Free Republic

When the New York legislature passed major changes to the state's rent regulations in June 2019, critics warned the new law would reduce investment in, and renovations of, rental properties in New York City. Six months later, those predictions are bearing out. Bloomberg reported this morning that sales of apartment buildings in the Big Apple fell by 36 percent in 2019, and that the money spent on those sales fell by 40 percent. The prices investors were paying for rent-stabilized units—where allowable rent increases are set by the government and usually capped at around 1 or 2 percent per year—fell...

New Jersey will become the first state to require that builders take into account the impact of climate change, including rising sea levels, in order to win government approval for projects, Gov. Philip D. Murphy plans to announce on Monday. The move by Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, is part of a widening effort by states to use regulations to address worsening climate conditions and to aggressively counteract the Trump administration’s push to roll back environmental regulations. “This is not abstract for us,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “This is real. The dangers are there.” New Jersey’s initiative is believed...

I live in a historic neighborhood in the heart of Washington, D.C. It’s not historic in the sense that anything especially important happened here — certainly not in the modest rowhouses that make up the bulk of the neighborhood. What “historic” means, here and in cities across the country, is that this is a neighborhood where buildings are not supposed to change. The law says window frames on Capitol Hill must be wooden, or something that looks very much like wood. If a front door has two parts and opens down the middle, it cannot be replaced by a single...

Following a unanimous vote by the city council Tuesday night, Oakland has now become the first city in California to ban criminal background checks on potential renters. “Indescribable emotions and feelings,” said John Jones III of Oakland, who got out of prison in 2012 and struggled to find a place to live in Oakland despite his well-paying job as an aviation mechanic. Jones said he’s among the many who left prison only to end up on the streets, contributing to Oakland’s homeless crisis. That’s why he’s been lobbying hard for the Oakland City Council to pass the Fair Chance Housing...

The Trump administration is under fire for daring to touch a third rail of liberal financial regulation: the 1978 Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA. The proposed new regulations would affect 70 percent of banks by replacing requirements that bank lending target specific geographies or borrowers, such as low-income minorities. Instead, banks would set total dollar goals for lending to low-income borrowers, with the aim of helping poor communities broadly, rather than focusing on specific neighborhoods. Some of these loans might have occurred anyway, and critics (which include the Federal Reserve) oppose the idea that banks could get “CRA credit” for...

A growing number of legislators are trying to eliminate a practice that has prevented many lower- and middle-income people from renting an apartment: the steep, all-cash security deposit. With low-cost housing hard to come by in many states, state and city lawmakers are introducing bills that would give younger renters and others strapped for cash the choice to replace security deposits with insurance policies or installment plans paid overtime. These payments are usually equivalent to one or two months’ rent, which landlords require as a guarantee against damages. Cincinnati on Wednesday became the first U.S. city to require that landlords...

Construction of new homes surged in December to the highest level in 13 years, capping a year in which falling mortgage rates and a strong labor market helped lift the prospects of the housing industry. The Commerce Department reported Friday that builders started construction on 1.61 million homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in December, up 16.9% from the November pace of home building. Housing construction has been rising since July, helped by falling mortgage rates and increased demand as the unemployment rate approached a half-century low. For the year, builders started work on a total of 1.29 million...

In addition to embracing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, Elizabeth Warren recently stated that, as president, she would demand that all new buildings be “carbon-neutral,” starting in 2028. This latest brainstorm comes on top of the Massachusetts senator’s previous environmental vows: to ban all oil and gas drilling on her first day in office, mandate that all cars and trucks be carbon-neutral by 2030 and force the closure of all existing, carbon-free nuclear power plants. Really? This is the same Warren who introduced legislation in October 2018 to end homelessness and “housing poverty” in America. Those are real problems....

If your home isn’t carbon neutral, Elizabeth Warren might not let you build it. And if that means no new homes get built, she’s OK with that. In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, the Massachusetts senator and fading presidential candidate talked about her Thunberg-lite plan to help end climate change. (Climate crisis? Catastrophe? What are we going with these days?) She promised “to do everything a president can do all by herself, that is, the things you don’t have to do by going to Congress.” This includes putting an end to energy mining and drilling on federal...

