Sunday, December 22, 2019

PETE BUTTIGIEG VOWS TO TAKE CARE OF ILLEGALS FIRST BUT NOT A WORD ON AMERICA'S ONE MILLION MADE HOMELESS FROM MEXICO'S INVASION AND OCCUPATION BY INVITATION OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

"When we hear stories about the homelessness in California and elsewhere, why don't we hear how illegal aliens contribute to the problem?  They take jobs and affordable housing, yet instead of discouraging illegal aliens from breaking the law, politicians encourage them to come by lavishing free stuff on them with confiscated dollars from this and future generations."  JACK HELLNER

Buttigieg Would Compensate, Fast Track Citizenship for Illegal Minors Separated from Families
By Melanie Arter | December 20, 2019 | 11:18am EST






(Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
(Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
CNSNews.com) – Democratic presidential candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Thursday that he’s for compensating illegal immigrant children separated from their families at the border, and on top of that, he would fast track U.S. citizenship for them.

“You said last month that the U.S. owes compensation to children separated from their families at the southern border. The consensus among child welfare workers is that they will suffer lifelong trauma as a result of that separation. Are you committing as president to financial compensation for those thousands of children?” Buttigieg was asked at the PBS NewsHour POLITICO Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles, Calif.



“Yes,” Buttigieg said, “and they should have a fast track to citizenship because what the United States did under this president to them was wrong. We have a moral obligation to make right what was broken, and on the larger issue of immigration, my understanding of this issue isn't theoretical. 
“It’s not something I formed in committee rooms in Washington. It begins with the fact that my household, my family, came from abroad. My father immigrated to this country and became a U.S. citizen. It comes from the fact that I'm the mayor of a city where neighborhoods that were left for dying are coming back largely due to the contributions mainly of Latino immigrants,” he said.
I’ve seen neighbors shut down, families huddling in church, panicking just because of a rumor of an ice raid. It did not make our country safe,” Buttigieg said. 
“To look into the eyes of an eight-year-old boy whose father was deported even though he had nothing so much as a traffic ticket against his name and try to think of something to tell that boy because I couldn't tell him what he most wanted to hear, which is just that he was going to have his dad back,” the mayor said.
“How can harming that young man possibly make America safe? When I am president, based on those experiences, I will make sure that this is a country of laws and of values, and that means not only ending these unspeakable, cruel practices at the border but finally and truly fixing the immigration problem that has needed a full overhaul since the 1980s. We cannot wait four years, 10 years. We cannot wait anymore to do something,” he said.
Buttigieg was also asked whether he supports reparations for the descendants of slaves.
“I support H.R. 40, which is the bill that has been proposed in Congress to establish a commission to look at reparations, but we shouldn't wait for that commission to do its work to do things that are reparative. Remember, we're not talking about a gift to anybody. We're talking about mending what was broken,” the mayor said.

“We're talking about the generational theft of the wealth of generations of African-Americans. And just crossing out a racist policy and replacing it with a neutral one is not enough to deliver equality. Harms compound, just like a dollar saved in its value compounds over time. So does the value of a dollar stolen, and that is why the United States must act immediately with investments in minority-owned businesses, with investments in health equity, with investments in HBCUs, and on the longer-term, a look at reparations so that we can mend what has been broken,” he said.

Walters: California housing goals an economic and physical impossibility


Newsom said he’d triple California housing construction, but after his first year as governor it’s shrinking

 

 

 As a candidate, Gavin Newsom said he’d triple California housing production, but after his first year as governor housing construction is shrinking.


