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Beginning in early 2020, Berlin’s left-leaning government will freeze rents for five years. Landlords will be required to show new tenants the most recent rental contracts to prove they aren’t jacking up prices. They’ll also have to follow new rent-cap rules, which for many landlords could mean lowering rents by as much as 40%. Those who don’t comply will be hit with fines as high as €500,000 ($553,000) for each violation. — Bloomberg Businessweek
Writing in Bloomberg Businessweek, Caroline Winter and Andrew Blackman cover the fascinating political battle taking place in Berlin, Germany, where tenants' groups and landlords are navigating the impacts of recent rent-freeze regulations by the local government that aim to reign in unaffordable... View full entry
The Berkeley City Council has voted to create a new city-run homeless encampment to help provide a safe and clean place for some of the city's unhoused residents to live temporarily. According to a report from Curbed, the measure was supported by a majority of the City Councilmembers and... View full entry
Now SB 50 allows cities two years to adopt their own plans to achieve the bill’s central goal, which is to greatly increase the amount of market-rate and affordable housing built near transit and job centers [...] without increasing car travel or concentrating the new homes in low-income areas while leaving more affluent areas untouched. — The Los Angeles Times
Writing in The Los Angeles Times, opinion columnist Kerry Cavanaugh highlights some of the recent changes made to proposed legislation from California State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco. Wiener's SB 50 measure is a statewide densification initiative that's been a work in... View full entry
“No Section 8.”
You’ll find those words on rental listings across the country. Landlords use them to deter people who rely on the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8, from applying for their units.
Starting in January, a new California law will make that discrimination illegal.
— Capitol Public Radio
A new law is slated to take effect in California on January 1, 2020 that will prevent landlords in the state from discriminating against federal housing voucher recipients. The measure caps off a better-than-average year for tenants rights activists across the country—at the local... View full entry
Though the French capital and its suburbs house less than one-third the population of California, the region produced more new homes last year than the entire Golden State. — The San Francisco Chronicle
MIT Urban Planning doctoral candidate Yonah Freemark, writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, highlights the successes that have taken shape in Paris in recent years with regards to increasing housing production and affordability. The recipe for success, according to Freemark’s... View full entry
Under the Faircloth Amendment [signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1999], the supply of public housing is capped at 1999 levels. In order to build a new public housing unit, the federal government is required to either abolish an existing unit or sell it to a private buyer. [...]
Article 34 of the California state constitution requires majority voter approval at the ballot for government-funded construction of any low-income housing project including public housing.
— San Francisco Examiner
Writing in The San Francisco Examiner, data scientist and fair housing advocate Sasha Perigo highlights the federal Faircloth Amendment as perhaps the most significant obstacle standing in the way of a trio of recently proposed public housing expansion programs that could vastly increase public... View full entry
The red-hot housing market has made it difficult for adults, especially Millennials and single families, to afford decent accommodations. With the increasingly popular tiny home movement, it's become clear that this appealing lifestyle trend is turning into a viable solution to the looming housing... View full entry
California Senator and presidential contender Kamala Harris and California Representative Maxine Waters have introduced the "Housing is Infrastructure Act," a $107 billion bill that aims to upgrade and expand affordable housing across the country. The bill is the latest in a series of efforts... View full entry
Homes For All United States Representative Ilhan Omar has unveiled a new piece of legislation that seeks to reinvigorate public housing construction across the country by building 12 million new public and affordable housing units over the next decade. The so-called “Homes for All Act”... View full entry
New York City Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have unveiled a bold initiative aimed at rejuvenating and decarbonizing the nation’s public housing stock. The visionary Green New Deal for Public Housing Act aims to bring sorely needed maintenance... View full entry
By early next year [UnitedHealth Group] expects to house 350 homeless Medicaid patients whose annual health-care spending, while they’re on the streets, exceeds $17 million. The goal is for them to “graduate” within a year to paying their own rent. — Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek profiles UnitedHealth Group's efforts to reign in healthcare costs by providing high-cost patients with housing. The approach comes as the connections between a lack of housing and extreme healthcare costs come into sharper relief between these adjacent industries. The... View full entry
WXY architecture + urban design, Body Lawson Associates, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) have broken ground on a $300 million redevelopment plan that will replace the defunct Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in The Bronx with up to 740 units of affordable housing... View full entry
In New York, hope sometimes comes at the price of the sun.
The city welcomes poor immigrants, but its housing does not. Most rents are far beyond the means of people like Amado, who arrive looking for a better life or to make money to send back home.
So they turn to the basements of Queens.
— The New York Times
The New York Times has produced an interactive photo essay profiling New York City residents in the borough of Queens who live in some of the city's windowless basement apartments. The arrangement, derived out of economic necessity and rooted in a desire to stay out of sight, provides newly... View full entry
The Australian company promoting the brick- and block-laying robot Hadrian X has entered a series of agreements with housebuilders in Australia and Mexico with a view to getting demonstration homes built.
Fastbrick Australia, a joint venture between Hadrian X inventor Fastbrick Robotics (FBR Ltd) and Australian building supplies company Brickworks Building Products, hopes the agreements will get traction for its “Wall-as-a-Service” concept in the two countries’ sizeable home-building markets.
— Global Construction Review
FBR's Hadrian X robots can build multi-room structures from 3D CAD models with no human intervention. In addition to new contracts with Australian and Mexican entities, the company has also inked deals with builders and fabricators in Saudi Arabia and Austria, among others. A recent... View full entry
A first-of-its-kind deal to sell the air rights at a Fort Greene NYCHA development is nearing completion after months of negotiation.
The deal would transfer nearly 100,000 square feet of building rights from the Ingersoll Houses to a yet-to-be-built private development next door. In exchange, developers would provide nearly $25 million for maintenance at Ingersoll as part of NYCHA’s new long-term strategy to leverage private funds for the repair of its beleaguered housing stock.
— The Brooklyn Eagle
The deal will help a 183-unit mixed use development located next door to Brooklyn's Ingersoll Houses grow to 400 units in size. In exchange, the number of affordable housing units designed into the project will increase from 79 to 100, New York YIMBY reports. The proposed 202 Tillary Street... View full entry
