Zealful Homes

08/31/2019

Locals are eyeing greener pastures elsewhere with affordable homes out of reach. The Bay Area is still growing, but from new births and immigrants. Change is the only constant and more diversity is welcome. Still, municipalities and their residents need to support more affordable housing to retain their local identity. Locals of all income brackets should be apart of shaping the future of the places they know best.

Alameda County saw the most outward migration, and Santa Clara County came in second.

10/10/2017

The rent crisis is real and getting worse.

Nearly 70 percent of renters surveyed in Santa Cruz County experience "rent burden," defined as spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities, according to preliminary results of a survey of 1,700 renters across the county conducted by UC Santa Cruz.

05/12/2016

The American Middle Class is now a minority due to weaker unions, loss of manufacturing, a broken tax structure, and depressed wage growth.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/us-middle-class-metros-takeaways/

Our new analysis of government data finds that the middle class is losing ground not just nationally but in the vast majority of U.S. metropolitan areas.

03/08/2016

"More education and a more productive economy have not paid off for working Millennials"

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2016/03/03/131627/when-i-was-your-age/

Despite being more educated and working in a more productive economy, 30-year-olds today barely make more than 30-year-old Baby Boomers did in 1984.

02/25/2016

Santa Monica gears up for a battle against home owners use of short-term rentals.

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/02/23/santa-monica-trying-to-stop-airbnb-with-500-fines #

Eight months after banning short-term rentals and funding an enforcement office, the city said it has issued citations on about 650 violations.

02/09/2016

Why hasn't your candidate been talking about affordable housing?

http://www.zillow.com/research/2016-campaign-housing-affordability-11732/

02/09/2016

What's your presidential candidate's thoughts on unlocking affordable housing? Given the size of the problem, the field has been largely silent.

http://www.builderonline.com/newsletter/housing-affordability-hasnt-received-much-attention-from-presidential-candidates_c

Housing affordability hasn't been a big issue so far in the 2016 campaign, maybe because candidates haven't been campaigning in the places it matters most.

02/03/2016

A program in Vermont makes homeownership more accessible by covering down payments and then splitting the resulting profits.

01/28/2016

Where are Chinese products in today's America? It your home!

"Their share of foreign purchases leaped to 16 percent in the year ending March 2014, from 5 percent in 2007. They paid a median price of $523,148, higher than any other nationality and more than double the $199,575 median price of all houses sold."

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-23/housing-weak-even-with-government-programs-and-big-bank-interest

The U.S. effort to revive housing can't overcome the economic headwinds working against it.

01/25/2016

Joe's right, the disparity between productivity and wages in the US is a broken promise. The path out is education, government and corporate protection of worker's rights, modernizing infrastructure, a modernized tax code, and access to capital. He must have simply forgot to add re-visioning home ownership.

We need to make sure the digital revolution creates more winners than losers, says Joe Biden