Wealth inequality and social mobility news
Posted: Sun May 28, 2023 10:38 pm
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We should note that homelessness got worse here before it got better. In 2011, the Houston area had one of the largest homeless populations in the country. With the threat of homelessness only increasing, and dismay over decades of substantial investments without results, our community was propelled into action.
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This became particularly critical during Covid-19, when homelessness became a present danger to many people who were already living on the brink. As challenging as it was, we reframed this crisis as an opportunity to do more to assist them. The city of Houston and Harris County strategically invested federal pandemic aid, alongside contributions from private philanthropy, allowing our system to house, or offer homelessness diversion services to, more than 12,000 people during the pandemic. We housed the most vulnerable people first. When the average person sees someone experiencing homelessness and struggling with mental illness, they assume that individual is dangerous or needs hospitalization. Our experience is that most of these folks stabilize in housing with the appropriate level of services. We have also found that housing with supportive services is the solution to encampments — sites where unhoused people set up groups of tents. We have holistically decommissioned dozens of encampments by placing close to 400 people on the path to housing.
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We are doing this difficult work not just because it is the moral thing to do, but also because it is the fiscally responsible thing to do. It is less expensive to house an individual and provide services (we estimate about $18,000 per year) than the multiple of costs of putting people in jail or allowing them to suffer on the streets and being forced to make regular use of our emergency rooms (which national estimates range from $30,000 to $50,000 and up).
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Since 2012, more than 28,000 people who have experienced homelessness in the greater Houston area have been housed. This has resulted in a more than a 60% decrease in overall homelessness in just over a decade.
— CNN’s Anna Bahney contributed to this report
Minneapolis (CNN) — Some welcome news for renters: The US median rent in May fell from May 2022, the first annual rent decline in at least three years, according to a Realtor.com report released Monday.
In May, the national median asking rent was $1,739, which was up a skosh ($3) from April but down 0.5% from May 2022. It’s the first decline since Realtor.com started tracking the year-over-year data in March 2020.
“This is yet another sign that rental-driven inflation is likely behind us, even though we may not see this trend in official measures until next year,” Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist, said in a statement. “Although still modest, a decline in rents combined with cooling inflation and a still-strong job market is definitely welcome news for households.”
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A new program in St. Louis will give $500 a month to low-income families for 18 months, an effort to help prevent the root causes of crime, city officials said. The city’s Mayor Tishaura Jones announced Tuesday that the funds will go to hundreds of households across the city, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“St. Louis’ guaranteed basic income will give hundreds of St. Louis families the resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty, giving them a strong foundation to grow and to thrive,” Jones said during a news conference. A website is already available for those interested and will begin taking applications later this month. The city plans to start doling out the money in December through debit cards.
About 540 St. Louis households are expected to receive the benefits, with the money going to parents or guardians of children enrolled at city public schools. Those eligible include families making 170% of the federal poverty line or less, which comes to roughly $42,000 for a family of three.
The program, launched after Andrew Yang popularized universal basic income during his failed 2020 presidential campaign, was approved last year by St. Louis’ Board of Aldermen.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/politics ... index.htmlWashington CNN — The Biden administration announced new steps Friday to ensure access to affordable housing, launching a slew of resources to convert high-vacancy commercial buildings to residential use. The effort is an attempt to address what the administration says is a dearth of much-needed, affordably priced, conveniently located and energy-efficient homes.
Last week, CNN reported that – with mortgage rates nearing 8%, steadily rising home prices and historically low inventory of homes for sale – the housing market has been getting consistently worse for two years, and there appears to be no end in sight.
Home sales dropped in September to the lowest level since the foreclosure crisis as surging interest rates and climbing home prices made buying a house unattainable for a growing share of would-be buyers. Historically low inventory of homes for sale continued to push prices up and rates that crossed over 7% in August have pulled sales down to their lowest level in 13 years, according to a monthly report from the National Association of Realtors.
As part of Friday’s announcement, the Department of Transportation will release new guidance on more than $35 billion in lending available for transportation-oriented development projects. According to a fact sheet shared with CNN ahead of the announcement, the administration estimates the guidance “will increase housing supply, while encouraging state and local governments to improve their zoning, land use and transit-oriented development policies.”