Free Republic

Comedian Dave Chappelle found himself in hot water once again Monday night after he was seen opposing an affordable housing project in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Chappelle, 48, addressed the town council and threatened to pull his money from the community if they approved plans to develop 53 acres of residential housing. The town voted on the plan Wednesday after the council meeting, where the public was invited to comment on the proposal. Now, Chappelle is clearing things up. His reps didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment, but in a statement to Fox News, his spokeswoman Carla Sims said...

But local zoning laws often don’t allow housing at these locations. [S]tate lawmakers are moving to pass new laws to get around those barriers. A bill that cleared the state Senate last week would let developers build houses on most commercial sites without changing the zoning. Another proposal would pay local governments to change the zoning to let developers build affordable housing. Last year, a bill that would have overridden local zoning laws to let developers build small apartment buildings in neighborhoods reserved for single-family homes died in the state Senate. Local governments and developers in California are already trying...

After years of not being able to find a buyer for her Saddle River mansion, Rosie O’Donnell finally caved and sold her home at a loss, The Post has learned. But the home’s next residents are already causing a stir in the tony neighborhood, home to the rich and famous, from rapper Ja Rule to singer Mary J. Blige. The six-bedroom, nine-bathroom abode is expected to be demolished and turned into a series of affordable housing units per a landmark public court settlement with Fair Share Housing Center. But the agreement has left its upscale residents outraged. According to an...

St. Paul-based developer Wellington Management Inc. woke up on Thursday morning to find its under-construction, 190-unit apartment project in its Minnehaha Commons redevelopment near the intersection of Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue in south Minneapolis had been torched and burned to the ground. The six-story, 190-unit affordable housing project had been slated to open in the spring of 2021. A city of Minneapolis worksheet on the project listed the total development cost at approximately $37 million, including contingency and reserve funds; land and construction costs were about $30 million. The apartment project has been known as Midtown Corner.

Common life events that can cause homelessness You’ve heard it before: the root cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. That’s still true. However, anyone can become homeless. Setting aside the structural factors and systemic failures, here are the most common individual causes of homelessness. Because this is a more personal look at the subject, I’ve included examples of someone who became homeless in these various ways. Eviction or Foreclosure Unsurprisingly, losing your home can result in homelessness. It did for William when he lost his Detroit home to foreclosure in 2007 while undergoing treatment for colon cancer....

Many retail employees are having a hard time making ends meet. Leftists have proposed raising wages to $15/hour, and sometimes have done so, but such wages are unrealistically expensive for most retail employers. If retail stores had restricted occupancy apartments above their selling floor, retail employees could live in these and not need to pay for a car and liability insurance. Residential restricted occupancy is sometimes found in English agricultural regions to keep housing affordable for people working in agriculture. Retail store residency would have additional benefits of reducing road congestion and CO2 emissions, increasing employee reliability, the amount of...

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany “urgently needed” extra affordable housing and used her weekly video podcast Saturday to reel off a series of steps — outlined last February as her coalition took shape — to get them built before the next federal elections in 2021. Simultaneously Saturday, the board chairman of Germany’s BA Labor Agency, Detlef Scheele, told Stuttgart-based SWR public broadcasting that affordable housing had become the “burning topic of our times.” More and more people were seeking second jobs to supplement their incomes, especially in Germany’s urban hubs, said Scheele Last year alone, Berlin property prices soared 20.5...

As any New Yorker knows, finding an apartment is not easy. The city’s affordable housing lottery was set up to assist residents, but applying for the lottery takes time and patience. Brooklyn resident Maria Martinez told PIX11 she’s been applying faithfully for 20 years, since the inception of the lottery program. Speaking through a translator, she said the process is frustrating. “You keep applying. You hope you end up with a home, but it hasn’t happened for me yet,” Martinez said. Martinez currently rents a one-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. She lives with her husband and two teenage children. “Sometimes I...

Last year we noted, via the Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, that rents in San Francisco and surrounding areas had grown so out of control that even Ivy Leaguers, like 31 year old Luke Iseman of The Wharton School, were having a hard time making ends meet. After growing tired of renting a run down, tiny apartment for $4,200 per month, Iseman decided to take a novel approach to housing. So he rented out a warehouse space and filled it with 11 steel shipping containers that he now rents out as makeshift apartments for $1,000 per month. We learn more from Bloomberg:...

