Harvard Study – Affordability Squeeze (Part 2)
(This is the second in a two-part series reporting on a recent study by Harvard University’s Joint Center on Housing Studies called The State of the Nation’s Housing. Part 1 appeared yesterday in Fox and Hounds.) Every year about this time the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University publishes its evaluation of the nation’s housing condition. […]
Harvard Study: Housing Outlook Mixed (Part 1)
When it comes to housing as a national matter, there’s good news and bad news. At a minimum, it can be said that demographic changes – particularly the rise in household formation coming from expanding millennial populations – look like they’re going to save the day. On the other hand, incomes don’t appear to be […]
State Agency Should Return to its Roots
When the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) was created in 1975 – Governor Jerry Brown’s first term – its mission was simple: to help low- and moderate-income families buy their first home. More than 40 years later, in the midst of huge gaps between incomes and prevailing home prices, that goal is getting harder and harder […]
Congressional Democrats Want Millions More Homes
After a few years at the state Capitol, it became clear to me that Republicans, who philosophically see more eye-to-eye with those of us supporting free enterprise over more government, were not in my lifetime ever going to gain control of two let alone one house of the Legislature. It just wasn’t going to happen. […]
The Consequences of Bad Housing Laws
If you think being a rental housing owner in California is frustrating and nerve-rattling, read what is being said about property owners in Seattle: My landlord is a dying breed. He’s a middle-class guy who owns and rents out the tiny house we live in, built in the 1950s on the other side of the […]
Millennials Prefer Suburban Living
To most builders, housing demand is meaningless unless it’s in their backyard or in some nearby community. That is, most homebuilders don’t stray too far from the markets they know. What we recently learned from the U.S. Bureau of the Census will be well received by those builders: thanks to the interest millennials are taking in […]
A Class Act Leaves the Stage
Not everyone knows Eileen Reynolds. But, among real estate lobbyists she’s iconic, a giant. She’s getting ready to retire and she will be sorely missed. Eileen started out her career reading bills for the REALTORS. She learned a lot about lawmaking during that time. But it was her work ethic that got the attention of […]
State Says New Homes Must Have Solar Panels
Turning a deaf ear to the new housing costs its decision would generate, a state panel recently ruled that beginning in 2020 all new homes built in California must include solar rooftops. The action by the five-member California Energy Commission (CEC) makes good on a decades-long threat that the mandate was coming. But, is this […]
Bill Would Give Free Pass to Nuisance Tenants
If a tenant in a residential rental property of yours is continuously hassling his or her next-door neighbors, after several warnings would you move to evict? How about if a tenant consistently violates the building’s no-smoking policy? What if that tenant is found to keep an illegal pet? By notifying the tenant up to 60 […]
Rent Control is Not the Answer
State housing activists recently came to Sacramento to celebrate a special achievement of theirs. They gathered on the steps of the Capitol to announce they had a solution to high housing costs in California: a repeal of the law which prevents statewide rent control. With the blessing of voters this Fall, they expressed the hope […]