Hell on Earth

19th Century Slum or a 21st Century one?

Sam Zell the Billionaire who owned and destroyed properties, newspapers and generally made those whose lives he touched through his reverse Midas one, is dead. May there be a special place in hell for him.

To know who Sam Zell is you have to look at his wealth and how he accumulated it over his lifetime. He did it by buying distressed properties and largely maintaining them the same way, only charging inordinate amounts of rent in the process. There is a lawsuit pending here in Jersey City over the Equity properties that have made life untenable for many residents, not the first nor the last for excessive fees or costs. All of this tied to a Pro Publica article about Real Page Analytics, used onn properties owned by Zell , and many others with regards to rent inceases in properties across the country.

While the focus on multi family units is one of Zell’s investment, he also owned trailer parks. For the record Berkshire Hathaway, the beloved Billionaire Warren Buffet is another who owns similar properties and many of those residents feel the same way about him as they do Zell. This is also true of the Kushner family, nee of Jared who made their real estate fortune as slumlords in Baltimore.

Anyone who knows the procedure of how these men accumulated their fortunes need to understand that it came at a price for those whose livelihoods and businesses were tied to them and in turn exploited by them when the opportunity arose. A rising tide lifts all boats and these men are just examples of how rising tides crashes and damages property in its wake. But hey its all fair in war and Capitalism.

The story below is from The Guardian regarding Zell’s approach to property maintenance. As in none. There is how you make a profit, you buy low, sell high and in the interim do as little as possible. See try that in your own home, let me know how it works out.

‘It’s hell’: life under the American mobile home king who calls himself a ‘grave dancer’

Billionaire Sam Zell is the largest mobile home landlord in the US, but his tenants say they reckon with disrepair, neglect, flooding and rising rents. Some have had en

by Michael Sainato in Tampa, Florida, with photographs by Tina Russell

The Guardian May 2023

Down Yonder mobile home park bills itself as “downright relaxing”. Located a few miles from the beaches of the Tampa Bay area, the 362-unit community touts numerous amenities for its residents such as a clubhouse, pool, hot tub, shuffleboard courts and warm weather.

These are what drew Colleen Gartner, 51, who moved to the park from Pennsylvania in November 2020 after being forced into retirement due to a disability. Like many Americans living in the north, she dreamed of getting away from cold winters and a retirement someplace warm.

“I came down here, looked at homes, loved the layout of the park, purchased and moved,” she said. “Expecting since my children were grown and I was single for the first time in my life, I thought I was going to retire and enjoy the sun for how many days, years, decades, I have left.”

She and two others now face eviction from the park.

Residents like Gartner complain their dreams have been dashed by the park’s billionaire owner. They say they face hikes in rent and fees, while amenities like the pool and clubhouse are intermittently closed, there are few ramps or other accommodations for the elderly, and property maintenance has been neglected.

The man they blame is Sam Zell, the property mogul who is the largest landlord of mobile homes in the US. He styles himself as a “grave dancer” for his business habit of buying up distressed assets, and serves as chairman of the board of Equity Lifestyle Properties (ELS), which owns Down Yonder and more than 400 other mobile home parks across the US. Residents at other ELS properties across the country tell the Guardian that they have raised similar complaints.

“We’re withholding our lot rent because it’s the only voice we have and it’s the only thing Sam Zell pays attention to: money,” Gartner said. And she plans to keep doing it until Zell and ELS “do something for us that they’re contracted to do, which is to take care of us. That’s why we moved here. It’s why we put our lives and safety in their hands. They told us they had our back. They don’t.”

Equity Lifestyle Properties denied all allegations of lack of maintenance and upkeep, and characterizations of its property managers as harassing residents. It has filed eviction notices against the three residents at Down Yonder for failure to pay rent. “We are confident that the community is in full compliance of the Florida Mobile Home Act,” which mandates that landlords must take good care of their properties, it said.

For the 10.5 million Americans who live in mobile home parks, properties like Down Yonder promise affordability, especially in high-rent areas such as Tampa, and a greater sense of permanence than renting.

The average sale price of a new mobile home as of January 2023 was $128,300, compared with the average sale price of a house of $400,600 in February 2022. On top of this, mobile home owners typically pay to lease the land – typically for under $1,000 a month – on which their property sits.

This is especially appealing to one demographic: about a third of mobile home residents are seniors, and they tend to be lower-income than other older Americans.

Colleen Gartner and a few other people who live at Down Yonder have decided to stop paying their lot rent until issues at the mobile home park are addressed and fixed. They claim the property isn’t being maintained.

