Today's News
December 5, 2011
TODAY'S NEWS
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TRIBUNE: Once-troubled development in downtown San Dimas nears opening
By J.D. Velasco // SAN DIMAS - When work began on the Grove Station development in eastern downtown in 2007, city leaders envisioned a mini-community where young families, entrepreneurs and retirees could live and work. … Most of the residential units will be sold at market rate, but the city's redevelopment agency has purchased four of them for use as affordable housing. The affordable units, which are being offered for $243,000, have two bedrooms …
ELK GROVE CITIZEN: City of long road to recovering affordable housing investments
By Bryan M. Gold // The city of Elk Grove’s affordable multifamily housing loan portfolio includes more than $61 million in loans and financial commitments, but large chunks of that money will not be repaid until the year 2030 or later. “Affordable housing,” are housing units that had their costs reduced for low-to-mid-income residents. Impact fees on residential, commercial, and industrial development fund the city’s ability to provide the loans. …
HOUSING DEVELOPMENT
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE: Hope Grows in S.F.
By Donna Kimura // There’s an unfamiliar scene in San Francisco’s Bayview- Hunters Point neighborhood. It’s the sight of a construction crew at one of the city’s most distressed public housing developments. After years of planning, The John Stewart Co., Devine & Gong, Inc., and Ridgepoint Non-Profit Housing Corp. have begun rebuilding Hunters View, a 22-acre site consisting of 267 public housing units built in 1956. Hunters View is just the first chapter in what is hoped will be an epic tale of renewal. …
SACRAMENTO BEE: Sacramento home builders skittish in slow market
By Rick Daysog // With sales of new homes near historic lows, Sacramento builders remain in survival mode, but a few say they expect to see demand slowly pick up next year. Sacramento's five-year housing bust has toppled some of the biggest names in the industry – firms that were once a backbone of the region's economy. According to San Diego-based DataQuick, builders in the Sacramento area sold just 2,363 new homes in 2010, an 85 percent decline …
FRESNO BUSINESS JOURNAL: Fresno Habitat for Humanity to receive grant
Habitat for Humanity Fresno County has been chosen as one of 52 nonprofits nationwide that will receive grants from Wells Fargo's Leading the Way Home Program Priority Markets Initiative. Wells Fargo will donate $5.53 million, an increase of 11 percent over last year, to help stabilize and revitalize neighborhoods. The grants will help purchase and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned properties in neighborhoods that have been hit hard by the economy. …
LAND USE / PLANNING / REGULATION
THE ATLANTIC CITIES: The Transportation Planning Rule Every City Should Reform
By Eric Jaffe // Completing a major transit project is never a quick and easy process, but if any place should be able to move one swiftly through to completion, it's San Francisco. In 1973 the city adopted a "transit first" policy that gave planning priority to modes of transportation other than the automobile. As the policy expressly states, decisions related to streets and sidewalks "shall encourage the use of public rights-of-way by pedestrians, bicyclists, and public transit." That's strong support for livability on paper …
LONG BEACH PRESS TELEGRAM: Two Long Beach council members want city to oppose railyard
By Kristopher Hanson // LONG BEACH - Two City Council members representing West Long Beach are asking their colleagues to formally oppose a planned $500 million railyard on the border with Wilmington, a controversial and hotly debated project nearly 10 years in the making. Council members James Johnson and Rae Gabelich, whose 7th and 8th districts parallel the proposed 153-acre site and the truck and rail routes that would feed it, said increased traffic, noise and pollution from activity at the site may seriously harm the long-term quality-of-life and health of thousands of residents …
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY SUN: Supervisors to discuss cutting greenhouse gas emissions
By Joe Nelson // A plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2020 will be considered Tuesday by the the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. If adopted, the county will have met all the terms of its legal settlement with the state Attorney General's Office in August 2007 … Then-Attorney General Jerry Brown sued the county in April 2007, alleging its general plan did not include a greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan. It came amid the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, or AB 32, which requires the California Air Resources Board to develop guidelines …
HOUSING MARKETS / REAL ESTATE
THE BAY CITIZEN: In SF's Tight Rental Market, Paying Just to Look
By Scott James // …In a city with a chronic housing shortage, a confluence of recent trends has created one of the tightest rental markets in years. The vacancy rate is just 3.7 percent, and the average rent has skyrocketed to $2,572. Experts cite various factors: a population increase of nearly 30,000 since 2000; an influx of affluent tech workers; traditional buyers becoming renters due to housing prices and financing uncertainties…
