Neil deMause

The Associated Press today on the housing market and the economy:

BOSTON (AP) — Home sales in the Northeast rose in February as the economy showed signs of recovery, inspiring buyers. …

Nationwide, homes sales were up 8 percent from February a year ago, without adjusting for seasonal factors.

And the Associated Press today on the housing market and the economy:

Sales of existing homes fell for a third straight month in February, pushing sales down to the lowest level since last July. There is concern the fragile housing rebound is faltering, making it harder for the overall economy to recover.

Sure, Brooklyn has become fashionable on Mayor Bloomberg’s watch, but can he make it livable?

A few years back, when the New York real estate market still looked within reach of, say, itinerant op-ed writers, I got to spend some quality time touring houses in a then-unfashionable part of Brooklyn.

My most vivid memory is of the basements. One had a warren of cubicles surrounding a filthy hot plate; in another, the landlord proudly showed off the tiny rooms he’d built (“That’s craftsmanship! This rent roll is a gold mine!”) in a windowless sub-basement 20 feet underground. It was a rare glimpse into the other New York, the one where its 1.5-million-and-growing poor live… [read more]

I just received my hot-off-the-presses copy of the new issue of City Limits Investigates, with a report by CLI editor Jarrett Murphy and myself on how one New York City zip code — 11237, which covers most of the neighborhood of Bushwick, and also happens to be the geographic center of the city — has fared the last eight years under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. You can read Jarrett’s short summary online, but to see my section (which is focused on housing) you’ll have to order a physical copy. A sample of my housing chapter:

At a meeting of tenant volunteers for the Bushwich Housing Independence Project, the stories pour out, in both English and Spanish. All the volunteers are themselves tenants in Bushwick’s many rent-regulated apartments, mostly in the century-old six- or eight-family row houses that remain the neighborhood’s signature housing stock. All described similar tales of landlord harassment with the goal of getting them out in order to slip the units to market-rent status.

“I have no cooking gas and no hot water,” says Luz Varela, a board member and volunteer tenant advocate. “He’s doing everything in his power to get me to up and move. But I’m not gonna budge.” Finally, after she took her landlord to court, his lawyer claimed that the shutoff of services was a mistake stemming from a renumbering of apartments in her building.

Another BHIP volunteer, Hector Vazquez, says his landlord renovated his bathroom but made it too small to be usable. “You can’t go inside. You have to go outside and back in, like you’re walking backward,” he says. “You can’t even put your clothes on in there.”

There’s another 9,500 words or so on this and how 11237 is faring in terms of crime, jobs, schools, and other measures. So really, pick up a copy.

The New York Times ran a Page One story yesterday headlined “Where Home Prices Crashed Early, Signs of a Rebound,” all about the housing market in Sacramento, which it declares to be in “the earliest stages of a recovery, a hopeful sign for an economy mired in trouble and anxiety.”

What’s the evidence of this provided in the article? To wit: A single real estate industry analyst says he’s hopeful that prices will “show evidence of stabilizing” soon — i.e., that they’ll stop falling like a rock as they have in recent months. Meanwhile, home sales are up, but only because everyone’s buying foreclosures — which only foretells that they’ll keep selling if there are more foreclosures. And while that well may happen, it’s hard to see it as a good sign for the housing market.

All of which looks less like a “rebound” than “hitting bottom and staying there,” but there’s an implicit agreement among newspapers (especially the Times) to view the world through the lens of the real-estate industry, which needless to say appreciates having front-page stories encouraging people to run out and buy homes. Though you have to wonder how long they’ll keep this up once real estate ads disappear altogether.

After a three-week hiatus, I make my return to the Metro op-ed page with a discussion of how a poorly thought out rent law is forcing people out of their homes:

On a recent trip to my local coffee shop, I had an unexpectedly long wait for my chai. The reason: The woman ahead of me on line was bawling, gasping out her story to the sympathetic barista. She’d just been told, she sobbed, that her landlord was unexpectedly raising her rent, and she and her family were being evicted. The woman behind me chimed in: The exact same thing had happened to her a few months ago, she said… [read more]

NOTE: I’ll be appearing in Metro every other Monday from now on, as a weekly filing deadline was proving too much amid all my other projects. Also, I see that Metro has finally redesigned its website, albeit in a way that now all that appears above the fold is a giant picture of my head. Baby steps, I guess…

Yes, “Condos Fizzle While Homelessness Burns” would have made a better Nero reference, and it’s what I suggested originally, but character counts are a harsh mistress. In any case, read on about how New York is facing a simultaneous housing glut and housing shortage:

To see one of the dilemmas facing New York in the post-Wall Street economy, just turn on “Top Chef.” When the gourmet gang gets sloshed between challenges, the balcony they’re lounging on belongs to 20 Bayard Street in Greenpoint: one of many apartment towers that have sprung up around McCarren Park to sell overpriced condos to wannabe hipsters — only to see the housing boom go bust, making a temporary rental to chefs look like a good deal.

If construction cranes marked the New York of the ’00s, vacant luxury buildings could be emblematic of the ’10s… [read more]