Construction Maison

In 2013, Randy Dillard was living with his four sons and a daughter in an apartment at 198th Street and Bainbridge in the Bronx. The windows were broken; mold and mildew streaked the walls. In the winter, Dillard’s family had to boil water on the stove to bathe; there was no heat or hot water. When the New York City Housing Authority conducted an inspection of the apartment on behalf of Section 8, the federal rent assistance program that financed Dillard ’s rental, the unit failed the test, and Section 8 stopped paying Dillard ’s landlord, demanding that he make repairs. That winter, Dillard was hospitalized for two months with a bout of emphysema; when he came out, he was served with eviction papers for nonpayment of rent. advertisement “I stood in the middle of my hallway looking around my apartment thinking: What am I going to do with my stuff?” Dillard tells Fast Company . “I told myself: I’m going to end up homeless. I’m going to wind up in a shelter.” Dillard got word of a Bron...

Pittsburgh will continue to witness a surge in apartment construction this year, amid moderate payroll gains and rising home prices . Pittsburgh Multifamily Market – Supply and Demand – 2015 Outlook Research data from Marcus & Millichap shows that the metro’s employment—driven by the education, medicine, technology and energy sectors—will grow by 9,500 new positions in 2015, a slight increase from the 8,000 jobs added in 2014. However, this uptick will lag the national average for the fifth consecutive year. Meanwhile, developers are expected to bring 1, 900 apartments online this year, expanding inventory by 1.4 percent. This is slightly less than the amount of new additions recorded in 2014, when the rental construction cycle in Pittsburgh hit a peak with the completion of 2,200 units. Demand for multifamily projects will be sustained mostly by young professionals and empty nesters looking to rent newly built apartments in desirable neighborhoods, despite the fact that ren...