As he was running for governor, Gavin Newsom repeatedly and emphatically promised to attack California’s housing shortage head-on, pledging in an online article to “lead the effort to develop the 3.5 million new housing units we need by 2025 because our solutions must be as bold as the problem is big.”
During his inaugural address in January, Newsom said he would implement “a Marshall Plan for affordable housing,” likening it to the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.
As Newsom completes his first year as governor, however, housing construction is shrinking. A bulletin issued last week by his Department of Finance says that 112,000 new housing starts had been authorized through October, down from 121,000 during the same 10-month period of 2018.
Newsom’s promises have also been shrinking. He’s taken to calling the 3.5-million-unit pledge “a stretch goal” and told the Los Angeles Times, “It’s a stubborn issue. You can’t snap your fingers and build hundreds of thousands, millions of housing units overnight.”
Well, no you can’t. And he should have known that building 3.5 million units by 2025 was an economic and physical impossibility.
It would have required building an average of 500,000 units each year for seven years, more than twice the state’s highest-ever production year, at least $200 billion a year in investment, and hundreds of thousands of additional construction workers.
It was never going to happen — and perhaps it shouldn’t.
The 3.5 million figure comes from a 2016 study by McKinsey & Company on the San Francisco Bay Area’s very tight housing picture, based on an assumption that California should have the same per capita housing level as New York, despite obvious demographic and cultural differences.
A critical examination of the McKinsey conclusion by the Palo Alto-based Embarcadero Institute contends, logically, that Texas would be a better basis for comparison and using it indicates that California needs another 1.5 million units, not 3.5 million. Based on nationwide housing trends, the Embarcadero study concludes, the number would be 1.4 million.
Those lower numbers would translate into a need for about 200,000 housing starts a year, which comports with the state’s official goal of 180,000 units a year or 1.1 million by 2025, still much higher than current production but in line with what’s happened in years past.
So while California may not need 3.5 million new units, it still has an acute shortage that would take tens of billions of dollars in annual investment — plus political will and thousands of more construction workers — to erase.
It can’t happen overnight, as Newsom now — and belatedly — concedes, but it could happen if all the ingredients could be assembled.
This year, the Legislature and Newsom took a few baby steps toward overcoming the resistance to affordable housing, such as authorizing more auxiliary housing, known as “granny flats” or “casitas,” on single-family lots.
However, they also passed a rent control law that, if anything, will discourage the increased private investment that’s vital if housing production is to significantly increase.
Meanwhile, a new report by a team of attorneys at two University of California law schools postulates that under-the-radar laws, including several passed this year, collectively give Newsom’s Department of Housing and Community Development some serious new powers to force communities to accept more housing, overcoming “not-in-my-backyard” sentiments.
“When he was running for office, Governor Newsom boldly announced that he would more than triple California’s rate of housing production,” the study’s authors point out. “The ball is in his court.”
Every American (Legal) is one paycheck and one thousand illegals away from being homeless!

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES AND VIDEOS OF WHAT IT IS NOW LIKE LIVING IN MEX-OCCUPIED CALIFORNIA WHERE HALF THE 30 MILLION POPULATION ARE ILLEGALS OR THE ANCHOR BABY PROGENY OF ILLEGALS.

"When we hear stories about the homelessness in California and elsewhere, why don't we hear how illegal aliens contribute to the problem?  They take jobs and affordable housing, yet instead of discouraging illegal aliens from breaking the law, politicians encourage them to come by lavishing free stuff on them with confiscated dollars from this and future generations."  JACK HELLNER



HOUSE POOR:
How price hikes hurt the most vulnerable

An exclusive analysis shows the Bay Area’s poorest ZIP codes endured the largest percentage increases in rents and mortgages. Residents say there’s nowhere to go.

By Julia Prodis Sulek and Kaitlyn Bartley
PART 2 OF 3

PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 8, 2019
AFFORDING the meager apartment he shares above a pool hall on International Boulevard already was a scramble for Ricardo Lopez. But when the landlord announced last summer that she was nearly doubling the rent, the 60-year-old janitor began a soul-crushing journey: scouting out the squalid homeless encampments proliferating around the city, looking for one he could bear to live in.

IT IS NOT AN ACCIDENT WE HAVE OPEN BORDERS AND NON-ENFORCEMENT! IT IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PROFITS HIGHER FOR A FEW!

“For example, it would take an individual earning the median income 43 years to save up enough for a down payment in Los Angeles—and that’s not a down payment for a McMansion, it’s for a median-priced dwelling. In San Francisco, it would take that individual 40 years. In New York City or Miami, it would take 36 years.”
Millennial homelessness and unaffordable housing are some of the biggest problems facing America—but no one is willing to speak frankly about it.
The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.

How Immigration Made 14 Million Millennials Homeless

Homeownership rates only tell half the story.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/15/how-immigration-made-14-million-millennials-homeless/


Imagine a homeless man. Does he have a long, frazzled beard and unkempt hair? What do his clothes look like? Probably ratty and full of holes—moth nests in the pockets. Maybe he has a shopping cart full of cans and a mangy dog named “Rusty.”
Although culturally ubiquitous, this characterization of the grizzled old hobo is profoundly misleading. In reality, most of America’s homeless people are young and healthy. Many attended college and work full-time jobs. They usually have permanent mailing addresses. Who are these people? Millennials.
Estimates suggest that 14 million Millennials still reside in their childhood homes. Why? Some prefer to live at home while they attend college. Others are lazy. But most cannot move out because rents are too high and houses too expensive. They are literally homeless—and millions would also be unsheltered were it not for their parent’s generosity.
How did it get to the point where an entire generation of Americans cannot afford to live where they were born and raised? Where millions must choose between remaining wards of their parents or leaving their friends and families behind in search of affordable accommodation—effectively becoming refugees in their own land?
One word: immigration.

