On Our Radar

Axios, October 10, 2023, U.S. Economy Adds Staggering 336,000 Jobs In September The U.S. economy added a staggering 336,000 jobs in September, defying expectations of a slowdown, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 3.8%, according to new data the Labor Department released Friday. : The new data reverses what had been signs of a definitive cooling in the labor market. […]

NPR, October 10, 2023, The Forest Service Is Trying To Build Affordable Housing To Keep Staff In Colorado The U.S. Forest Service is in charge of millions of acres in Colorado’s mountains, but their workers can hardly afford to live there. Now, the service is trying to build more affordable staff housing. The Forest Service

AP News, October 3, 2023, Massachusetts Has A Huge Waitlist For State-Funded Housing. So Why Are 2,300 Units Vacant? In Massachusetts, which has some of the country’s most expensive real estate, there are 184,000 people on a waitlist for the state’s 41,500 subsidized apartments. Yet a WBUR and ProPublica investigation found that nobody is living in nearly

NYTimes, October 3, 2023, New York Is Rebounding For The Rich. Nearly Everyone Else Is Struggling. As New York City inches closer to recovering all the jobs it lost during the pandemic, Manhattan — the city’s economic engine — marked a far less encouraging milestone. It now has the biggest income gap of any large

Shelterforce, October 3, 2023, Which U.S. Laws Require Accessibility In Housing—And How Well Do They Do? Section 504 says that in any housing development that receives federal funds, at least 5 percent of the units must be accessible for people with physical or mobility disabilities and 2 percent accessible for people with vision or hearing

NPR, October 3, 2023, Consumer Watchdog Agency’s Fate At Supreme Court Could Nix Other Agencies Too If you have a mortgage or a loan or a credit card, you likely have more protection from deceptive practices in the financial services industry today than you did at the time of the 2008 financial crash. Now, however,

The New York Times, September 22, 2023, Children Are The Casualties In New Yorkers’ Daily Struggle For Space In New York, intimate tragedies often provide the clearest view of our bleakest problems, the most urgent invitation to reckon with systemic failings. The case of Nicolas Feliz Dominici, almost 2, who authorities say died after exposure

CNBC, September 22, 2023, Biden Administration Takes Steps To Remove Medical Bills From Credit Reports The Biden administration wants to remove medical debt completely from consumer credit reports, so the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday outlined its proposed rules to keep unpaid medical bills from affecting patient’s credit scores. Medical debt is the most common debt in collection. The

American Banker, September 22, 2023, Rate ‘Lock-in’ Effect Is Hurting Housing And Mortgage Markets, Powell Says Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that the so-called “lock-in” effect has contributed to stagnation in the mortgage lending market and the nation’s broader housing woes, but he said he doesn’t regret the central bank’s monetary policy moves that played a major

The Washington Post, September 22, 2023, Biden’s New Climate Corps Will Train Thousands Of Young People President Biden announced an initiative to train more than 20,000 young people in skills crucial to combating climate change, such as installing solar panels, restoring coastal wetlands and retrofitting homes to be more energy-efficient. As part of a recruitment push,

The Washington Post, September 3, 2023, Home Insurers Cut Natural Disasters From Policies As Climate Risks Grow In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most. Major insurers say they will cut out damage caused by hurricanes, wind and

ProPublica, September 5, 2023, Erasing The “Black Spot”: How A Virginia College Expanded By Uprooting A Black Neighborhood Around 1960, in the last gasp of the Jim Crow era, the Shoe Lane community consisted of a church and about 20 Black families, including teachers, dentists, a high school principal and a NASA engineer. They owned

The Washington Post, August 30, 2023, Female Professors Sue Vassar College, Alleging Wage Discrimination Five female professors at Vassar College are suing the elite institution in Upstate New York — one of the country’s first colleges to educate women — alleging it engaged in decades of systemic wage discrimination by paying them less than their male colleagues.

FOXBusiness, August 29, 2023, US Housing Market Faces New Hurdle: Student Loan Repayments The US housing market has been over the past year walloped by high mortgage rates and a worsening inventory shortage. It may soon face another obstacle: Student loan repayments. Real estate experts are bracing for a significant blow to the market when

American Banker, August 17, 2023, In Debate Over Appraisal Bias, Rival Researchers Clash Over Key Data Conflicting findings from a pair of non-profit research groups call into question whether or not recent actions will improve financial outcomes for minority homeowners without leading to banks and other mortgage lenders taking on undue risks. The debate centers on a 2018 report