#housing-policy

#housing-policy

Roughly a month after neighborhood and small business groups sued San Francisco over a housing plan they said went too far, a coalition of housing activists are filing their own suit arguing the city's plan doesn't go far enough. "We are here today on the precipice of St. Valentine's Day out of love: love for the San Franciscans who can't afford where they live, who are forgoing essential items like health care and saving for the future," she said.

Opposition says reforms will fuel more homelessness, emigration of skilled workers and delays in starting families

New York City renters can now sign up to testify at the city's first-ever Rental Ripoff Hearings, a series of public forums announced by Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration aimed at gathering tenant experiences with unsafe conditions, hidden fees, and other common rental complaints. The hearings, established through an executive order signed on Jan. 4, will take place in all five boroughs between late February and early April.

"Tonight, the people of the 47th District made a clear choice for progress, integrity, and leadership that shows up," Bottcher said in an election night statement. "I'm deeply grateful to every voter, volunteer, and neighbor who believed that government should work harder for working families - and I'm excited to get to work."

The current issue is whether Fremont controls the road that the Alameda County Board of Supervisors ceded to Christopher George, who has now blocked access with a gate. But it is part of a longer battle that has included the board considering George's request for the land after his company donated $10,000 to Supervisor David Haubert's campaign. The board granted his request ostensibly to save maintenance costs, but at the expense of constituents who have used that section of road recreationally for decades.

That local exodus is documented by Cornell-led research that mapped annual moves between U.S. neighborhoods from 2010 to 2019 in detail 4,600 times greater than standard public data. Called MIGRATE, the new, publicly available dataset revealed that most of those displaced remained within the affected county - moves not captured in county-level public migration data aggregated every five years.

"She was such a force of nature in her enthusiasm for making our city, county and the whole Bay Area a better place." One of many comments shared about Roma Dawson, a dynamic activist who succumbed to cancer last December. Many knew Roma as a longtime dedicated League of Women Voters and community member for San Jose and the Bay Area.

The government is to scale back new energy efficiency targets for social housing, after councils and housing associations warned about the multi billion pound cost of potential building upgrades. Labour plans to introduce minimum energy performance ratings for social homes in England, in a bid to cut tenants' fuel bills and meet climate goals. But ministers now plan to give social landlords more time and greater flexibility to show they comply with new standards.

The law that the council approved does not allow for short-term rentals of residences, like those listed on Airbnb or VRBO. The council also set penalties for people found to be listing their homes for short-term tenants. A first warning would cost $1,500, which would increase to $3,000 at the second warning, a third warning would incur a fine of $5,000. The law also allows the city to request data from websites for short-term rental listings for enforcement reasons.

"I'm jumping in this race because we need a governor who is both a fighter for our values and a fixer of our problems," said Mahan, one of the state's most outspoken Democratic critics of departing Gov. Gavin Newsom. "We can fix the biggest problems facing California, and I believe that because we're making real progress on homelessness, public safety [and] housing supply in San José."

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice sued California, along with 22 other states and Washington, D.C., for access to their full, unredacted voter files. That includes driver's license, social security numbers and other sensitive data. DOJ officials said they needed the data to assess whether states were properly maintaining their voter rolls and ensuring "only American citizens are voting, only one time," as Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a social media post in December.

The mortgage market is off to a strong start in 2026. Mortgage rates declining to levels not seen since September 2024 have boosted borrower demand, with both refinance and purchase applications up solidly on both a weekly and an annual basis, said Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). With the spring homebuying season approaching, lower mortgage rates would be a welcome development for households looking to buy a home.

Housing Minister James Browne has defended the Government's controversial rental reforms which were approved by Cabinet today, claiming supply will increase as a result. The changes, which are due to come into effect on March 1, will give effect to other changes that were previously announced by Government, including the introduction of a six-year tenancies for new tenants. It applies from the start of March for smaller landlords with three or fewer tenancies.

I will be a governor for all New Yorkers,

The City of Milpitas has cleared a path for homeowners to build or legalize accessory dwelling units (ADUs). With funding from the Community Investment Fund and allocation approved by the Milpitas City Council, the Office of Building Safety will cover permit fees for eligible ADU projects. The move is estimated to save homeowners an average of $5,000, depending on ADU size and other factors.

Investors own roughly one in six of California's single-family residences. That's what my trusty spreadsheet found after reviewing a BatchData report that estimates investor ownership of houses and townhomes nationwide. Investors in this study include everything from giant companies controlling thousands of houses to folks with a small collection of rentals to short-term rental operators to people with a second home.

Though he was better known before running for his charitable leadership as founder of the poverty-fighting nonprofit Tipping Point, Lurie immediately after getting elected began focusing on crime, homelessness, housing bottlenecks and quality-of-life issues like cleaning the streets. Lurie streamlined housing approvals, re-organized and sped up city safety responses, launched an anti-homelessness campaign and won a 73% approval rating at Thanksgiving among local voters.

Sumathy Kumar and I have fought side by side in Albany to win real, transformative change for working-class families and, as we look to freeze rents and hold bad landlords accountable, the tenant movement couldn't have a more powerful champion. I'm proud to partner with Sumathy in the fight for every New Yorker to have a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.

He's taking an extreme left-wing position which looks like state capitalism,

Director Dan Garodnick informed Mayor Zohran Mamdani that he would be stepping down from the role "in the coming weeks," according to an email shared with staff earlier this morning, City Limits first reported. Under Gardonick, the agency passed the first major citywide rezoning since 1961-"City of Yes"-an effort to create more housing in every neighborhood amid a citywide housing shortage that has pushed rents higher.

Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as 'wealth building' public policy,

Where I live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, we saw this cycle where landlords and bankers and policymakers had driven up the value of real estate using speculative financial capital, the housing market crashed, and then the solution to that was just a different private equity firm coming in and owning the buildings," Weaver, 37, said in a Dissent magazine interview published last winter. "This cycle fueled waves of gentrification in Crown Heights.