Housing
Local governments face a year-end deadline for obligating American Rescue Plan Act funds. To keep funds earmarked for housing from being plundered, they need to make some decisions now.
Proposition 4 could usher in a bevy of property tax changes for homeowners and businesses. If passed, the measure includes using $12.7 billion from a record state budget surplus to lower school district taxes. Unanswered is the proposition’s affordability.
The city wants to suspend its 42-year-old right to shelter because of the strain the migrant crisis has put on city resources. But many are worried what suspending the policy will do to homelessness in the area.
Woodbury University architecture students designed and constructed the 3D-printed home in just 15 months. Though the structure still needs some drywall, exterior features and landscaping, many are hopeful of what it could mean for the housing crisis.
Houston has created a real system to address homelessness, aligning city, county and nonprofit efforts. That innovative program is now under threat, due to changes in leadership and funding.
Local governments are considering rent control initiatives to protect struggling tenants, but some analysts say restrictions only exacerbate the housing crunch and others have questioned if the true beneficiaries are actually low-income renters.
Boston has a new tax incentive program to help developers convert downtown office space to housing. Conversions remain relatively rare, but more cities are looking at ways to push them forward.
It offers significant cost, efficiency and sustainability benefits, but its widespread use is hampered by a patchwork of state and local regulations. Regulatory consistency could help builders deliver the housing we need.
The city manager’s budget includes $1.5 million on decommissioning homeless encampments, $1.5 million on building fences to keep homeless individuals out of encampment-prone areas and $1.1 million for the “cleaning” of encampments.
Lakewood, Colo., voted four years ago to limit the number of new housing units that can go up in the city in any given year, but a law recently signed by Gov. Polis prohibits the implementation of “anti-growth” policies.
Heat indexes in Orlando have surpassed 100 degrees 32 times so far this year, making this year especially dangerous for unhoused residents. There has been a 75 percent increase in unsheltered people in Central Florida since 2019.
Many landlords see federal housing vouchers as a red flag about the renters’ income, and while 17 states and D.C. have laws that protect against housing assistance program discrimination, enforcing them is still a challenge.
Housing deterioration is a serious problem for lower-income households. Home repairs address deep-seated racial and environmental injustices, and substandard housing can be a matter of life and death.
The California city will use the state funds over the next three years for outreach, case management, rapid-rehousing assistance, meal vouchers, health-care coordination, hiring a new city social worker and more.
Arresting people who have no options left is just adding another tier of disenfranchisement. At best, it’s a dehumanizing shell game.
Three states and more than 20 cities have adopted some form of protection. Landlord and real estate groups argue that the policies make it more difficult to remove problem tenants and could worsen the housing shortage.
The White House has announced the single largest infusion of funds into the Continuum of Care program, while also including grants for legal services and job training for veterans and “boot camps” for VA medical centers and public housing agencies.
A recent poll found that 52 percent of city residents were optimistic that the city would reduce its homeless population over the next four years, despite the crisis having worsened recently.
A year ago, six jurisdictions were selected as the first participants in an incubator project designed to help them harness the economic power of publicly owned land and buildings. Atlanta is ready to use what it learned.
For many, Suza Francina’s struggle for housing and her council seat is a stark example of California’s ever-growing housing crisis. Last month the Ventura County grand jury gave her 30 days to establish new residency or lose her seat.
Fluctuations in need and bed availability for foster children is normal, but this year has seen a striking crisis in the regional foster care system, which forced the state’s family agency to house seven children in casino hotel rooms over an 89-day stretch.
Mayor Eric Adams works to open expensive migrant shelters in airport warehouses and school gyms despite the fact that there are thousands of unoccupied beds through the city’s public and supportive housing systems.
Inadequate housing stock is causing problems across the country. Local zoning is part of the problem. State-level reforms in two western states may point to the answer.
Housing leaders and experts worry that tenants are disadvantaged when inspection reports are discarded so quickly, but city officials say keeping older information isn’t relevant to the properties’ current states.
An analysis of zoning laws in Connecticut finds people in single-family areas are likelier to be white and have higher incomes than those in areas that allow more housing. The findings add to a growing recognition of how zoning is linked with segregation and exclusion.
California legislators approved a new approach to mental health care that allows judges to issue treatment plans for people with certain diagnoses.
Seattle, Houston, Atlanta and Tucson, Ariz., are among a small number of cities that lost population in the pandemic but now have more people than a decade ago. Finding those residents housing is a challenge, however.
An outdoor death is defined as a person found dead outside with no fixed address. The deaths occurred in April and are the highest number of outdoor deaths in Anchorage for any single month since the beginning of 2017.
From Chatsworth to Irvine, “not in my backyard” opposition to proposed homeless housing projects has grown in suburbs even as the areas become increasingly diverse and liberal.
Simply rehashing the problem does more harm than good. Instead, state and local leaders must help citizens see how solutions to homelessness benefit all of us.
The city of Los Angeles uses a scoring system for subsidized housing gives Black and Latino people experiencing homelessness lower priority scores.
