Tag: Affordability

Protest in France

Today’s political moment feels very similar to the early phases of the Yellow Vest movement in 2018, when a proposed hike in the fuel tax unleashed weeks of demonstrations. Then, too, there was simmering anger from households struggling to make ends meet, widespread support for disruptive protest and a stunning aloofness from the people in charge. As in the early days of that conflict, Mr. Macron went weeks without publicly addressing the pension battle at length, forcing his prime minister to take the heat instead. His first major address on the topic since protests began was panned by critics as tone-deaf and condescending.

“There’s a form of disconnect,” Laurent Berger, the general secretary of the country’s largest labor confederation, the C.F.D.T., which prides itself on its ability to negotiate and compromise, told me. “There needs to be an end to this verticality where only a precious few are right and everybody else is wrong.” That obstinacy has pushed France into a political crisis — one that raises questions over the very architecture of the Fifth Republic and the extensive power it hands the head of state. How is it possible for a president without a parliamentary majority to ram through such an unpopular policy?

France Is Furious
Cole Stangler
Mr. Stangler is a journalist based in France who writes about the country’s politics and culture.

Also following the news at Reddit r/france

Réforme des retraites – les slogans des manifs – Difficile de faire un choix… Au début, ça me faisait sourire. Au final, j’ai juste le seum.
by u/artsnumeriques in france

Food Assistance Cuts – Kentucky

HAZEL GREEN, Ky. — As he claimed the first spot in a mile-long line for free food in the Appalachian foothills, Danny Blair vividly recalled receiving the letter announcing that his pandemic-era benefit to help buy groceries was about to be slashed.

Kentucky lawmakers had voted to end the state’s health emergency last spring, by default cutting food stamp benefits created to help vulnerable Americans like Blair weather the worst of covid-19. Instead of $200 a month, he would get just $30.

He crumpled up the letter and threw it on the floor of his camper.

“I thought, ‘Wow, the government is trying to kill us now,’” said Blair, 63, who survives on his Social Security disability check and lives in a mobile home with his wife after their house burned down five years ago. “They are going to starve us out.”

A mile-long line for free food offers a warning as covid benefits end
Tim Craig

Homelessness and the Cost of Housing – The New York Times

Advocates say Phoenix’s streets are increasingly filled with people who simply could not afford an increasingly pricey Arizona: Average rent in the Phoenix area has risen by about 70 percent over the past five years, and the number of people in shelters or living on the street has gone up by 60 percent.

“The cost of housing is the biggest thing we see,” said Kenn Weise, the mayor of the suburban city Avondale, Ariz., and chairman of the Maricopa Association of Governments, which runs the Point-in-Time Count.

The path that brought Mr. Greene to a park in downtown Phoenix, repairing a beater bicycle, began, he said, when he fell from a scaffold at his carpentry job a few years ago. Work was impossible after he crushed his leg, but he said he survived on monthly disability checks.

The rent on his apartment near the palms of Encanto Park crept up from $525 to $700 before doubling in December, part of the disappearance of modestly priced rentals around Phoenix. A decade ago, almost 90 percent of apartments around Phoenix rented for $1,000 or less. Now, just 10 percent do.

582,462 and Counting
To fix a problem like homelessness in America, you need to know its scope. To do that, you need sheriffs, social workers, volunteers, flashlights and 10 days in January.

Million Dollar Public Restrooms, 600k Affordable Housing Units – High Costs in California

The project in question is for the Noe Valley neighborhood, which wants a public toilet for its Town Square. The problem is the price tag: $1.7 million.

State funds will not be forthcoming for the project, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told the San Francisco Chronicle this week amid mounting controversy. Republicans have hammered Newsom, a Democrat, over the state’s homelessness problem, with San Francisco a prime example.

“A single, small bathroom should not cost $1.7 million,” Erin Mellon, the governor’s communications director, wrote in a statement. “The state will hold funding until San Francisco delivers a plan to use this public money more efficiently. If they cannot, we will go back to the legislature to revoke this appropriation.”