Sam Zell has an estimated net worth of about $6bn. He is one of the largest landlords of US rental properties full stop, with a huge real estate portfolio spread among affiliates under Equity Group Investments, his investment firm.

The 81-year-old Chicago native, who was not made available for an interview by ELS, began managing rental properties while in college at the University of Michigan, and started his real estate investment firm shortly after graduating.

In a 2012 conference call, Zell said he liked “the oligopoly nature of our business”, in reference to limited competition in the mobile home industry. Zell self-coined the term “grave dancer”. As a rebuttal, tenants and tenant advocates have labeled him a “grandma gouger” over rent increases on the tenants, often older, at his parks.

Diana Giffin, left, and Colleen Gartner prepare the agenda for the HOA meeting at Down Yonder.

Tenant advocates and activists have also criticized Zell for pouring money into opposing legislation for tenant protections, including $5.3m against a proposition that aimed to enact rent control in California. (It was defeated.)

“The way that we’ve historically always looked at Sam Zell is he really was a harbinger of doom in terms of the manufactured housing sector,” said Kevin Borden, executive director of Manufactured Housing Action, a national organization for mobile home residents. He attributed the founding of the organization in 2010 as a response to numerous complaints from residents at ELS communities. “His, for lack of a better term, leadership in the investment space in the manufactured housing sector then created the trend that we are truly struggling with today.”

Borden linked Zell to the influx of Wall Street investment into manufactured home communities. Owing to his success, Zell does indeed appear to have inspired others to invest in mobile homes. There are even “boot camps” for entrepreneurs who would like to follow in his footsteps.

But none has drawn as much opposition as Zell himself.

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Several Down Yonder residents told me about their problems with their landlord recently, on a typical sunny day in Florida. Gartner has a light blue caravan home on the corner a few blocks into the park, where she lives with her service dog, Munfred, a small gray poodle mix. Although Down Yonder is technically intended for over-55s, 20% of residents – including Gartner – are permitted to be younger.

“I’m disabled,” she said. “I’ve had 13 spinal surgeries. My income is never going to increase. Currently, I pay $900 a month for my house to sit here and get nothing for it,” she said, referring to the lack of maintenance, upkeep and state of amenities.

The back gate at Down Yonder is held up by zip ties. This is just one of the many issues residents want fixed.

This year, residents received a 7.5% rent hike after rents rising an average of 4.4% over the past five years. They are now being charged separately for water and sewage, which used to be included with the lot rent.

In November, more than 200 residents sent a notarized petition to ELS opposing the cost increases. Gartner herself recently received a $2,500 estimate for cutting trees on her property, though residents argue this should be the park’s responsibility as it owns them.

Gartner and other residents shared dozens of photos documenting issues of disrepair, neglect and flooding.

Clogged storm drains cause flooding that traps residents whenever there is significant rain. They describe frequent water shutoffs due to leaks, crumbling roads and a lack of upkeep of amenities and common areas. Seniors face difficulties entering the clubhouse as there are no access ramps and automatic doors, while restrooms and pool areas are not easily accessible by wheelchair, all of which they say violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Drug users utilize the park’s common areas, they add, which ELS attributes to the park’s close proximity to unhoused encampments.

Like Gartner, Dagmar Benedik, 70, has been hit with an eviction notice for refusing to pay rent, alleging the park is violating the state law requiring landlords to maintain properties. Benedik moved to the park five years ago from Canada, where she had emigrated from Czechoslovakia.

Diana Giffin fills pots with water before the water is turned off at Down Yonder at 10am for approximately four hours to address plumbing issues.

“Services have gone from bearable to insanely unbearable with cheap people who don’t do anything for us. And we really have no recourse,” she said. “We are rebels, we’re not going to roll over.”

The rising costs are particularly hard for residents on fixed incomes relying on social security benefits, she said. The average social security benefit is about $1,782 per month, and lot rents now account for about half of that. Benedik deals with flooding and sand in her tap water and collects multiple bags of leaf litter on her property each week because the park does not, though it is responsible for maintenance of the grounds.

Like Gartner, Diana Giffin, the third rent holdout, was enticed to move to Florida to get out of the cold weather, and to make a fresh start after a divorce. She left New York in May 2022 with her developmentally disabled son, Nicholas.

Upon moving in, Giffin said she noticed issues with the pool such as the lack of a Hoyer lift for seniors with movement impairments, and a leaking air conditioner that posed a fall hazard by the entrance of the pool. She also criticized the recent rent hike and water fees.

Diana Giffin uses bottled water to clean her hand after slicing an avocado at her home.