Apples to Apples

The overwhelming majority (88 percent) of Millennials say they want to buy a home. Yet, just 4 percent believe they will be able to so in the coming year. Why? They cannot afford it: 72 percent say they cannot afford a home mortgage, while 62 percent say that the down payment is the biggest hurdle. This despair is reflected in generational homeownership rates.
Currently, 32.2 percent of Millennials own homes, compared to 60.4 percent of Gen-Xers and 75 percent of Baby Boomers. This alone is unsurprising: Millennials are younger and thus have had less time to save. But what’s interesting—and alarming—is that Millennial homeownership rates are far lower even when correcting for age differences.
For example, 45.4 percent of Gen-Xers owned homes when they were 25 to 34, as did 45 percent of Boomers.
Meanwhile, the Millennial homeownership rate for this age group is just 37 percent. In short, Millennials are 8 percent less likely to own a home than were their parents and grandparents at the same age.
While this may not sound like much, we must remember that Millennial homeownership rates are buoyed by banks (at the government’s behest) who offer effectively negative interest rates on mortgages—they literally pay Millennials to buy homes. If Millennials needed to pay the 10 percent interest that Boomers “enjoyed,” I suspect their homeownership rate would drop precipitously.
On top of this, Millennials are also far less likely to rent than were previous generations. As such, homeownership rates only tell half the story of Millennial dispossession.

Boiling the Frog

Although Millennials clearly want to buy homes, they cannot. Why? Houses are too expensive.
In 1973 the median household income was $9,265, whereas the median sales price of a new home in January, 1973, was $29,900—3.2 times the median household income. In other words, if the median family saved up every penny and put it towards a new home, it would take just over three years to buy a brand-new house.
This is in stark contrast to current prices. In January 2017, the median sales price for a new home was $317,400. This is 5.6 times the median household income of $56,516. In short, houses are 73 percent more expensive today (in real terms) than they were in 1973. This is the primary reason why disposable income has actually declined in America since the 1970s—not just for Millennials, but for all Americans.
Furthermore, it was easier for previous generations to save money for a down payment. Consider that the rate of return on a 10-year Treasury Bill in 1973 was 6.46 percent. Today, the rate is just 1.72 percent. Lower interest rates, combined with the fact that the price of shelter is increasing faster than inflation, is impoverishing our people.
Lastly, housing prices have not increased uniformly across the nation. In fact, they have actually decreased in those vast swathes of America which have suffered globalization-driven economic collapses. Thus, housing and rental prices have increased by much more than 73 percent in areas where Americans can actually find work.
For example, it would take an individual earning the median income 43 years to save up enough for a down payment in Los Angeles—and that’s not a down payment for a McMansion, it’s for a median-priced dwelling. In San Francisco, it would take that individual 40 years. In New York City or Miami, it would take 36 years.
Clearly, the Millennial generation has been dispossessed by high housing and rental prices.

The Source of the Nile

Since 1965, more than 45 million people have immigrated legally to America. During the same period, at least 20 million illegal migrants settled in America. Millions more arrive every year.
The scale of this mass migration is unprecedented in human history, and its consequences are not fully understood. But one thing we do know is that migration drives-up housing prices. How?
Migrants provide virtually unlimited demand for housing. This basic problem is compounded by two issues. First, the housing supply is relatively inelastic because as it takes much longer to build a home than to inhabit one.
Second, housing is a relatively scarce commodity since there is only a finite quantity of desirable land. Consider that the vast majority of immigrants settle in a select few metropolitan areas. Further, immigrants usually settle in areas already populated by their diaspora—they self-segregate, and in doing so cluster in relatively small areas which are not able to absorb or disperse their economic impact.
For example, California alone is home to more than 10 million immigrants. This works out to 26 percent of the state’s population. Meanwhile, immigrants comprise 22.9 percent of New York state. This explains why 17 of 25 of America’s least affordable housing markets are in California and six are in New York.
A number of academic studies demonstrate that immigration indeed raises housing prices and rents. Libertad Gonzalez and Francesc Ortega in a 2013 study found that immigration into Spain caused 52 percent of the overall increase in Spain’s real estate market.
Another paper published in 2012 by Canadian researchers Ather Akbari and Yigit Aydede found that immigration raised housing and rent prices in Vancouver, although the effect was not large. The authors postulated that the unexpected minor impact may be due to native residents leaving neighborhoods with high immigrant rates—“white flight.”
Abeba Mussa, Uwaoma G. Nwaogub, and Susan Pozoc tested this theory in a 2017 paper. Their findings were startling: for every 1 percent that immigration increased the population in a metropolitan statistical area (“MSA”), rents in that area increased by 0.8 percent. Additionally, domestic out-migration caused rents in neighboring MSAs to increase by 1.6 percent on average.
This effect was magnified when looking at housing prices: housing prices increased by 0.8 percent for every 1 percent immigrant-driven rise in population in the destination MSA, but by a whopping 9.6 percent in surrounding MSAs. In this way, immigration not only raised rents and house prices, it primarily raised them for native-born Americans!

