Free Republic

Santa Monica, California, is preparing to construct an apartment building for the homeless that would cost roughly $1 million per unit. The apartment building, which will be built in Santa Monica and will be home to “122 apartments” and two levels of underground parking, will cost more than $123 million, according to the website for the City of Santa Monica. A second design concept on the website found that the project could cost even more, totaling more than $200 million for 196 apartments.

A crafty squatter bilked his landlord of at least $72,000 in rent for his Lower East Side apartment — then made tens of thousands in profit by subletting the unit, the owner charges. For three years, computer programmer Thor Boucher hasn’t paid a cent of his bargain-rate $2,000-a-month, two-bedroom, one-bathroom Essex Street pad, claiming he didn’t have to because the building was noisy and shook, according to landlord Ed Yau and Manhattan Civil Court documents. The alleged freeloader had no qualms renting the space out, though, charging as much as $1950 per room monthly since November 2021 on platforms including...

The Democrat mayor of New Orleans Latoya Cantrell is facing an FBI probe over allegations she had an 'ongoing adulterous affair' with the former head of her police detail on city property. Cantrell was seen on security cameras spending hours together with Jeffrey Vappie in a city-owned apartment during work hours. Vappie has himself been investigated over hours he was alleged to be clocking in. Now, the federal government is reportedly looking into whether the couple abused government funds for personal trips, as the pair have been seen partying from Los Angeles to Scotland. Vappie's wife, Danielle, alleges that her...

NEMA, one of San Francisco’s largest apartment buildings, has lost almost half its value in five years as it faces an “imminent default” risk on its mortgage, according to a new report. The 754-unit apartment tower was valued at $543.6 million in 2018 but is now valued at $279 million by real estate data firm Trepp. That’s below the value of owner Crescent Heights’ $384 million mortgage, an ominous sign indicative of the Mid-Market area’s struggles. • S.F. Bay Area property map: Here’s who owns every building in region Crescent Heights didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but...

In the modern rental market, some apartments and other types of homes for rent have requirements from their owners dictating the level of a tenant's income. Typically, these require tenants to make three times their monthly rent in income to qualify, with some requiring up to four times the rent to ensure tenants will pay each month. Over the past few years, rental rates have increased dramatically across the U.S., with a 16% increase observed nationally from 2021 to 2022, according to NerdWallet. While that growth has reportedly slowed, rents remain higher than they have historically. A TikToker questioned the...

A bullet hit Austin’s left arm and traveled through his chest, lungs, and all the way to his right arm, according to Tarrant County Medical Examiner Kendall Crowns. An hour after police responded to the scene at the apartment complex, Austin’s neighbor, 21-year-old Gabriel Nathaniel Brown, turned himself in to the police. He told police he did not commit a crime, but that he shot Austin by accident. The events leading up to the shooting According to police reports, Brown told investigators that he had just received a micro conversion kit for his pistol. A micro conversion kit is used...

A shooting at an apartment complex in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Wednesday evening left five victims with injuries, including two juveniles and three adults, police said. Fort Lauderdale police said the shooting started shortly before 9 p.m. after an argument escalated between two groups of people in the courtyard of the complex, located at Northwest 29th Avenue and 19th Street, WSVN reported. “At approximately 8:40 p.m. this evening, at this apartment complex … we had a group of people gathered in the courtyard. A second group of people confronted them,” FLPD Chief Patrick Lynn said. “As a result, gunfire ensued.” The...

Robert De Niro's 18-year-old grandson Leandro was found dead on Sunday afternoon with a white powdery substance on a plate near his body, DailyMail.com can reveal. Leandro was the son of De Niro's adopted daughter Drena, 51, and artist Carlos Rodriguez. On Sunday, Drena announced his death on Instagram, saying: 'I wish that love alone could have saved you.' Aspiring actor and director Leandro was following in his mother and grandfather's career footsteps, landed a small role in 2018's A Star Is Born as the son of Bradley Cooper's best friend, George 'Noodles' Stone, played by Dave Chappelle. He also...

A project intended to provide an entire apartment building for “women-only” won’t be as free from Y-chromosomes as initially thought, with organisers admitting that biologically male transgender and non-binary individuals will be allowed to rent flats in the building. A feminist scheme to build a 15-storey apartment block for single women, particularly “vulnerable” women from ethnic minority backgrounds or those facing domestic abuse, has been given the go-ahead by the Ealing Council in west London this week, the BBC reported. Under the plans, men would be prohibited from renting apartments in the building, and would only be allowed into the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned a Russian missile strike that he said killed two people, including a child, in a Zaporizhzhia apartment building on Sunday. “Tonight, the Russian army shelled Zaporizhzhia with S-300 missiles. They hit a house, an apartment building. Three people were inside. A man, a woman and a child — a girl, her name was Iryna, she would have turned 11 this year. She died. The man died too,” Zelensky said in an address to Ukrainians, adding that the woman is in critical condition. “This is how the terrorist state spends this Palm Sunday. This is how...

