Free Republic

U.S. adults disregard potential negative impact of Amazon's presence Time is running out for cities to submit their bids to become Amazon.com Inc.’s second home. The tech giant announced plans last month to open up a second headquarters — and its hunt for a host city. Bids from metropolitan areas are due Thursday. There are plenty of willing contestants: Mayors across the country have launched viral-worthy campaigns enticing Amazon to choose their cities, with the winner set to be announced sometime in 2018. A Sept. 29-Oct. 1 Morning Consult survey found that 72 percent of a national sample of 2,201...

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump—like his opponent Hillary Clinton—spoke glowingly about infrastructure spending, alluding to Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System as examples of how spending on roads, bridges and airports helped unite the country. For 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s infrastructure an overall grade of D+, estimating it would cost more than $4 trillion to upgrade properly. But President Trump’s $1 trillion dollar, 10-year infrastructure plan has so far moved along at a halting pace. This tortoise-like process may offer an opportunity to think more strategically about...

The Vernon Parish Police Jury on Monday approved Champion Home Builders for participation in the parish’s ad valorem tax exemptions under the industrial tax exemption program, clearing the way for a $1.3 million plant to build manufactured homes in Leesville. Jury President Jim Tuck said Champion plans to create 200 new direct jobs at the plant in Northside Industrial Park. “I am very proud for the City of Leesville, as well as the surrounding communities,” Leesville Mayor Rick Allen said. “The jobs that this company will provide are desperately needed. We have worked to lease the Industrial Park, not to...

City Councils Taking Land from the People for Profit – U.N. Agenda 21 Generating Mass Homelessness across America? Resident-led grassroots organizations are springing up in cities around the country. In 2016, activists against gentrification shut down the Bay Bridge and disrupted a council meeting in Oakland while voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to expand tenant protections. Outside well-known hubs of activism, the “renter nation” movement has won similar policy changes and exposed backroom deals by corrupt city officials. Landlords say tenants are being misled into illegal or extreme tactics such as rent strikes that will only make it harder for...

A Chicago-based company will open a Birmingham plant, creating 100 jobs. Zekelman Industries said its Z Modular division will take the 106,000-square-foot former O’Neal Steel building in Valley East Industrial Park. It will be the first U.S. manufacturing plant for the company formed less than a year ago from VectorBloc Corp., Z Modular Fabrication and Connexio Building Systems Inc. “The city of Birmingham is proud to welcome Z Modular to our community,” Birmingham Mayor William Bell said. “This company represents the future of the construction industry. Z Modular choosing our region for its first U.S. plant signifies Birmingham’s importance to...

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The International Trade Commission has found injury in a suit filed by Suniva and SolarWorld, a pair of struggling, foreign-owned, U.S.-based solar cell companies who claim foreign imports have unfairly harmed their bottom lines. ITC judges voted four to zero to advance the suit into the remedy phase. While it's not yet clear what the commission will recommend, the two companies have requested a tariff of 40 cents per watt for foreign-made solar cells, as well as a price floor for solar cells manufactured in the United States. Such a remedy, should it be granted by...

Suburban housing construction has ground to a halt in Northern Virginia, according to county officials from the region, due to a law that changed the state's proffer system. "New home development has slowed across Northern Virginia since new rules kicked in last summer limiting what public infrastructure developers were allowed to pay for as part of new construction projects," reports Max Smith. That assessment was delivered by elected officials from around the region attending a meeting on the subject earlier this week. Officials from Loudon, Fairfax, and Prince Williams counties agree that housing construction has slowed since the law took...

TV star Steve Harvey is apparently pressing ahead with his commitment to help the Trump administration on its Housing and Urban Development initiatives despite the fierce backlash he received for meeting with then-President-elect Trump in January. In an extensive interview with the Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, the comedian and Family Feud host revealed that he has been meeting with HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson to discuss building what he called “vision centers” in New York City, to teach STEM subjects and computer programming to children.

When I was a college freshman in the early 1990s, I lived in a dorm that was as sterile as a hospital room, a 193-square-foot box with white cinderblock walls that I shared with two other guys. The bathroom was also shared—with an entire floor. Such basic living quarters greeted generations of college students before me. For much of the history of American higher education, dorms and other student amenities—from dining halls to recreational centers—were an afterthought to the primary business of campus planning: grand academic buildings. In fact, in the 1840s, the president of Brown University described dorm life...

Local entities involved in the proposed Interstate 15 Siphon Road interchange signed off this week on plans to start construction on a project expected to dramatically increase the Pocatello area’s population and greatly improve the local economy. Those behind the effort to build the interchange say that with its construction, the area north of Pocatello and Chubbuck will see massive development in the future, including a technology park employing thousands of people, shopping centers, dozens of new neighborhoods, parks, trails and even new concert venues. But before such unheralded growth can occur, the interchange needs to be built. While the...

