T here's a running joke in one of my friend circles that, if we ever pooled our resources and lived together, we'd need a cat room. We daydream about what our space would be like beyond feline accommodations: Everyone would have their own bedroom with en suite bathroom, naturally. We'd have a communal kitchen and living space, so we could hang out and get some friend time in.
These debates, while legitimate, have become distractions from larger challenges, and while we argue over how to slice a shrinking pie, millions of Americans are starving for a slice of the American Dream. Eales acknowledged the plethora of legislative proposals devoted to improved housing affordability. These include some of the provisions in the ROAD to Housing Act and the More Homes on the Market Act, which focuses on changing the current capital gains tax exemption limits.
There are not too many spaces where you can have folks gather without a permit and not be harassed by the police and other people, said Orobosa Ogbeide, the 28-year-old founder of Play2Win, the group behind the event, which drew more than 300 people. It was the quality of the park, the baseball fields were clean and safety was definitely a concern. We really wanted a positive vibe.
Right now is an opportunity for me to introduce myself as I am, and the focus of what my administration will be. Because it's very much in line with what many Staten Islanders care deeply about - which is not only their ability to afford to live in New York City, but also build a life in New York City.
I am a man in my late 20s, and I have rented the same three-bedroom house with my best friend, "Gail," since we graduated college seven years ago. Gail is a woman, but she is gay, and there has never been anything between us. The landlord likes us since we are quiet and clean. He has barely raised the rent.
In response to a survey asking, "Which of the following do you think have increased the most in cost for you over the past year?" groceries and food topped the list at 64%, followed by housing at 50%, utilities at 33%, restaurants and entertainment at 28%, taxes at 25%, health care at 23% and home insurance at 22%. Joint Venture conducted its poll in August, surveying 1,750 residents from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.
This week's review focuses on concrete responses to shared urban challenges, including housing affordability, long-term resilience, and the role of cultural and material innovation in shaping cities. The selection spans regulatory measures affecting housing markets in European cities, high-density residential and mixed-income proposals in New York, and major renewal and planning efforts in London, Barcelona, Ulaanbaatar, and Drammen. It also highlights research-driven and built projects in Chicago, Buenos Aires, Las Vegas, and Riyadh
For generations it has been taken as a near article of faith across the country that ownership is both the financially and socially superior way to inhabit a home and that public policy makers should always promote it. California legislators and housing advocates spent this past year enacting sweeping policies aimed at making it easier to build housing of all kinds. This coming year, many of them indicate that they plan to focus specifically on providing more plentiful paths to homeownership.
It's impossible to say how many firsts were had within the walls of G-A-Y Bar on Old Compton Street. An innumerable number of LGBTQ+ people, young and old, will have flocked there from far and wide over the years to have perhaps their first experience of a gay bar, maybe even their first alcoholic drink, as well as their first taste of a different, brighter, queerer life.
Buying a home and signing up to a 30 to 35-year mortgage is already the biggest financial commitment you'll ever make. But would you be prepared to go a step further and commit to paying the same interest rate for 30 years?
In the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn metro, investors accounted for 10.6% of home purchases in Q2 2025, essentially flat year over year. What sets Detroit apart is pricing. The median investor purchase price was $106,000, compared with $252,000 for the overall median sale-an eye-popping 58.0% discount. That gap is the widest among the 50 largest metros tracked, underscoring how strongly investors are targeting entry-level and undervalued housing stock in the region.
On the outskirts of Dallas/Fort Worth, where pastureland once stretched uninterrupted to the horizon, thousands of new structures are rising. Windowless. Warehouse-sized. Fenced in and humming with electricity. These are not fulfillment centers or factories. They are data centers, the physical backbone of artificial intelligence. Texas, long known for oil rigs and subdivisions, is now ground zero for the AI economy.
Housing affordability remains one of the most pressing challenges facing aspiring homeowners, renters, and communities, Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), said in a statement. Today's overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the House Financial Services Committee is a significant milestone. Broeksmit said the bill advances several long-standing MBA priorities, including updates to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) multifamily loan limits, targeted improvements to rural housing programs and stronger coordination among federal agencies.
