On Our Radar

Tampa Bay Times, February 2, 2024, How Corporate Investors Are Taking Over Tampa Bay’s Neighborhoods Housing in Tampa Bay is becoming increasingly corporate-owned, a Tampa Bay Times analysis has found. Large companies have amassed around 27,000 homes across three counties. More than 70% of these properties are linked to institutional investors backed by Wall Street […]

KJZZ, February 1, 2024, From Drug-Exposed Babies To At-Risk Students, How AZ Marijuana Money Is Helping Nonprofits A very small cut from every recreational marijuana sale in Arizona gets set aside for what Proposition 207 authors described as justice reinvestment. The state treasury has put more than $26 million into a namesake fund. Now health officials

The Hill, February 5, 2024, This Florida Mall Has Gucci, Prada…And Soon, Affordable Housing? In Bal Harbour, Fla., an oceanside village north of Miami Beach, a luxury mall says it wants to help tackle one of the nation’s — and Florida’s — most intractable problems: a lack of affordable housing. It is an unexpected move

The Hill, February 4, 2024, ‘The US Is On An Unsustainable Fiscal Path’ “The US federal government’s on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy. So, it is unsustainable. I don’t think that’s at all controversial,” Powell said when asked if the national debt is

DCist, February 1, 2024, Civil Rights Group Sues D.C. Landlord For Allegedly Discriminating Against Voucher Holders A civil rights organization filed a lawsuit Thursday against national real estate group AIR Communities, alleging that the company discriminates against prospective renters with housing vouchers, criminal records, and histories of eviction.  The complaint alleges that AIR Communities explicitly

Next City, February 1, 2024, They Bought An Apartment Building In D.C. Now They’re Turning It Into An Affordable Housing Co-op One project in DC is poised to defy these odds, thanks to robust tenant organizing and a critical mass of mostly small-dollar donations. But a hefty loan to repay, along with mounting interest, could

The Guardian, January 29, 2024, How A Black Miami Neighborhood Became “Ground Zero” For Climate Gentrification In 2015, Miami-Dade county officials announced a $74m development project aimed at revitalizing the historically Black neighborhood in the north-west of the city. The plan was to raze Liberty Square, the dilapidated housing project in the heart of the neighborhood, and

PBS Wisconsin, January 31, 2024, Milwaukee County Banned Section 8 Housing Voucher Discrimination, But Landlords Still Do It Milwaukee County in 2018 banned landlords from categorically rejecting recipients of housing assistance. More than five years later the county’s Office of Corporation Counsel, which is supposed to enforce the protections, says it has yet to receive

Bloomberg, January 29, 2024, Can A National Zoning Atlas Chart A Way Out Of The US Housing Crisis? Two years ago, a Montana think tank called the Frontier Institute released a new tool to help push the group’s advocacy for pro-housing reforms: a zoning atlas, one of the first of its kind. The atlas used parcel-level

WBUR, January 8, 2024, A Bronx Teenager Reflects On What Gentrification Means To Her and Her Community When neighborhoods become gentrified, there’s often a sense of loss for longtime residents of the communities. That’s the case for Radio Rookie Christina Adja and her friends. The teens discuss their fear of being displaced and what gentrification means to

Vox, January 9, 2024, Are $18 Big Macs The Price Of Falling Inequality? For months now, political observers have been squabbling over whether the Biden economy’s unpopularity reflects its genuine weaknesses or voters’ collective failure to recognize its virtues. On the one hand, the president did preside over a sustained period of exceptionally high inflation. On

DCist, January 8, 2024, On The Record: Addressing Homelessness In D.C. In 2024 Street Sense Media reached out to a few dozen local and national organizations that shape housing and homelessness policy to hear their hopes and predictions for this year. Here are some of the responses.

Planetizen, January 7, 2024, The Symbiotic Relationship Of Housing and Transit A proposed federal law would promote transit-oriented development and prioritize funding for jurisdictions that adopt ‘pro-housing policies’ such as eliminating parking minimums and clearing the way for multifamily construction by reducing minimum lot sizes and raising height limits. As M. Nolan Gray explains in Bloomberg

Business Insider, January 7, 2024, Student-Loan Borrowers Are Taking On More Debt, And It’s Not All Tuition — Blame Skyrocketing Housing Costs But skyrocketing home costs are increasingly putting pressure on student budgets across the country. The housing crisis has become a “five-alarm fire” for students struggling to make ends meet in hot real estate

The Washington Post, January 4, 2024, ‘Equality’ Says The Path Has Always Been Fraught In 2013, Barack Obama was flush with optimism as he stepped up to the podium to deliver his second inaugural address. He knew that America had a long way to go, but he believed that the country also had much to