California leads the nation in having the most severely rent-burdened households, as well as having the largest shortage of affordable rental homes. (The U.S. Department Housing and Urban Development and other agencies consider families that spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent as rent-burdened.)
Isabelle Lopez, her husband and their dog live in a tiny room, perhaps 130 square feet, in the impoverished Lacy neighborhood in the Orange County city of Santa Ana. The room has cardboard walls, which Lopez’s husband painted white to provide at least an illusion they were solid. On those walls, she has tacked family photos and a large reproduction of a painting titled Angel de la Guarda, surrounded by cutout paper butterflies.
On February 22, Capital & Main launched a week-long series on California’s increasingly severe affordable housing crisis. “No Direction Home” explores how escalating housing prices are undermining the state’s already embattled middle class and exerting intense economic pressure on millions of poor and working-class residents.
Tools and solutions to stop gentrification and rising rents!
Blackstone is one of the world's largest private equity firms. Blackstone made big money in the last housing bubble and now is cashing in again to make lots more. It is buying up housing and real estate all over the world and quickly becoming one of the largest landlord's in our cities. They are raking in the profits. But at the expense of our families and communities.
Videos: John Oliver: Washington DC Statehood. We Need Truth and Reconciliation. Bob Dylan -- Desolation Row at 50. Affordable Housing Crisis. Pastor Dewey Smith: Homosexuality.
More New Yorkers than ever are struggling to keep up with rising rents, leaving less and less of their paychecks for food and healthcare.
Many American renters are already extremely burdened when it comes to housing costs, with about 25% nationally paying more than half their monthly income toward housing. On May 12th 2015 Tenants Together released a report on the experience of tenants renting single-family homes from the three biggest Wall Street landlords in California: Blackstone/Invitation Homes, Waypoint Homes, and Colony American Homes.
May 9th, Arise for Social Justice in Springfield, MA held the first of over 15 Renter Nation Assemblies scheduled to take place around the country this year. The Assemblies are part of Right to the City’s Homes For All Campaign, a national movement to increase awareness of the housing crisis and implement resident-driven solutions to the massive displacement and housing instability the crisis has imposed.
HUD program makes changes to reduce foreclosures and increase affordable housing after broad coalition's campaign, but the fight is not over.
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