Urbanexus Update - Issue #60
Please scroll down for the weekly compilation of analysis, reporting and opinion about real estate and community development. Some links may lead to material that is behind a paywall.
Housing
The allure of Los Angeles may be the good weather, beaches, and the glitz and glam of Hollywood. However, the Los Angeles area has around 50,000 people who are currently experiencing homelessness. Natasha Sokol, a student at Chapman University, shows us how extreme the juxtaposition really is in her video.
Housing stress on the middle class
Jenny Schuetz of the Brookings Institution examines middle-class housing stress along four dimensions: affordability, inadequate space, commute times, and homeownership.
Freddie Mac's new affordable housing lending platform
Freddie Mac has set up a new vehicle to provide small financial institutions access to additional liquidity for the financing of affordable housing. The government sponsored mortgage loan firm said the program enables a lender to swap a pool of loans backed by affordable properties for Freddie Mac Multifamily Participation Certificates (PCs) backed by the loans. The Multifamily PCs, which are guaranteed by Freddie Mac, can then be sold to investors, returning liquidity to the financial institution.
Metropolitan areas
Infinite Suburbia is a collection of articles edited by Alan Berger, Joel Kotkin and Celina Balderas Guzman. The book is the culmination of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's yearlong study of the future of suburban development.
Young Seattle residents unsatisfied? How do Seattleites' perceptions of their own town stack up to other U.S. cities? Not great, according to a new survey of young people across the country.
Good metros for the less educated
Exploring employment for sub-baccalaureate workers across metro areas and over yime
Transportation
Los Angeles streetcar conspiracy — la.curbed.com
Setting the record straight on what happened with Southern California’s first rail transit system. Spoiler: the famous Red Cars didn’t fall victim to a scheme by automakers.
Real estate leaders
This is "Malcom Davies" of George Smith Partners the Los Angeles based real estate finance firm .
RCLCO Managing Director, Charles Hewlett, speaks with The Bozzuto Group's Chairman and Co-Founder, Tom Bozzuto, and President and CEO, Toby Bozzuto, for a conversation about succession planning , the demographic changes facing the apartment rental market, advice for young executives, and the challenges, as well as the benefits, of working in a family business.
Environment
Climate change and the natural world
A United Nations report, based on thousands of scientific studies, paints an urgent picture of biodiversity loss and finds that climate change is amplifying the danger to humanity.
Around the world
Foreigners stage a 'positive invasion' — www.thisisplace.org
Selling homes for token sums has become a popular, last-ditch strategy for tumbledown towns in Italy's south, many of which are fighting de-population and decay.