In the past few months, Apple, Google and Facebook announced multibillion-dollar investments in housing. Gov. Gavin Newsom has made housing a top priority of his administration, committing an unprecedented $1.75 billion to spur housing development. The state legislature has passed a record-breaking number of housing bills in the past two years. And last week, Newsom called a meeting of the states top business leaders and asked them to do even more.

The urgency public and private sector leaders are bringing to housing reflects an increasingly dire reality statewide. In the Bay Area alone, tens of thousands of individuals are cycling into homelessness annually, and there are 175,000 more on the brink of homelessness. Addressing this need would require construction of 188,000 new units of affordable housing by 2023 at a cost of $94 billion.

If we are to upend the status quo, we must do more than simply sustain our current momentum. We must engage on this issue in a fundamentally new and collaborative way. We see four primary levers.

First, density and zoning. Onerous land-use requirements make it nearly impossible to identify parcels for multi-family housing or move affordable projects forward at the scale required. For example, 94% of all developable land in San Jose and 62% in San Francisco is zoned only for single-family housing. We need more flexible zoning with much greater density near services, transit corridors and surrounding urban areas.

Our second challenge is time. It can take five to seven years from project inception to completion. This is too long given our immediate housing needs, and makes housing more expensive, since construction costs escalate at over 5% each year. Entitlements for affordable-housing projects need to take months, not years, and we need our elected officials to address these inefficiencies and regulatory hurdles for affordable housing.

Third, we must reduce the cost of construction. We have serious work to do to make up for decades of minimal innovation in the industry and to address our shortage of skilled construction workers. Even now, as construction innovations begin to advance, they are hindered by risk-averse construction lenders and government funders who are reluctant to embrace new approaches like modular housing.

Fourth, we need to be more strategic in our deployment of capital, so were not only building more housing, but doing so as cost effectively as possible. Investments provided by business and philanthropic leaders at low or no cost can allow developers to be more nimble in acquiring land and buildings and utilize new cost-saving construction technologies. While long-term public-sector funding will always be needed to ensure permanent housing affordability, upfront flexible investments by the private sector can drive change and allow public dollars to go further.

To address each, we need to fundamentally change the way we work together to provide housing. Each sector philanthropic, private and public needs to leverage its unique strengths to fill the specific gaps that others cant. This may seem daunting, but there are successful models at work.

The city of San Francisco is working with nonprofit housing developers and the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, a lender that leverages private and philanthropic capital to buy apartment buildings and preserve their affordability. And, in partnership with Tipping Point Community, the Accelerator Fund leverages philanthropic capital to build new permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness, bending development cost and time curves in a way the public sector cant do alone.

In the South Bay, cities and counties are working with Destination: Home as part of a collective impact strategy to implement Measure A, a 2016 ballot measure generating $950 million for deeply affordable housing. These partnerships have resulted in a pipeline of 21 new housing developments for homeless and vulnerable residents.

And working across city and county boundaries is imperative. Industry leaders recently created All Home, a nonprofit organization, with the specific intent of working regionally with cross-sector stakeholders to create transformative change.

We need innovation and new kinds of partnerships across sectors and geographies to deliver solutions that match the challenge. Solutions are within our grasp, and tackling this crisis will require all of our grit, humility, and creativity. Californias future depends on our ability to work together to create change.

Rebecca Foster is CEO of San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund; Jennifer Loving is CEO of Destination: Home; Tomiquia Moss is CEO of All Home.

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It takes a village to solve Bay Areas housing crisis - San Francisco Chronicle

In 2018, Scott Wiener, a California state senator representing San Francisco, introduced a co-authored bill that detonated a debate over housing. The aim of Senate Bill 827 was to override local regulations on building height in order to allow denser, high-rise construction near transit hubs. At once radical and simple, its target was nothing more, and nothing less, than zoningthe most common American way to control land use. Zoning determines whether a building is commercial or residential, how big it can get, whether its a single-family home or a high-rise tower. Though zoning is a legislative act, it is sometimes influenced by the efforts of a handful of well-connected people at a neighborhood association, or sometimes by a single, well-connected member of a zoning board. S.B. 827 would have overridden many such rules and made it easier to build. The bill derived its intellectual force from a growing consensus among economists that rising rents and housing prices in Californiaa state in which the median home price is more than twice the national average, and in which more than twenty per cent of residents spend more than half their income on housingare due to a dearth of multifamily housing and to the cumulative effect of zoning rules that stopped that housing from being built.

S.B. 827 elicited heated arguments, along with a few bizarre political coalitions. In supporting the bill, housing advocates found themselves allied with wealthy developers. Meanwhile, in opposing it, anti-gentrification activists found themselves allied with rich homeowners from places like Beverly Hills. A portion of the anti-S.B. 827 crowd simply didnt want to change their neighborhoods characteroften a racialized code wordbut many others came from multiracial working-class neighborhoods, and, for them, the bill was essentially a gift to developers, who would take the opportunity to build market-rate housing and augment ongoing gentrification. In the end, the opposition won outthe San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles City Council both voted against endorsing itand, despite late-breaking attempts to include anti-displacement measures, the bill failed to make it out of committee, losing 64. Of the votes in its favor, only two were from Democrats, Wiener and his co-authorfurther proof that the housing debate involves some strange bedfellows.