“I’m still trying to make changes and help the elderly and help the disabled in our community. If we don’t do this, they’re just being taken advantage of,” said Giffin. “It’s hell with all that’s transpired.”

Ruzhdi Leka, 73, and Zyhrije Leka, 67, moved into Down Yonder from New York in March 2022. According to their daughter, Iba, who spoke for her parents as their native language is Albanian and they are not fluent in English, they’ve been harassed by property management since they moved into the park.

“Anytime that they had anything to say, they usually would do it when I wasn’t around, and the encounters were always aimed at my father because they knew about my father’s condition,” said Iba. (Ruzhdi is recovering from a stroke and has Alzheimer’s.) “I’ve seen my father cry here at this place far more than ever in my life.”

Staff have shouted at her father for planting flowers in his yard, which is not permitted, she said, and has refused to assist with maintenance issues, such as a dilapidated home foundation that has caused her parents to fall.

“My mom survived two different wars, and she said during the wars they had a place to run to evacuate, but here, this is our home, where do we go? It broke my heart completely,” added Leka. “I am terrified to leave my parents here.”

The Down Yonder property manager referred a request for comment to ELS, which denied allegations of harassment by management and disputed the residents’ characterizations of conditions at the park.

A spokesperson said in an email: “Management enjoys a professional relationship with residents, including Ms Giffin, Ms Gartner and Ms Benedik. Management has, on occasion, needed to deliver notices to these residents regarding various issues. We regret that any resident may interpret the delivery of routine notices to be ‘harassment’.”

Ruzhdi Leka,73, and Zyhrije Leka, 67, had their daughter, Iba Leka, move in with them after Ruzhdi experienced harassment and bullying from the park management staff for planting flowers in his garden. He and his family were told they couldn’t plant flowers because the lot belongs to the mobile home park. However, the mobile home park won’t take care of the tree that is leaning over their home.

ELS also denied maintenance complaints, adding that drainage issues were the responsibility of municipal authorities and were being addressed. Residents are responsible for maintaining landscaping on their home sites, the company said. It acknowledged that it now charges separately for water and sewage, but said it reduced rents before tacking on these additional costs.

The firm added that it was renovating clubhouse restrooms and addressing termite damage in the clubhouse, and the work will be completed later this year.

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The problems at Down Yonder sound familiar to other tenants of Zell-affiliated companies. There have been numerous reports over the years of these firms hiking rents and fees at mobile home parks, significantly affecting seniors on fixed incomes.

“They have an investment approach to communities designed to be as extractive of profit as possible. Significant rent increases, reduction in staffing by transitioning as much as possible from on-site staff to regional staff, shuttering amenities, reduction in maintenance,” said Dave Anderson, executive director of the National Manufactured Home Owners Association.

“Their strategy seems to be entirely centered around profit maximizing, raising the rent as much as possible and looking at every category at which there are expenses and keep[ing] them down.”

Dagmar Benedik, left, talks to Mike Keith as Nicholas Hallock takes a nap on the couch at Colleen Gartner’s home.

In 2014, a jury awarded a record $111m to residents of a mobile trailer park in San Jose, California, owned by ELS for its failure to maintain the park. The lawsuit argued that property managers were incentivized through a bonus structure to forgo maintenance. Amid appeals, the case was later settled for just under $10m.

In 2019, a Denver ABC News affiliate reported on residents at Holiday Hills mobile home park facing significant hikes in rent and fees, including a 77-year-old resident who had to return to work to cover the increases.

And in May 2022, a court in Washington DC ordered Equity Residential Management, an apartment property corporation belonging to Zell’s investment group, to pay nearly $2m to victims of illegal rent hikes.

Dagmar Benedik speaks to a neighbor outside their homes. Benedik moved to the mobile home park in 2017 and has experienced continuous issues with the park. She sometimes rakes up to 10 bags of leaves a week.

Other suits are pending. Residents at Heritage Plantation mobile home park in Vero Beach, Florida, filed a lawsuit over allegations the company had refused to maintain and repair the property. A class-action lawsuit has been filed in California against Equity Residential for overcharging for rental background checks.

There have also been allegations of harassment by property managers. At Bonanza Village, a mobile home park owned by ELS in Las Vegas, 37 residents signed a petition alleging harassment by the property manager, including claims of unfair and targeted enforcement of park rules.

One resident, Christine Needham, claimed the manager harassed her to the point that she sold her mobile home for a fraction of its cost, leaving the park she lived in for 25 years in May 2022.

