Free Republic

Summers in the city could get a little cooler for apartment dwellers with the recent passing of a New York City Council bill. Intro 994, also known as the Cool Homes For All legislation, passed the City Council on Thursday, paving the way for tenants to get free cooling systems from landlords at their request. “All tenants deserve a safe, livable home, and as our summers get hotter, that means guaranteeing access to air conditioning,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler, who sponsored the bill. The legislation will require building landlords to provide cooling systems capable of maintaining 78 degrees in...

About one in three U.S. households rents, a ratio that has stayed surprisingly steady over the past six decades.But with mortgage rates soaring from 2.7% in 2020 to almost 7% today - and home prices continuing to climb - the share of renters has edged up.Today, it takes $121,400 to afford a typical home, or 43% higher than the average salary.This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the share of Americans renting versus owning by state, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau.A Closer Look at Renting vs. Owning in AmericaAs the table below shows, states with the...

Key Points: The national median rent for apartments fell 1% in November from October, and now stands at $1,367, according to Apartment List. The national multifamily vacancy rate was 7.2% in November, a record high. The historic surge in multifamily construction over the past few years is now pulling back, but a good supply of new units is still coming online at a time of much weaker demand. A slew of new supply is still making its way through the multifamily housing market. That, coupled with weakening demand, especially from the youngest workers, is pushing vacancies up and rents down....

Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.”The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. The...

Turning Point USA founder said in July that young Americans could start feeling like 'permanent renting class.' ... "How do we get more young people under the age of 35 to have equity in the system? Not the Democrat version of equity, where they want to have redistribution, but actually, are they paying a mortgage? Do they own stuff? Or are they permanent renters?" Kirk asked during a July 11 appearance on "Fox & Friends." "A permanent renting class in this country is the prerequisite, is the leading ingredient for radical politics that nobody wants to see," he continued. "We...

Homeowners vote red. Renters vote blue. Will President Donald Trump's 50-year mortgage make a red voter out of you? That is what the president hoped on Saturday, when he posted the idea of stretching out the customary 30-year repayment terms for home mortgages to 50 years. Turns out, that idea is smoke and mirrors. But at least Trump is recognizing that home affordability is a real crisis, not fake news. "Affordability" is the campaign pledge that produced big wins on election day, and most of the winners were Democrats. Affording a home is increasingly out of reach. The median age...

A Penn Yan woman is facing multiple charges after police say she refused to leave an apartment during a landlord-tenant dispute and then resisted arrest. Carol Briggs, 63, was arrested by Penn Yan Police for obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest, and trespass following an incident at an apartment where she had no legal right to be. Officers responded to a call involving a dispute between a tenant and Briggs, who is a family member of the landlord. Police say Briggs entered the apartment without permission, became upset with the tenant, and demanded they leave the property. Police informed Briggs that...

Why do New York City voters want to repeat this disaster from the 1960s and 1970s? https://reason.org/commentary/rent-control-laws-nearly-destroyed-parts-of-new-york-city-they-could-do-the-same-to-california/

With a 1.4% vacancy rate, the city is in desperate need of housing, and fast. A special panel known as the Charter Revision Commission, established by Mayor Eric Adams, believes they have some solutions to the problem. What You Need To Know Housing-related proposals will appear as questions two through five on the November ballot. Voters will see them when they flip over their ballots Question two would create two new shortened processes for affordable housing: one for publicly financed projects and another for a newly created list of the 12 community districts with the least development Question three would...

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — The New York State Assembly Housing Committee held a public hearing in Albany on Tuesday to examine how municipalities outside of New York City can opt into laws that regulate rent, services, leases, and evictions to keep housing attainable. The hearing centered on the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants Act (S4659A/A4877A), a proposed bill that could make it easier and less expensive to enact better tenant protections. Proponents of the REST Act—including tenants, local elected officials, and legal experts—testified that current state law is flawed and easy for landlords to manipulate. Opponents argued that the existing...

Rents for single-family residential homes rose just 1.4% in August compared with the year before, according to analytics and data firm Cotality, down from a 2.3% annual gain in July. That’s also much less than the 3% average gain seen last year and is the smallest increase in 15 years. Rent growth weakened across all price points, continuing a trend that has persisted in the second half of this year. Rents had been strengthening in the first half of this year. There were, however, strong variations regionally. Chicago saw the highest annual rent growth at 4.7% in August, followed by...

