Apartment Choice

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...

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 ...

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler promised during his 2016 campaign that he would tackle the city's affordable housing crisis if elected. His second day in office, he took over the housing bureau , putting himself in charge of its big decisions on top of his already ambitious workload. But eight months into his term, the mayor has little to show for it. No groundbreakings. A single deal to bring an affordable apartment complex to Northeast Portland . A key policy position on his staff vacant five months after his housing expert quit . He has yet to tell developers what the city will fund if they work to put roofs over needy Portlanders' heads. Wheeler's insistence on painstaking public involvement and the lack of housing expertise on his staff have hampered progress on what he said was an urgent priority. The mayor has also made no decisions about how the city should spend the largest pool of money ever available to address Portland's affordable housing shortage . Wheeler ...

As the Charlotte Housing Authority moves forward with plans to redevelop the aging Tall Oaks subsidized housing in the fast- gentrifying Cherry neighborhood , the last two families there say they can’t move out, in part because of improper evictions from CHA on their records. Most of the buildings at Tall Oaks, a 50- unit housing complex owned by CHA on Cherry Street near the Metropolitan shopping complex , have already been torn down. In its place, CHA is developing 81 units of new subsidized housing . The next phase of the project could include building up to 200 units of “ workforce housing ” for families making $38,500‐$77,040. That plan is still in the rezoning process. For now, Jacqueline Sherrill and Crystal Goode, along with their children, are the final residents of the former Tall Oaks complex . They say the eviction proceedings on their records – which they contend stem from CHA’s mistakes – are causing potential landlords to turn them down as they seek new housing with...

Leonnel Davis sees change in Rochester and wonders what it means for her new neighbors. "I see growth in the community but not growth around where I live," she said. Up until about three months ago, Davis was living in a home in northeast Rochester, which she was hoping to buy through a contract for deed. However a pending divorce changed her plans, and she moved with her two grandchildren, one 12 and the other 15, to a three-bedroom apartment in the Andover Apartments complex in southeast Rochester. It wasn't the first choice for the 53-year-old grandmother, but searches for three-bedroom apartment kept coming with price tags as high as $1,900 a month in buildings near the city's core. "Who are they building that for? They couldn't be building it for me," she said, noting she pays $900 for rent in her new apartment as she points to needed repairs and cites safety concerns . "I'm on disability, and I'm a single grandparent....

We’re a particularly strong and well-capitalized company with a very strong investment record . Joe Lubeck Executive chairman, Landmark Apartment Trust of America Inc. The recession and slumping housing market made the past few years a good time to invest in apartments — and Landmark Apartment Trust of America Inc. was poised to take action. By acquiring more than $1 billion in properties in 2013, Landmark now owns or manages almost 33,000 units, says Joe Lubeck, executive chairman. This correlates with increased interest in renting. “We see that a lot of people are more interested in job portability and the ability to relocate from one city based on job availability, and they also no longer perceive a house as being the solid investment that it once was,” Lubeck says. “As a result, we’re seeing significant growth in the household formative years , the 25- to 40-year-old market, where people are specifically looking to be renters by choice.” Targeting distressed properties that c...

The Wine Institute estimates that nearly 24 million people visit the 4,653 wineries in California’s wine regions each year. That tourism's economic impact in the state, which last year totaled $57.6 billion, includes a robust hospitality and lodging market. While construction slowed a bit last year, there were 26 hotels with 2,204 rooms in the planning stages for northern California’s vineyard- rich Sonoma County , and 13 hotels with 1,621 rooms being planned for Napa Valley, according Atlas Hospitality Group ’s 2016 California Hotel Development Survey . Earlier this month, construction began on one of those establishments, the $24 million, 122- key Hotel Trio in Healdsburg, Calif., which CU Investors, its developer, expects to open next April. The 82,638-sf hotel, situated in the Sonoma wine country , will serve the Dry Creek, Russian River, and Alexander Valley areas (hence, the “trio”). It will be within walking distance of a host of wineries and have convenient access to hu...

August 24, 2017 Millennials are creating their own definition of financial success . | Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Facebook knows how you feel about money. The company has been listening in on young people ’s online conversations, as well as analyzing audience data and conducting surveys, in order to learn more about how users between the ages of 21 and 34 think about financial matters. What it discovered is likely to surprise some people, though probably not millennials themselves. “Millennials are misunderstood — famous for their impulse for instant gratification. But when we stop to observe their financial behaviors and listen to them describe their relationship with money in their own words, a new millennial emerges,” according to the report, Millennials and Money: The Unfiltered Journey. ")}; Once you brush aside the stereotype of the lazy and entitled millennial, a picture of a financially responsible generation comes into focus. Millennials want to pay down debt...