Housing – RUPTURE.CAPITAL

A group photo of residents at PDX Commons outside Portland, Oregon.

PDX Commons

Some older Americans are building cohousing communities instead of moving into senior living.
Cohousing refers to living arrangements in which residents own a unit and share common spaces.
Residents said cohousing helped them avoid social isolation and lead their most authentic lives.

Carolyn Salmon, 82, and her husband used to live in a retirement neighborhood of about 500 homes just outside Port Townsend, Washington, but they never felt as if they were part of the community.

“We basically never saw our neighbors,” Salmon told Insider. “We had a little group that would get together about once a month for dinner, but other than that we had no other real contact with them.”

That was until 2014, when the Salmons and a group of eight other seniors began developing Quimper Village, a cohousing community in Port Townsend for people ages 55 and older. The group purchased nearly 3 acres of land and helped finance the construction of the 28-unit community, which was completed in 2017. The couple then purchased their 1,300-square-foot home in the community for about $400,000.

The Salmons are part of a growing coalition of older adults who are choosing to live in cohousing communities with people who are about their same age.

Quimper Village is a 28-unit self-governing condominium community about a mile outside downtown Port Townsend. Residents work on one of several “teams” that handle the village’s affairs, from landscaping and gardening to financial planning, according to its website. The website also highlights amenities such as a bocce court and an art studio, which residents also manage.

Carolyn Salmon

Cohousing emerged in Denmark during the 1960s and describes a living arrangement in which residents own or rent their own home but also share a common house — which may include amenities like laundry and a shared kitchen — with their neighbors.

Salmon said the group decided to build Quimper Village because more traditional senior-housing options in the area were scarce or were in locations that didn’t have a lot of nearby grocery stores.

“Maintaining community and close relationships isn’t always easy to do,” Salmon said. “But this place gives us the ability to drive less and do the things that build friendships.”

Cohousing is an example of how the senior-housing industry is evolving

Since 2005, 17 cohousing communities for older people have cropped up across the US with another six more in development, according to an online directory maintained by a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

The move comes at a time when the cost of more traditional senior-living options is at an all-time high and occupancy rates and construction activity for these housing units are still below their pre-pandemic levels, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, or NIC, a nonprofit senior-housing research firm. Senior-living facilities include assisted living, memory care, and independent living. Nursing homes fall under a different category because Medicaid can reimburse their costs.

“The senior-living industry is evolving,” Beth Mace, a senior economist at NIC, told Insider. “Partly because of what happened during the pandemic, but also because developers are trying to figure out exactly what this cohort wants.”

Residents want to live their most authentic lives

Barbara Chase, 71, said that to earn the respect of her peers and clients while working as a corporate-management consultant she always felt as if she needed to hide the fact that she identified as a lesbian.

Chase retired in 2020 and moved into a cohousing community for LGBTQ seniors and allies ages 55 and up called Village Hearth just outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Chase said she purchased a 1,150-square-foot unit for about $385,000 when she moved in.

Barbara Chase

She said that decision had helped her live her most authentic life and avoid more corporate senior-living operations, where a growing number of seniors feel as if they have few support options, according to research from the National Center for Elder Abuse.

“As I was nearing retirement, I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to spend the last sliver of my life in the closet,'” Chase told Insider. “To me, it means the world to live among people who embrace you, and help you preserve your dignity and self-respect.”

Chase considered more traditional senior-housing options, but none of the nearby places offered the same level of activity that she was looking for. At Village Hearth, Chase said, residents are responsible for everything from maintaining the property to planning and cooking community meals.

“We make collective decisions together about how we’re going to treat one another,” Chase said. “And that is the true meaning of community.”

Cohousing can help avoid social isolation

Karen Erde, 70, moved into PDX Commons in Portland, Oregon, in 2018 after retiring from a long career as a family physician. The 27-unit complex requires at least 80% of its residents to be above the age of 55, while younger homeowners can make up the remaining 20%, according to its website.

