On Our Radar

Two American government agencies — the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission — have finally gotten around to looking into the dead obvious by investigating the market power of big tech companies and whether their dominance in a range of arenas has hurt competition and hindered new start-ups from forming.

Homeownership rates for younger Americans have fallen sharply over the last decade. The median age of a home buyer is 46, the oldest since the National Association of Realtors began keeping records in 1981.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau caught many in the mortgage industry off guard Thursday when the agency said it will retire a policy that gives Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a competitive advantage in complying with underwriting rules. 

Does San Francisco have more homeless people than before? Or are we just getting better at counting? The best answer appears to be: “yes” to both.

How easy is it to go green, to make deliberate, eco-friendly choices when you’re barely getting by? Can you be green and poor?

A new analysis of more than 500,000 U.S. users on the investing app Stash found women pay a disproportionate amount of banking penalties.

Hospitals are often left to pay the bills for the poorest and sickest, and the math worsened as legislatures in the region rejected Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

New data released Friday further undermined the claims of Trump’s economic prowess, deflating the myths around his administration’s supposedly growth-inducing tax cuts and deregulation.

Witnessing racism surge in our country, both during and after Obama’s service and ours, has been a shattering reality, to say the least. But it has also provided jet-fuel for our activism, especially in moments such as these.

“The only generation with a lower home ownership rate than millennials is the Greatest Generation. This generation was coming out of the Great Depression in 1940 and didn’t benefit much from the New Deal programs that assisted with home ownership.”

The YIMBY movement is definitely on to something: In many parts of the world it is too difficult to build new housing. The result is that lower-income individuals are priced out of some of the world’s most productive cities, such as San Francisco and London, because of exorbitant rents.

The majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump. But in 2020, Democrats will still have a hard time defeating him.

The essential thinginess of capitalism has been one of its most-criticized features. Materialism, and specifically consumerism, are almost always used as pejorative terms. Nostalgic conservatives, egalitarian progressives and environmentalists loudly agree on at least one thing: we are just buying too much stuff.

The Black Socialists of America (BSA), a coalition of “anticapitalist, internationalist Black Americans,” just launched its Dual Power Map. The map promises to plot every single worker cooperative, small business development center, community land trust, and dual power project in America so “you can support them right now.

Amazon HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, is just getting started — with a smattering of employees and a new campus construction — but the surrounding housing market is already experiencing a boom in anticipation of the new demand.