Category Archives: Housing

Chinese Immigrants Sue Florida Over DeSantis’s Discriminatory Law Banning Home Purchases

“All Asian Americans will feel the stigma and the chilling effect created by this Florida law, just like the discriminatory laws did to our ancestors more than a hundred years ago.”

By Julia Conley. Published 5-22-2023 by Common Dreams

Governor Ron DeSantis speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

Accusing Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of enacting an unconstitutional law that would not have been out of place at the turn of the last century, a group of Chinese American immigrants on Monday filed a lawsuit against the state over S.B. 264, which restricts most Chinese citizens from purchasing homes in Florida.

The law is set to take effect on July 1, but the plaintiffs and the groups representing them—including the ACLU, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (CALDA), and the ACLU of Florida—hope to block the measure in the courts.

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US Unemployment System ‘Wholly Unprepared’ as Fed Risks Throwing Millions Out of Work

“If another wave of job losses does indeed hit, the unemployment safety net isn’t ready to cushion the blow without significant improvements,” warns the co-author of a new study.

By Jake Johnson  Published 11-1-2022 by Common Dreams

People’s Unemployment Line protest in Philadelphia, 2020. Photo: Joe Piette/flickr/CC

With the Federal Reserve poised to induce mass layoffs in its ongoing campaign to curb inflation, a study published Tuesday warns the notoriously fragmented U.S. unemployment system is nowhere near ready to handle another surge in jobless claims, potentially spelling disaster for the millions of people who could be thrown out of work next year.

Authored by Andrew Stettner and Laura Valle Gutierrez of The Century Foundation (TCF), the new analysis notes that “the share of jobless workers actually receiving UI benefits has shrunk dramatically” since federal benefit increases expired last year. According to TCF, just 26.8% of jobless workers were receiving state unemployment benefits in the 12 months that ended in August 2022, a sharp decline from the 76% rate through early 2021. Continue reading

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Company That Makes Rent-Setting Software for Apartments Accused of Collusion, Lawsuit Says

 

Texas-based RealPage worked with some of the nation’s largest landlords to create a cartel to raise rents, says a lawsuit filed just days after ProPublica published its investigation into the company.

by Heather Vogell for ProPublica,  Published 10-21-2022

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Renters filed a lawsuit this week alleging that a company that makes price-setting software for apartments and nine of the nation’s biggest property managers formed a cartel to artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law.

The lawsuit was filed days after ProPublica published an investigation raising concerns that the software, sold by Texas-based RealPage, is potentially pushing rent prices above competitive levels, facilitating price fixing or both.

The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego. Continue reading

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‘Time to Take to the Streets’: Working Class Hold ‘Enough Is Enough’ Rallies Across UK

“Does a CEO need an extra zero at the end of their salary—or should nurses, posties, and teachers be able to heat their homes?” said one supporter ahead of the #EnoughIsEnough National Day of Action.

By Julia Conley  Published 9-30-2022 by Common Dreams

From the Enough is Enough rally in Blackpool. Photo: OCS Dispute Lancs & South Cumbria/Twitter

Weeks of economic justice rallies organized by the Enough Is Enough campaign across the United Kingdom over the past six weeks have been building to a National Day of Action, set to take place Saturday in more than four dozen cities and towns as hundreds of thousands of people protest the country’s cost-of-living crisis.

The campaign, whose roots lie in the trade union and tenants’ rights movements, has outlined five specific demands of the U.K. government as renters have seen their average monthly housing costs skyrocket by 11% on average since last year and household energy bills approaching $4,000 (£3,582) per year. Continue reading

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‘Worst Yet to Come’ as Global Civil Unrest Index Hits All-Time High

“Over the coming months, governments across the world are about to get an answer to a burning question: Will protests sparked by socioeconomic pressure transform into broader and more disruptive anti-government action?”

By Jessica Corbett  Published 9-2-2022 by Common Dreams

Protesters at Plaza Baquedano, Santiago, Chile in 2019. Photo: Carlos Figueroa/Wikimedia Commons/CC

The risk of civil unrest is rising in over 100 nations, with the “worst yet to come,” according to an analysis published Thursday by the U.K.-based consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft.

Incorporating data going back to 2017, the latest update to the firm’s civil unrest index (CUI) shows that the last quarter of this year “saw more countries witness an increase in risks from civil unrest than at any time since the index was released,” the analysis states. “Out of 198 countries, 101 saw an increase in risk, compared with only 42 where the risk decreased.” Continue reading

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Despite Housing Crisis, Mississippi May Return Up to Millions in Federal Rent Aid to DC

“For them to suggest people like me aren’t working? It’s a slap in the face,” said one woman affected by the end of the pandemic assistance program. “It’s very insulting and degrading.”

