DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ What Would Jesus Do? Tackle the Housing Crisis, Say Some Congregations.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-27 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Walking past empty pews and stained-glass windows, the Rev. Victor Cyrus-Franklin, pastor of Inglewood First United Methodist Church in Inglewood, Calif., talked about how housing prices were threatening his flock. As Mr. Cyrus-Franklin spoke, a 78-year-old man named Bill Dorsey was a few yards away in an outdoor corridor that led to the chapel, amid tarps and piles of clothes. “We know their stories and we know how hard it is to find housing,” Mr. Cyrus-Franklin said. So the church is trying to help — by building housing.

Persons: Victor Cyrus, Franklin, Cyrus, Bill Dorsey, Mr Organizations: Inglewood First United Methodist Church, Los Angeles International Airport Locations: Inglewood, Inglewood , Calif, Inglewood First’s, Los

☆ America’s Affordable Housing Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The consensus reflects a major problem: Tens of millions of families, across red and blue states, struggle with rent and home prices. But action in Washington won’t make a huge difference. America’s affordable housing crisis is likely to be solved in cities and states. They tend to have fewer construction and environmental rules, which allows the housing supply to expand faster. But as rent and home prices climb beyond middle-income budgets in more places, states are racing to add housing.

Persons: Biden, Washington won’t, — Organizations: Congress, Republican, Democratic Locations: Washington, Spokane, Dallas, Phoenix

Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicFor years, a mysterious company has been buying farmland on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, eventually putting together a plot twice the size of San Francisco. At every step, those behind the company kept their plans for the land shrouded in secrecy. Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter at The Times, figured out what they were up to.

Persons: Conor Dougherty Organizations: Spotify, The Times Locations: Silicon Valley, San Francisco

☆ The Surprising Left-Right Alliance That Wants More Apartments in Suburbs
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-09 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For years, the Yimbytown conference was an ideologically safe space where liberal young professionals could talk to other liberal young professionals about the particular problems of cities with a lot of liberal young professionals: not enough bike lanes and transit, too many restrictive zoning laws. The event began in 2016 in Boulder, Colo., and has ever since revolved around a coalition of left and center Democrats who want to make America’s neighborhoods less exclusive and its housing more dense. (YIMBY, a pro-housing movement that is increasingly an identity, stands for “Yes in my backyard.”)But the vibes and crowd were surprisingly different at this year’s meeting, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin in February. In addition to vegan lunches and name tags with preferred pronouns, the conference included — even celebrated — a group that had until recently been unwelcome: red-state Republicans. The first day featured a speech on changing zoning laws by Greg Gianforte, the Republican governor of Montana, who last year signed a housing package that YIMBYs now refer to as “the Montana Miracle.”

Persons: —, Greg Gianforte, ” Organizations: University of Texas, Republicans, Republican Locations: Boulder, Colo, Austin, Montana

☆ The Great Compression
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-17 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Robert Lanter lives in a 600-square-foot house that can be traversed in five seconds and vacuumed from a single outlet. When relatives come to visit, Mr. Lanter says jokingly, but only partly, they have to tour one at time. Each of these details amounts to something bigger, for Mr. Lanter’s life and the U.S. housing market: a house under $300,000, something increasingly hard to find. Mr. Lanter’s house could easily fit on a flatbed truck, and is dwarfed by the two-story suburban homes that prevail on the blocks around him. For Mr. Lanter and his neighbors, it’s a chance to hold on to ownership.

Persons: Robert Lanter, Lanter, Lanter’s, Hayden, it’s Locations: Redmond , Ore, Cinder

☆ The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For six years a mysterious company called Flannery Associates, which Mr. Sramek controlled, had upended the town of 10,000 by spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy every farm in the area. It sued a group of holdouts who had refused its above-market offers, on the grounds that they were colluding for more. Residents worried it could be a front for foreign spies looking to surveil a nearby Air Force base. The truth was that Mr. Sramek wanted to build a city from the ground up, in an agricultural region whose defining feature was how little it had changed. They and others from the technology world had spent some $900 million on farmland in a demonstration of their dead seriousness about Mr. Sramek’s vision.

Persons: Jan Sramek, Flannery, Sramek, Michael Moritz, Reid Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs Organizations: American Legion, Flannery Associates, Air Force, Silicon, LinkedIn, Emerson, Apple Locations: Rio Vista, Calif, Rio

Jan Sramek has spent the past several months in restaurants and conference rooms pitching politicians, environmentalists and labor unions on a plan to erect a new California city on open farmland in an eastern corner of the San Francisco Bay Area. The project is backed by a host of big Silicon Valley names, including the venture capitalists Michael Moritz and Marc Andreessen, the LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman, and the Emerson Collective founder, Laurene Powell Jobs. At an event Wednesday evening, Mr. Sramek, the chief executive of a company called California Forever, took his case to the Solano County voters. Mr. Sramek took it in stride, patiently answering questions and appearing mostly unruffled. He promised improved infrastructure, employment and middle-class homes for the county’s 450,000 residents.

Persons: Jan Sramek, Michael Moritz, Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs, Sramek, ”, “ Flannery Will Ruin Organizations: San Francisco Bay Area, LinkedIn, Emerson Collective, Solano County voters, Vallejo Naval, Historical Museum Locations: California, San Francisco Bay, Solano County

☆ The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-12 | by ( Conor Dougherty | More About Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

From 2011 to 2015, about 100,000 properties — more than a quarter of the Detroit lots — were auctioned in tax foreclosures, according to Regrid, a Detroit-based provider of parcel data nationally. (Speculators recently made money after the city bought out vacant lots to help revive an auto plant that would bring jobs to the area.) Mr. Allen said his main project at the agency was finding new ways to stimulate growth that didn’t rely on grants and tax breaks. After reading “Progress and Poverty” years earlier, he’d become obsessed with the problem of speculation, and suggested a land-value tax. A tax break for residents — paid for by nameless investors who are “taking advantage of the city” — would seem like a political layup.