S.B. 827 nonetheless has spurred a more substantial conversation about zoning reform, of all things, than any urbanist could have predicted. Unfortunately, much of this conversation has taken place online, meaning that its resembled people screaming past one another and then shrinking into two opposing crags of congealed vitriol. On one side are the YIMBYsthe acronym stands for Yes, in my back yardwho believe that prices are too high because of market distortions that limit the amount of housing people actually want and need. For them, the solution is to increase market-rate housing, which, over time, will result in a reduction in prices and rents. Opponents of YIMBYsoften called NIMBYs, meaning Not in my back yard (as a term of opprobrium, it of course predates YIMBY)have a variety of rejoinders to this argument, but they center on the idea that building market-rate housing will never deliver the amount of housing that people need, at prices they can afford. Furthermore, they argue that the immediate effect of introducing such housing is gentrification and displacement. It is at this point that the argument devolves into accusations that the YIMBYs are tools of rich, white real-estate developers, and that the NIMBYs are tools of rich, white homeowners, and the space in between these two positions is quickly converted into a muddy field, where no one dares show a white flag.

The particular airlessness of this debate is only partly due to its growth in the complexity-free vacuum of the Internet. The more significant constriction is that it is an argument that takes place almost entirely according to the terms of real-estate development. In a recent book, Capital City, the geographer Samuel Stein puts this debate into context, and adds to it. He argues that our housing dilemma derives from an unholy fusion of development and politics, which he calls the real estate state. Stein, a geographer at the City University of New York, tries to establish how industrial cities, in becoming postindustrial, opened the way for real estate to enter the breach. Landowners have been determining the shape of cities for centuries, and the idea of housing as a commodityeven as a financial assetis not exactly state of the art, Stein writes. What is relatively new, however, is the outsized power of real estate interests within the capitalist state. Deriving his insights from left-wing geographers and urban historians, and also from interviews with activists in New York City, he alternates a panoptic view with one that looks more closely, from the ground up, at what reckless development does to lives and livelihoods.

But Steins special aim is not just to show how real estate controls everything, which, if you were halfway paying attention during the financial crisisrooted as it was in the predations of housing marketsyou already know. His principal point is that the power of the real-estate state flows from the dynamic between development and the profession of city planning. Planners are usually thought of as bureaucrats, though sometimes they take on the aspect of legend: Baron Georges-Eugne Haussmann, who tamed rebellious Paris into wide avenues that couldnt be barricaded; imperious Robert Moses, who pummelled New York with expressways. Steins planners are at once lesser and greater than these. Though they may look like mousy cubicle denizensdetermining the right sort of window treatment for a historic house, or calculating the Area Median Income for a smattering of affordable units in a luxury buildingtheyre more influential than they appear. Planners, he writes, are tasked with the contradictory goals of inflating real estate values while safeguarding residents best interests. The position is an inherently uncomfortable one. But planning holds out the promise that the future is, at least in part, knowable. Explicit in Steins narrative is the idea that a different, more democratic kind of planning might lead us to more democratic kinds of cities.

Like many professions with a broad, metaphorically resonant name, planning has a history that can be dated back centuries. In the Americas, planners domesticated forests, dammed rivers, laid out grids. But city planning as we know it today arose in the late nineteenth century, as a response to the growing chaos of industrial life. At first, the profession was meant to ameliorate conditions of congestion, sanitation, and shoddy construction, especially where they intersected with the lives of workers and the urban poor. Benjamin Marsh, the first secretary of the New York City Committee on Congestion of Population (CCP), was one of the twentieth centurys most energetic thinkers on planning. He decried tenements and sweatshops, pushed for government control of factory-owned land, and advocated for a progressive tax on land values to help fund the social needs of workers. Marshs proposals, like those of many planners, were essentially based on the hope that the rich could be shamed into supporting the poor. This was a gambit that, in time, left planners frustrated and power imbalances intact.

Marsh and figures like him embody what Stein, following the historian Robert Foglesong, describes as a twinned set of contradictions in planning. Developers need planners, but a conflict arises when the former look to the latter for interventions in public space. They demand that the state build the infrastructure that makes their land usable, Stein writes of developers. At the same time, they are fiercely protective of their property rights and suspicious of planning insofar as it threatens their control over land. Planners, in turn, are agents of the public, but they are beholden to developers, in practice. Democratic societies require at least a display of public input, but often only a display: planners must proceed with enough openness and transparency to maintain public legitimacy, while ensuring that capital retains ultimate control over the processes parameters. From this comes the charade of public-comment sessions, familiar to most active city dwellers, in which so-called stakeholders are invited to discuss development plans, whose basic outlines they have little chance of influencing.

Similarly, planners who want to assert broad control over the public realm are often dependent on recalcitrant businessmen, who are unlikely to give them the full measure of what they might want to achieve, since planning often involves the creation of public infrastructure that requires business to get out of the way. Much of what does get achieved requires catastrophic, violent interventions in the lives of the very people that planners are trying to help. The land for Central Park, the green lung of New York and one of the greatest parks in the world, was secured by expelling Manhattans largest African-American settlement. The construction of most public housing required the resettlement of thousands of households, often those of working class African-Americans, in the destructive process known as urban renewal. (Urban renewal, James Baldwin said, in an interview, really means Negro removal.)

Urban renewal accompanied broader convulsions in American cities, during which much industry fledto barely unionized Southern states and abroad, for cheaper wagesor was deliberately pushed out. Stein follows Robert Fitchs underrated, impassioned book The Assassination of New York in detailing how many planners dreamed of replacing the citys industrial areas with office towers, and, in the sixties and seventies, through large-scale changes in zoning, succeeded, transforming the city from blue-collar to white-collar. At the same time, the practice of redlining, in which the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), a New Deal agency, marked diverse neighborhoods as being unworthy of credit, and hardened urban segregation and poverty. In the eighties, the United States began to cut public assistance to cities, leaving more and more power in the hands of private developers.