Captive in Babylon

Millennial homelessness and unaffordable housing are some of the biggest problems facing America—but no one is willing to speak frankly about it.
The Left acknowledges that rents are “too damn high.” But because immigration is their Golden Calf they are only willing to entertain cosmetic “solutions” like rent control—solutions which have harmful iatrogenic effects.
The Right usually ignores the problem. If a solution is offered it invariably takes one of two forms. First, Millennials are told to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” This is obviously unhelpful advice: Millennials are drowning in a sea of 65 million immigrants and their 30 million children. Further, a large fraction of America’s blue-collar jobs has been shipped to China and Mexico.
There was a time in America when a high school graduate could get a job that paid enough to allow him to buy a house and support a stay-at-home wife and three children. This is impossible today. In fact, I know many young lawyers who cannot even afford to buy an apartment—much less have children. In essence, Millennials are all out of bootstraps.
The second “solution” is for Millennials to move to cheaper locations—to leave the dead-end town where they were born and seek prosperity in the wide world. This is not only stupid, it’s immoral.
To begin with, housing is cheap for a reason—usually, because the neighborhood is infested with degenerates or the economy is toast. Who cares if you can afford a home if you risk getting shivved in your driveway? Who cares if the rent is cheap if you can’t find work?
Beyond that, telling Millennials they need to move away from their place of birth is immoral.
People are not merely individual consumers. They are part of something far greater. They are members of a family, a community, and a nation. What does it profit America to separate sons from their fathers and infants from their ancestors’ graves—to uproot an entire generation—to steal from our youth their sense of home and belonging, and replace it with restless anomie?
Immigration is raising housing prices. The solution to this problem is not to further atomize America by encouraging a mass exodus of Millennials from their hometowns in search of cheaper rents. The solution is to cut the immigration rate and enforce existing deportation laws.
The solution is to put Americans—and America—first.

Every American (Legal) is one paycheck and one thousand illegals away from being homeless.

These figures will get much worse when the Democrat Party hands amnesty to 40 million illegals so they may legally bring up the rest of their family and vote Democrat for more!




Democrats Promise to Welcome Illegal Migrants ‘Like One of Our Own’ NEIL MUNRO

High cost of housing cuts into food, utilities study says

 

More than a third of Americans scrimp on essentials to pay for housing


Overall, 62 percent of renters and 47 percent of owners reported struggling to afford housing, according to a Freddie Mac survey. (www.google.com/maps)

More than a third of Americans have been forced to cut spending on essential items like food and utilities to afford housing, according to a Freddie Mac study.
About 42 percent of renters and 33 percent of homeowners have had to reduce the money spent on essentials to cover the cost of housing during the prior two years, the report said. Overall, 62 percent of renters and 47 percent of owners reported struggling to afford housing.
“Our research confirms much of what we see in our business every day — affordability remains the essential factor when it comes to determining whether to rent or purchase a home, and the cost of housing is having a significant impact on households of every age, size and location,” said David Brickman, president and incoming CEO of Freddie Mac, as Yahoo reports. “For millennials and many Gen Xers, buying a home is no longer just a decision based on housing and housing costs — increasing pressure from student loans and the rising cost of child care are having a significant impact.”
Freddie Mac conducted the online survey over a four-day period. The poll collected data from 4,040 respondents over the age of 18, including 2,864 homeowners, 1,119 renters and 57 others.
“While we tend to focus primarily on wages not keeping up with house prices and misperceptions of down payments, we should also recognize that for many millennials and Gen Xers, the basic cost of living has gone up,” says Brickman, as Yahoo cited. “Heavy burdens from student loans and the rapidly rising cost of child care are clearly affecting the housing decisions of these individuals.”
Student debt has more than doubled over the past decade to more than $1.6 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Of millennials who rent, 51 percent said they based their choice of housing on their student loan payments.
The cost of child care has also risen over the past 30 years, according to the report. About 31 percent of renters and 45 percent of homeowners reported choosing cheaper housing to afford daycare, according to Freddie Mac.
About 35 percent of homeowners who reported trouble affording housing in the last two years had to move to find a more affordable place to live, an increase of nine percent since last August.

CAN YOU NAME EVEN ONE DEM POL WHO IS NOT OUT THERE ENDLESSLY HISPANDERING AND PROMISING THE ILLEGALS ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING?

 

AND YET NOT ONE WORD ON THE HOUSING AND HOMELESS CRISIS.

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN WHEN THEY HAND 40 MILLION ILLEGALS AMNESTY SO THEY CAN LEGALLY BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILIES???

 

“Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.”  JOHN BINDER
"When we hear stories about the homelessness in California and elsewhere, why don't we hear how illegal aliens contribute to the problem?  They take jobs and affordable housing, yet instead of discouraging illegal aliens from breaking the law, politicians encourage them to come by lavishing free stuff on them with confiscated dollars from this and future generations."  JACK HELLNER
This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.

This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.

The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.     JOHN BINDER

America's housing affordability crisis spreads to the heartland

 Prashant Gopal, Reade Pickert and Noah Buhayar

Low mortgage rates and thriving employment should be the recipe for a strong housing market. Instead, they’re deepening America’s affordability crisis.

What began on the coasts, in areas like New York and San Francisco, is now radiating into the nation’s heartland, as well as to cities from Las Vegas to Charleston, South Carolina. Entry-level buyers are scrambling to purchase homes that are in short supply, sending values soaring.

Expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce interest rates this week will do little to change the sober reality: For many, prices have risen much faster than incomes, pushing homeownership out of reach for a new generation of hopeful buyers. That’s cooling the market, with the 2019 spring season shaping up as the slowest for sales in five years, according to CoreLogic Inc.

“All signs point to a housing market that should be doing really well and it’s not,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com. “The No. 1 constraint, despite low mortgage rates, is that people can’t find housing that they feel is affordable.”

Many buyers in expensive West Coast cities have already retreated after a surge in prices squeezed them out. But in other areas, demand is still robust, fueled by a strong economy and this year’s rapid decline in borrowing costs. There’s just too little to buy, and too much competition.

Dean Rusch, a 29-year-old chemical-plant worker, has been trying to buy a starter home for less than $200,000 in Louisville, Kentucky, since April. On three occasions, houses he planned to tour were snapped up before he could get there. He was outbid on another. He finally had an above-asking offer accepted Sunday on a house listed for about $199,000, but only after his agent locked the door during a showing, keeping another buyer out. For much of his hunt, it was slim pickings.

“I’ve looked at some crappy ones,” Rusch said. “I used to be in the fire department, and smelled some crazy stuff. But one smelled so horrible that it gave me a headache.”

Recent months have shown a growing divergence between the high and low ends of the U.S. market. Prices in the bottom third jumped about 9% in June from a year earlier, compared with 1.1% growth for the top third, data from Redfin show. Meanwhile, sales for lower-priced homes plunged almost 20% as buyers struggled to find properties in their range, according to Zillow.

“We have a lot more buyers pre-approved for mortgages than people closing on homes,” said Jeff Davis, Rusch’s agent. “What that means is the struggle is not in the financing. The struggle is in the inventory.”

That makes for a particularly bleak outlook for first-time buyers. The number of new homeowners created in the second quarter was the lowest since 2006, and just a third as many as a year earlier, the Census Bureau reported last week. Black homeownership fell to the lowest level since at least 1970.

Unequal Recovery

The housing recovery that began in 2012 has been unequal from the start. About 6 million Americans lost homes in last decade’s crash and needed time to rebuild their credit. Private equity firms such as Blackstone Group Inc. swept in to buy foreclosed properties at deep discounts and rented them back to many of those displaced former homeowners.

Now those people are back in the market, along with the bulging population of millennials eager for their first crack at homeownership. But many of the properties they want have already been picked over. Builders have focused on wealthier buyers willing to pay bigger price tags, and now some areas have too many expensive homes, and not enough where they’re needed.

Affordable homes disappeared first in technology and financial hubs like Silicon Valley and New York, where buyers with big paychecks pushed up prices. Now values are flattening after many would-be homeowners have been forced to the sidelines. In some areas, demand has also been hit by a pullback in foreign buyers and new federal limits on property-tax deductions -- as well as fears that a recession may be around the corner.

But even in traditionally affordable parts of the country, renters worry that if they don’t act, their piece of the American Dream will go to the higher bidder.

“People do at this point in the cycle start getting a little panicked that they need to get into the market,” said Jenny Schuetz, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. And, with lower mortgage rates, “a lot of people who were on the fence between renting and owning, may look at owning.”

In Louisville, fewer than one-fifth of listings were affordable to buyers in the bottom 30% of incomes in April, according to Realtor.com. That’s down from 23% a year earlier and 38% in 2015. The trends are similar in other low-cost cities from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Charleston, where only 6% of listings meet that affordability threshold.

Clogged Up

Las Vegas, which was hit hard by the last crash and then sharply rebounded, now is seeing a rapid decline in sales because there’s little on the low end worth buying. Many single-family houses were purchased by investors, and now are rentals. The result is there aren’t enough owners of entry-level homes to move up to the next rung of the ladder, said Thomas Blanchard, president elect of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

“Our inventory is clogged up, causing a backup of people that want to buy,” Blanchard said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy -- nobody is willing to move anywhere because they’re afraid they won’t find a house to buy.”

Mike Manesiotis, a 28-year-old who works in software sales in Charleston, says his friends in Seattle and the Bay Area would say home prices where he lives are a steal. But the salaries are also much lower, he said.

Manesiotis wants to live in or near downtown, within a short walk or Uber ride to bars and restaurants, and pay less than $350,000 -- near the median price for a single-family home in the city. But he hasn’t found anything he likes. The return of low mortgage rates hasn’t helped.

“It’s not the interest rate; it’s the sheer cost,” he said. “You’re spending $300,000 on a home that’s 1,000 square feet. You get two bedrooms, one bath and it needs a lot of work.”

More bad news for renters in SF's already insane market, report says

 Anna Marie Erwert 

Has San Francisco's rent finally convinced you that renting a one-bedroom alone isn't economically feasible? According to a new report, sharing a two-bedroom might not be cheaper for long.