By Brett Wilkins  Published 8-15-2022 by Common Dreams

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves.
Photo: Tate Reeves/Facebook

Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor, faced intense criticism Monday as the poorest U.S. state ended participation in a federal rent assistance program that helped shield tens of thousands of people facing eviction during the economic upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Invoking former U.S. President Ronald Reagan—whose administration eviscerated the social safety net and turbocharged economic inequality—Reeves tweeted that “today in Mississippi, we are ending RAMP, a federal program that incentivizes people not to work by using taxpayer dollars to pay for up to 15 months of free rent and utilities.” Continue reading

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Global Military Spending Tops $2 Trillion for First Time in History

“If global leaders actually care about charting a more secure future, then we need a massive realignment in spending priorities,” said one prominent peace group.

By Brett Wilkins  Published 4-25-2022 by Common Dreams

U.S. warplanes and the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan are seen during a deployment in the Indian Ocean on June 32, 2021. (Photo: U.S. Pacific Fleet/Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0)

Global military expenditures surpassed $2 trillion for the first time ever last year, with the United States spending more on its war-making capacity than the next nine nations combined, according to new data published Monday.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported an all-time high of $2.1 trillion in worldwide military spending for 2021, a 0.7% increase from 2020 levels and the seventh straight year of increased expenditures. Continue reading

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Misogyny helped South Korea’s president win. Now feminists are fighting back

Yoon Suk-yeol was swept to victory on a wave of ‘anti-feminism’ among young Korean men. Now, he wants to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality

By Hannah Pham.  Pubished 3-26-2022 by openDemocracy

Yoon Seok-youl leaves the main opposition People Power Party’s headquarters in Seoul on July 30, 2021 Photo: 고려/Wikimedia Commons/CC

“I threw up and cried.” This was 30-year-old Haein Shim’s reaction to the results of South Korea’s presidential election, held on 9 March. As the senior director of foreign media of Seoul-based feminist group Haeil (translated as ‘Tsunami’), Haein had felt neither candidate was necessarily a strong or progressive choice. But ultimately it was Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party – in Haein’s eyes, the worse of two evils – who won.

“We have to choose the head of the state, but there is no candidate for women to choose from,” says Haein, who originally hails from Gwangju in south-west South Korea and now lives in the US. “No candidate sees women as they really are.” Continue reading

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EU Joins Rights Group in Condemning Israel’s ‘Day of Destruction’ of Palestinian Homes

“Demolitions are illegal under international law and significantly undermine the prospects for peace.”

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 11-28-2021 by Common Dreams

sraeli forces use bulldozers including a U.S.-made Caterpillar to destroy Palestinian homes in illegally occupied East Jerusalem. (Photo: jenniferlisa/Flickr/cc)

The European Union on Friday joined a prominent Israeli human rights group in condemning last week’s demolition of multiple homes in occupied East Jerusalem, an illegal action that displaced 22 Palestinians including 15 children.

“We reiterate our call to halt demolitions and any other unlawful practices that coerce Palestinians out of their homes,” the European Union Delegation to the Palestinians (DPAL) tweeted. Continue reading

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A Quarter of All ‘Critical’ US Infrastructure at Risk From Flooding: Report

“Our nation’s infrastructure is not built to a standard that protects against the level of flood risk we face today, let alone how those risks will grow over the next 30 years as the climate changes,” said one expert.

By Kenny Stancil, staff writer for Common Dreams.  Published 10-11-2021

Long Island Expressway in New York City shut down due to flash flooding from Post-Tropical Storm Ida’s landfall. Photo: Tommy Gao/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Underscoring the need to slash greenhouse gas emissions and invest in public goods to better prepare communities across the United States for escalating extreme weather, a new report released Monday finds that one-quarter of the nation’s “critical” infrastructure is already susceptible to flooding that renders it inaccessible, with risks projected to increase in the coming decades.

Described as the first-ever nationwide evaluation of community-level vulnerability to flooding, the report—Infrastructure on the Brink, compiled by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group that specializes in environmental risk assessment—highlights localities where housing, commercial real estate, transportation networks, schools, hospitals, power plants, and other pieces of infrastructure face operational flood risk in 2021. Continue reading

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