This history sets up Steins main story, which is about the contemporary high-priced city of gentrification and displacement. Mercifully, his analysis does not mention hipsters, artisanal stationery stores, or CBD lattes. Instead, he discusses how planners have once again played a central role in scaling up gentrification from a neighborhood phenomenon of renovation and reinvention to a larger process of displacement, demolition and development. A miasma of guilt and misunderstanding surrounds discussions of gentrification. The usual storyof upwardly mobile people moving into depressed areas and displacing existing, less well-off residents in the processis at least partly true. But, as geographers have pointed out for some time, it also requires disinvestment: neighborhoods decline, in part, because of state neglect, and yuppies rush in where planners fear to tread. This is how the familiar story of places such as SoHo, in lower Manhattan, and Park Slope, in Brooklyn, begins. Those neighborhoods were abandoned by the government before they were occupied by new residents.

Similarly, the past three decades have been characterized by hyper-gentrification, which is a largely legislative phenomenon, the work of planners and policymakersnot simply an ineluctable market signal that is sent when someone opens a vegan doughnut shop. Stein details the number of planning-policy innovations that have made it easier for developers and large nonprofits to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. In 1971, the establishment of New Yorks 421-a tax program gave developers abatements on luxury construction, for anywhere from ten to twenty-five years. (One of the great beneficiaries of 421-a, Stein notes, was Donald Trump, who built Trump Plaza, on the Upper East Side with a thirteen-million-dollar tax break.) In 2016, when the program was set to expire, 421-a cost New York $1.2 billion a year. A recent revision to the law, under Governor Andrew Cuomo, brought the cost to $2.4 billion a year. Thats about six hundred million less than the M.T.A. requested from the state to fix the ailing subway system. These are the sorts of numbers that reveal how the real-estate state declares its priorities. As legislators made developers lives easier, planners became the helpless accomplices of urban inequality.

Jane Jacobss The Death and Life of Great American Cities, an indictment of American city planning, appeared in 1961; Robert A. Caros The Power Broker, an indictment of an American city planner, appeared in 1974. In the years between their publicationand partly owing to their argumentsplanning lost whatever was left of its swashbuckling air, and was increasingly seen as a clumsy, illegitimate, even villainous profession, its members casually carving their utopian visions into the fabric of complex, heterogeneous cities.

When planning lost its revolutionary lan, it also lost its sense of ambition. Many mid-century planners, for all their missteps, tried to engineer a more equal city. As planning lost its power, an impressive variety of inequities crept into policymaking. Zoning emerged as the most important tool of increasingly powerful neighborhood groups that sought to limit racial integration, protect the character of existing neighborhoods, and encourage the early stages of gentrification. As the think-tank scholar Richard Rothstein outlined in The Color of Law, from 2017, zoning has always been exclusionary, especially in keeping black families out of certain neighborhoods. In 1910, Baltimore tried to institute zoning on explicitly racial lines, before the Supreme Court struck down the practice. But zoning on implicitly racial lines has persisted because of Americans preference for single-family housing over apartment buildingsmultifamily housing was associated with poorer renters of color. New Yorks 1961 zoning law, for example, protected a number of mostly single-family-housing districts in Queens, the Bronx, and South Brooklynthe archetypal urban villages depicted in shows like All in the Family and films like Saturday Night Feverand helped prevent renters of color from joining their mostly white residents.

Contemporary planners, stripped even further of power, have proposed only meager remedies for such inequality. One attempt has been inclusionary zoning, which allows developers to exceed zoning restrictions and receive subsidies if they commit to making a portion of their apartments affordable for a certain period of time. In response to New York Citys luxury-development boom, Mayor Bill de Blasio made inclusionary zoning mandatory. Even so, the mandate has a number of fatal loopholes, which allow developers to skirt the requirements, and the income threshold still excludes most black and Latinx New Yorkers. Another problem with de Blasios plan may be its premise. For it to succeed, the plan needs to marshal a multitude of rich people into places that are already experiencing gentrification, as Stein writesexactly the sort of effect that activists feared with regard to S.B. 827. Though it would potentially satisfy only three per cent of the need for affordable housing units in New York, it could add a hundred thousand market-rate apartments to the citys neighborhoods.

According to ultra-YIMBY reasoning, the addition of these apartments might not be a problem, since housing markets are, like other markets, subject to supply and demand. But, as the author Rick Jacobus recently argued in the magazine Shelterforce, the housing market is segmented, better understood as as a set of interrelated submarkets that can move somewhat independently than as a single market. For example, rent for student housing may roughly follow the laws of supply and demand, but, in general, its cost isnt eased by building a lot of housingwhat matters is the supply of student housing and the demand from students. By the same token, upzoning that allows for more affordable housing to be built has effects on existing affordable housing. When planners upzone neighborhoods to allow bigger buildings, rent-stabilized landlords will have every reason to sell their properties to speculative developers, who could then knock down the existing properties and build something bigger and more expensive, Stein writes. The long-term effect of a housing boom may be a housing bustbut, in the meantime, all sorts of pain may be inflicted on existing residents.

