The hidden virtues of income inequality
The New York Times recently ran a front-page exposé of segregation by wealth in the booming cruise business. The article, by Nelson Schwartz, was entitled “In an Age of Privilege, Not Everyone Is in...
Sec. Ben Carson’s approach to affordable housing might work
The new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, aims to succeed where the Obama administration failed. Carson’s department intends to revise one of the landmark housing policies implemented by the Obama administration,...
The Home Act
Maryland's HOME Act is legislation that would prohibit landlords and other property owners from declining Section 8 vouchers, deeming it discrimination based on "source of income." While proponents believe the Act will eliminate high...
Death and taxes
If you're planning on dying soon, you might want to hurry up. It's that other certainty of life you'll want to watch out for. The estate tax, which taxes the inheritance you pass on...
The future of housing
While our industry has often been slow to adopt new technologies, the opposite, of course, is true of the electronics industry. As such, I decided to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held earlier...
The new housing problem facing low-income renters
There’s a new problem facing low-income individuals seeking affordable housing: Even if they have a housing choice voucher to subsidize rents in the private market, landlords do not want to accept voucher tenants. A...
Fusion wariness
Livermore National Laboratory’s announcement is certainly a breakthrough, but it’s a commercially limited one. Nuclear fusion has long been hailed as the next great energy source, capable of providing nearly limitless power without the...
Am I the only techie against net neutrality?
No, I am not a paid shill for the cable industry. I am no fan of Comcast or any other ISP I’ve ever had the “pleasure” of dealing with. I’m skeptical of large corporations...
Gen Y buy in
Not long ago apartment living was an accepted rite of passage -- a years-long holding station between dormitory living and home-ownership. But with today's mortgage interest rates near historic lows, lenders offering more flexible...
Affordable housing’s not so affordable solution
Looking for an easy solution to this complicated problem, hundreds of cities and counties have adopted so-called “inclusionary zoning” ordinances, demanding that developers build and sell a certain percentage of the homes they develop...
The day the leasing office died
The landlord selected an apartment for the prospect, that is, as soon as the results of the leasing application and credit screening were deemed acceptable. An obedient tenant could sit and wait for the...
Clinton tax increases slowed growth
But what really happened after Clinton raised taxes? The historical record is clear, and it isn't what President Obama would have you believe.
Clinton signed his tax hike into law in September 1993, the same...
New research could upend our understanding of economic inequality
Inequality has become one of the most hotly debated topics in economics, spurred on by Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which argued that inequality could inexorably rise if the income from...
A house is not a credit card
Last summer, that same trump card stopped a bipartisan bill to reform the mortgage market, more than six years after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be taken over by the government.
All of...
Senate Bill 1217 makes first round, applauded by NMHC and NAA
The vote passed 13-9, which is one more vote than senators said they had during the first mark-up on April 29, when they decided to delay the bill in an effort to build a...