“It’s taken me almost a year to feel safe again in my house,” said Needham. “I now live eight miles north and I’m still scared. I can’t go back to visit my friends in the park because I’m afraid of him and he’s threatened people who visited me.”

Needham claimed that he began threatening to evict her for feeding feral cats in the park, criticized her for having a Black Lives Matter sign on her property, and that he would park his truck outside her house early in the mornings while he spoke on the phone, which she believed was an attempt to intimidate her. (A friend of Needham’s, who asked to remain anonymous as they are a current resident and fear retaliation, also describes having observed this.) Needham’s attempts to raise the complaints with the district manager went nowhere, she said.

“It’s not a very nice mobile home park and it was going downhill,” said Needham, referring to rising rents and poorly maintained amenities. “They get their money and they ruin lives. I was homeless as a kid, so that house meant everything to me.

The property manager could not be contacted for comment. ELS said he had resigned.

A current resident at Bonanza Village who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said the departure of the property manager was very recent.

“Instead of a manager, he was more of a dictator, because we’re under his rules,” they said.

ELS denied Needham’s claims and allegations of harassment. It said in an email: “Ms Needham chose to sell her home in the community in June 2022 and relocated. Management was not involved in the sale and we have no knowledge of the selling price of her home. The only interaction management had with Ms Needham during the last nine months of her residency was the delivery of three notices, each of which was handled professionally and in accordance with local laws.”

People play bingo inside the manor house. The park management keeps the thermostat for the air conditioning under lock and key so residents cannot change the temperature.

ELS attributed the petition against the property manager to residents being displeased after being cited for violations discovered in an annual community inspection. “Enforcing community rules and regulations improves the curb appeal of the community and helps to maintain the value of homes for homeowners in the community,” a spokesperson said.

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Over 1,500 miles away from Down Yonder is another ELS mobile home park, the Cimarron mobile home community in Lake Elmo, Minnesota. It may not have the same temperate weather as Tampa Bay, but the families who live there say it has offered an affordable way to rent or own a home. They are attempting to take their fight with ELS to the next level to address rental increases and what they say has been degrading conditions of the park.

Homeowner Brey Mafi said amenities had been reduced or closed off since the pandemic, that flooding is a regular occurrence in the park, snow removal through the winter isn’t properly conducted and the community isn’t properly lit at night. She claimed the streets are crumbling with potholes and rarely cleaned.

She provided a PowerPoint presentation with dozens of photos outlining disrepair at the mobile park. Park management, she added, had responded dismissively to resident complaints.

“Sam Zell is doing well,” said Mafi, who lives with her husband and daughter. “They’re getting shareholder dividends paid out. There’s growth, yet we can’t get some lights here just to walk the streets safely.”

But while the amenities have been closed off and maintenance lags, lot rent fees have regularly been increased, including a 7.75% increase this year, twice as high as the year prior. Lot rents are now over $900 a month for many residents.

Mafi serves on the residents association at the park, which she said has retained legal counsel, because residents have made numerous complaints to the state attorney general’s office about issues at the mobile home park. The Minnesota attorney general’s office did not confirm or deny any current investigation.

John Murphy has lived in Cimarron since 2005 and for most of that time the property management left residents alone. But recently property managers began enforcing policies such as parking restrictions that result in residents getting their cars towed and having to pay towing fees. Murphy and others consider this a form of harassment. ELS has claimed the parking enforcement is not a new rule and is for emergency vehicle access.

“They’re just a large corporation that buys this place up, they’re pulling money out of it, they’re not reinvesting much back into it, and it’s making us feel like we’re just a bunch of milk cows rather than customers,” said Murphy. “They don’t talk to the residents, and when they do it’s usually ugly or dictating.”

ELS denied claims of poor maintenance and complaints about management, claiming the park was currently in year two of a three-year project to repave the roads at Cimarron Park and that potholes are filled every spring. The company denied any drainage issues, but noted a preventive maintenance plan to clear stormwater channels at the property had been implemented. It claimed that amenities such as the golf course were open and maintained on a regular basis and that the playground was being replaced.

A woman walks past a ‘for sale’ sign for a mobile home at Down Yonder.

“We make it a priority to regularly meet with residents and discuss any issues they have, including rent increases,” the company said. “Increases and rent levels are in line with those of comparable housing options in the area,” added a spokesperson.

Residents hope the attorney general will prove ELS wrong.

“It’s sickening. It’s just misery and people will tell me all the time, I feel like I’m in prison here,” said Mafi. “What did I do to pay money to these people every month to deserve this? It is by far and large the worst consumer experience I have ever had in my life. They’re slumlords and there’s no way around it.”