There are other reasons to be cautious. Historically, attempts to remedy segregation through the real-estate market have often ended up increasing it. In a groundbreaking new book, Race for Profit, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton, shows how the post-urban renewal-planning regime came to rely heavily on the real-estate industry. New forms of subsidized loans were, in her phrasing, a form of predatory inclusion, trapping black homeowners in substandard housing, while developers continued to reap dividends. Her analysis covers a specific period in time, and a particular kind of housing market, but its conclusion is general and damning: the American real-estate market was founded on racism and still depends on it. White NIMBYs have kept multifamily buildings out of wealthier neighborhoods, in no small part to keep those neighborhoods racially homogeneous, and it is doubtful that real-estate developers can solve this historic inequity.

Though Stein supports efforts that would increase housing construction in wealthy areas, he is clear that these policies need to be part of a broader program. In a recent article for Jacobin, he argues that there is a general overreliance on zoning, which is, in any case, a tool ill-equipped to confront the private land and property markets. The solution, therefore, is a popular movement for anticapitalist urban planning and the decommodification of land and housing. In other words, having a market for housing is itself the problem. And a return to large-scale planning is the answer.

Stein is one of a number of voices, some of them newly ensconced in state legislatures, pursuing what he calls classic methods. One of these methods is rent control. For decades, rent control has served as a case study in what not to do in housing in the U.S., though it remains a normal feature of housing markets in Austria and other countries. But, in the past few years, it has made something of a comeback; Oregon and California both recently passed statewide caps on rent increases.

In classical economics, caps on rent increases were believed to limit the incentives to build new housing. If that were true, one policy solution would be to exempt new construction from controls for a certain period of time. A more significant solution would be for the state to intervene where the market failsthat is, to build public housing. Public housing is another curse word in the American context, though less for the economics of itthere is no more obvious solution to the rise in prices than to take some units permanently off the marketthan for its sorry denouement in the countrys history. The United States committed to a sweeping expansion in spending for public housing with the landmark Housing Act of 1949, and then proceeded to build fewer units than were promised, and dedicated little to maintenance following building. Many condemned American housing projects for their forbidding scale and design flaws and, even more so, for the racial segregation they createdby the mid-nineties, forty-eight per cent of public-housing residents were black, as opposed to nineteen per cent in the private-rental market. And, since the nineteen-seventies, several measuresincluding President Richard Nixons moratorium on public housing, the rise of Section 8 vouchers, and the HOPE VI program, under which housing towers were demolished and replacedhave steadily eroded Americans support for public housing. The result is a country in which millions of eligible people have lost access to subsidized housing, and in which the existing public-housing complexes are suffering from severe infrastructural neglect.

Decades of a housing crisis, accompanied by decades of organizing and activism, have finally led to revaluations of public housing and regional planning. A policy team led by the tenants-rights activist Tara Raghuveer recently produced a proposal for a Homes Guaranteea marquee plan that proposes the construction of twelve million new, permanently affordable homes as social housing. Meanwhile, the law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, who has advised Senator Elizabeth Warren, has called for a twenty-first-century Homestead Act, under which a public trust would be tasked with purchasing distressed or abandoned homes in historically redlined areasa form of direct capital investment with the aim of remedying the racial wealth gap. Both are serious proposals that have the potential to shift power away from developers and toward the people historically excluded from the housing market. To be achieved, both need the backing of enormous social movements. They could also resurrect large-scale planning, conceived on a freshly democratic basis, as a profession of consequence. The planner, after decades of irrelevance, or worse, might yet be a figure of noteand perhaps, in a time of crisis, one of purpose.

A previous version of this post misidentified the author of the Shelterforce article.

More here:
The Plight of the Urban Planner - The New Yorker

From students having to relocate for class to store schedules being thrown off, Tempe construction is negatively affecting the community

The construction site for the Omni hotel and conference center is pictured on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, at the corner of Mill Avenue and University Drive in Tempe, Arizona.

Construction in Tempe is almost inescapable. The traffic delays, booming demolition and dusty metro air can affect the lives of ASU students, staff and local residents. These negative repercussions seem to be overlooked in the interest of the Universitys ceaseless need for innovation and expansion.

ASU and the city of Tempe have continually invested in construction projects around the Universitys main campus, which has had a detrimental impact on local businesses. While this construction has proven short-term inconveniences for consumers and business owners, it is expected to have positive long-term effects on business.

ASU President Michael Crow has signed off on $1billion worth of new developments to maintain the Universitys expansion, he said at a town hall in May.

These projects range from several new apartment complexes to the construction of a retirement home on Mill Avenue and retail spaces that will allow new businesses to reach ASUs student body.

These new projects enable the University to form meaningful partnerships with corporations. ASUs relationships with local businesses often prove to be beneficial to students, as they create job opportunities, discounts on goods and services, and new places to shop, live and eat.

But the high volume of construction in such a small area does not come without pressing issues. Local businesses, which can become inconvenient to access, are significantly impacted by the construction.

Depending on what the construction is, it can make a business or hinder it, Kassie Haywood, assistant general manager and three-year employee at Original ChopShops Tempe location, said. It really hurts our business. However, in cases of construction of new buildings that dont block off roadways, such as the new Union Apartments next door (to ChopShop), that actually just brought us a ton of new business. There are now a bunch of new local students who are coming into ChopShop multiple times a week who werent originally there before the new building.

Haywood also said that she has received numerous calls from patrons claiming that they were unable to find ChopShops location due to the road blockage from construction.

Businesses on Mill Avenue have especially suffered consequences of the construction.