A once-crumbling factory in Seneca Falls just won one of New York’s top preservation honors — after being saved from the wrecking ball and transformed into a home for dozens of families and veterans. Huntington Apartments has received a 2025 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award from the Preservation League of New York State, the organization announced Monday. The building at 201 Fall Street was originally home to the National Yeast Company in the late 1800s. By the 2010s, it was deteriorating fast. A gas station proposal nearly sealed its fate — until local advocates stepped in. The Seneca Falls Historical...

Dear Chuck, My parents are retired and have a very low interest rate on a small amount of remaining mortgage. They told me they want to sell their home and rent, thinking they will save money. I am gathering information to help them. Would you suggest they rent or keep owning their home? Retired: Rent or Buy?Dear Retired: Rent or Buy?It depends. I don’t have the full financial picture of your parents, so I don’t want to give advice based on false assumptions. Let me disclose a few assumptions from your question:They are feeling financially insecure.Their home value is...

Canandaigua, N.Y. — A woman is charged with first-degree identity theft for a months-long scheme, according to the Ontario County Sheriff's Office. Nichelle Beale, 48, of Canandaigua, used another person's identity to rent a unit from Candlewood Apartments on County Road 28 from May 1 through Aug. 13, 2025, the sheriff's office said. She also failed to pay rent and utilities, stealing more than $6,000 worth of service from the complex. The sheriff's office said Beale was arrested Monday and taken to Ontario County Jail, where she remains in custody as she awaits arraignment in CAP court.

The media has suddenly focused on inflation after ignoring skyrocketing inflation under Biden. Now they are pimping a so-called "Housing Crisis" for renters. The fact is in most parts of the country there is actually a "Responsible Tenant Crisis." The media cites statistics that there are 15 renters for each apartment. The fact is that out of those 15 renters, possibly one of them is a qualified candidate. Ever since the Scamdemic, when the government told renters that they won't get evicted if they don't pay their rent, many renters lived large off of expanded unemployment checks and simply opted...

"The biggest threat to the Republican Party in 2028 is if we do not deliver on our promises of [home]ownership for the next generation," Kirk told Fox News Digital in an interview at the Turning Point Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida… "If we don't fix the homeownership problem in this country, the cost-of-living crisis, and if we don't give the next generation [a chance] at being owners and not renters, we are going to see what I call ‘Mamdani-ism’ spread across the country," he predicted. The influential conservative media personality said there was no doubt that younger voters were...

A woman living in a 1,200-square-foot underground bunker says it’s “worth it” to save $1.5k a month on sky-high rent. Caitlin Johnson, 44, snapped up the chance to live in a friend’s underground bunker in their yard in Bakersfield, California, after moving from New York in April 2024. She pays just $500-a-month in rent for the bunker – which has a master bedroom with en-suite, a full kitchen, living room, 18 bunk beds, a separate bathroom, two more toilets and another shower. Caitlin’s friend, moved into the property in 2022 and discovered it had an underground bunker originally built by...

Philon Green was forced to move out of Woodlawn because of skyrocketing rent prices. He wanted to stay at Jackson Park Terrace — down the street from the under-construction Obama Presidential Center — but his landlord raised the rent from about $800 to $1,300. Green said the property wasn’t in the best condition, but he enjoyed the area. Being priced out of the neighborhood was a concern shared at a protest Tuesday morning by other Woodlawn and South Shore residents, who now fear rental prices will rise if a proposed luxury hotel gets city approval. “When you got people’s rent...

Los Angeles and California never cease to amaze. I can say that with absolute certainty.Just when you think things are simmering down, those folks out there come up some off-the-wall freakin' crap that just so mind glowingly unreal, you have to check twice to make sure you read it right.And then it's still unbelievable.That daffy, worthless, Communista LA mayor is still doing her posing and not much else regarding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity that hasn't paused while LA's coddled illegals go through the motions, acting out during their tantrums in the streets.STOP THIS LAW STUFF RIGHT NOW“Mayors...

A squatter allegedly shot and killed his roommate after he was asked to pay just $250 in rent — shouting “I’m going to kill them all,” as he marched towards the house, according to law enforcement officials. Angel Gomez Montanez, 21, paid no rent at a home outside of Houston, Texas, for over three months when his roommate Christopher Rodriguez Lara, 18, asked the delinquent to pony-up the paltry sum, KTRK reported. The two got into an argument and then Montanez left the shared home with his belongings — only to return on June 12, saying he had the $250...