A public toilet ‘should not cost $1.7 million.’ Why California’s governor is wading into a San Francisco neighborhood’s ‘inexplicable’ plan

Six years later, neither the mandate nor the money has proved to be nearly enough. In 2016, Los Angeles had about 28,000 homeless residents, of whom around 21,000 were unsheltered (that is, living on the street). The current count is closer to 42,000 homeless residents, with 28,000 unsheltered. Prop HHH has built units, but slowly, and at eye-popping cost. The city says that 3,357 units have been built, and the most recent audit found the average cost was $596,846 for units under construction — more than the median sale price for a home in Denver. Some units under construction have cost more than $700,000 to build.

The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve Homelessness Is ‘Absolutely Insane’

Insulin – Unaffordable to Many in US

A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that in 2021, nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. with diabetes either skipped, delayed or used less insulin than was needed to save money. That comes out to roughly 1.3 million adults, or 16.5% of those who need insulin.
…
“In the ICU, I have cared for patients who have life-threatening complications of diabetes because they couldn’t afford this life-saving drug,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts.

“Universal access to insulin, without cost barriers, is urgently needed,” he said.

Starting Jan. 1, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, will cap the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for seniors on Medicare. The bill, however, will leave out millions of Americans with private health insurance as well as those who are uninsured.


Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. adults with diabetes ration insulin to save money, study finds
Young adults and the uninsured — those who will be left out of the Inflation Reduction Act’s monthly insulin cap — were the most likely to ration their medication.
Berkeley Lovelace Jr.
NBCNEWS

HarperCollins Strike – July 20, 2022

More than 200 unionized HarperCollins employees are on strike today following months of contract negotiations, which began in December 2021 and which, they say, have not yielded a fair agreement for workers.

HarperCollins, based in New York City—where the median rent recently reached $4,000 a month—offers a starting salary of $45,000, and unionized workers make an average salary of $55,000. Employees are calling for a pay increase along with more family leave benefits, improved efforts to diversify the company, and “stronger union protection,” while currently working without a contract, according to a press release.

Employees are currently holding a picket line in lower Manhattan, where others have joined them in support.

HarperCollins workers are on strike today
Corinne Segal
Lithub

Denver Housing – Unaffordable

Talk to anybody looking to buy a place to live in Denver and they’ll tell you about their struggles. Properties are too expensive for most mortals to afford, bidding wars have been raging, and even though there are slight signs the market is cooling down, prices are still higher than ever.

In fact, Denver just ranked as the fifth least affordable real estate market in the United States. That’s according to an April report from Ojo Labs, an Austin-based real estate company.

In March, the median selling price for a home in Denver was $564,990 (compare that $520,000 in the New York City area). That was 23.2% higher than the previous year, according to the report.

The least affordable city was San Francisco, where the median home price was $1.3 million.

Only four U.S. cities were less affordable than Denver in March
Other than San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Miami, pretty much everywhere else is cheaper to live.
Kyle Harris

Getting By in Denver

The_Raji
I was living with roommates when I was making 40k a year.

PandaKOST
Notice, too, “roommates” and not “a roommate.” The housing situation out here is bonkers.

Lonely-Criticism1419
Fiancé and I both work full time and we have a studio apt, no kids

ashrnglr
… I make decent money but a house still seems like a dream. Maybe one day

TheAbbott418
… I make good money and a house in this state just is not happening. Remote life is about to be for real…plan to move to a place that hasn’t gone insane.

throwawaypf2015
i make 50k. union job. on a good year maybe 55k with overtime and differential. have my own place. no debt, no kids. i’m struggling tbh.

UBsamsongz
Roommates. 3 bd 2 bt house in the Westminster area. $2200 a month. It goes up in February though

NOTE –
If you’d like to see similar discussion pertaining to any particular city, google something like this:
reddit afford living San Francisco
Results:
1 How do you guys afford to live here? : San Francisco … – Reddit
2 If “nobody” can afford to live in SF – who exactly inhabits all …
3 Is this enough money to live and save in San Francisco – Reddit
4 What do a lot of people in San Francisco do for a living to …
5 How can people afford living alone in SF? : r/AskSF – Reddit
6 I can’t afford to live in SF. : r/sanfrancisco – Reddit
7 How do people afford to buy in the Bay Area without rich …
8 How Do People Afford to Live in the Bay Area? We Asked …
9 Can someone from SF explain to me how people afford to live …