Chloe Rizzo, a stylist at Juut Salon Spa on Mill Avenue, said she has noticed a drop in business among her clients even native Arizonans and regulars because of construction.

My clients are exhausted from the construction, Rizzo said. I talk to a lot of people every day, and its always a first topic. I have clients say that if it wasnt for me, or the salon, they would never even come to Tempe.

The construction around ASUs Tempe campus, which is home to numerous single-lane streets, makes it difficult for patrons to access businesses. Some students, like Lauren Coleman, refuse to even attempt driving through Mill Avenue due to how slow and inconvenient it can be.

Jonathan Schneider, an ASU junior studying communication and a ChopShop employee, said that due to the stores location, he always hears complaints about the traffic and construction.

Especially when University Drive was under (palm tree) construction, we had a lot of food delivery workers come in, Schneider said. It turns people away from traveling to the actual store.

Not only does this construction dampen business, but it also has a negative impact on students education.

Lauren Coleman, an ASU junior studying secondary education, said construction noise frequently disrupts her class in the G. Homer Durham Language and Literature building, and they even had to relocate to avoid the disturbance.

We sat on the floor in the Social Sciences Building, and we are planning on going there again for class this Thursday and maybe for the rest of the semester, Coleman said. It is quite frustrating that we can't have our class in our assigned classroom because the construction is so loud.

Coleman also stated that she tries to avoid driving and riding her bike on Rural Road, Apache Boulevard and Mill Avenue due to the construction.

According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, small businesses are at risk for difficulties from construction projects because they rely on local traffic to support their existence.

The construction on Mill Avenue has caused a lot of chaos for my clients, as well as everyone else at our salon, Rizzo said.

She also said that clients have a difficult time finding parking, which causes lateness and sets back the salons schedule as a whole. She mentioned that lateness makes stylists unable to complete their full service due to time constraints.

Roadway construction may also make it increasingly difficult for employees to make it to work on time.

Haywood said the construction affects the whole days workflow at ChopShop. One of her employees was recently 30 minutes late due to construction, she said. This small setback affected the food preparation process and delayed orders.

Construction on ASUs campus has been the norm for several years, but why exactly is the University so deeply committed to developing new structures?

This is likely due to the Universitys biggest marketing tool the number one in innovation rating.

ASUs chief research and innovation officer, Sethuraman Panchanathan, said in a State Press article in 2017, this rating is closely related to forming partnerships (with) corporations and entities that share common values with us, like Starbucks, Mayo (Clinic), Adidas along with everything the institution is involved in.

New developments, such as Mirabella or the Hayden Library reconstruction, sets ASU apart from other universities.

Haywood believes that once the light rail expansion and the Mill Avenue town car construction are finished, a whole new demographic could be introduced to the local business scene.

Right now, we have a lot of student customers and a lot of local business workers who come here on their lunch breaks, but we think that this could bring a lot of high school students waiting for the bus or nearby shoppers, Haywood said.

ASUs leadership values innovation and development, even when local businesses are directly impacted.

Coleman said that she finds it difficult to fully enjoy the campus while everything is being built and rebuilt.

I really wonder whether all of the construction projects going on right now are unique to this year or if this will be the standard rate of construction on our campus and in our city from now on, Coleman said. I hope it isn't.

Reach the reporter atamsnyde6@asu.eduor follow @AnnieSnyder718 on Twitter.

Like State Press Magazine on Facebook and follow @statepressmag on Twitter.

Original post:
The adverse effects of Tempe's construction - The State Press

The Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) Calicut chapter and several trade and industry organisations have opposed the newly brought out Kerala Municipality and Panchayat Building rules saying that the provisions would have a detrimental impact on the development of several sectors.

At a news conference here on Tuesday, CREDAI office bearers M.A. Mehaboob and K. Arunkumar urged the government to desist from the move to implement the newly-framed rules. Before drafting the rules, the government ought to have held consultations with the representatives of the construction industry and other related sectors, they said.

They said that construction segment had not come out of the difficulties following the demonetisation, implementation of the Goods and Service Tax and the floods that hit the State. If the new rules were implemented, hundreds of establishments would be closed down. Besides, about 8,000 engineers and 18 lakh workers would be rendered jobless. This would also have a severe bearing on the economy of the State. They said the new rule stipulated that more space is required for the construction of a house. But this was impossible in a State that had the highest density of population in the country. Home aspirants would also have to shoulder additional burden by paying more for land.

The cost of construction would also increase manifold if the rules were executed in toto. Any apartment or complex above four-storey would be categorsied as high-rise building, they said.

The Malabar Chamber of Commerce, Kerala State Small Scale Industries Association, LENSFED, Builders Association of India, Indian Institute of Architects, Calicut Chamber of Industry, The Institute of Engineersalso supported the demand of CREDAI to withdraw the rules.

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CREDAI, construction industry oppose new building rules - The Hindu

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Apartments were constructed and playgrounds were built. All of that and more has molded Sheboygan County into what it is today.

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SHEBOYGAN - In the past 10 years, Sheboygan County has seen building expansions, new businesses, increased community spaces and other growth thanks to over $1 billion of investments.

The Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation celebrated that growth at its 10th annual meeting on Wednesday.There were acrobats from Sheboygan Falls, vendor booths with innovators from across the county and an opening statement given by David Kohler, president and CEO of Kohler Co.

Among the award-giving and the looking forward, there was a video that took time to reflect back on some of the pivotal ways Sheboygan County transformed over the past decade.