The fact that the warehouse was not on the fire inspection system is puzzling because the city Fire Prevention Bureau is required to conduct annual inspections of all commercial buildings and multifamily residences, according to city ordinance. Some former residents described the warehouse as a cluttered “death trap” lacking fire sprinklers and filled with debris and exposed wires. Some said they made complaints to the city. People rented space in the building even though it was zoned only for warehouse use. The death toll from the fire was so high because the warehouse was hosting an unpermitted concert that night....

First, police fatally shot two minority suspects carrying knives. Then transcripts surfaced showing officers using racial slurs in text messages. Finally, a young black woman was shot dead as police tried to pull her from a stolen car. The woman's shooting death Thursday was the tipping point for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who forced Police Chief Greg Suhr to step down after months of mounting pressure. The new chief inherits the daunting task of turning around a troubled department in a city deeply divided by race — and doing it fast. "Reforms, reforms, reforms," acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin...

According to Census estimates, the number of blacks [in San Francisco] shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.

Anne Bakstad and Ed Cohen are starting to feel as if their family of four is an endangered species in San Francisco. Since the couple bought a house five years ago, more than a dozen families in their social circle have left the city for cheaper housing, better schools or both. The goodbyes are so frequent that Carina, age 4 1/2, wants to know when she is going to move, too. Eric, 2 1/2, misses Gus, his playmate from across the street. "When we get to know people through our kids, we think to ourselves, `Are they renters or owners?...

Nearly half the families in San Francisco with preschool children stated in a newly released survey their intent to move out of the city in the next three years, citing the lack of affordable housing, concern over public safety and the state of the public schools as their primary motivators. The survey findings, contained in a report issued Friday by the mayor's office that looks at the declining population of children in San Francisco, confirms what many have known for a long time: The city has had a hard time attracting and retaining young families. People under the age of...

We already knew the rent was too damn high, even before we published a report this February showing not only that the median for a one bedroom apartment in the city had jumped to $3,460, but that even formerly cheaper neighborhoods were now among the pricey. Apparently though, they weren’t high enough. According to Zillow, the new median rent in San Francisco is $4,225 a month. Zillow’s data compose the “Zillow Rental Index” (ZRI). This index shows rents up 16% year-over-year (YOY) this April, and take into account all types of rentals in San Francisco proper, from single family homes...

The poorest Americans, who can’t afford to buy property, are increasingly priced out of rentals. There were only 28 adequate and available to rent homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters in 2013, down from 37 in 2000, according to the Urban Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that focuses on social and economic policy. “This gap between supply and demand leaves 72% of the country’s poorest families burdened by the high cost of housing,” it found. Extremely low-income renters are households with incomes at or below 30% of the median income in that region. Not one county in the...

Struggling to live in America's $1M city: Photographer captures lives of ordinary San Francisco residents who have been forced to live in cars, trailers, garages and tents following the tech boom Photographer Wenxin Zhang moved to San Francisco in 2011 Discovered a group of people online that had been forced to find alternative means of accommodation 'I visited them alone with mutual trust,' she said The subsequent photo essay is called Goodnight Stories A recent report said that a family needs about $200,000 a year to live comfortably in San Francisco, so long as their children go to public school....

San Francisco -- Rebuilding San Francisco after a major earthquake would change its human face, hastening gentrification and driving out poor and elderly residents, experts and city officials warn. Experts say there's a 62 percent chance a quake with a magnitude of 6.7 or higher will hit the San Francisco Bay area within several decades — or tomorrow. Thousands of homes would be rendered uninhabitable, displacing up to 300,000 residents, almost half the city's population, according to some projections. A major issue would be creating replacement housing for the poor in one of the nation's most expensive markets. About 16,000...

Author, founder of Salon.com, and Bernal Heights resident David Talbot recently made a speech at Stanford which was then published in 48HillsOnline.com decrying “Stanford douchebags”, gentrification, and Mayor Ed Lee. Talbot’s strong words for Stanford students have struck a chord up north in San Francisco, and his speech is rapidly going viral.

If you’re out on the left coast and heading out for some tasty Chipotle goodness tonight, be prepared to dig a little deeper when you pay the check. Prices are going up and it’s not just because of the cost of beef. (From the Chicago Tribune) In its weekly survey of 10 Chipotle markets, Chicago-based William Blair found that Chipotle raised prices in half of the markets that the investment firm surveyed — San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and Orlando. In most markets, the price increases occurred due to the rising cost of beef.The city by the bay, however,...