Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Housing Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard

February 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Affordable and Available Units per 100 ELI Renter Households

Since the American housing crisis began five years ago, policymakers have devoted the bulk of their attention to the bubble’s most visible victims, homeowners who’ve lost their houses to foreclosure, or who look like they may any day now. This group has been the subject of congressional inquiries and legal settlements and numerous election-year speeches. Just this week, California’s attorney general has been pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive some of the debt owed by underwater homeowners. Considerably less attention has gone to a population deeply impacted by the housing ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, The Idea Lobby
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Surplus Government Property: Homeless Help vs. Revenue

February 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

For the past 25 years, many organizations that serve the homeless in America have been able to do so with a free supply of real estate: surplus federal property that the government no longer wants. Old warehouses have been turned into food banks. Small agency office buildings have been converted to counseling centers. Decommissioned military housing now sometimes shelters the homeless. But in a reality of the recession, as America’s homeless ranks have risen, so too has the pressure in Washington to make a buck by selling these properties. “The issue has kind of devolved into a ... Read More

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Leaky Homes Show Green Intentions Gone Wrong

December 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Twenty years ago, changes to New Zealand’s construction and building inspection codes, the introduction of new materials, a shift in the style and design of homes, and, ironically, pressure from environmentalists, all combined to sow the seeds of a massive “leaky homes” problem. Two decades after that perfect storm, the debris is now washing up on the shores of a recession-hit housing market, leaving thousands of people trapped in homes that are rotting around them, but which they cannot afford to repair and have no hope of selling. Russell Cooney, past president of the New Zealand ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Gay Neighbors Impact Property Values

November 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

When gay people move into a neighborhood, do property values go down? Newly published research suggests the answer is yes — but only for neighborhoods with negative attitudes toward gay people. A look at sociopolitical attitudes and home prices in a major Ohio city finds “an increase in the number of same-sex-couple households is associated with an increase in house prices in more liberal neighborhoods, and a decrease in house prices in more conservative neighborhoods. “This suggests that gay and lesbian coupled households do experience prejudice in conservative ... Read More

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Rescuing the Rural Edge — It Takes a Village

September 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Where suburbia merges into countryside typically looks peaceful enough, with lawns giving way to forests and fields. But in most places, this is a zone of conflict and dysfunction. The steady loss of farmland and natural habitat to sprawl-pattern development endangers food supplies and other resources, as well as the health, wealth and survival prospects of individuals and even whole communities. Take California's fifth-largest city, Fresno, located in one of the most productive areas on Earth, the San Joaquin Valley. Agriculture is the principal industry in Fresno County — generating ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Magazine Feature Story, September-October 2011
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For Americans, Mobility Breeds Uniformity

August 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

We Americans take fierce pride in our individualism, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at our subdivisions and shopping malls. From Boston to Burbank, we buy the same nationally advertised products at the same chain stores and restaurants, happily embracing conformity as we proudly proclaim our uniqueness. Why does our self-image fail to reflect reality? Researchers led by University of Virginia psychologists Shigehiro Oishi and Felicity Miao offer an intriguing answer. They argue our willingness to move far from home leads us to crave the comfort of sameness in our immediate ... Read More

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Mortgage Loan Documents Getting an Overhaul

June 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

If you've ever shopped for a home mortgage, you probably recognize — perhaps with a knot of fear in your gut — these two federally mandated pieces of paperwork: the two-page Truth in Lending disclosure, and the three-page Good Faith Estimate form. They are, despite their sweet-sounding names, daunting loan documents for consumers about to make the largest financial commitment of their lives. The government has long required banks to present these papers to potential home buyers to help them grasp the full consequences of loans and all the sneaky fees that go with them. Over the years, ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, The Idea Lobby
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ARCHIVE Says Home Is Where the Health Is

April 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Peter Williams

Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Peter Williams took for granted the holes in the wood floors of his house — and the rats that crawled through them. But when his father contracted a bacterial infection that left him paralyzed, Williams, a budding architect, began to recognize the connection between shoddy housing and ill health. "The disease was directly attributed to the fact that the house was poorly constructed," says Williams, 35. "I saw firsthand how housing was both responsible for his illness and also incapable of meeting his care needs, given that he was quite immobile." If the ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Health, May-June 2011, Profile
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Mentally Ill Homeless Improve With Group Living

April 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Homelessness, Housing and Mental Illness

In 1990, a research team in Boston launched an ambitious experiment with some of the city's sickest residents — the chronically homeless and severely mentally ill. With $13 million in federal funding, the team recruited 118 volunteers from the shelters and randomly placed them in group homes and independent apartments. The group homes were envisioned as a kind of utopia, in which the mentally ill clients — up to 10 in each of six homes — would become "active agents in shaping their future." By the end of 18 months, they were supposed to replace the paid staff. The project team, led by ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, May-June 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
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Immigrant Flow Shifts to Smaller Cities

December 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The Pew Hispanic Center has predicted that the U.S. population will grow by more than 100 million over the next 40 years solely as a result of immigration — legal and illegal — and the children born to immigrants already here. Those numbers are in line with several other forecasts based on Census Bureau data, and certainly sound right to associate professor Gary Painter, director of research at the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate. Where will all those people live? Painter, a specialist in urban economics, homeownership and housing markets, has a pretty ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Culture
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