Karen Erde

Erde said she moved into PDX Commons because it was the only cohousing community in Portland where she could live among people her own age and not have roommates who were generations younger than her. The community is also within walking distance of the Belmont Library, Laurelhurst Park, and pharmacies like Walgreens. Erde purchased her 1,065-square-foot unit for about $585,000, she said.

“I like kids and all that stuff — I raised three children of my own,” Erde told Insider. “But I’m not really interested in raising anybody else’s kids at this point of my life.”

Though Erde describes herself as an introvert, living at PDX Commons has allowed her to be more social, she said. Erde chairs the community’s communication committee, which helps spread the word about PDX Commons. She said she also helped community members solve computer issues and worked with other retired medical professionals who live in the community to develop the local COVID-19 guidelines.

It is also comforting to know that help is always nearby, Erde said. When Erde had her knee replaced in 2014, she said, her friends and family would have to drive 20 to 30 minutes to her townhome in Portland to help her cook and clean up around the house. If something similar happened today, Erde said, she has a group of friends at PDX in nearby units who would pitch in.

“I’ve been around other senior-living facilities where they have activities and people generally get to hang out with each other,” Erde said, “but I never got the sense that the people there actually wanted to live together.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

Rental markets everywhere are being overtaken by a cresting wave of housing speculation. Pandemic-era rental deals for tenants in both high- and low-cost cities have given way to 100 percent rent hikes, rising eviction rates, and a conservative backlash against tenants’ rights. In cities across the world, tenants are pushing back and building political power to fight against political retrenchment.

Historically, successful tenant movements do not materialize in a vacuum but build on long-term, on-the-ground organizing around issues that are immediately important to tenants. These include a neighbor being evicted, the heat getting cut off in February, or an unexplainable rent increase. The traditional venue for dealing with bread-and-butter organizing issues are building-level tenant associations and/or neighborhood-level tenant unions. The shape, scale, and formality of any given tenant union is highly context-specific, influenced by everything from international investment trends to state housing laws, to the availability of space in the neighborhood to hold an evening meeting. At the same time, tenant unions everywhere are based around the same core principle: to address a fundamental imbalance of power between tenants and landlords, and to tip the scales in tenants’ favor.

In September 2022, Housing Justice for All, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-New York, and the Community Service Society of New York organized a discussion about tenant associations and tenant unions in the RLS-NY offices. We brought together a group of organizers and tenant leaders from New York’s tenant movement to hear from U.S., German, and Australian tenant organizers.

The discussion was led by Berta Del Ben, spokesperson for Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen (Socialize Deutsche Wohnen), a group working to municipalize large landlords in Berlin; Joel Dignam, founder of Better Renting, an Australian community of renters working together for stable, affordable, and healthy homes; Esteban Girón, a member/leader with the Crown Heights Tenants Union, a union of 40 buildings across Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and, Lulu Kirtchuk, an organizer with Los Sures, a nonprofit in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which organizes tenants, develops affordable housing, and provides direct services to the community.

While day-to-day tenant organizing happens on the smallest of scales, bringing in an international lens gave our audience a new perspective on strategy and tactics. The discussion provided a moment for participating organizers and tenant leaders to reflect on their work and challenge outcomes they deem “reasonable”. For example, in New York City, the socialization of privately owned apartment buildings doesn’t seem like an immediate possibility. However, DWE’s ongoing socialization campaign in Berlin helped normalize the concept for some participants, making it seem both reasonable and possible.

The discussion with Berta, Joel, Esteban, and Lulu approached the mechanics of building tenant power from multiple angles, covered short and long-term campaigns, and connected local issues to global power imbalances.