As families leave, our school enrollment declines, our tax base erodes, and neighborhood stability crumbles. The article highlights the fact that median asking rent for family-sized apartments with three or more bedrooms is now nearly $5,000 a month. That's impossibly high for so many, including those who were born and raised here. As a result, families are leaving New York City at higher rates than other demographic groups and at a higher rate than families are leaving other major cities.
If starting a family, buying a house, or just thinking about purchasing a car feels impossible-you're definitely not alone. What used to define "middle class" feels further out of reach for Millennials and Gen Z than ever before. Rising costs, stagnant wages, and where you live all play huge roles in whether big life milestones feel doable-or merely like dreams. So has the middle class actually disappeared, or is it just morphing into something new?
So the housing market faces some really significant challenges, and I don't know that, you know, a 25 basis point decline in the federal funds rate is going to make much of a difference for people. You know, housing supply is low. Many people have very, very low, low, low rate mortgages from the pandemic period, and they kept refinancing and caught the really low. So it's expensive to them to move. And you know, we're a ways away from that changing.
The dirty secret many now understand is that a lot of wage labor is not enough to get by in America anymore. The past promise of working hard for 40 hours per week and getting a home and a retirement in return is gone for a significant chunk of this country, stripped away by capitalists whose only desire in their miserable lives is to have more than they currently do.
According to the First American Real House Price Index, which adjusts prices for income and interest rate changes, housing affordability has posted its longest stretch of annual improvement since late 2019 and early 2020. Wage gains outpaced home-price appreciation in 2025 and mortgage rates eased off their peaks, helping repair some of the damage. But the progress has been far from uniform.
The Thurmond Amendment, passed in 1988, is a carve-out of the Fair Housing Act that enables landlords-and the algorithmic screening software they increasingly rely on-to summarily deny housing to applicants with any conviction related to selling drugs, regardless of the circumstances. The result has been to undermine housing affordability. If the nation is to act and start making housing more affordable, removing this barrier is one obvious step to take.
Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars - the median California home sells for US$906,500 - and you'd be paying a mortgage that's risen 82% since January 2020. Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs less than half as much: just $353,700. The catch? Option B sits in an area with significant hurricane and flood risk.
Analyzing nearly 650 counties, cities and towns that have participated in the AARP Livability Index over the past decade, new Cornell research shows most have made progress developing communities conducive to aging in place across a range of metrics, from transportation to civic engagement. Some 31,000 other places that are not part of AARP's age-friendly network also made improvements, but to a lesser extent.
A recent American Enterprise Institute analysis ignited a spark. A Wall Street Journal piece that followed on the heels of the AEI report fanned the flames into a scandalous narrative: Permanent mortgage buydowns particularly those enabled by bulk forward commitments from large, mostly public, homebuilders act as a quiet force that inflates home prices and puts buyers at risk. But the assumption underlying that framing makes it worth a time-out to ask a few questions.
There are a lot of false solutions being peddled these days. We hear things like: Your rent is too high, so the government should deport immigrants. Your wages aren't enough, so billionaires should get lower taxes. You're worried about your kids' future, so trans kids should lose their rights. These are real problems paired with false solutions. Real problems deserve real solutions.
We no longer need as much centralized power generation, yet it is still the planning model used by PG&E and the other investor-owned utilities (IOUs). Instead, the IOUs should be leading the effort to grow local electricity generation through solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Microgrids should be the main method of distribution, and costly transmission lines should be minimized.
Nashville, one of the fastest-growing Sun Belt cities over the past decade, has been working to address the housing affordability issues that accompanied its massive economic development. Confronted with a shortage of nearly 90,000 homes, the Nashville Metro Council made its most significant move since 2018 to shape the city's future. It passed two groundbreaking and controversial zoning measures, overcoming strong opposition to clear their final hurdle and become law. With the adoption of these laws, Nashville joins a growing list of cities and states working to eliminate decades of restrictive zoning covenants and regulations.
Today's buyers aren't just looking for a house they're looking for a sense of community, said Chris Lim, REMAX's chief growth officer. It's the job of real estate professionals to help prospective buyers find homes and neighborhoods that meet their financial needs while also supporting the way they want to live. Economic uncertainty and rising housing costs remained the top barriers among respondents. About three-quarters (78%) said more affordable home prices would prompt them to buy within six months.
