Excerpt, NYTimes, Sept 2019 Nationally, about a quarter of tenants pay more than half their income in rent, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. A greater share of households nationwide are renting than at any point in a half-century. But only four states — California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York — have localities with some type of …
John Mclean is on a limited budget and is eligible for service at PCs for People, a nonprofit that sells refurbished computers and discounted internet. He’s helped by Fabian Vazquez, a customer service rep for the nonprofit, on September 4, 2019 at the retail store on Alameda Ave. (Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun) “The cruel irony of the digital divide” …
Chicago implements energy rating system for buildings + affordable, ZNE Habitat homes in Colorado
Katie Pyzyk, Smart Cities Dive, Aug. 26, 2019 Chicago launched its Energy Rating System to rate and make public the energy efficiency of large buildings (50,000 square feet or larger), including about 3,400 buildings across the city. The buildings will be provided with placards illustrating their energy performance on a zero to four-star scale, which they are required to display on-site and report …
We have had an economic system, a housing system, a school system, a credit system, that has specifically excluded black populations through housing, through student loans, through credit, through businesses, from the wealth accumulation of whites
And whiteness has been defined differently throughout time. And so we can go through the history of whiteness, but all of it has been built on an anti-blackness. So we have to talk about the racial wealth gap if we’re going to talk about housing, or schools, or anything like that. You can’t understand why we have the gaps that …
Six Reasons Why Berkeley’s Ban on New Natural Gas Is a Great Idea
by Gideon Weissman, Monday, August 19, 2019 Natural GasElectrificationGlobal WarmingFrackingClean Energy Last month the city of Berkeley, California, banned natural gas infrastructure from new buildings.[1] The most obvious reason for the ordinance is enough to justify it on its own: Natural gas is a fossil fuel, and burning it contributes to global warming. But by getting off gas, Berkeley is doing a whole …
More Than 50 Ideas, Policies, Proposals, Suggestions And Radical Notions To Fight The Affordable Housing Crisis
National Affordable Housing August 11, 2019 by Dees Stribling, Bisnow The affordable housing crisis is at a fevered pitch. Nearly half of all U.S. renters are cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of after-tax income on housing and thus may have difficulty affording food, clothing, transportation and medical care. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that 12 million households (renting and owning) …
Prefab affordable housing for backyards
Excerpt from Quartz, Aug 2019 Seattle-based startup Node sees an urban future for housing built in a factory. Node wants to be the Ikea of the home industry. The modular homes it is making can be flat-packed—the ultra-efficient technique popularized by the Swedish retailer—and then assembled in a matter of days on site. Shingles fasten into place. Walls snap together in metal …
What U.S. Cities Are Learning from Copenhagen’s Evolution
By Kathleen McCormick, Urban Land, August 8, 2019 Spanning a busy arterial road that separates the historic center from the harborfront, BLOX (center), designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the Dutch architecture firm founded by Rem Koolhaas, opened in 2018 as the new home of the Danish Architecture Center. The 89,000-square foot (27,000 sq m) BLOX also features 22 rental …
Assisting low income residents with moving within the region to areas with better schools or opportunities made a big difference in Seattle
Vox.com August 2019 Most American cities have a stark racial divide. In Seattle, the divide runs north to south: North Seattle is largely white; South Seattle is largely not. And as is usually the case in the US, the racial divide is also an opportunity divide. The north is richer and has more expensive houses and higher-ranked schools than the south. Research released by a group …
The Housing Crisis Is Worse Than You Think: 10 statistics that outline the U.S. housing crisis from the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual report on the gap between wage-earners and rent prices
24.7%: U.S. renters who spend more than half their income on rent. 49.5%: Those who spend more than the federal threshold of “affordable” (30% of income). 7,000,000: Nationwide shortage of affordable homes for low-income renters. 552,830: People experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2018. 7,400,000: Americans forced to move in with friends or family. 32%: Increase in median rent from 2001 to 2015. 97%: Increase in the number of homes renting for $2,000 …