Free Republic

Rising housing costs in Colorado are making it hard for teachers to stay in the area, so officials are moving in to help. As Colorado’s housing costs skyrocket, a growing number of school districts, local leaders, and lawmakers are taking steps to make housing more affordable for teachers and staff. For years, resort communities like Aspen, Colorado, and a rural district in the state’s Eastern Plains have leased housing to employees at below-market rates. More recently, subsidized housing for educators has cropped up in pricey urban areas such as San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore. But lately, Colorado districts big and...

A disabled man living in subsidized housing is suing his Grand Rapids apartment complex, saying he is being wrongfully evicted because jugs of urine set on his seventh-floor balcony leaked, generating complaints from a ground-floor tenant. The man, who is obese and can't reach the bathroom in time, routinely urinates in jugs and sets them on the balcony of Grandview Apartments on Bridge Street NW, according to the lawsuit filed this week in federal court. . . . Hamblin's 34-year-old son has offered to help with housekeeping, but was banned from setting foot on complex grounds due to a 2010...

President Barack Obama says Congress must give more homeowners the chance to refinance their mortgages to save money. Obama says more than 2 million people are saving about $3,000 a year after restructuring their loans under his administration but that more deserve the same chance. …

AUGUST 15, 2011 Immigration Audits Drive Illegal Workers Underground BY MIRIAM JORDAN MINNEAPOLIS—In 2009, Alba and Eugenio were making almost twice the federal minimum wage, plus benefits, cleaning a skyscraper for a national janitorial company. With two toddlers, the Mexican couple enjoyed relative prosperity in a tidy one-bedroom duplex in a working-class neighborhood here. Late that year, federal agents audited employee records of ABM Industries Inc., forcing it to shed all the illegal workers on its payrolls in the Twin Cities. Among them was the couple, undocumented immigrants who had worked at ABM for more than a decade.

A suspected looter in this week’s riots and his mother are being thrown out of their council home. In the first case of its kind, Daniel Sartain-Clarke, 18, and his mother have been served with an eviction notice as council bosses seek to turf them out of their £225,000 taxpayer-subsidised flat. Sartain-Clarke is charged with violent disorder and attempting to steal electronic goods from the Currys store at Clapham Junction, South London, on Monday night.

Green Township is being singled out because federal investigators believe the housing authority blocked new public housing there for at least the past two years. More public housing for the poor is likely headed to Green Township and some other communities as part of a deal to resolve a discrimination complaint against Cincinnati's housing authority.

<p>A 12-year-old boy and 16-year-old boy were in critical condition tonight after they were wounded in a drive-by shooting as they walked to a 7-Eleven store, police said.</p> <p>The shootings also left a 14-year-old girl injured with a graze wound but her condition did not appear life-threatening, said Schaumburg police Sgt. John Nebl.</p>

Hundreds of families living in housing subsidized by Fairfax County taxpayers exceed income caps designed to ensure that only the neediest receive assistance, a review of county records shows. In the most extreme cases, Fairfax is underwriting rents for families making well into six figures: One household getting help makes more than $216,000 a year; another, $184,000. Dozens of others -- making $60,000, $70,000, $90,000 -- exceed eligibility caps. And they do so with the tacit approval of county housing administrators, who do little to encourage occupants to move on when their fortunes improve.

Hundreds of families living in housing subsidized by Fairfax County taxpayers exceed income caps designed to ensure that only the neediest receive assistance.... Fairfax is underwriting rents for families making well into six figures: One household getting help makes more than $216,000 a year; another, $184,000. Dozens of others -- making $60,000, $70,000, $90,000 -- exceed eligibility caps. And they do so with the tacit approval of county housing administrators, who do little to encourage occupants to move on when their fortunes improve. These tenants live in housing intended for families at the bottom of the county's economic spectrum. They...

Next time you sit down to write your monthly mortgage or rent check, consider this: In Santa Barbara, about 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles, a public-private partnership is planning to build a subsidized-housing development for some families earning as much as $177,000. “It does sound unusual,” admitted Rob Pearson, the executive director of the city’s Housing Authority, which helped broker the deal for the development, to be called Los Portales. “But Santa Barbara is getting Gucci-fied. If we don’t do something, we’ll lose our middle class.” The problem seems to be a matter of supply and demand, made worse...

With every developer West of the Mississippi drooling over the chance to develop some 1/4 acre of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, it seems every politician and city planner worth their salt is now talking about “affordable housing.” But what is “affordable housing” in California?Since normal people know that “affordable housing” doesn’t really exist in the regions of California where normal people really want to live, what is it that big-government, pro-redevelopment politcos really mean when they yap on and on about “affordable housing” this campaign season?Two words: Subsidized Housing.When you look at it, most everything about housing in California...

When Mayor Street declared his war on blight in Philadelphia, it is unlikely that he imagined the James J. Clearkin construction company as the enemy. The 87-year-old, family-owned business is located just off Castor Avenue in Juniata Park, in a modest, two-story office building that is as sturdy today as it was when the family mortared in the last buff-colored brick in 1950. Now, as then, the Clearkin company specializes in schools and churches, mostly Catholic ones. It still employs about 45 people. In the last decade, it has paid more than $400,000 in city taxes. But unlike some Philadelphia...

Concord -- The City Council has approved a plan by DeNova Homes to build a 15-unit town home complex on less than 1 acre along Detroit Avenue. The project, which includes two affordable units, is one of the first since the city passed its inclusionary housing ordinance, which requires developers to set aside a percentage of low-cost units for those who can't afford to pay market prices. The project will consist of five two-story buildings with 900-square-foot two-bedroom units. Rent will probably be about $1,300 a month, with the two affordable units going for about $900 a month, said DeNova...

Summary: SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- The transportation options available in feudal society are only quaint in hindsight. Smart Growth calls for a reversion to the limited mobility of the pre-automotive society. Full text: Transit-oriented developments (TODs) are a failure in modern society. The reason I say it this way is because the idea of a transit-oriented development is not new, but has arisen naturally as transportation has evolved. TODs are an artifact from the pre-automotive society and their failure in modern implementation is due to this fact. It helps to define a TOD... Transit-oriented developments are optimally self-sufficient nodes on...