Looking forward, three major themes emerged during our discussion:

Building conditions and unjust rent hikes act as entry points into tenant organizing: For many tenants, habitability issues in their apartments or buildings, sometimes paired with a rent increase, often act as a politicizing spark. This was true in Berlin, in large developments like Kotti & Co., where private owners failed to keep up the building, cut-off heat in the winter, and hiked up rents beyond what was affordable to low-income tenants receiving government assistance. It was also true in New York City, where the Crown Heights Tenants Union provides support for tenants exercising their rights to repairs in Crown Heights, while Los Sures helps tenants organize to address building-level repair issues in Williamsburg. Habitability issues relating to extreme weather conditions also proved to be galvanizing for many Australian tenants.

Developing a shared political consciousness among tenants is important: Most forms of political organizing allow people to first make a connection between individual and shared needs, and then helps channel those needs into collective action. Among tenant organizers, this process often involves creating a space for tenants to understand that bad conditions in their apartment or their inability to make rent is not an individual failing, but a structural power imbalance with their landlord.

Among the cities represented on the panel, Berlin provides the strongest model for tenant politicization, because of the high share of tenants in the city (85 percent) and the militant history of tenant organizing from the left. Before the pandemic, the city’s Mietenwahnsinn [Rent madness] protests drew as many as 40,000 people. Even during the pandemic, Berta described Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen’s outreach workgroups (safely) collecting the signatures necessary to get the socialization issue on the ballot. While for Berta, and many of the other campaign volunteers, this campaign was their first foray into tenant organizing, they were entering into a civic participation model that is well-practiced in Berlin.

Unlike Berlin, Australia as a whole does not have as long of a history of tenant-centric political consciousness. Tenants do not see themselves as a political class, and they are scattered in single-family homes, or individual rental units within condo buildings, presenting a further challenge to organizing. Better Renting is actively working to build a culture of organizing and cultivating a sense of community among Australia’s renters.

Tenant unions will need to navigate multiple geographic scales to be successful: Berta, Joel, Esteban, and Lulu all spoke about learning to function on the local, state, national, and international scales as part of their work. While conditions affecting tenants happen on the local level, they are ultimately tied to city and state laws, national housing policy, and transnational financial flows. Berta mentioned DWE volunteers making these connections in their workgroups, which had to balance connecting with tenants about their individual rent increases while understanding German constitutional law and housing financing. Similarly, Lulu and Esteban talked about the day-to-day work of organizing building by building, block by block, while participating in city-wide campaigns, connecting with other tenant unions from across the U.S., and even building transnational tenant union connections.

Our panelists provided participating NYC tenant leaders and organizers with an international perspective on tenant power, creating space for consideration of day-to-day tactics and broader strategy. Perhaps the most important theme that emerged from the convening was the connection between tenant organizing and broader struggles for racial and economic justice, immigrant rights, and against climate change. Connecting housing struggles to broader societal issues helps to form the connective tissue of strong and effective social movements.

Oksana Mironova is a writer and researcher who was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up in Brooklyn, NY. She writes about cities, urban planning, housing, and public space. You can follow her on twitter @OksanaMironov or read more of her writing at oksana.nyc.

The post Building Tenant Power in Berlin, Australia, and New York appeared first on RLS-NYC.

Detroit Resident Taura Brown is being threatened with eviction by her nonprofit landlord, Cass Community Social Services (CCSS), a major nonprofit with a $7 million dollar operating budget. A participant in CCSS’ rent-to-own Tiny Homes program, Ms. Brown is being evicted in retaliation for speaking out about exploitation within the program and advocating on behalf of her neighbors, tenants in the Tiny Homes and CCSS’ homeless shelter. Her situation highlights the effects of the housing crisis and real estate speculation, and the exploitation of nonprofits.

Demanding Fair Housing, Fighting Retaliatory Eviction

When Ms. Brown first enrolled in the Tiny Homes program, she lacked secure housing and was practically homeless. Ms. Brown was herself a former property manager but was unable to work due to a medical diagnosis that placed her on dialysis and in need of a replacement kidney. For Ms. Brown, the Tiny Homes rent-to-own “homeownership” program represented a chance to get her life on track and secure financial stability for herself and her son.