Overall, San Francisco's rent didn't grow dramatically this year: In June rents were up 1.2 percent, according to ApartmentList.com. This is less than the national inflation of 1.6 percent. But what is dramatic is the steady creeping upward of two-bedroom rents. Apartment List found that over the past six years, the median rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in San Francisco has increased by 10.7 percent.

In 2014, the median rent for a two-bedroom in San Francisco was $2,804 ... Today, median rents in San Francisco stand at $3,100 for a two-bedroom.

Apartment List isn't the only online rental site to notice this trend. Rental site Zumper's most recent National Rent Report showed that "one bedroom rent have another flat month, staying at $3,700. Two bedrooms, on the other hand, jumped 4.9 percent to settle at $4,720."

Why the disparity?

The disparity in median rent price reports is down to methodology. Every rental site collects data differently, and their findings reflect calculations based on their particular methodology. Zumper says it aggregates data from "over one million active listings [and] includes new constructions but excludes listings that are no longer available or are currently occupied."

Apartment List, on the other hand, takes a different approach. "Data from private listing sites, including our own, tends to skew toward luxury apartments, which introduces sample bias when estimates are calculated directly from these listings," says the site's methodology section. To address this issue, Apartment List uses median rent statistics from the Census Bureau, then "extrapolate them forward to the current month using a growth rate calculated from our listing data."

Whichever method we think more accurate, what is not in dispute is that renting a two-bedroom is getting more expensive in San Francisco.

And if the past six years are an indicator, it looks poised to get even more so.

Why? Because, frankly, one bedrooms are already pushing maximum affordability, while previously two bedrooms were more affordable if shared. The relatively less expensive unit has the most room to grow in price, and growing it is.

Moving may not be the answer

Lest you hope that moving south or east of the city will make life easier, you should know that this June, San Jose is the fourth-most expensive city for renters looking to share, with two-bedrooms hovering around $3,000 a month by Zumper's figures and $2,670 by Apartment List's.

Oakland comes in sixth, with two-bedrooms at around $2,800 according to Zumper and $2,200 according to Apartment List.

What can you rent for SF's new median 2-BR rent?

If we average Zumper and ApartmentList data, we come up with $3,910. That means $46,920 per year on rent alone, sharing a two-bedroom in San Francisco.

The gallery above shows you what you get for your money, as well as data used to make these projections.

Overall, it seems if you want to spend less by renting a two-bedroom, you better do it soon. Renting these units is getting more expensive by the day.

Anna Marie Erwert writes from both the renter and new buyer perspective, having (finally) achieved both statuses. She focuses on national real estate trends, specializing in the San Francisco Bay Area and Pacific Northwest. Follow Anna on Twitter: @AnnaMarieErwert.

Homeless Surge Hits Oakland, Silicon Valley, San Francisco Suburbs

JOEL B. POLLAK

San Francisco saw its homeless population rise by 17% in the last two years, but the rise in many surrounding counties has been worse.

A report Monday by Curbed San Francisco summarizing the figures noted: “Five out of nine Bay Area Counties—i.e., all of those not located in the North Bay—saw their homeless counts spike during the same period, with each other county showing worse homelessness surges than SF.”

As Breitbart News has noted, homelessness has been rising rapidly in urban areas throughout the state. San Francisco’s rise in homelessness has been accompanied by a spike in Los Angeles that some say has brought the city to the brink of an outbreak of deadly disease — perhaps bubonic plague. San Diego recently suffered an outbreak of hepatitis A among the homeless, partly due to a plastic bag ban making it harder for homeless people living on the streets to dispose of excrement.

Now the problem is leaving downtown areas and hitting the suburbs. Curbed reports:

•        San Mateo County: rise of more than 20% in two years

•        Santa Clara County: rise of more than 31% in two years

•        Alameda County: rise of more than 42.5% in two years

•        Contra Costa County: rise of 42.8% in two years

In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday that homelessness in the City of Oakland alone rose 47% over the past two years.

The Curbed report adds some “good news”: ‘While the rest of the Bay Area saw the levees break, homelessness actually declined significantly all over the North Bay during the same period.”

President Donald Trump has warned that federal intervention may be necessary to deal with the problem — a suggestion that has met with protest from the state’s Democratic leaders.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside St

ory of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Exclusive–Michael Savage Backs Trump on San Francisco: ‘Junkies Shoot Up in Front of Children’
William Morrow Paperbacks
JOSHUA CAPLAN
 29 Jul 20191,416
4:16

Talk radio legend and New York Times bestselling author Michael Savage is once again sounding the alarm on the deterioration of San Francisco, California, in the wake of President Donald Trump criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over the conditions in her “failing” district.

