News and Views
The developers of a 20-story apartment tower planned for near Capitol Records in Hollywood announced today that they would voluntarily make all of their units rent-controlled. Subjecting the approximately 210 new apartments to the city’s rent control stabilization ordinance will cap rent increases at 3 percent per year. The ordinance applies to housing built prior to 1978—not new projects—so the decision is almost totally unheard of.
November 17, 2017
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.
November 17, 2017
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.
November 16, 2017
Sonoma County is experiencing a second wave of fire victims: renters.
Many are being evicted because their homes are now needed by the landlords, for themselves or someone else to live in.
"It would have been easier if everything was just gone, and we started over," Jeff Larcher told KTVU, in the Santa Rosa house he has rented for 12 years.
Larcher, his wife and two children, must vacate the 3 bedroom home by January 5.
November 16, 2017
Supporters of an initiative which would establish rent control in Pasadena as well as limitations on the termination of rental tenancies officially notified City officials Wednesday afternoon of their intention to publicly circulate a petition supporting a new City Charter Amendment to those ends.
The notice of intent to circulate the petition was signed by Pasadena housing activist Michelle C. White; Nicole Marie Hodgson, who is a leader of the year-old Pasadena Tenants Union; and 85-year-old Pasadena renter Robert Roberts.
Complaints of repairs undone and evictions undeserved prompted consumer investigator Jim Strickland to speak to metro tenants of a local corporate landlord.
Waypoint Homes rents thousands of single family homes across metro Atlanta, and that number will more than double after a merger with another rental giant. This fact did not sit well with local tenants, who call Waypoint Homes an absentee landlord at best. The Better Business Bureau's d+ rating for Waypoint comes with an alert for a pattern of complaint.
November 16, 2017
Bruce Nicholson and Lisa Daspit thought they had found the perfect house. They spotted it from the car -- a bright yellow bungalow with white trim, partially hidden from the street by an array of palm trees on the lawn -- while exploring a favorite neighborhood in Margate, Florida, outside Fort Lauderdale. The couple had dreams of owning their own home, and this single-family rental offered both the time to save and the space to grow.
They called the number for Waypoint Homes posted on the sign out front and moved in shortly thereafter, excited to make the house their own.
November 16, 2017
A coalition of Los Angeles affordable housing advocates and labor unions isn’t happy about one of Downtown LA’s newer high-rises.
In a letter to the city’s planning director, Vince Bertoni, they accuse Level Furnished Living, home of LA’s “most expensive” penthouse, of operating as an “unpermitted hotel.” The letter calls upon the planning department to open an investigation.
Some renters of homes owned by the “billion-dollar landlords” highlighted in an ABC News investigation might be surprised to learn that they, as taxpayers, have a stake in their corporate landlord’s business.
That’s because of a new initiative by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), in which Fannie Mae guarantees mortgage-backed securities on rental homes. (Fannie Mae, along with Freddie Mac, is a government-sponsored enterprise that securitizes mortgages, allowing private lenders to put more of their money back into lending.)
The I-Team investigated the "Billion Dollar Landlords" and the tenants who say they're being bullied by them. There are allegations that the landlords are quick to threaten evictions and slow to repair.
The complaints include problems with overall living conditions, repairs, and billing disputes, as well as quick eviction threats. In a joint investigation the ABC7 I-Team and ABC News are exposing complaints connected to the new trend of "Billion Dollar Landlords."
November 15, 2017
In 1981, Minneapolis was facing an affordable housing crisis. Rents had risen 61 percent in the five years since the repeal of Nixon-era rent controls; they were expected to increase another 10 percent the following year. A number of condominium conversions had decreased available units, and the city’s vacancy rate had fallen from 4 to 3.4 percent. With rent increasing as much as 7.6 percent in just a few months, tenants found that they could not survive.
November 15, 2017
Supervisors London Breed and Jeff Sheehy announced a plan Tuesday to offer legal service to renters who are served eviction notices. It’s pitched as a right to civil counsel — similar to that which individuals accused of a crime receive.
November 14, 2017
Instead of amending the city’s rent control law, Councilman Tam Nguyen said housing officials should focus on creating more affordable housing — and stop “pounding” on the landlords. But Councilman Raul Peralez argued that new housing developments take years to approve and build — and Nguyen last year voted against an affordable housing project in his district on Senter Road.
“When you’re talking about a city that has 4,000 homeless people — waiting 10 or 15 years to get those homes can’t be the only solution,” Peralez said.
November 14, 2017
Voters in Portland, Maine, rejected a ballot measure last week that would have established a rent stabilization program in the small coastal city, capping off months of debate over how to address rising housing costs.
November 14, 2017
America needs more affordable housing. That is a fact. How to fund that housing, however, has Republican tax writers in the House at odds with those in the Senate.
It all comes down to a type of tax-exempt bond that funds about half of all affordable housing development. The House tax reform bill eliminates the bond — the Senate bill retains it.
Palo Alto’s city council voted against further discussion of new measures that would address the housing affordability crisis in the city even as soaring rents have displaced community members like teachers, first responders and service industry workers.
While cities around the peninsula have passed rent control or approved new affordable housing projects to address the problem, the Palo Alto City Council voted 6-3 on Oct. 16 against studying stabilization measures after hearing passionate testimony from 60 members of the public.
November 12, 2017
A San Francisco woman appears to have made history as the first person to successfully fend off an Ellis Act eviction through a jury trial.
On Thursday, a jury found that Betty Rose Allen would not have to vacate her Noe Valley apartment, where she’s lived for nearly 40 years, after a lengthy and acrimonious legal battle with the building’s owners.
November 11, 2017
Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has heard plenty of complaints about sky-high rents and hotel prices in the aftermath of the region’s devastating fires.
But a report of a big dollar amount alone doesn’t necessarily constitute a violation of the state’s price-gouging law.
“As of this moment we have received over 60 reports of potential rental price gouging,” Ravitch wrote Thursday in an email.
November 11, 2017
Amid soaring housing costs and a tight rental market, tenant advocates are urging the San Jose City Council on Tuesday to limit increases for rent-controlled apartments to inflation levels.
Currently, landlords can raise rents in the 44,359 apartments subject to the city’s rent-control ordinance by no more than 5 percent a year. Tuesday’s proposal would limit increases to the area’s consumer price index, a variable rate determined by the federal government and considered an inflation gauge.
Ben Hernandez and his family have spent the past five weeks in hotels, unable to find a place to rent after wildfires destroyed more than 5,000 homes in Sonoma County, including their three-bedroom tract house in northwest Santa Rosa.
“It’s looking more and more like we might have to stay with relatives,” said Hernandez, who works in maintenance and construction. His homeowners insurance is paying for the hotels, he said, but the company “is only going to give you so much housing money” toward a future when the family can rebuild in Coffey Park.