THE GRASS VALLEY UNION: Real estate: Still a bargain hunter's dream
By Trina Kleist // Nevada County real estate continues to lose value -- offering bargains for those who have jobs or cash and who can get credit. That means “lots of out-of-town buyers, not just investors,” said Linda Kaneko, manager of ERA Cornerstone Realty and based in Nevada City. High volume means “people... are realizing the prices now, combined with the interest rates we're seeing now, are as good as it's going to get.” Some buyers are picking up second homes or deciding it's time to move to the area, Kaneko added. …
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Phoenix Realty buys Long Beach apartment complex
By Roger Vincent // New York investment firm Phoenix Realty Group bought a Long Beach apartment complex last month for $34.5 million, the latest in a string of acquisitions targeting Southern California residential properties. Since December 2010, Phoenix Realty has spent $228 million to acquire and improve 11 apartment complexes in the region. … "We try to find the areas that get under-looked," Managing Director Edward Ratinoff said. "When Southern California comes back, the Inland Empire will get its fair share of growth."
GLOBAL ECONOMIC INTERSECTION: Housing affordability only means cheap houses
By Scott Sambucci of Altos Research // … Calculating Capita per Inventory for a cross-section of the 225 HOI metros shows that the “unaffordable” markets have less supply per capita. Notice how the “unaffordable” California metros (Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Santa Cruz) have tight housing supply relative to “affordable” metros like Ocala, FL and several of the Rust Belt metros (Flint, Toledo, Lansing, Flint, and Canton). So what does this mean? San Francisco only needs 1 out of 456 people to be able to afford a house.
MORTGAGE & FORECLOSURE ISSUES
THE DESERT SUN: Whatever Happened To...? Indio foreclosed home rehab project seems stalled
By Xochitl Peña // INDIO -- Almost two years ago, the city of Indio was awarded $8.3 million — likely the largest grant in the city's history — to buy foreclosed homes, rehab them and then sell them. It was part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Neighborhood Stabilization Program intended to clean up blighted neighborhoods and create jobs and affordable homes. The goal was to renovate 105 homes. …
PETALUMA 360.COM: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announce holiday break for home evictions
By Jamie Hansen // Members of Occupy Petaluma and other advocates for a holiday respite from home foreclosures celebrated after mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced Thursday that they would suspend home evictions for a two-week period during the holidays. "We did a little dance," said John Bertucci, the new media contact for Occupy Petaluma. Occupy Petaluma kicked off a local push for a holiday moratorium on home foreclosures this November …
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS: California AG faces tough choice on mortgage deal
By Pete Carey // Negotiators struggling to settle charges against five banks stemming from the so-called "robo-signing" foreclosure scandal are eager to get California Attorney General Kamala Harris back on board for a $25 billion deal. Harris has walked away from the federal-state negotiations, saying there's too little benefit for Californians while banks would get a pass on years of questionable practices. Nearly four years after the housing bubble popped, Harris has put California at the center of the debate …
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Occupy L.A. takes its fight to foreclosure auction
By Kate Linthicum // Several times a week, a group of investors gathers in Norwalk to bid on homes that have been foreclosed. The midmorning auction outside the Los Angeles County Superior Court building is a high-stakes, but usually low-key affair. … The protester, Abe, wouldn't give his last name, but said anger at the foreclosure crisis, and at banks that he believes haven't done enough to help homeowners get more favorable loans, helped draw him to Occupy in the first place.
HOMELESSNESS
SACRAMENTO BEE: Tent city campers say they aren't leaving
By Ed Fletcher // Dozens of Sacramento homeless people said Friday they're tired of being herded back and forth and would rather risk arrest than comply with a recent police order to take down their tent city and move on. "I'm not going anywhere," said the man everyone calls Brother Eli. "They want us to play cat and mouse. "What do I have to lose? I've already lost everything," said Eli, 60, who said he lost his home and his vehicles to money woes. …
ECONOMY / EMPLOYMENT
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE: San Jacinto: Council to consider enterprise zone fate
By Gail Wesson // The San Jacinto City Council will be asked Tuesday whether the city should pursue a more formal partnership with other local governments interesting in seeking a business-friendly enterprise zone designation from the state. … The state had been scheduled to consider new applications for zone status next year. Last month, the state Department of Housing and Community Development said it wants to make the program more accountable and cost effective.
