Housing Starts: Renters Majority Despite Rising Rents | NYC Bribe Scheme | NYCHA Deal Questioned

Image By: Shutterstock

1. Renters Become Majority of Market As Prices of Rents Increase, Report Shows The majority of households in Houston are renters, despite a time of low vacancy rates and sharply rising rents, a report released Monday shows.  Affordability has become a concern in all major U.S. cities analyzed, leaving low-to-moderate income renters burdened by housing costs. In nine of 11 top cities in the country, renters make up the majority of households. In Houston and Dallas, where the price of single-family homes is relatively inexpensive, this represents a shift. As a result of demand, housing costs are shifting upward across the board and burdening low-income households. The supply of affordable rental housing failed to keep pace with demand in the 11 largest U.S. cities, according to New York University’s Furman Center and Capital One Financial Group.  The report analyzed data from 2006 to 2013 in the 11 largest cities in the U.S. [Houston Chronicle – 02/09/15]
2. New York City Buildings Inspectors Charged in Bribe Schemes More than a dozen New York City buildings inspectors and clerks have been charged with exploiting their positions as gateways to the city’s booming real estate industry to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday. In return for bribes of home mortgage payments, sport utility vehicles and a luxury cruise, among other payments, city buildings inspectors cleared complaints and stop-work orders, expedited inspections and tried to remove tenants under false pretenses, according to records filed on Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. [New York Times – 02/10/15]
3. NYC Housing Authority Deal With Developers Raises Concerns Elected officials asked Tuesday whether a deal to give private developers a 50 percent stake in six New York City Housing Authority properties could signal a trend toward privatization of the nation’s largest public housing agency. The partnership deal, which closed in December, affects 875 apartments in buildings where rents are subsidized under the federal Section 8 program. Housing Authority Chairwoman Shola Olatoye said the deal will provide $48 million over the next five years for capital improvements including new kitchens and bathrooms, enhanced security systems and upgraded lobbies. [Newsday – 02/10/15]
4. DC Became a Majority-Renter City in Just a Few Years [Chart] Washington, D.C., rent prices may be among the highest for U.S. metro areas, but for the majority of Washingtonians – 54 percent as of 2013 – rentals are still the housing option of choice. And that wasn’t always the case. Between 2006 and 2013, D.C.‘s median rent saw a 21 percent increase, The Wall Street Journal reports. That number comes from research commissioned by Capital One and published by the NYU Furman Center. According to the findings, four of the largest cities in the U.S., including D.C., were minority-renter in 2006 but had a majority of their populations living in rental housing in 2013. [DCInno – 02/10/15]
5. Housing Gains in Elmhurst, Queens, Leave Many Cold Elmhurst, a quiet working-class area in western Queens, has seen major changes in recent years. Beginning in the 1970s, a wave of Latin American and, later, Chinese immigrants began settling in the once predominantly Italian and Jewish neighborhood. Today, it stands as one of the most international areas in the city, one where 70% of the heads of households are foreign-born, according to the 2010 Census. In the process, Elmhurst’s population has become one of the city’s fastest-growing, with more than 110,000 residents today, up from 72,000 in 1980. Now Elmhurst finds itself in the midst of another major shift—an economic one. Developers are flooding in, erecting rental apartment buildings and even condominiums whose units few existing residents can afford to live in. [Crain’s NY Business – 02/09/15]
6. The Ferguson Moment: Race and Place The shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., set off a series of peaceful protests and violent riots that reverberated across the nation — and even the world. The media has largely viewed the turmoil in Ferguson through a racial lens. A half century after the legislative triumphs of the civil rights movement it seems as if race relations are as bad as ever. [UMSL Daily – 02/11/15]
7. Majority of People in Big US Cities Opt to Rent: Report It’s a renter’s world out there. Major U.S. cities are seeing an uptick in the amount of renters compared to homeowners, according to a new report by New York University’s Furman Center and Capital One. Even lower-density cities are seeing an uptick in renters, according to the report cited by the Wall Street Journal. New York City no longer has the largest share of renters among the country’s other big cities, the report found. [The Real Deal – 02/09/15]
8. City Living: Bensonhurst, Brooklyn’s Little Italy, Is Now Teeming With Diversity Historically an Italian and Jewish neighborhood, Bensonhurst has transformed into a multi-cultural hub of southwest Brooklyn…In fact, a 2013 report on the city’s housing and neighborhoods by New York University’s Furman Center named Bensonhurst is the most racially diverse neighborhood in the city. Bensonhurst also ranked No. 5 for the largest number of foreign-born residents in the city, with 56% of its population born outside the United States. [AM New York – 02/11/15]
9. It’s More Expensive to Rent in Queens Than in Brooklyn, Report Finds Queens’ rental prices are catching up to Brooklyn’s — and surpassing them. The ascendance of Queens has been a common refrain for more than a year now. Last month’s rents for the “hot” northwestern part of the borough that includes Long Island City and Astoria show that Queens is no longer necessarily cheaper than most desirable neighborhoods of Brooklyn, stretching from Greenpoint to Park Slope. [DNAinfo – 02/12/15]
10. ‘Scraped’ Airbnb Data Shows 58% of Listings Possibly Illegal Months after facing accusations by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that its users were violating rental and zoning laws, home sharing site Airbnb continues to host thousands of potentially illegal apartment listings in New York City. That’s according to a Capital analysis of newly published data that was “scraped” from the Airbnb website by a community activist. More than 58 percent of the Airbnb listings in the city are for ‘entire’ apartments or houses, meaning no one else would be present during a stay, according to the data. [Capital NY – 02/10/15]