Affordable housing

A Los Angeles City council member Wednesday proposed banning or regulating the practice of renting out vehicles for people to live in within city limits.

Council member Mitch Englander's motion cites KPCC reporting on the growing sub-economy of RV and van rentals for homeless people.

"They're not safe for the community, where you have sewage overspilling next to parks commercial zones and next to schools," said Englander. "Do we ban them, do we make it criminal, do we have rules and regulations? We've got to have the conversation."

Adrian Bonilla lived in a shared house in this Silicon Valley town with his wife and two grandchildren until earlier this year, when the rent for their bedroom jumped to $1,200 from $900 a month. Mr. Bonilla attributed that rise to Facebook, which is based nearby and was growing.

So Mr. Bonilla, a 43-year-old mechanic and Uber driver, bought a 1991 recreational vehicle and joined a family-oriented R.V. community on a quiet cul-de-sac. They lived there until last week, when Mr. Bonilla received an eviction notice.

As Senate leaders move closer to taking a floor vote next week on their version of the Republican tax reform measure, Los Angeles County leaders have directed their lobbyists in Washington, D.C. to oppose provisions of their proposal.

Future residents of the proposed teacher housing complex slated for development in the Sunset District could have their tenancies capped at seven years, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.

In an effort to address school district vacancies and high teacher turnover as a result of San Francisco’s high rents, The City and the San Francisco Unified School District joined forces in developing the Francis Scott Key Annex — a district-owned plot of land at 1351 42nd Ave. — into up to 150 affordable homes specifically for educators.

It’s been a year since the Fall River Catholic Diocese took over the homeless shelter on Winter Street, but shelter coordinator Karen Ready can’t get over the number of older people who are ending up on the mattresses at St. Joseph’s House.

“I’m a little bit alarmed at how many elders are coming to shelter and what we can do,” Ready said. “It’s a very bitter pill for me to swallow.”

The Los Angeles City Council has shown only lukewarm support for Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposed “linkage fees,” which would be funded by developers and earmarked for low-income housing. But even as the policy has stalled on a citywide level (it was finally green-lit by a key committee in August), a coalition of advocates has been steadily working on other ways to create developer incentives and get more affordable homes built in South Central L.A.

In the world of New York housing, where landlord-tenant battles are both routine and brutal, Joel Wiener has plenty of scars.

One of the city’s top 10 rental apartment owners, Wiener’s been sued for overcharges and shoddy repairs, and denounced by politicians for making housing too expensive for the working class.

For everyone who has ever passed one of this city’s sprawling homeless encampments and wondered how to help, Mayor Libby Schaaf has an answer — open your door to someone in need of shelter.

In any given week, the housing crisis in New York City reveals itself through new but familiar anecdotes of deprivation, in fresh sets of grim statistics, in staggering contradictions. Several days ago, residents of the notoriously beleaguered Louis H. Pink Houses in the East New York section of Brooklyn rallied to protest a lack of heat and hot water in the buildings, a recurring condition, they said, that left children sleeping in parkas and hats and getting sick.

A little-noticed provision in the Republican tax reform bill that passed the House on Thursday could have a big impact on affordable housing construction.

The House bill maintains a tax subsidy for low-income housing construction, but ends the tax-free status of certain bonds that builders rely on to arrange financing.

Developers say the mere threat of the policy change already has them scrambling to close deals for upcoming projects before the end of the year, when funding could disappear.