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And is the city’s high ranking fair ? People working in addiction recovery explain the various factors at play in Wilmington. By Taylor Knopf By some measures, Wilmington, N.C. ranks number one in the nation for opioid abuse . But for all its problems, the city’s residents and those in the addiction recovery community say that reputation is a bit unfair. “There are a lot of different theories about why it’s so problematic in Wilmington specifically,” said Michael Page, a North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition worker who helps operate a mobile needle exchange in Wilmington. NC Harm Reduction Coalition ’s Michael Page. Photo courtesy Michael Page . “I feel that it has a lot to do with the polar opposite, which is recovery. Wilmington is a mecca for recovery,” he argued. Page and others in the area say that there are close to 300 twelve-step meetings a week in the city. It’s filled with halfway houses and substance abuse outpatient programs . It’s also important to note that accordin...

But young people may not be fully aware of the "great opportunities" that await them in this sector of the job market, said Gisi, whose company owns and operates senior living facilities across the Upper Midwest. "People realize that there will be a lot more people in old age, but they don't see the lack of workers available to care for those people, what with the birth rate collapsing in the early '70s," said Gisi. Edgewood owns and operates assisted -living and memory- care facilities in 55 communities. "There'll be a significant need for health care workers in all of our communities," he said. "The demand will continue to grow." The time frame of 2020 to 2040 will be a period of significant aging of the population, based on U.S. Census data, which will dramatically increase the demand for senior housing and health care. In that time period, the number of people who are 65 or older will increase by 46 percent. "There will...

Stacy Hunt of Greystar moderated the Houston Apartment Association ’s State of the Industry breakfast last week. Hunt is a former president of HAA and the Texas Apartment Association . HOUSTON – Houston’s multifamily industry will have a lackluster 2017 with upscale Class A properties as the weakest sector. That’s the word from the Houston Apartment Association ’s State of the Industry breakfast last week. The worst multifamily problem spots are Class A properties in Montrose, Downtown, the Galleria area and the Medical Center area , says Bruce McClenny of Apartment Data Services . Weak job growth , the energy downturn and heavy multifamily construction activity – some 58,000 apartment units were built over the last three years – created the weakness in Houston’s Class A market, McClenny says. “We still have too much supply,” McClenny says. Allied Orion Group will complete four multifamily communities this year, said COO Ian Douglas , but he’s encouraged by the fact that oil prices ...

Geoff Lee in front of the Confucius statue, listening to the audio from the Talking Statues project . Photos by Bill Weinberg BY BILL WEINBERG | Confucius is talking now. The statue of the ancient sage stands at Chinatown’s Confucius Plaza — where Division St. meets Bowery — just outside the housing complex of the same name, built in the 1970s for the neighborhood’s booming population. Now there’s a sign standing beside him with a scannable code that brings his voice to life on your smart phone — or an impersonation of it across the centuries. This is part of the Talking Statues project , now in New York after setting up at such landmarks in several European cities. Thirty-five statues in all five boroughs are thusly brought to life — including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Mohandas Gandhi in Union Square. Confucius urges his modern tech-savvy listeners to “study the past if you would divine the future,” and espouses his ethics of perseverance, filial piety and self-cultiva...

The Late Victorian period in the United States—roughly the last third of the 19th century—produced some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the history of Western civilization . It also produced some of the most hopeless slums. In response to the crisis of industrial cities, the modern discipline of city planning emerged . The tools of this new profession helped clean up many unhealthy aspects of urban industry , but also stifled some of the best innovations of Late Victorian urbanism . By the 1920s, planners in the industrial world had established the legal authority to promulgate land-use regulations, and over the next generation, they succeeded at slowing the construction of slum housing and segregating noxious industries from incompatible activities, such as housing and office space. Through some of the same devices, however, planners curtailed some positive features of 19th- century urbanism , including the rich variety of free- form industrial development and the adaptiv...