Excited to enter the program, Ms. Brown initially had no issues with the program or its director, Rev. Faith Fowler. Yet rent-to-own programs in Detroit have a troubled history. As tenants progress through the program, property owners often move the goalposts and rely on technicalities to prevent tenants from ever making it to homeownership. Ms. Brown sensed that these programs had problems based on the fact that it was hard to get details about them, and approached the Tiny Homes program with attentiveness to detail. When she started asking questions and spoke out against exploitative practices, program inconsistencies, mandatory volunteer hours, and an attempt to evict her neighbor, her relationship with Rev. Fowler soured. Rather than respond to the concerns raised by her advocacy, CCSS moved to evict Ms. Brown.

Ms. Brown attempted to fight the eviction in court, but recently lost her appeal. She and her supporters now seek to defend her home by any means necessary. On Saturday, Oct. 8, a rally in support of Ms. Brown and others being evicted in Detroit will take place at her house. The court system is not designed or intended to support tenants – it swings in favor of tenants in direct proportion to the strength of the movement in the streets and the ability of the tenants and their community to self-organize. The success of the home defense against CCSS rests on the strength of the community defense.

Ms. Brown is joined in her home defense by several groups including Detroit Eviction Defense, Charlevoix Village Association, Detroit Will Breathe, and General Defense Committee.

“Nonprofit” Doesn’t Mean “Nonexploitative”

Detroit, and most of the nation, are in the midst of another housing crisis. In Detroit, rent and evictions are increasing rapidly coupled with a serious shortage of accessible rental units, homes, and public housing. The crisis has had an outsized impact of Black working class Detroiters, easily observed in the large-scale displacement, segregation, and gentrification that has occurred over the last 20 years. Detroit, the State of Michigan, and community groups have sought to address the problem, in part, by promoting nonprofit housing schemes such as rent-to-own programs, church-run developments, and community land trusts. These programs fail to address the underlying causes of the housing crisis.

Ms. Brown’s eviction highlights how a nonprofit landlord is still a landlord. Privatization of housing via public-private partnerships and nonprofits only shifts the labels, not the underlying dynamics of housing. Nonprofits, including CCSS – which has an annual budget of $7 million – are dependent on philanthropy and government grants to exist. In line with broader neoliberal politics of austerity, nonprofits are kept in a precarious position, balanced on the edge of closing, and never receive enough funding to serve their community, pay employees, and keep the lights on. As a result, nonprofits must bend towards the funding priorities of wealthy, corporate, and government donors rather than designing programs around the real needs of their constituents. Further, due to the instability of grant-based funding, nonprofits are also under great pressure to find other revenue streams. For nonprofit landlords, like CCSS, that includes collecting rent from properties such as the Tiny Homes project. CCSS is incentivised not to follow through on its promise to transition Ms. Brown and the other residents to homeownership in no small part because the Tiny Homes are a valuable asset and a revenue source.

These structural pressures pit CCSS against its own constituents, leading them to prioritize control over the well-being of their constituents. This can be seen in the extraordinary efforts CCSS has taken to evict Ms. Brown, going so far as to hire a high-profile attorney and file a defamation lawsuit, which has been dismissed. Indeed, CCSS offered Ms. Brown an initial payout of $2,500 then increased it to $10,000 to leave rather than give her the opportunity to complete the program and own her home.

As part of the neoliberal approach of replacing governmental functions and services with public-private partnerships, large nonprofits such as CCSS function as an extension of the state. They often operate in tight coordination with government entities and funding agencies, but lack the accountability of elected (and recallable) leaders. In this way, nonprofit organizations can still be highly exploitative.

The current housing crisis is not the first one, nor will it be the last, while real estate remains a tool of speculation and capital accumulation. Instead of speculation, what we need is public housing controlled directly by the community. That means the elimination of real estate as a tool of financial investment and speculation. Instead, apartment buildings and housing collections like the Tiny Homes must be controlled and operated by the people that work and live in them.

The post Disabled Black Detroiter Facing Eviction from Prominent Nonprofit appeared first on Left Voice.

