#housing-affordability

#housing-affordability

The number of U.S. homes that typically change hands as people relocate for work, retire or trade-up for more living space hasn't been this low in nearly 30 years. About 28 out of every 1,000 homes changed hands between January and September, the lowest U.S. home turnover rate going back to at least the 1990s, according to an analysis by Redfin.

Mayor Daniel Lurie has not appointed a new supervisor for D4, but already there's a strong candidate in the race to defeat the mayor's choice. Natalie Gee, labor and community organizer and chief of staff to Sup. Shamann Walton, announced Tuesday that she's running for the seat. Gee was born in San Francisco, went to local public schools, including Lowell High and SF State, and if offering an agenda that could appeal to many of the voters who tossed Joel Engardio out of office.

Benjamin Franklin famously said that nothing in life is certain except death and taxes. When I saw a recent article by Robert Bork Jr. claiming that the affordability crisis is due to some sort of Realtor tax, I stopped in my tracks. The only Realtor tax I'm aware of is the 15% self-employment tax I'm subject to as an independent contractor, above and beyond the taxes everyone else pays!

Everyone deserves an affordable, stable place to call home. In Boston, a housing affordability crisis - marked by skyrocketing housing costs, gentrification, and displacement - threatens that fundamental right for too many residents. We need strong leadership to ensure Boston remains a city where everyone can live and thrive, not just the wealthy. Our housing system is broken and requires immediate action.

Toronto's condo sales have hit a new low for the month of September with just 53 new condo units sold in the city as the market continues to face consequences due to housing affordability. Just 155 condo units were sold across the Greater Toronto Area last month, down 44 per cent from September 2024 and 90 per cent below the 10-year average, according to data by Altus Group on behalf of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) released Tuesday. BILD's CEO said the sales are low because of the high cost of building due to government fees and taxes.

Although some Realtors might be expecting a more active housing market in the current months, economists warn that affordability remains a challenge for many consumers. Lower rates have been bringing some buyers into the market, but according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, the recent drop in rates has primarily increased refinance activity rather than purchase activity, Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Bright MLS, said in a statement.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Ireland is a trend setter when it comes to having a housing crisis. In fact in the last five years, it seems most cities in the western world have started to follow our lead.

Thanks to a series of state laws passed several years ago, homeowners now have more control over what they can do with their property, and that includes building ADUs. Once considered a niche housing option, ADUs have become a vital part of the city's residential growth strategy. A combination of state housing reforms and local incentives has helped homeowners take the lead in producing new units.

"The most lucrative industry in Hsinchu isn't chips. It's kindergartens," a Taiwanese friend quipped when I mentioned my trip to the chip city, 50 miles south of Taipei. He was half-joking, but it's not far from the truth. Hsinchu, home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and a dense network of tech firms that form the world's chip supply chains, is now the rare place in Taiwan where people are still having babies - if they can afford to.

This has been a generational mistake. Transit makes it possible to capture the benefits of density - a diversified economy and thriving neighborhoods - while mitigating the bad stuff, namely congestion and its attendant maladies: pollution, car crashes, injuries, fatalities, property damage, noise, road repairs, and more. Any city that hopes to grow its tax base by adding population and jobs without expanding its physical footprint needs a high-capacity transit system that enables anywhere-to-anywhere connectivity without succumbing to density's negative attributes.

The origins of Monopoly, a popular board game, not only tell the story of the streets and neighborhoods of Atlantic City, NJ but also how the market compares today. Initially designed by Quakers in Atlantic City with a focus on teaching about monopolies, the game evolved into its current form through Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers. The real-life Atlantic City has witnessed economic fluctuations, making homeownership actually affordable as of 2025 compared to its Monopoly-era peak.

RealPage says it can help its clients "optimize rents to achieve the overall highest yield, or combination of rent and occupancy, at each property."

For Nashville, Clever Offers lauded the city's parks and greenways, impressive street art, and cultural attractions like the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame. However, the company said rising home prices make living in Nashville unrealistic for many people. The city boasts a median home sale price of $470,000, higher than the national median of $438,000.

SB 79 is a historic step toward tackling the root cause of California's affordability crisis - our profound shortage of homes and too few people having access to transit," Wiener (D-San Francisco) said in a statement.

As a company that takes great pride in being L.A. based, we no longer build within the city of Los Angeles because of the unpredictability, the cost of doing it [and] the multiple layers of bureaucracy you have to go through for approvals, Caruso said on stage. And I made that decision long before I ever ran for office [in 2022].

The bill, which involves a wide range of policy approaches to address housing affordability, including provisions to boost supply, modernize financing options, reduce regulatory barriers and promote economic mobility, previously passed the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in July with a unanimous 24-0 vote. Today, the Senate took a historic step towards addressing our nation's worsening housing crisis and bringing down costs for the American people by passing the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act,

New rules for insurance company owners that are now out of state regulators' reach. An emergency relief fund to help low-income homeowners pay for insurance. A national risk pool to spread insurance costs across several states. Those are some of the ideas - some new, some brought back - that Florida's Democratic senators are pushing to ease the high costs of property insurance costs for homeowners and renters in the state.

The Debt Collective is perhaps best known for the ripple effects of the small student loan repayment strike the group organized against a defunct for-profit college in 2015. The strike grew into a nationwide movement demanding justice for millions of people facing overwhelming student debt. By 2025, the Biden administration had approved $188.8 billion in student debt relief for more than 5 million people.