Construction Maison

Megan Mishler has lost her sense of security. Mishler, who has a rare genetic condition called Ehlers -Danlos Syndrome that prevents her from working, was recently forced to move from her apartment just west of Ann Arbor because her landlord is transitioning from affordable housing to market rate. Mishler is not alone; the transition will impact 144 units at the 368- unit Woodchase apartment complex at 1100 Rabbit Run Circle in Scio Township. “This has been extremely, extremely difficult. I was almost paralyzed at first,” Mishler said, referring to when she learned she would have to move. “This just added a whole other layer on top of all the other stuff that I’m already dealing with.” Mishler was told the rent for her one-bedroom apartment would jump from $770 per month to about $1,200 per month at the end of her lease term. The Woodchase apartments in Scio Township were developed in 1998. Katie McLean | The Ann Arbor News   Mishler uses the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Progr...

It’s been only two months since the Portland Housing Authority opened Bayside Anchor , its first new housing development in decades. But already, the low- income housing provider is poised to file plans for two additional projects , totaling more than 155 units of housing at a time when a dearth of affordable housing in Maine’s largest city is reaching crisis levels . “This is the continuation of our effort to be a part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis in Portland,” said Jay Waterman, the housing authority ’s development director. The authority is looking to build a 55- unit apartment building at 58 Boyd St. in the city’s East Bayside neighborhood . The site is practically across the street from Bayside Anchor , a highly energy- efficient PHA apartment building at 81 Oxford St. with 45 units that opened in June. A public meeting about the East Bayside proposal has been scheduled for Monday, from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., at 47 Smith St. Meanwhile, about 2 miles away, t...

LEBANON TWP. – A settlement deciding that the township should build 65 new units of affordable housing and two additional non- affordable units was announced at the Township Committee ’s Wednesday, Aug. 16, meeting. The settlement now awaits court approval following a fairness hearing before Superior Court Judge Thomas Miller at the Somerset County Courthouse . The Fair Share Housing Center (FSHC), a Supreme Court- designated interested party in determining third- round Mount Laurel obligations by municipalities to provide affordable housing , agreed the township should build 65 new units plus one accessory apartment and one market-to- affordable unit . The third round obligation covers the years 1999 to 2015. Township Attorney Richard Cushing gave a brief summary of the litigation at the Township Committee meeting . He said following the township’s filing for a Declaratory Judgement in 2015, there had been several conferences with the FSHC and the court’s special master, Pet...

There’s a big demand for more affordable housing in Charlotte, where rents and home prices have shot up much faster than wages over the past few years. Many of the apartments being built now target more affluent renters, waitlists for housing vouchers are long and starter homes are snapped up almost immediately. So why aren’t developers building more affordable housing ? That was one of the main questions at a candidate education panel hosted by the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association on Friday, where about two dozen candidates for Charlotte City Council turned out to learn some of the basics on a complicated subject. “ Affordable housing is one of the topics you’ll talk about a lot,” Bryan Holladay, who supervises the group’s government affairs outreach , told the candidates. The subject is an alphabet soup of acronyms (like NOAH, or “ Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing ”) and overlapping terms and definitions. Sometimes when people say “ affordable housing ” they mean go...

"); } if ($(imageDivId).length == 0) { $("#wrapper").after(contentText); } })(jQuery); BREMERTON, Wash. - Crystal Turner stood in the kitchen of her cramped apartment and stared at the cracks in the fake wood flooring beneath her feet. Surrounding her was the home she'd made for herself and her two sons in the past year, since they moved out of her Toyota Camry and into Admiral Manor, a low- rent apartment complex in west Bremerton . There was the single bedroom with two kids' beds on the floor. The living room she'd decorated with signs that said "Hope" and "Love." A dingy bathroom with a leaking toilet that had never been fixed. In this undated photo, Matthew Daigneault pushes his son Aden as he plays outside on the swings of his rental home in West Bremerton , Wash. (Larry Steagall/Kitsap Sun via AP) © 2017 Cox Media Group . Admiral Manor wasn 't the place Turner, a recovering addict, wanted to raise her boys. It was the place...

CLOSE Collier County will consider four public sites in East Naples and North Naples to encourage the development of affordable housing. Greg Stanley/Naples Daily News Credit: Andy Dean Photography via iStock (Photo: Andy Dean Photography via iStock) A developer wants to put up an apartment complex on Bayshore Drive and rent out nearly half of its units as affordable housing. The property, a vacant lot at the northeast corner of Bayshore and Thomasson drives, has been slated for affordable housing since 2005. But it has always been the county's plan for the East Naples site that the housing on it — either condominiums or single family homes — would be owned and not rented. In a 2005 agreement with the owners of the property, called the Cirrus Pointe Planned Unit Development , the county gave developers permission to build more units than is typically allowed in exchange for keeping 44 of those condos or homes affordable. More:  Four sites owned by Collier County could be us...

Nearly 1,100 new apartment units could be coming to Pentagon City as part of a major planned development of the 37- acre RiverHouse apartment complex . RiverHouse owner Vornado presented the initial development plans to largely skeptical members of the Arlington Ridge Civic Association last night. The plans call for 934 new market rate apartment units , to be added to the existing 1,670 units on the site across three buildings, which date back to the 1950s and 60s. Vornado is also proposing a 150 unit, stand-alone affordable apartment building , to be developed with a nonprofit affordable housing partner . The new market rate units will be built across three buildings, each about seven stories tall — half the height of the existing buildings — to preserve the views of condominium residents on Arlington Ridge . The first two buildings are to be built on what is currently a surface parking lot across from the Pentagon Row courtyard . Between the buildings will run a pedestrian co...

Let’s face it: Nobody really knows what to do about the homeless crisis. The sheer numbers of 60,000 people in city shelters and nearly 4,000 more on the streets — many in the latter group psychotic, drug-addicted and violent — overwhelm the best-intended plans to help them. That said, there are better and worse ways to cope with the nightmare. It’s bad enough that the city now spends $2.3 billion a year on homeless services including $1.4 billion on shelter housing , twice what it spent just three years ago. But making things worse : City Hall is now paying landlords more money to put up the homeless than the property owners could make by renting apartments and hotel rooms to non-homeless people at ordinary market rates . Shouldn’t developers be incentivized to create actual affordable housing for permanent residents — not more shelters for transients with no links to a community? The hapless Department of Homeless Services has gone off the deep end at a site in The Bronx, whether ou...