Free Republic

Unfortunately, what the Pittman administration is aggressively pushing on the middle, western and northern areas of the county is workforce housing, by introducing one bill at a time that makes way for zoning changes where high-density housing is permitted in areas that previously would be low to medium density neighborhoods. In some cases — as in Bill 65-20 — there is no height restriction to the buildings, and the zoning is changed so that a “Mixed Use” zoned area can be 100% workforce housing, instead of mixed office, commercial and residential.

California’s legislature passed a bill late Monday granting renters who are financially affected by the Covid-19 pandemic a reprieve from evictions, which were set to resume Wednesday when prior relief expires. The bill passed with supermajorities in both houses of the Democratic-controlled legislature in the final hours of its two-year legislative session and addresses what advocates had said was a looming wave of evictions. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who crafted the compromise with legislative leaders, tenant advocates and landlord groups last week, immediately signed the bill into law. It takes effect immediately. Backers say it will help keep California’s 17...

Over three days in late July, a three-bedroom house in East Orange, N.J., was listed for sale for $285,000, had 97 showings, received 24 offers and went under contract for 21 percent over that price. On Long Island, six people made offers on a $499,000 house in Valley Stream without seeing it in person after it was shown on a Facebook Live video. In the Hudson Valley, a nearly three-acre property with a pool listed for $985,000 received four all-cash bids within a day of having 14 showings. Since the pandemic began, the suburbs around New York City, from New...

I've grown to expect little in the way of analysis or truth from most of the media," Dr. Carson told Just the News in a video interview at the White House. "So many of them said that our policy is racist, and we're trying to keep suburbs white and silly stuff like that. You know, they don't know the facts. They don't know that 52% of African-Americans live in the suburbs, that 60% of Hispanics live in the suburbs, 62% of Asian-Americans live in the suburbs." Carson told Just the News the policy change on suburban zoning was driven by...

President Trump caused a stir in July when he issued an order terminating some Obama housing policies aimed at killing off the suburbs. “The [Democrat] plan is to remake the suburbs in their image so they resemble the dysfunctional cities they now govern,” he wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal column jointly authored with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. “As usual, anyone who dares tell the truth about what the left is doing is smeared as a racist.” Outraged Democrats called the president a racist. The rule he overturned, Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) program, would...

We found that the most affordable housing markets in America were uniformly located in the South and Midwest. The most affordable place we looked at in America was Youngstown, Ohio where the median household income in one year is more than the typical purchase price of a home. On the other hand, almost all the least affordable places to buy a home were in California. Of all the markets we examined, Newport Beach was the least affordable market in the country.

The Trump administration recently rescinded the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, adopted in the early months of the Obama administration. The rule was an add-on to the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The act was about preventing discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of housing. However, like so much of the distortions that occurred after the civil rights era of the 1960s, this rule is not about preventing discrimination but about using civil rights language to advance a brazen left-wing political agenda. In the case of the AFFH rule, there are so many different stated objectives it's not even...

Following the recent announcement that Kamala Harris has been selected as Joe Biden’s running mate, Senator Harris was eager to share plans of her own if elected. Harris has now unveiled a bold, new strategy to provide affordable housing to the Americans she believes need it the most. Harris's free housing plan will provide poor families with a clean, safe, secure concrete room, armed guards, and three full meals a day. “Truly, I can think of no better place for these people to be contained - er I mean to live!” said Kamala Harris, smiling and taking pictures outside the...

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday revealed a plan to buy properties around the city and turn them into permanent affordable housing, after moving more than 10,000 homeless people into hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic and shaming rich residents who have left the city as 'fair weather friends'. The homeless-in-hotels scheme set up by de Blasio is one of many components to an escalating downward change in the city. Many of New York's wealthy residents fled months ago - taking their disposable income and their tax dollars with them - and there are fears they may never come back. Crime...

Well, I'm sure I've got your attention now, with that provocative title! But I'm not kidding. I think President Donald Trump will win by an electoral landslide on Nov. 3 because of guns, black voters and the NFL. Let me explain this winning formula. First, guns. It's hard to believe Democrats are this clueless, blind, deaf and dumb. And I stress dumb. They've made the 2020 election about guns. What a huge mistake in a country dominated by gun owners. First, a Soros-funded St Louis circuit attorney made the PR mistake of a lifetime: indicting Mark and Patricia McCloskey for...