Politicians bemoan the lack of affordable housing, but their policies often create the problem. Look no further than Oregon, where restrictive zoning and mandates have yielded the lowest rate of residential construction in decades. Oregon’s population grew by nearly 400,000 between 2010 and 2019. But the state added a mere 37 housing permits for every 100 new residents, according to a report released last week by the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis. Economist Josh Lehner found that “while much of the attention is paid to rising housing costs, we know they are the symptom and not the cause of the...

Home sales are slowing in wildfire-prone areas of California as insurers retreat from high-risk regions, say real-estate agents and homeowners. Insurance companies have continued to reduce their wildfire exposure in the past two years after paying more than $24 billion for California wildfire losses in 2017 and 2018. Home insurers have declined to renew policies for tens of thousands of homeowners across the state, and regulators expect more nonrenewals in the coming months. Real-estate agents say potential buyers are having difficulty obtaining insurance and are backing out of purchases or lowering their offers after realizing how much insurance would cost,...

NIMBYism has dominated housing policy for the last ten years. Will the 2020s be any better? A lot of things happened in the past 10 years. A boom in housing construction was not one of them. The 2010s will go down as a decade of historically low housing starts, resulting in higher home prices and rents for some and longer commutes for others. Last week, Freddie Mae Deputy Chief Economist Len Keifer tweeted out a graph comparing new housing starts over the past six decades. The results are startling. In the past 10 years, construction started for 9.8 million new...

Seriously, how much WINNING can one nation take? – Believe it or not, the NASDAQ did not close at a new record high on Friday, falling slightly to break an 11-trading day winning streak. But the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrials did manage new record closings, making Friday yet another banner day for investors. The WINNING truly never grows old. The Enviro-Marxists are now coming for your homes. – As we come to the end of 2019, it is only appropriate that the radical leftist climate change lobby signals its clear intent to deprive you of yet another basic...

Half-a-dozen cities from San Francisco to Cleveland are promising tenants the right to an attorney in eviction cases, a costly and logistically daunting initiative that advocates say is a necessary response to rising housing costs and homelessness. If successful, proponents say these programs could provide a bulwark against gentrification and homelessness, and end up saving cities money by reducing the number of families who end up on the streets and in shelters. Implementing such a sweeping new right poses challenges. It requires staffing legal aid offices with dozens of new attorneys, finding space in courtrooms for lawyers to meet with...

As reported by the LA Times, according to data recently released by the Department of Finance, CaliforniaÂ’s population growth rate for the year ending July 1, 2019, was the lowest the state has experienced since 1900. Estimates indicate the Golden StateÂ’s population grew by 0.35 percent over the course of the year (or by 141,000 people), down from 0.57 percent for the previous year ending July 1, 2018. CaliforniaÂ’s growth in population was buoyed by the net difference between births and deaths in the state, which amounted to 180,800 people. However, this number was tempered by net losses in migration,...

Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not. The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on suburban lots in neighborhoods previously consisting of quiet streets and open green spaces. Proponents of “upzoning” say the changes are necessary because suburbs are bastions of segregation and elitism, as well as bad for the environment. The move, which aims to provide “affordable housing,” might be fiercely opposed by local officials throughout the state, who have deliberately created...

Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation. Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not.The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on...

Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs. Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle. Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation.

NEW YORK — Many New Yorkers may dream of buying a home, whether it's a Brooklyn Heights brownstone or an almost suburban house in eastern Queens. But a new report suggests housing is unaffordable for the typical worker in all five boroughs. In the report published Thursday, ATTOM Data Solutions crunched housing and wage numbers for 473 of the nation's more than 3,000 counties nationwide. It determined affordability by assuming a 28 percent maximum "front-end" debt-to-income ratio. That means a buyer purchasing an affordable home would not be spending more than 28 percent of their income on house payments including...

Among the millions of recent eviction cases researchers have begun to compile across the country, there are a startling number of modest sums. There are dozens of families in Texas evicted with money judgments — unpaid rent, late fees, court costs — totaling $516. There are multiple families in Cumberland County, N.C., who owed all of $301. There is a household in Providence, R.I., whose 2016 court record shows a debt of just $127. Such relatively small sums suggest that, for all of the intractable problems of poverty and affordable housing driving the nation’s eviction crisis, a little intervention could...