http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jchs_americas_rental_housing_2013_1_0.pdf
This study is really fascinating, I would recommend skimming it (since it’s really really long). Here were some crazy points:
1.There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of renters from almost every age group (the exception being people over 70).
2. Depending on the pace of immigration, this number is likely to increase by between 4 and 4.7 million in the next ten years.
3. One in five households that were in their 30s in 2001 switched from owning to renting at some point in
2001–11, as did nearly one in seven of those in their 40s.
4. Contrary to the stereotype, families with children are nearly as likely to rent their homes as singles.
5. Assuming current rentership rates, the aging of the baby-boom generation will lift the number of renters over age 65 by 2.2 million in the ten years to 2023, generating roughly half of overall renter growth.
6. As the number of low-income renters have grown, the likelihood of assistance (i.e rent subsidies) have diminished.
This study was quoted in a CNN OpEd on affordable housing. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/28/opinion/rubinger-affordable-housing/
Also in that article was a study done by NYU Furman Center: according to them, more than 45,000 existing lower-cost homes will return to market value by the end of De Blasio’s first term. http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/NYChousing_Preservation.pdf
I am posting two articles that relate to our discussion about gentrification, and provide some additional perspectives:
1. http://nymag.com/news/features/gentrification-2014-2/index1.html
2. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html
To summarize: in response to the first article I posted, this guy went on a rant against gentrification. My favorite part is when he equated Whites moving into Harlem to Columbus and the Europeans settling America.
Ha sorry. Didn’t realize I was supposed to write about something in the news.
For the first time in American history, people are prioritizing reform for the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States than border security reform. According to a CNN poll, 54% of Americans were more concerned about legalizing immigrants here currently.
This poll came out right when Congress was going to shelf the immigration issue. (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/17/polls-publics-immigration-priorities-changing/)
Most likely nothing will happen this year given the Republican’s distrust of President Obama, according to John Boehner, House speaker. But most republicans claim that changing the status quo will increase the amount of poverty in the United States, and will result a bigger demand for welfare.
Below is a really interesting article which affirms what we learned in class about the relationship between welfare benefits and illegal immigrants. According to the article, “the amount of welfare benefits given is unaffected by the foreign origin or diversity of population.”The article goes as far to say that immigration actually reduces the size of welfare states, as seen in some European countries.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/18/increased-immigration-is-unlikely-to-increase-the-size-of-the-welfare-state/)
This is especially interesting given Switzerland’s recent decision to limit their immigration. Economists are saying that this decision will most likely hurt economic growth. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/swiss-immigration-curbs-seen-as-threat-to-economic-growth.html)
After visiting the tenement museum last week with class, I was excited to speak to my grandmother about her experience, if any, with the tenements. My grandmother, second generation American, barely speaks of her past, and little is known about her childhood.
Usually my grandmother takes a good deal of prodding, and after a few words on the subject, she changes it to something more current.
This past Sunday was different though. During a biweekly visit to my grandmother’s assisted living facility, I briefly mentioned the tenement museum, and as soon as I did, she seized the opportunity to tell me about her experience with the tenements, and about her father’s story.
Her grandparents, and my great-great-grandparents, came from Eastern Europe between the 1870s and 1880s. They were the first of their family to come to the States. My great-great grandfather worked in a factory, and every nickel went to his family back home. My great-great grandfather even bought them tickets, but his parents refused to come.
They refused to speak Yiddish with their children, even though that was what was being spoken all around them. But even when my great-great grandparents could afford to move out of the tenements, they decided to stay. My grandmother speculated that they did not want to leave all of their friends and memories behind.
My grandmother frequently visited her grandparents on Cherry Street (or so she says– she is 97), and was shocked to learn about the living conditions of the tenements later on, given the fact that her grandparents lived only two in one tenement when she visited.
I loved the tenement museum: I really got a sense of what life was like for the Eastern European Jews during the early 1900s, as well as my own family. The community that I learned about was my great-great grandparents’ community, one that my great-great grandparents refused to leave.
Hi! My name is Emily Stone, I am 19 years old and I am (hopefully) pursuing a major in music and a minor in legal studies and/or public policy. I am the lone Jersey girl in the Macaulay @ Hunter Class of 2017, and hail from the township of Teaneck, a suburb only fifteen minutes away from the George Washington Bridge (by car). I deferred a year after high school and spent my gap year traveling, studying and working on a Kibbutz in Israel. I love to sing, and am a member of Macaulay’s acapella group, the Macaulay Triplets. I am also passionate about politics, particularly as it pertains to the Middle East. My long-term professional goal is to connect youth from across enemy, political, and social line using music (or more specifically, singing) as a form of dialogue.
As for my story, I am a Modern Orthodox Jew of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic descent. My father’s ancestors are from Eastern Europe, while my mother’s are from Aleppo, Syria. Much of my father’s side has lived in New York for generations (the last of the immigrants came before World War II), while both sets of my mother’s grandparents came with their families in the 1920s, and settled in Brooklyn with the rest of the Syrian Jewish community. My mother ended up going to Binghamton, leaving behind the traditional, and somewhat insular community in which she grew up, and after meeting my father on a singles retreat, married and had three daughters. With the birth of their second daughter, they moved from Brooklyn to Northern New Jersey. I am the youngest.
