look a whole lot different than what it does today. But dreaming up the future of Tampa doesn't come without its challenges. For all the promises of a new urban core filled with hotels, parks, food halls and stores, there are also potential pitfalls. The Tampa Bay Times identified the five key obstacles that stand in the way of some of the biggest projects proposed in Hillsborough County . Many of these challenges are ones local politicians and business leaders have been fighting for years to find a solution. Others are fairly new territory, but still pose a real threat to the region's continued growth. [LOREN ELLIOTT | Times] A construction site is seen just north of Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa , Fla., on Monday, May 1, 2017. Curr...