Low-income Black and Brown housing activists in Philadelphia are fighting to stop the displacement of residents who live in an affordable housing complex in the largely gentrified neighborhood of University City. The complex, known as University City Townhomes, was built to provide affordable housing to low-income residents, many of whom are elderly and disabled, but the property owner has since announced plans to redevelop the property, which is near the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. We speak with University City Townhomes residents Rasheda Alexander and Sheldon Davids, who have held months of encampments and protests alongside William Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “It was always about greed and money and racism,” says Barber, who notes the move to redevelop the complex is part of a larger assault on poor people and housing services in the United States.

America’s housing shortage is a key reason why the benchmark 30-year mortgage rate likely will top 7%, according strategists at BofA Global.

Only state intervention can save the day, but the pain is likely to fall on ordinary citizens, say observers

A little more than a year ago, a Chinese property developer largely unknown to the outside world said its cashflow was under “tremendous pressure” and it might not be able to pay back some of its eye-watering debts of $300bn (£275bn).

Today, that company, China Evergrande Group, is all too well known as the poster child of the country’s economic woes. House prices in China have fallen in each of the 12 months since Evergrande’s now prophetic warning, with Xi Jinping’s government now preparing to throw billions of dollars at a property market that experts say increasingly resembles a giant Ponzi scheme.

The US housing market is in a recession, one leading economist says.

fstop123/Getty Images

The US housing market is in a recession, Pantheon Macroeconomics’ Ian Shepherdson said.
House prices are down about 5% since May, and may slump another 20% by mid-2023, the economist said.
Federal Reserve officials have indicated they want a correction in the housing market.

The US housing market is in a recession, and home prices are poised to tumble another 20% by next summer, a top economist has warned.

“The plunging trend in sales has further to go, and prices are falling,” Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a research note published on Wednesday.

Shepherdson and his team estimated that seasonally adjusted existing-home prices slid by 0.7% in August, the third monthly decline in a row. Prices are now down about 5% from their May peak, and are poised to slide further despite a tight supply of homes, they said.

“The very low level of inventory means that a headlong collapse in prices is unlikely, but we still expect a total decline of up to 20% by the middle of next year,” the economists wrote.

“Housing, in short, is in recession, and everything connected to housing either is in recession now or soon will be,” they added.

However, they emphasized the current housing downturn won’t crash the rest of the US economy, as the market has fewer entrenched risks than during the mid-2000s housing bubble.

Still, there are growing concerns about the sector. Inflation, which surged to a 40-year high in June and remained above 8% in August, has squeezed consumers’ budgets.

The Federal Reserve has reacted to the threat by hiking interest rates from near zero at the start of this year to over 3%, raising borrowing costs and driving long-term mortgage rates to north of 6% for the first time since 2008.

The combination of eye-watering valuations, rising living costs, and more expensive, less accessible credit has piled pressure on home prices and sales in recent months.

The median existing-home price has fallen by 6% from a record high of about $414,000 in June, to $390,000 in August, the National Association of Retailers said this month. Moreover, existing-home sales dropped for a seventh straight month in August, and were down 20% from a year earlier, the trade group said.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has signaled the US central bank wants to bring down house prices. That would help to realign supply and demand, return appreciation to sustainable levels, and make properties more affordable, he said during a press conference on Wednesday.

“We’ve had a time of a red-hot housing market all over the country,” Powell noted. “The deceleration in housing prices that we’re seeing should help bring prices more in line with rents and other housing-market fundamentals. And that’s a good thing.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

The twenty-first century had been one of triumph for the Chinese Communist Party.

Beijing will need to deploy ‘big bazooka’ to end crisis of confidence among homebuyers, market participants say

Archive for category: Housing

Cohousing is an example of how the senior-housing industry is evolving

Residents want to live their most authentic lives

Cohousing can help avoid social isolation

Demanding Fair Housing, Fighting Retaliatory Eviction

“Nonprofit” Doesn’t Mean “Nonexploitative”

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