TRANSPORTATION
MODESTO BEE: Modesto rail path hinted - Panel move seems to skip Riverbank
By Garth Stapley // A bid to bring high-speed rail through downtown Modesto someday may have gained momentum Thursday over competition from Riverbank. A key recommendation Thursday to route bullet trains through downtown Merced adjacent to Union Pacific tracks seems to indicate a preference for downtown Modesto instead of Burlington Northern Santa Fe rails east of town. "This bodes well for us," said Stacey Mortensen, executive director of the San Joaquin Rail Commission and a vocal advocate for a downtown Modesto alignment. …
INFRASTRUCTURE
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Balboa Island trying to outsmart a rising sea
By Mike Reicher // As people stroll Balboa Island's picturesque waterfront, some wonder how much one of those cozy cottages costs. City officials think about another price tag: how much it will take to defend those homes against rising sea levels. City engineers revealed last month that it could cost about $60 million to replace Balboa Island's aging seawalls; otherwise, residents could risk more high tides washing into their streets and homes. …
DEMOGRAPHICS / QUALITY OF LIFE
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: S.F. schools struggle with more homeless kids
By Jill Tucker // …Rudy is among a growing number of San Francisco schoolchildren in homeless families who too often come to class cold, hungry and sleep-deprived, making learning difficult if not impossible. "If you're not fed, if you're not warm, if you're not sleeping ... you can't turn that off and focus on double-digit multiplication," said Jessica Chiarchiaro, Rudy's fourth-grade teacher. In the city's public schools, there are 2,200 homeless children, some in shelters, others in cars, or on couches, or in long-term hotel rooms.
NATIONAL HOUSING NEWS
HUD.GOV: HUD Offers More Than $40 Million in Grants for Housing Counseling
[Press Release 12/1/11] // WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today announced that more than $40 million is available for a broad range of housing counseling programs to help families find and preserve housing. These grants will be awarded competitively to hundreds of HUD-approved counseling agencies and State Housing Finance Agencies across the nation that offer a variety of services including how to avoid foreclosure, how to avoid mortgage scams, how to purchase or rent a home, how to improve credit scores, and how to qualify for a reverse mortgage.
THE SPOKES-MAN REVIEW: There's no 'Plan B' if mortgage interest deduction goes away
By Tom Kelly // Moe Veissi, the new president of the National Association of Realtors, didn’t even blink an eye when the sensitive question was raised. It wasn’t an elephant-in-the-room topic, but it was close. “There’s a lot maneuvering on Capitol Hill,” the reporter said. “If the mortgage interest deduction is in jeopardy, what’s Plan B”? “We have no Plan B,” replied Veissi, a tough, savvy Florida resident and former chairman of NAR’s political action committee. …
CNBC.COM: Buy a U.S. House, Get a 3-Year Visa: Senator Schumer
By Margo D. Beller // A new Senate bill would help spur demand in U.S. housing by offering foreign investors a three-year "homeowners visa" if they invest half a million dollars cash and stay in the house for 180 days, co-sponsor Sen. Charles Schumer told CNBC Monday. … The residency requirement will force these investors to pay federal and property taxes, Schumer pointed out, and is intended to allay immigration concerns. "We have to straighten out our immigration policy," Schumer said. "Immigrants are good for America. …
ENVIRONMENT / CLIMATE CHANGE
ECO SEED.COM: Obama leads U.S. green building campaign with $4 billion fund
By Jhoanna Frances S. Valdez // United States President Barack Obama announced a presidential memorandum to create a public-private fund of nearly $4 billion to facilitate energy upgrades in federal and private buildings through the Department of Energy's Better Buildings Initiative crafted last February. The initiative had an initial goal to make all commercial buildings at least 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020. Last Friday's memorandum now directs all federal buildings to join the cause …