Persons: Duggan, Nick Allen, Allen, he’d, Henry George, — Organizations: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr, Poverty Locations: Detroit

☆ A Higher Monthly Payment, but Less Square Footage
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Conor Dougherty | More About Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With interest rates rising and mortgage costs with them, homebuilders are pulling in yards, tightening living rooms and lopping off bedrooms in an attempt to keep the monthly payment in line with what families can afford. In a recent survey of architects, John Burns Research and Consulting found that about half expected their average house size to decline. New communities will have more duplexes or small-lot single-family homes that are just a few feet apart. Even in Texas, where land is abundant, builders are adding more homes per acre, the company found. “The monthly payment matters more than anything else and builders have responded with smaller, more efficient homes,” said John Burns, the company’s chief executive.

Persons: John Burns, ”, Hayden Organizations: John Burns Research, Consulting Locations: Texas, Pacific Northwest, exurbs

What if you built a new city from the ground up? Mr. Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to make it in tech. He was a European immigrant smitten with the energy of local start-ups, but he preferred more walkable cities like Zurich. Soon, he began taking fishing trips to Solano County on the San Francisco Bay’s eastern edge. A rural corner of the county eventually became the centerpiece of a plan hatched by Mr. Sramek to build a city from scratch.

Persons: Jan Sramek, Sramek, Goldman Sachs, Flannery Organizations: San, San Francisco Bay Area, Flannery Associates Locations: San Francisco Bay, European, Zurich, Solano County, San Francisco, Silicon Valley

Jan Sramek was 15 years old the first time he tried to get a government to do something he wanted. The problem was his town of 1,400 people had only dial-up internet service. He persuaded the local government to pay an internet service provider to bring the town a broadband connection. He was even paid a commission for it, Mr. Sramek wrote in “Racing Towards Excellence,” a sort of self-help book for ambitious young adults he co-wrote in 2009. The next campaign for Mr. Sramek could be more profitable.

Persons: Jan Sramek, Sramek Organizations: Silicon Locations: Drevohostice, Czech Republic, Northern California

In 2017, Michael Moritz, the billionaire venture capitalist, sent a note to a potential investor about what he described as an unusual opportunity: a chance to invest in the creation of a new California city. The site was in a corner of the San Francisco Bay Area where land was cheap. He painted a kind of urban blank slate where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought. And it would all be a short distance from San Francisco and Silicon Valley. “Let me know if this tickles your fancy,” he said in the note, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.

Persons: Michael Moritz, Moritz Organizations: The New York Times Locations: California, San Francisco Bay, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley

☆ This Is Public Housing. Just Don’t Call It That.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Conor Dougherty | More About Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Traditional public housing, financed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and operated by one of the nation’s roughly 3,300 public housing agencies, is locked in steady decline. Today, instead of building taxpayer-owned buildings, much of the federal housing money flows through the private sector. The underlying message of those programs is that the era of government-owned housing is over. In Montgomery County, however, the stock of government-owned housing has steadily grown for decades while the definition of what it can be has expanded. The reason: In the Washington region, as in every other high-growth metropolitan area, the demand for affordable housing is way beyond what federal housing programs can provide.

Organizations: Department of Housing, Urban Development Locations: Montgomery County, Washington

☆ Who Will Stand Up for Renters? Their Elected Representatives, Who Also Rent.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Conor Dougherty | More About Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“There is a pretty foundational bias against renters in American sociological and political life,” said Jamila Michener, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell. But the number of renters has grown steadily over the past decade to about 44 million households nationwide, while punishing housing costs have migrated from coastal enclaves to metropolitan areas around the nation. More salient to politicians, perhaps, is that renters are increasingly well-off — households that make more than $75,000 have accounted for a large majority of the growth in renters over the past decade, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. At the same time, the struggle to find something affordable has escalated from lower-income tenants to middle-income families that in past generations would very likely have owned their homes. In other words, renter households are now composed of families much more likely to vote.

Persons: ”, Jamila Michener, “ Organizations: Cornell, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

☆ The Hottest Thing in Real Estate Is a Loan From Two Years Ago
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-10 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

From the pedestrian to the dodgy, it all seems to underscore the manner in which the nation’s real estate market has been frozen by regret. In lieu of acceptance, a determined few are trying to use imagination and fine print to build a portal to the cheap-money days of 2021. In theory, any of the millions of homeowners holding a assumable low-rate mortgage have a valuable perk to sell with their home. Still, real estate agents say it can be hard in practice to transfer them. For instance, homeowners who transfer a V.A.-backed mortgage can lose their ability to get another similar loan unless they can find a V.A.-eligible buyer to take their original mortgage.

Persons: ”, influencers, “ It’s, Scott Trench, Sellers, Michael Fratantoni, Black Knight Organizations: Federal Housing Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Mortgage, Association Locations: U.S

☆ Can the ‘California Effect’ Survive in a Hyperpartisan America?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Conor Dougherty | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For a while this winter, seemingly every text message that Buffy Wicks received asked if she was running for Congress. This decision by Lee, who is 76, created a rare opportunity for the next generation of California Democrats to vie for federal office. Soon enough, however, Wicks put out a statement that, humbled as she was by the suggestion, she wouldn’t be seeking the seat. “I pass big bills here,” Wicks told me. California has been so successful at bending national policy in its direction that academics have taken to calling the phenomenon the California effect.

Search resuls for: "Conor Dougherty"

16 mentions found