Housing Starts: Americans Aren’t Moving | Economic Segregation High in Europe | Bodegas May Lose WIC

1. Americans Literally Aren’t Going Anywhere Long-distance moves — from one city to another, out of state, across the country — are often moves made for jobs. Local moves, on the other hand, tend to be more about housing. We move from one address to another within the same city or county to get a bigger home, a better home, a home in a different neighborhood or school zone. Or we move for reasons like eviction or rising rent. Whether we’re pulled by better options or pushed out by bad ones, local moves say something a little different about our lives than do long-distance ones. For this reason, it’s particularly noteworthy in new Census data that Americans over the last year made such moves — within the same county — at the lowest rate since the government began recording this data in 1948. [Washington Post – 11/13/15]
2. Economic Segregation and Inequality in Europe’s Cities Americans are well aware of the growing economic inequality playing out in major U.S. cities. So you can forgive them for assuming that things are always much better in European cities, with their larger welfare states and long histories of social democracy. But a new study of 13 leading European cities—London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, Vienna, Madrid, Milan, Athens, Budapest, Prague, Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn—documents a substantial rise in socioeconomic inequality and economic segregation over the past decade or so. [City Lab – 11/16/15]
3. Bodegas Say Benefits Cutback Would Burn Them to the WIC Thousands of small stores are at risk of being dropped from a food-subsidy program for low-income mothers—a change that some bodega owners said would crush them. The largely immigrant-owned corner stores in poor neighborhoods could fail en masse, industry experts said, if the state Department of Health adopts its proposal to reduce the number of shops authorized to accept the Women, Infants, Children program, or WIC. The rule change, an attempt to ease the burden of managing the program, would weed out small stores while still allowing larger supermarkets to accept WIC checks. [Crain’s NY – 11/15/15]
4. In Housing Migrants, Germany Hits Walls With more than 42,000 migrants still camping in tents, according to a recent survey by Die Welt newspaper, the search for housing is gaining new urgency as temperatures fall. Vacant sanitariums, castles, barracks, former airports, shut home-improvement stores and youth hostels have been converted for the new arrivals. But the tough housing code has made it hard to ramp up capacity in sync with the inflow of nearly 10,000 people a day. [Wall Street Journal – 11/02/15]
5. City Housing Chief Aims to Rebut Concerns About Displacement Been also responded to the common outcry about the income levels associated with affordable housing, which often are out of step with average income in the neighborhoods where the housing is built. ‘Going deeper would require hundreds of millions more in city subsidies, or mean producing fewer new units,’ Been’s presentation read. What’s more, ‘Our obligations to fair housing are to promote diversity, not to have all the new housing match the existing incomes of the neighborhood.’ [City Limits – 11/13/15]
6. FHA Meets Minimum Reserve Requirement for First Time Since 2009 The Federal Housing Administration will report Monday that its reserves met the minimum threshold required by law for the first time since 2009, a turnaround for an agency that just two years ago required a taxpayer bailout. The rapid improvement is likely to prompt calls for the FHA to do more to bring first-time home buyers back into the market. The agency backs mortgages with down payments of as little as 3.5%, making it a favorite avenue for borrowers with little means. [Wall Street Journal – 11/16/15]
7. They got beef: The neighborhood the meatpackers made has been their undoing John Jobaggy, 59, is one of the last meatpackers in the meatpacking district, itself the last holdout among the many marketplaces that once flourished in Manhattan. The fish market decamped to the Bronx 10 years ago from Fulton Street; wholesalers have withered from the flower district on West 28th Street; and just try getting any printing done in what used to be the printing district at Hudson Square. Jobaggy survives in the meatpacking business for two reasons: He’s got a lease as delectable as a prime rib. He also sells the best beef money can buy. [Crain’s NY – 11/16/15]
8. Berlin Just Showed the World How to Keep Housing Affordable It might seem odd that the city needs a new measure to enforce affordable rents in buildings it owns. The strange fact is that while Berlin public housing typically offers the best, most secure tenancies, it is currently slightly more expensive on average than housing on the open market. In 2014, the average private rent in the city was €5.84 per square meter, but for public housing it was €5.91. This situation is possible because of a former funding quirk. Stemming this rise with a subsidy might sound like a huge tax burden. When it comes to the housing controlled under the new bill, however, the city would ultimately be both payee and recipient of the money. [City Lab – 11/12/15]
9. The latest frontier for Chinese investors in NYC: Multifamily Homes Chinese firms make headlines in New York by investing in trophy office buildings and condo projects. But as quick profits become more difficult to achieve amid a cooling market, a growing number of Chinese investors are now looking for stable low-risk assets, including multifamily buildings, industry leaders said on a panel hosted by the New York Law School Thursday. [The Real Deal – 11/13/15]
10. Images of Parisian Housing Complexes are Beautiful and Striking These large housing projects, known as the “Grand Ensembles,” were constructed by the French government from the 1950s through the 1980s to help ease the housing problems that were prevalent throughout the country. Many of these high-rise buildings and communities still exist today. Still, many Parisians are not aware of what these communities are really like for those who live there. Over the past few years, photographer Laurent Kronental has sought to document the housing projects and the people within them. [Business Insider – 11/04/15]