The investment firm of billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer is set to begin acquiring and upgrading apartments and buildings across the U.S. in an effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to reports. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Galvanize Climate Solutions’ latest plan will rest on strategic asset acquisition, proprietary methods of retrofitting buildings and adding solar panels in buildings across the country, and result in the long-term payoff of assembling a portfolio of energy-efficient buildings. The head of Galvanize Real Estate Joseph Sumberg told the media outlet that the firm will also look into purchasing student housing, self-storage, and industrial...

A new Zillow study discovered it takes four people to cover the cost of rent for an apartment in Raleigh. Chelsea Byrd went out on her own in a one-bedroom apartment, paying $700 a month. Since then, she has become a mom with a growing family, paying $1,400 for two bedrooms in Raleigh. "Where we are now, it’s pretty tight," she said. But the search for something bigger brings a more costly bill. "Everywhere else we’re looking right now is exponentially higher," she said. "These are things that should not be so hard for the average working person to attain."...

CNN - Three bodies found Thursday in the Detroit area are believed those of three rappers who have been missing for almost two weeks, a spokesperson for the city of Highland Park said. The bodies were found in Highland Park, roughly 6 miles northwest of Detroit, Highland Park spokesperson LaKisha Brown said. Michigan State Police, who are leading the investigation into the bodies, have not confirmed their identities. Victims were found in an abandoned Highland Park apartment complex, they said Thursday evening. **SNIP** State police said a homicide task force, troopers, and workers from their forensic lab were part of...

The congressman-elect who will become the first member of Generation Z to join Congress next month said on Thursday that he was denied an apartment in Washington, D.C., because of his “really bad” credit. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a community organizer who is set to take the seat of Rep. Val Demings (D) representing Florida’s 10th Congressional District, tweeted that he told his potential landlord that his credit was poor as he applied to the apartment, and was told it would be fine. But Frost said his application was denied and he lost the apartment and the application fee. He said...

Proptech company RealPage won’t be able to turn the page on its software controversy anytime soon. A class-action lawsuit filed by a University of Washington student accused RealPage of colluding with student housing providers to inflate rent, Multifamily Dive reported. The lawsuit, filed last month, names a number of prominent multifamily landlords, including Greystar and Cushman & Wakefield. The plaintiff alleges collusion in popular college towns, such as Ann Arbor and Gainesville. The lawsuit claimed operators had the ability to collaborate and track competitors’ rents through the RealPage platform.

Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos said that while cougars “may look cute and cuddly when young, these animals can grow up to be unpredictable and dangerous.” New York has seen other notable cases involving dangerous animals in private residences, including Ming, a 400-pound tiger that was removed from a Harlem apartment in 2003. Ming’s owner, Antoine Yates, was arrested and sentenced to five months in prison for reckless endangerment. Ming died in 2019 at the Noah’s Lost Ark Exotic Animal Rescue Center in Ohio. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the cougar’s case “is currently under investigation and no...

Gotcha.

The lead investigator in the wrong-apartment killing of an innocent man by a former Dallas police officer on trial for murder claimed on Wednesday that the officer did not commit a crime based on the totality of the evidence. The stunning pronouncement by Texas Ranger David Armstrong, the lead homicide investigator on the high-profile case, came while he was under cross-examination by an attorney for fired police officer Amber Guyger but not while the jury was present in the courtroom.

This article was written in response to a discussion that I had with a friend of mine. He made the statement, “You wouldn’t be able to believe how these (Chinese) people lived! You and I could never live like that!” Turns out that he saw some propaganda from the UK and was convinced that the Chinese lived in windowless hovels. Not so. Not by a long shot. Over the last thirty years, China has experienced a period of enormous growth. It began in the 1990’s. It started when the progressive socialist policies of Mr. Mao were replaced with the Free-Market...

Many apartments have restrictions on renters having pets. But what happens when the renters are the pets? A California man is renting his Silicon Valley studio apartment to a pair of cats for $1,500 a month, The Mercury News reported. The apartment lacks a kitchen, but cats are not known for their culinary skills, so it all works out. “Basically I’ve got two renters that don’t have opposable thumbs,” David Callisch told the newspaper. “It’s actually great. They’re very quiet, obviously. The only problem is they stink up the place.” The rent for the cats, named Tina and Louise, is...