On Sunday, President Trump shifted his fierce critiques from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) over Baltimore to Pelosi, warning San Francisco will soon decline beyond repair unless immediate action is taken. “Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco.” the president wrote on Twitter Sunday. “It is not even recognizable lately. Something must be done before it is too late.”
In a statement to Breitbart News, Savage, a longtime resident of the Bay area, joined President Trump in eviscerating California’s Democrat leadership by highlighting San Francisco’s worsening crime and crumbling infrastructure:
Where has all the Federal and State highway funding gone? The streets are worse than some African nations! Even the roadway going on to the iconic Golden gate bridge is a disgrace! The streets are littered, bums rule the sidewalks. Junkies shoot up in front of children. People are afraid to go out at night. Assaults by bums are swept under the radar by the non-newspaper. Over 30,000 cars are broken into each year! Police do nothing because the psycho-lib ‘judges’  dismiss those few cases that are prosecuted. Need I mention the well-known epidemic of human feces on the sidewalks? Have you ever eaten dinner and seen a filthy human being drop his pants and crap outside the restaurant as you are attempting to eat? Where are Pelosi, Feinstein and the other oh-so compassionate rulers?
The conservative media star’s condemnation of Pelosi comes as Democrats are expressing outrage over President Trump spotlighting the worsening state of long-run Democrat cities. On Saturday, the president blasted Cummings for shouting at Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan during a recent congressional hearing and said Baltimore, the Maryland Democrat’s district, has “far worse” conditions than immigration detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,” he tweeted. “As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”
Without skipping a beat, Democrats raced to denounce the president’s comments, calling them racist and bigoted.
“Rep Cummings is a champion in the Congress and the country for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague,” Pelosi replied in a tweet. “We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership.”
President Trump shot back at the criticism, saying his comments directed at Cummings were in no way racist.
“[T]here is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore.” he tweeted. “Just take a look, the facts speak far louder than words!”
The president then said Democrats were playing the race card in an attempt to discredit his argument.
“The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people,” he stated. “The Dems should stop wasting time on the Witch Hunt Hoax and start focusing on our Country!”
Through 2015-2018, Baltimore homicides topped 300 each year and are on track to pass such figure in 2019, making it the fifth consecutive year to occur. As President Trump pointed out, the city does indeed suffer from a rodent problem, which was detailed in the documentary film Rat Film, which aired on PBS in 2018. The Baltimore Sun even published an opinion-editorial in November 2016 — Trump’s right: Declare Baltimore a ‘disaster’ and rebuild it — in which Sean Kennedy, a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institutecalled for the city to be official label a “disaster” and undergo extensive rebuilding effort.
Aaron Klein, Breitbart News’ Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter, contributed to this report. 

Democrats Promise to Welcome Illegal Migrants ‘Like One of Our Own’


NEIL MUNRO
 30 Jul 201978
4:13

Democrats in the July 30 CNN Democrat debate promised to welcome foreign migrants, and none mentioned migrants’ economic damage to blue-collar Americans’ wages and rents.

“Immigrants don’t diminish America, they are America,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who told Fox News in February 2019 that “we need workers” because unemployment was too low for business groups. “We have people all over the country who simply want to work and obey the law,” she said about the nation’s population of illegal immigrants. 
“We need to expand legal immigration,” said Sen. Liz Warren. “We need to create a path for citizenship, not just for ‘dreamers’ but for grandmas, and for people who have worked in the farms and students who have overstayed their visas.”
She reaffirmed her promise to end decriminalization of illegal migration: “We cannot make it a crime when someone comes here.”
Migrants are Americans and should not be criminalized, argued Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. “You don’t have to decriminalize everything [but] what you have to do is have a president in there with the judgment and decency to treat someone who comes to the border like one of our own,” he said. 
“If [migrants] are seeking asylum, of course, we want to welcome them. We’re a strong enough country to be able to welcome them,” said Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan. 
“Americans wants comprehensive immigration reform … [with] protections for ‘Dreamers,’ [and] making sure we have a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented,” claimed Pete Buttigieg, using the establishment’s code phrase for mass amnesty.  
Buttigieg also reaffirmed his promise to decriminalize illegal migration, saying: “If fraud is involved, that is suitable for the criminal statute — if not, then it should be handled under civil law.”
His White House would stop “criminally prosecuting families and children for seeking asylum and refuge,” promised Beto O’Rourke. “Asylum” is a legal term, complete with legal tests and deportation rules, but the term “refuge” suggests O’Rourke is making an open-ended promise of welcome. 
O’Rourke also promised to decriminalize illegal migration: “I expect people who come here to follow our laws, and we reserve the right to prosecute them if they do not.”
“If a mother and a child walk thousands of miles on a dangerous path, in my view, they are not criminals,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “They are people fleeing violence.”
Immigration Numbers:
Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes roughly 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business or health care, engineering or science, software or statistics.
But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately one million H-1B workers and spouses — plus roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.
The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.
This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.

The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.