Older Americans own half of the houses in the market. Many are simply refusing to sell and others have adult “kids” moving back in since they can’t afford a place to rent or buy. It is a Catch 22 and many people are looking at countries like Italy where the number of adults that live at home is enormous. Multi-generational families just don’t coincide with the “rugged American” worldview where you go out on your own and you make it with your own two hands. Of course, many house humpers had mom and dad chip in but that doesn’t make...

SEATTLE - The Seattle City Council voted 8 to 0 to prohibit landlords from using criminal records to screen prospective tenants. The only exception to the new ordinance are sex offenders. City leaders and supporters of the measure; 'Fair Chance Housing Ordinance' insist its goal is to reduce housing discrimination and barriers. Inside Seattle Council Chambers there was overwhelming support for a measure. In short, it will restrict how landlords can use arrest and conviction records to exclude prospective renters. Seattle landlords will no longer be able to ask about criminal records, pending charges, juvenile records or any arrest record...

If the mall killed Main Street, then this must be Main Street’s moment for schadenfreude. Real Estate Investment Trust stocks have dropped 18% in the past year, Bloomberg recently reported, and while mall executives would prefer to see the current decline as a transformative period rather than a death knell, that may be wishful thinking. Not all malls are created equal, of course. A-class malls are thriving, due to a premier selection of retail and restaurant tenants that successfully target the affluent communities they serve. However, B and C-class malls are struggling to find customers and keep tenants, as anchor...

The percentage of American full-time minimum-wage workers who can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any U.S. state without being what the government calls "burdened" is so vanishingly small — less than one percent — that it rounds down to zero. That's the conclusion of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a lobbying group that pushes for more low-income housing and also reports that no full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment in any U.S. state. Researchers define "afford" by people's ability to pay 30 percent of their income or less on the cost of housing, which may...

Sin City’s projected 5,000 new apartment units for this year makes no noise nationally in the latest real estate craze. “In 2017, the ongoing apartment building-boom in the US will set a new record: 346,000 new rental apartments in buildings with 50+ units are expected to hit the market,� writes Wolf Richter on Wolf Street. That is three times the number of units that came on line in 2011.Richter continues, “Deliveries in 2017 will be 21% above the prior record set in 2016, based on data going back to 1997, by Yardi Matrix, via Rent Café. And even 2015 had set a...

TORONTO -- Home sales in the Greater Toronto Area tanked last month and prices continued to recede, the city's real estate board said Thursday, further evidence that provincial measures aimed at cooling one of the hottest housing markets in North America may be working. The number of transactions fell 40.4 per cent in July compared to the same month last year, driven by fewer sales of detached homes in Toronto and its surrounding areas. The average selling price of all homes in the Greater Toronto Area was $746,218, up five per cent from a year ago. However, it's the third...

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) its July 2017 Porker of the Month for advocating for taxpayer-funded housing for members of Congress.During an interview with The Hill on June 26, 2017, then-Rep. Chaffetz said, “I really do believe Congress would be much better served if there was a housing allowance for members of Congress.” He admitted that the current political climate made such a proposal legislatively arduous, but claimed that, “A $2,500 housing allowance would be appropriate and a real help to have at least a decent quality of life in...

As the effects of the housing crisis further recede, markers of distress are declining, with one notable exception: Among the batches of severely delinquent mortgages bought by institutional investors, foreclosures are on the rise. The trend is a reminder of the reasons many community advocates resisted allowing institutional investors to buy delinquent mortgages in government auctions that began in 2010. Wall Street, those advocates said, shouldn’t be rewarded for its role in creating the housing crisis with the chance to buy for pennies on the dollar the very assets whose values it dented. The government auctions promised a risk-sharing solution...

You'd be forgiven for thinking that all is right with the housing market these days. With prices and sales both soaring nationally, the housing panic of 2007 seems like an all-but-forgotten nightmare. But it's still very much with us. The prestigious State of the Nation's Housing report for 2017, published by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies just last week, touts the newfound health of the housing market. "A decade after the onset of the Great Recession, the national housing market is finally returning to normal," the report says. "With incomes rising and household growth strengthening, the housing sector is...

TAMPA — Hillsborough County leaders voted Tuesday to move forward with a plan to add 90 miles of toll lanes to Tampa Bay's interstates despite continued opposition from the people whose neighborhoods would be impacted the most by the project. The Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization — a 16-person board which approves transportation projects — listened to more than 3½- hours of public comment on its Transportation Improvement Program, which lists the county's priorities for the next five years. The TIP includes dozens of projects, from road maintenance to bike paths. But the evening's debate centered around only one project:...