Here aresome of the highlights from the video:

More: The Office is coming to Sheboygan, but don't expect to see Michael Scott | Streetwise

More: Here's how a new Sheboygan nonprofit aims to make child care more accessible for local families

More: These Sheboygan County restaurants will be open on Thanksgiving | Streetwise

Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.

Read or Share this story: https://www.sheboyganpress.com/story/news/2019/11/18/sheboygan-county-saw-1-billion-investment-over-past-decade/4202630002/

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Here's what 10 years and $1 billion of investments did for Sheboygan County - Sheboygan Press

A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Frank V. Pabian

While activities at North Koreas Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center have been well documented over the years, serious efforts to upgrade and expand the adjacent Yongbyon City[1] have also been underway since 2002, including the addition of several new housing and apartment complexes and the construction of leisure and entertainment facilities.

Rewarding scientific communities with new, more modern housing has been common since Kim Jong Un came to power, reflecting his emphasis on the importance of science and technology to North Koreas future. At the same time, there is no evidence that the older housing complexes at Yongbyon City are being demolished, giving the impression that the number of personnel living there now or expected in the future is increasing. This would suggest a growth in the numbers of personnel at the nuclear complex as well.

Expansion of Yongbyon City

Yongbyon City is home to the personnel who work at the adjacent nuclear research center. It is comprised of several housing units and leisure facilities.The oldest commercial satellite imagery freely available via Google Earth of this area is from April 2002.[2] Figure 1 provides a timeline of the citys expansion over the past 17 years.

Figure 1. Timeline of Yongbyon City expansion.

The city is divided into three personnel housing and logistical support sectorsnorth, west and southwhich surround a city center comprised primarily of large civic buildings. Significant construction can be observed in the housing sectors over the 17-year period.

Within the city center, there are several amenities. The largest of these central buildings is made up of two massive meeting halls covering approximately 400 square meters. One of the halls was constructed before 2002, and the second was nearing completion in April 2002. Around the corner from the meeting halls, a probable performance hall was constructed between 2007 and 2010. Next to that, a probable cultural center (based on the historical Korean architectural style) was completed by late 2011. Construction began in 2018 for a newer civic building, but then was quickly abandoned. It restarted in June 2019 and has proceeded rapidly since then.

Figure 2. Construction of city center facilities.

Left: Image: Google Earth, annotation by 38 North. Right: Satellite image 2019 Maxar Technologies. All rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact [emailprotected]

Throughout this time period, several houses, apartment blocks and more ornate apartment towers have been added in all three personnel housing sectors.

Figure 3. Rapid progress on a major apartment project in the northern housing sector between March and September 2019.

Figure 4. Close-up of a monument area south of the main road between Yongbyon City and the Nuclear Scientific Research Center. The portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il can be seen across this 25-meter-wide monument.

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Multi-Year Expansion of North Korea's Yongbyon City - 38 North

Apartment buildings

Apartment developments, leasing, and rentals are on the rise. More individuals are seeking apartments lease agreements over a mortgageAs the housing market has shown increases over the past few years, apartment developments, leases, and rentals have continued to dramatically remain the dominant leader in real estate. Those who are seeking to develop apartment buildings should consider modular construction. This option not only offers you a quicker method of construction at the same standards as traditional constructions, but the modular construction also allows you to build more units for less.

Perhaps most importantly, modular construction is considerably faster than building from the ground up. We assemble units individually in our factory and ship them to your worksite ready to install. Shorter lead times allow units to be rented out sooner so youll see a faster return on your investment.

As you order the construction of a modular apartment building from Astel Modular, getting the most for your construction budget doesnt have to mean cutting corners. We employ strict controls to ensure you remain on-budget and on-schedule lowering your labor costs and time to occupancy.

We can assure the high quality of our products as Astel Modular is accredited to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 sertificates.

The price of a modular home does not include the foundation.

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Apartment buildings - Astel Modular

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*GRAND OPENING INCENTIVE!!! ** DON'T MISS OUT! * CALL OR STOP IN TO TOUR THIS BRAND NEW LUXURY COMMUNITY! * ** Visit our model apartments and experience life at 444 today!! ***NO APPOINTMENT NEEDED! - STOP IN ANYTIME - SEE LEASE OFFICE HOURS BELOW ******

Prices and availability subject to change without notice.

Prices and availability subject to change without notice.

If you want the Convenience, Comfort, and Style of a BRAND NEW APARTMENT ... located within walking distance of the MetroPark Train Station and The Oak Tree Road Shopping District, 444 Lincoln is the perfect address for you. Set in the bustling heart of the Woodbridge - Edison area, 444 boasts easy access to the Garden State Parkway, NJ Turnpike, and Routes 1 & 9, as well as to both Woodbridge & Menlo Park Shopping Malls....** 444 offers exciting amenities unique to this area ** * COVERED PARKING - Why deal with snow, ice & rain ? You'll receive an assigned covered parking space free of charge ** ELEVATOR BUILDING - Forget about lugging groceries up flights of stairs. 444 is the only local residential building with an elevator! ** ADVANCED SOUND REDUCTION TECHNOLOGY - 444 is built with special features to minimize sound & create a peaceful living environment ** SMOKE FREE ENVIRONMENT - 444 strictly enforces a smoke free building policy for cleaner & healthier air ** NO PET POLICY - We all love pets but most of our tenants enjoy the quiet, comfort and clean surroundings this policy provides * Our other popular amenities include : private package delivery boxes, trash chutes on every floor, controlled access, washer/dryer in each apartment and much more! *Our fabulous one and two-bedroom apartments feature bright, open layouts with such upscale features as laminated hardwood floors, an island kitchen, with stainless steel appliances, roomy baths with tiled floors and tub enclosures with elegant glass sliding doors plus plenty of closet space. *At 444, you'll live in Style! Characterized by large windows and abundant natural light, the two-story lobby and bright hallways are accented with classic crown and picture frame moldings with decorative sconces. Each of the building's four floors features its own lobby/gathering area complete with a sofa, chairs and desk. 444 also complements your active lifestyle. *** CONVENIENCE ... COMFORT .. STYLE! *** Visit our model apartments and experience life at 444 today!! ***NO APPOINTMENT NEEDED! - STOP IN ANYTIME - SEE LEASE OFFICE HOURS BELOW ******