US: Homelessness, housing insecurity top list of college student stressors as new year begins

 
This year’s # RealCollege survey, the largest annual assessment of basic needs security among college students in the United States, reveals that a staggering number of youth are experiencing food insecurity, housing insecurity and homelessness every day.
The survey, completed in fall 2018 and published in April 2019, by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice interviewed nearly 86,000 students from 123 different two- and four-year post-secondary institutions across the US and found that 45 percent of respondents reported being food insecure during the 30 days prior to taking the survey.
The breakdown of responses to the survey questions, known as the “Percentage Endorsing Statements,” provides a sobering view of the conditions facing today’s youth.
• 33 percent of four-year college students and 38 percent of two-year students agreed with the statement: “I ate less than I felt I should because there was not enough money for food.”
• 44 percent of four-year students and 51 percent of two-year students “worry whether my food will run out before I have money to buy more.”
• 8 percent of four-year students and 12 percent of two-year students “did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.”
Over half of the respondents said they were housing insecure over the previous year and 17 percent said they had been homeless. Housing insecurity includes a broad set of challenges, such as the inability to pay rent or utilities, or the need to move frequently. The study considers homelessness as a situation in which a person does not have a stable place to live. Students were identified as homeless if they responded affirmatively to a question asking if they had been homeless or they identified living conditions that are considered signs of homelessness.
Sixty percent of survey respondents at two-year institutions and 48 percent at four-year institutions experienced housing insecurity. The most commonly reported challenge is experiencing a rent or mortgage increase that made it difficult to pay, 30 percent of students at two-year institutions and 25 percent at four-year institutions. Eight percent of survey respondents at two-year institutions and 6 percent at four-year institutions left their household because they felt unsafe. Rates of student homelessness range from 10 percent to 32 percent at two-year institutions and 8 percent to 28 percent at four-year institutions.
To put these figures in perspective, a 2018 report by “PBS Newshour” found that more than 1.3 million primary and secondary students identified as homeless in 2017— a number equal to all students living in the state of Virginia.
The report highlights, “food and housing insecurity undermine academic success. Housing insecurity and homelessness have a particularly strong, statistically significant relationship with college completion rates, persistence, and credit attainment. Researchers also associate basic needs insecurity with self-reports of poor physical health, symptoms of depression, and higher perceived stress.”
Similar to the previous studies, the current research shows that working or receiving financial aid does not alleviate the stress of finding adequate housing. As the authors explain, “Students who experience basic needs insecurity are overwhelmingly part of the labor force. For example, the majority of students who experience food insecurity, 68 percent, housing insecurity, 69 percent, and homelessness, 67 percent, are employed. Also, among working students, those who experience basic needs insecurity work more hours than other students.”
Students who are forced to work while they go to school often come from families that are themselves suffering from poverty and are less likely to be able to help financially.
Likewise, most students eligible for a Pell Grant, a subsidy from the federal government for low-income students, are, in fact, more likely to be housing and food insecure.
A Pell Grant normally comes out to about $2,000 per year, or $1,000 per semester, and is available for families with an income of $30,000 or less. Despite the fact that this income level indicates the family is on the cusp of poverty, the families may still be expected to contribute up to $5,140 for the school year. This Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is money the student earns through working, or whatever money the parents can spare.
In addition, 88 percent of students who received Pell Grants in 2012 graduated with an average balance of $31,200 in student loans, compared to 53 percent of those who did not have a Pell Grant and borrowed $4,750 less, or about $26,000. Student loan debt in the US stood at a staggering $1.56 trillion in 2018.
Many campuses have been forced to try to address this issue on their own. Nearly every campus in the country now has a food pantry for students in need. Wayne State University (WSU), located in Detroit, for example, has something called the Helping Individuals Go Higher (HIGH) Program, which began in 2013 “with a goal to help homeless, precariously housed and financially challenged students to persist in their goal to earn a degree from Wayne State University.” The campus programs and resources on the WSU website include two counselors from the Department of Health and Human Services, a campus food pantry, National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY), more than a dozen area shelters, two soup kitchens, several social service agencies and homeless advocacy groups.
Despite these efforts, public school data reported to the US Department of Education during the 2016-2017 school year shows that in Michigan alone, an estimated 39,092 public school students experienced homelessness over the course of the year. Of that total, 611 students were unsheltered, 8,044 were in shelters, 2,514 were in hotels/motels, and 27,923 were doubled-up.
The report paints a stark picture of reality for young people in the most “advanced” capitalist country in the world. Thousands of young people are working two or three jobs while trying to get an education. Despite their best efforts they cannot make ends meet. They go hungry. They stay in shelters or with friends when they cannot afford a proper home. Millions then leave school burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, which will keep them in poverty and shackled to the banks, for most of their lives.
The latest HOPE Lab survey is the most widespread study of homelessness among college students and, according to the research done by the authors, is likely the only study that looks specifically at the plight of community college students. As the authors of the report acknowledge, “Data describing the scope and dimensions of this problem, particularly at the college level, remain sparse. The GAO report noted that there are only 31 quality studies of campus food insecurity, very few of which involve multiple colleges. Among existing multi-institutional studies, four draw on data from the #RealCollege survey.” The reality is that the crisis of housing and food insecurity among students is even more severe than this survey reveals.


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