Apartment Choice

Plans for more than 300 houses and apartments have been submitted to Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council in what is the first application for homes in the new town of Cherrywood. The application for 242 apartments and 80 houses by William Neville & Sons comes just days after the council changed the planning scheme for the Cherrywood Strategic Development Zone (SDZ) to allow smaller apartments be built in the town which is expected to accommodate 30,000 people over the next decade. In 2010, the council sought Government sanction to create an SDZ on a 400- acre site straddling both sites of the M50 south of Loughlinstown. An SDZ is a fast- track planning scheme which allows the local authority to grant planning permission to landowners which cannot be appealed to An Bord Pleanála. The Cherrywood planning scheme allowing for the development of more than 8,000 homes was finally approved in 2014, but despite there being 11 different landowners with sites in the zone, no plan...

By Beth Jacobi The recommendations of the Bend 2030 housing workgroup , recently offered to Bend City Council , may not ease the housing burden of many of the people who live and work in Bend. The recommendations are designed to increase housing for those making $40,000 to $90,000 a year. But according to the Oregon Housing Alliance , the current mean renter wage in Deschutes County is $11.86 an hour (about $24,000 a year). Many tourism industry workers , teachers, police officers, health care workers , social service workers , and families with children are suffering from our housing crisis. Bend leads the nation for rent increases. Bend’s average home sales price is over $400,000, and homelessness has gone up 31 percent since 2015 (Point in Time Count, 2017). The Bend 2030 housing workgroup has some great ideas, but the recommendations don’t ensure the development of affordable housing . City leaders must reserve valuable subsidies and incentives, ( property tax waiver , system ...

A recent housing study conducted by the city prompted debates online from residents who oppose the idea of multi- family housing in Maricopa. Read the study here Saturday morning, residents continued the discussion during “Councilman on the Corner,” a public forum held regularly by Councilman Henry Wade . “This subject seems to have resonated when I put it out there in Facebook and social media as to a question I posed,” Wade said. “It generated quite a bit of discussion, although that question was quite a small part of what the housing assessment is all about.” Some residents argued the apartment and condominium units would bring down property values and attract crime. “I also value that we have low crime, and that’s partly because of the kind of neighborhood that we have,” said resident Leonard Gonchar . Maricopans who support the idea fired back . “As a retired person, I’m not an undesirable,” said resident Karen Balliet , who said she cannot afford the cost of a single-family h...

Climate Change, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Energy, Environment, Global Governance, Headlines, North America, Poverty & SDGs Enrique Gili* - IPS/IFEJ POWAY, California, Oct 26 2007 (IPS) - Mary Jane Jagodzinzki nervously anticipated the arrival of a busload of building professionals . As it turned out, she needn&#39t have been too concerned. Solara green housing project in Poway, California. Credit: Enrique Gili/IPS" src="http://www.ipsnews.net/Library/solara_final.jpg" alt=" Solara green housing project in Poway, California. Credit: Enrique Gili/IPS" width="200" height="150" /> Solara green housing project in Poway, California. Credit: Enrique Gili/IPS Forty or so camera-toting architects, project managers and contractors arrived en masse in the bedroom community of Poway, north of San Diego, part of a green building tour showcasing a pioneering apartment complex that's saving money and helping the pl...

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. – National Community Renaissance , one of the nation’s largest nonprofit community builders, and the City of San Clemente hosted a Grand Opening of the highly anticipated Las Palmas Village Apartments on Wednesday, March 2. Las Palmas provides 18 units of much- needed workforce housing for very low-income families in south Orange County . Located near San Clemente’s historic downtown, the community matches the city’s “ Spanish Village by the Sea” design style and will feature an onsite community resource center with computer stations, private underground parking , an outdoor courtyard garden area and private patios and balconies in select units. A 19th unit will be for the on-site manager. The community also will feature on-site economic mobility assistance through the Hope through Housing Foundation. “Las Palmas exemplifies a successful partnership with National Community Renaissance and others,” said Mayor Bob Baker . “I am proud that the City of San Clem...

A decade after the crash, Shannon Valley housing estate , on the outskirts of Ballaghaderreen, in Co Roscommon, remains unfinished and partly in ruins. Although the number of “ unfinished housing developments ” has fallen sharply since 2010, Shannon Valley is one of hundreds that still dot the country. The Guls: ‘Every day I put rats in the bin’ Fatima Gul says her little brother, Yousaf, doesn’t like the rats. He jumps up on the sofa or the table in the living room when they come into the house. Their parents don’t allow Fatimar, who is 10, or her nine-year-old sister, Maryam, or Yousaf and his twin, Zohra, who are five, to play near the houses on the other side of their green. It’s too close to the rats and the rubble. Shannon Valley “ ghost estate ” outside Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. Photograph: Simon Carswell" height="349" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.3181475!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg" width="620...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...