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Part of New Jersey's Woodbridge Township, Iselin is a cozy suburban community with a twist -- many of the businesses downtown feature Indian cuisine and clothing, such as the Saree Bazar, Indian Couture, Khajana Boutique, Kandahar Restaurant, and Ali Babba Sweets & Restaurant. In addition to being a popular dining and shopping destination, Iselin is home to the popular Merrill Park. Located along the Rahway River, the park covers 179 acres and includes three playgrounds, the Woodbridge Township Progressive Playground, ball fields, basketball courts, four tennis courts, and picnic areas.

Ideal for commuters, Iselin is home to the Metropark Station, an Amtrak train station. This commuter train takes residents to Manhattan and Philadelphia in less than an hour. Metropark is one of the busiest stations in New Jersey, with more than 6,000 people passing through the station every day.

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444 - BRAND NEW CONSTRUCTION! Apartments - Iselin, NJ ...

There are two ways to understand the overall cost to build apartments. You can determine the budget for building an apartment either by measuring the price per apartment unit or simply a rough estimate of the entire building complex. Essentially, a single building complex may contain one or more apartment unit. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the standard size of an apartment unit is 861 square feet with a footprint of 24 feet by 35 feet (2435).

Each unit roughly costs anywhere between $64,575 and $86,100. But when it comes to the cost of an entire building complex, theres more to simply crunching the figures based on the average unit cost. For calculating labor cost and basic building components, let us defer to the 2013 RSMeans data.

Let us say for instance that you are building a three-story complex with around 12 apartment units. Hence, the standard assumptions include the other following details:

So how much does it cost to build an apartment? The total building cost estimate for union labor type of project is roughly $3,461,400. But for an open shop variety, the total cost is relatively less expensive with approximately $3,177,900.

Apart from labor and basic structural components, you also need to factor in roughly $4.65 million worth of materials and over $232,000 worth budget for the machinery, the total apartment construction costs would entail roughly $9-9.4 million.

You may also need to cover the cost of insurancefor unexpected circumstances like fire, theft e.t.c

When a prospective investor like you would ask how much does it cost to build an apartment?, at times one cant help but ask another question given the total $9.4 million cost. As much as return on investment is concerned, the best way to understand it is to compare its advantages over investing in single housing units. Here are the following benefits of investing in an apartment building complex:

With single houses, there is only either 100% or 0% occupancy. One vacancy of, lets say 5 houses, can already deal a ruthless blow to your cash flow. Moreover, an apartment rental has a wider range of buyers or tenants since single young adult occupants and senior citizens can better afford a unit than an entire house and lot. One of the stronger guarantees for a larger pool of buyers is that in apartment buildings, home buyers can avail more government-funded programs.

Simply put it, it is harder to keep an eye on several buildings than one. A lot of things can come into play when consolidating all real estate property into one building. Case in point: an entire apartment building has fewer assessments and set of regulations.

In fact, it costs more to build 5 houses than build more than 5 apartment units in a single building. In line with this, each single house is more challenging to maintain because there are less uniform regulations. Case in point: homes with pets and children require more oversight and potential maintenance expenses.

When it all comes down to it, you as an investor can even live in one of these units in the building. Hence, you have more incentive for sprucing up your entire building premises. The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) imposes a limit on lending when investing in single family housing units. You have a better chance of being less burdened when financing apartment buildings.

Considering that the cost to build apartments relatively exorbitant, you can still come up with clever ways to reduce the overall expenses. Curiously, the two aspects of the entire building project that can be conveniently configured are the materials and the building layout. By tapping into these two components, you can significantly reduce not only the building costs but also its maintenance for the long-run operation.

As per a few architectural experts online, it is possible to maximize the buildings effectiveness by eliminating corridors. A steep vertical building with fewer corridors can have an overall efficiency of as much as 90%. Long corridors needed to be lit, swept clean and air-conditioned. Reducing corridors would mean reducing inefficient use of electricity as well as lesser demand for custodian services. In terms of ventilation and navigation, minimized corridors can save you 25% to 30% of the overall circulation area. It roughly translates to $3 million savings for a $60 million overall budget.

Back in the days, the idea of using eco-friendly building materials only meant fractionally reducing energy bills. After all, some materials can practically minimize the need for using up too much electricity to power an HVAC system due to better insulation and solar energy obstruction.

But nowadays, the idea of going green means getting an Energy Star rating for the buildings comprised of eco-friendly materials. In other words, both government and private authorities are keen on granting tax rebates for homeowners whose properties are accredited with Energy Star or LEED rating.

The same can be said about real estate investors too. In fact, in 2015 a lending company called Fannie Mae drops 4% to 3.9% for any investor whose apartment building qualifies with Energy Star or LEED certification. This means over $95,000 savings for a $10 million loan owed for 30 years.

