Construction Maison

The mood was tense, the hour was late and the conflict had a familiar ring to it. Ansca Homes is seeking permission to build 206 apartments on Hypoluxo Road, and the neighbors were not happy. “There are two sets of property rights here, the existing communities and the people who want to build,” Palm Beach County Commissioner Shelly Vana said. “I hope the answer is something everybody can live with.” Vana reminded the homeowners that workforce housing , which accounts for 142 of the 206 apartments, is a mandatory program heavily supported by the Palm Beach County Commission . It was declared to be at a crisis level in 2005. Vana added that it would behoove the developer to make any concessions it could, even though some had already been made. At the Wednesday night meeting west of Boynton Beach, a dozen homeowners representing six nearby communities called the planned apartment complex “an eyesore” and “a Pandora’s box.” Homeowners mainly objected to the rental units, which they...

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...

Lee B. Lok (center) at his store, Quong Yuen Shing & Co, on Mott Street, New York, c. 1917. Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Collection One day in 1941, Lee Ng Shee went for a stroll in Bradley Beach , New Jersey. She was the wife of a prominent merchant in New York City Chinatown named Lee B. Lok, who in 1891 had established Quong Yuen Shing & Company, a general store on Mott Street. The family liked to spend their summers on the Jersey Shore, though it was a challenge to find landlords who would rent to nonwhites. Lee Ng Shee was passing a house on Newark Avenue, stepping carefully on her bound feet, when a woman came out on the porch. “Are you looking for a house?” the woman called out. “Would you like to buy this one?” Lee knew a deal when she heard one. “Two thousand dollars later, Lee B. Lok and family were ensconced in a summer bungalow of their very own in the village where twenty years before they would have been lucky to be able to rent some rooms over a store,” ...

In the summer of 1995, Doug Robb and his friends snuck into Agoura High School in the middle of the night. Dressed in all black, they found the set of portable stages their alma mater used for its commencement ceremonies and wheeled them through a dirt track and onto the beds of pickup trucks they’d borrowed for the occasion. The next day, they set up the foldout stages in Robb’s parents’ backyard to play their first show as Hoobastank, a metal- influenced band they’d formed about six months prior. Robb eventually returned the stages to the school, but not before using them during a massive rager that attracted teens and 20-somethings from all over the area. Among them were the then-unknown members of Incubus and Linkin Park—bands that, along with Hoobastank, would go on to produce some of the biggest hits of the next century. What could’ve easily been just another house party thrown by bored kids in a wealthy LA suburb turned out to be the beginning of a rock-music scene that was...

Real estate site Zumper looked at the median rent on a one-bedroom apartment across 27 Bay Area cities and found that almost nowhere in the nine counties can renters expect to rent a home for less than the California median price . This is hardly a surprise in San Francisco, where Zumper users can expect to shell out $3,420/month for a modest home, still the highest nationwide (although that price is down from last month and the same time last year, for the record). But in all, only five cities in the survey managed to dip below the state average of $1,686/month. And since one of those is Santa Rosa, which really shouldn’t be called part of the Bay Area despite having a regional relationship, that leaves only four Bay Area communities that make the grade as affordable by California standards . The winners are Livermore ($1,610/month), Concord ($1,600), Napa ($1,600 again), and Vallejo ($1,300). Brocken Inaglory Almost certainly not coincidentally, rents are up year over year in thre...

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Latest on the Spain attacks (all times local): 5:15 a.m. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has asked people to pray for a young Australian boy who is missing after a vehicle attack on a popular Barcelona promenade that killed 13 people. Turnbull said Saturday that the boy's mother was badly injured and is in a hospital following Friday's attack at the Las Ramblas promenade . Turnbull says the boy's family is searching for him. He did not release the boy's name. Turnbull says: "All of us as parents know the anguish his father is going through, and his whole family is going through, as they rush to seek to find him in Barcelona." Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says four Australians were injured in the attack. ___ 2:35 a.m. Police in Catalonia say they have searched two buses in their hunt for violent extremists believed responsible for a pair of deadly attacks in the northwestern region of Spain. Police say o...