Betsy Sweeny (left) snagged a rundown Victorian home (right) in West Virginia, which she learned about from the Instagram account Cheap Old Houses, for a mind-blowing $18,500. Betsy Sweeny =============================================================================== It was not love at first sight. After Buffalo, New York, couple Nick Weith and Damian Mordecai spotted a grand Victorian-style home on a popular Instagram account called Cheap Old Houses, they drove an hour south to a village called Gowanda (population 2,700) to tour the historic property. Initially, Mordecai, a 39-year-old nonprofit executive, was “less enthused” about the idea of living so far outside the city. But the...

Some California tenants have faced increasingly aggressive eviction efforts over the last month, despite emergency protections meant to preserve people’s housing during the coronavirus pandemic. And although advocates have urged state officials to strengthen the rules, key renters’ protections are set to expire without new state plans in place.The result, experts say, could be catastrophic.  Amid rising coronavirus infections and a worsening economic crisis, hundreds of thousands of renters are now at risk of becoming homeless in California, potentially exacerbating the state’s dire housing crisis. In addition, advocates fear the lack of protections will embolden some landlords to resort to...

Massachusetts landlords in need of rent payments are hoping a federal judge will soon end the state’s eviction ban amid the coronavirus pandemic, a lawyer representing property owners tells the Herald. Landlords in a federal lawsuit in Boston’s U.S. District Court are arguing that the eviction moratorium is unconstitutional, said attorney Richard Vetstein, lead counsel for the property owners. The suit is against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. “The state has never taken this drastic step,” Vetstein said of the eviction freeze on Wednesday. “Our main thrust is there’s never been a...

The Trump administration officially deep-sixed a secretive Obama-era scheme on Friday. That’s more good news for all Americans who appreciate the fundamental right of freedom to associate. As Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson declared, “President Donald Trump and I agree that the best run communities are the ones run locally. Today, we are tearing down the Obama Administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which was an overreach of unelected Washington bureaucrats into local communities.” Carson then hit the nail on the head: “The AFFH rule was a ruse for social engineering under the guise of desegregation, essentially...

Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, spoke to Fox News about what he called a "tremendous accomplishment" of the Trump administration, one that the mainstream media apparently failed to notice. In an interview on "Life Liberty & Levin" that aired Sunday, Kurtz shed light on the "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule," (AFFH) a law added by former President Barack Obama to the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which the conservative scholar said has aimed to expand federal influence over suburbia. On Thursday, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Dr. Ben Carson announced he's stripping...

In nine weeks, the borough has seen just 25 luxury homes enter into contract, an 88% decline year over year Buyers have signed deals for 25 luxury Manhattan homes since the crisis started nine weeks ago, compared to 207 contracts during the same time span last year, according to Olshan—a remarkable 88% decline year-over-year. The latest contracts highlighted some ways in which the crisis has changed buyers’ priorities to favor perks such as outdoor space. The most expensive deal, for example, was a three-bedroom condo in one of the new Waterline Square buildings, a trifecta of glass towers each designed...

President Donald Trump’s pledge to roll back an Obama-era regulation designed to eliminate racial disparities in the suburbs is drawing harsh criticism from fair housing advocates, who label it a blatant attempt to play racial politics and appeal to white voters in the final weeks before the election. They also consider it a empty political stunt, since the regulation he’s talking about eliminating never truly got started on the ground in the first place. The initiative, known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing or AFFH, is a provision of the Fair Housing Act that requires local governments and zoning boards to...

Real-estate surge eclipses the one in U.S. housing in the 2000s; desperate buyers undeterred by Covid pandemic. Even the coronavirus hasn’t stopped the world’s biggest asset bubble from getting bigger. After a brief pause during coronavirus lockdowns in February, a Chinese property boom in some megacities that many thought was unsustainable has resumed its relentless upward climb, with prices rising higher and investors chasing deals despite millions of job losses and other economic problems.

While we’re starting to see signs of economic revival, some areas are experiencing more of a recovery than others. Millions are rethinking where they live. Cities can be great places to live because of job opportunities and a wide array of amenities. Indeed, Professor Edward Glaeser’s seminal book, Triumph of the City, chronicles the rise of cities while also explaining their beneficial effects on productivity, health, and happiness. Yet despite all of that, we might be on the precipice of one of the greatest interstate migrations in our nation’s history.While there were always costs associated with living in cities that...

A significant number of commentators have posited that the 2020 election will be won or lost in the suburbs. For some reason, these suburban voters seem to be signaling that they want Joe Biden to take their guns away, raise their taxes, and cause massive job losses in industries related to oil and gas. Or perhaps they are super excited about having a cognitively impaired leader of the free world. Hard to tell. However, my bet is if they figured out Joe Biden was planning on destroying their communities, they might be a little more attuned to their self-interest. Joe...