Your budget for contractors comprised a very significant percentage of your overall apartment construction costs. It goes without saying that acquiring cheap labor expenses can help you a great deal. Note: the names of these locations in the United States are identified per the nationwide comparison of average expenses. These are the following cities that offer a discount:

Maxton, North Carolina = 26% less

Kissimmee, Florida = 20% less

Modesto, California = 12% less

Louisville, Kentucky = 7% less

Salt Lake, Utah = 6% less

San Antonio, Texas = 4% less

Colorado Springs, Colorado = 3% less

Jacksonville, Florida = 1% less

Buffalo, New York = 1% less

Phoenix, Arizona = flat price

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How Much Does It Cost To Build An Apartment In 2019 ...

In the realm of architecture, each project is unique and along with every individual project comes its own cost-driving program elements. Apartment buildings are no exception to this rule, as they can be as simple as a 3-story walk-up or as complex as an urban development project with various construction limitations.

When projects are initially budgeted for, RSMeans data can be implemented for background information; however, construction costs for apartment buildings cannot always be pinpointed to an absolute number, particularly in areas where the housing boom has sharply increased construction costs and a shortage of skilled labor.

In many cases, firms will use historical data from past projects and extract elements that are common to the proposed project. Because construction costs for apartment buildings vary greatly based on economic and market trends of the current year, the location theyre being constructed in, and other variables, determining an average national cost can become somewhat elusive. hmm

In this article, well explore the variables found in commercial construction across the U.S., along with tips and tools to estimate the cost of building a commercial apartment building.

When it comes to determining the cost of commercial apartments, many factors must be taken into consideration, including building practices, the cost of labor, the cost of land, and to some extent, the cost of the materials. Because these tangential costs can differ greatly from location to location, and are dependent on the nature of the particular apartment building being constructed, it is difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all answer.

Although the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) can provide a broad idea of construction costs for an average home, it is not an ideal tool for estimating costs for a commercial apartment building. Companies that provide more specific cost estimating, usually for a fee, include RSMeansandMarshall & Swift. These costs include all of the builders expenditures that go into a particular item, including labor costs paid directly by the general contractor, the cost of hiring subcontractors, and the cost of materials.

So, the question still remains: what does it cost to build an apartment building? As mentioned, there are a huge number of variables in such a question for example, apartments come as low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise architectural styles. For the purpose of this discussion, we will look at the mid-rise buildings with five or more units in each. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the size of the average apartment is 861 square feet, which assumes a footprint of approximately24x35. The building of single mid-rise complex would never be a DIY project, and typically requires a knowledgeable contractor, an architect, a team of subcontractors, and cooperative owner to get the job completed within a calendar year.

For the building of an apartment building with twelve units, the typical costs include:

Most owners rely on both an architect and a contractor, and the architect will require approximately10 17% of the total building budget. Below, a breakdown of services each professional traditionally provides, along with an overview of what to expect in a general commercial apartment buildout:

An architect will:

A contractor will:

A general apartment construction project will cover such items as:

Did You Know

The shape of the outside perimeter is also an important consideration in estimating the total construction cost. Generally, the more complex the shape, the more expensive the structure per square foot of floor area. The shape classification of multiple story or split-level structures is based on the outline formed by the outer most exterior walls, regardless of the varying level. Most structures have 4, 6, 8 or 10 corners. Small insets not requiring a change in the roof shape can be ignored when determining the shape.

For instance, in the 30-unit apartment development described above, the developer would have to invest $4,500,000 of equity (i.e., $150,000 per unit or 35% of the total cost). Most real estate developers would not invest all of the capital themselves, especially if they have a few real estate projects underway at any one time. Instead, they raise the equity capital, usually from an investment fund, and those outside investors put up 80-90% of the money (e.g., $3,600,000 to $4,050,000 of the total).

Above all, it is crucial to prepare for cost overruns when determining the costs for the construction of a new apartment building. If you can actively remember that the finished cost of an apartment is often more than the original bid price, you can work to avoid this outcome. In some instances, budgets can easily be eaten up on high-end materials, such as flooring, vaulted ceilings, elaborate landscaping and so on.

However, the investment made in such luxury fixtures and materials can be recouped, as the price of your property increases exponentially, both in real estate value and as a source of income (i.e., higher rental potential). When something is chosen that is outside the contract, this is called a change order, and if you are working with an experienced builder, they should be able to quantify these upcharges for you so you can make an informed decision.

Start by working with your new home builderto create as detailed a construction contract as possible. The more detail this contact reveals, the more accurate your estimated new apartment building costs will be, and the more likely you are to stay within your budget.

Some key components to identify in your contract should include:

Although there are wide variances in cost when it comes to commercial apartment construction, one thing is for certain with the proper planning and budgeting in place at the onset of your project, you can achieve your goals while staying within budget. In the end, it makes good business sense to figure in an additional 10% to cover unexpected costs; however, a seasoned commercial builder should be able to help you adhere to your budget.

Using tools such as ProEstsRSMeans building construction cost data, you cantrack labor and material cost changes can also be highly beneficial our database has the key information you need through every phase of your construction project. From Civil Cost Construction Data to Commercial Construction Cost Data, we have the estimating products and services to help you create profitable and competitive bids.

Our easy-to-use General Contractor Estimating Software helps you quickly respond to customer bids while accurately calculating the cost of any size project.

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Apartment Building Construction Cost Breakdown - proest.com