Big Rent Due

While I have written about the issues facing residential renters that is a double edged problem as some owners are small scale landlords with one or two investment properties that rent is the primary financial investment to pay the mortgages, taxes and incidental costs required to maintain and own investment properties. In 2008 many single investors bought numerous properties with the intent of owning as a method of long term investment and when that market collapsed it led many tenants in the lurch as banks foreclosed or the property was sold to larger REIT venture capitalists in which to again refurbish and resell or use as rental markets demanded including short term/Airbnb use. That too is another fallout post Covid for the small investor who are now listing furnished properties for rent with shorter leases in anticipation for the long term while others are simply moving to the more traditional means or trying to sell them. And once again the venture capitalists are quickly buying up such properties as well for their own long term gain.

That said the multiple family units be they condos or apartments are a market I have yet to see what will result as again I suspect many residents will want out of such hot boxes of confinement due to costs, lack of space and simply fewer demands to distance upon entering or exiting the property. The building behind me is one such example as an albatross that they stupidly accelerated and now will have multiple expensive units in which will go vacant for I suspect quite some time.

This from Forbes:  According to RealPage, about 370,000 new high-end units are to reach competition this year (although construction delays and disruptions could deflate this number), marking a 50% increase from the national supply that came online in 2019. 

“We have too much product that was either just completed or under construction and you’re not going to have people moving around as much as [it would be otherwise] typical in the near term,” says Willett. “It’s going be really hard to get that new product filled up.”

For the summer months, which usually see a peak in rental demand, it’s still hard to tell what the effects will be, despite the impacts already rippling throughout the industry.

“Everybody’s wondering what this all means for the summer leasing season,” says Robert Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association. “Traditionally, the summer period is when you see the most movement of people from property to property, from state to state, from city to the city.

“With the uncertainty that’s going on now, especially with the economy essentially being at a standstill, nobody really knows what that’s going to do. And the unknown factor here is what government policy is going to be with regards to how we interact when the businesses reopen.”

And if working from home becomes the norm it may mean larger plans other than just redesign and scheduling staffing needs for many companies as it too will have a ripple affect and nowhere will feel it more than Manhattan.

Which brings me to the issue of commercial properties which have been on the upswing in most markets, while housing lagged, this is one area of build that has not. Crane watch became the mantra of most business journals under some misguided (intentionally or not) to sell and market their cities to businesses in which to relocate their operations. Along with massive tax incentives that enables business to not pay income nor other revenue generating taxes for decades it become an inticing invite to enable business to hopscotch across America while small business are given no such breaks and they continue to generate the most jobs and in turn revenue to the state coffers. Then came Covid and that game changed.

Small business owners closed are already struggling with rent and now the added lootings we may see more closures and in turn that will affect overall taxes and mortgage burdens.   But it is not only the small businesses.

This from the Washington Post:   Nearly half of commercial retail rents were not paid in May. Companies as big as Starbucks say the financial devastation from the shutdown has left them unable to pay their full property bills on time. Some companies warn they will not be able to pay rent for months. And this from the New York Times:  If building owners cannot come up with enough money to pay their next property tax bill in five weeks, a deadline the city has refused to postpone, the city will be starved of an enormous revenue stream that helps pay for all aspects of everyday life, from the Fire Department to trash pickup to the public hospitals. It could lead to a bleak landscape of vacant storefronts and streets sapped of their energy.

But again like residential rents, commercial ones are not doing much to re-examine their balance sheets and rental agreements. This is from one such store owner in New York:  In 2018, even the national chains began closing more spaces than they opened. Rents have come down somewhat in a few heavy shopping arteries, but on the streets where I was looking to open stores, rents didn’t seem to budge. In 2019, rent for my NoLIta store jumped from $360,000 a year to $650,000.

And I laugh at the once adored WeWork that had everyone salivating at their “worth” that fell hard and fast before Covid and now it too has been infected with LayOff mentality and demands to reduce rents.

This is one new road we are going down and it sure as hell is like the rest of our infrastructure, rocky, bumpy and full of holes.

Office Towers Are Still Going Up, but Who Will Fill Them?

Developers around the country are grappling with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic as tenants cancel plans and workers fear returning to the office.

The New York Times
By Kevin Williams
Published June 2, 2020

Before the pandemic shut down businesses, a robust economy had powered a building boom, sending office towers skyward in urban areas across the United States. The coronavirus outbreak, though, has scrambled plans and sent jitters through the real estate industry.

Skyscrapers scheduled to open this year will remake skylines in cities like Milwaukee, Nashville and Salt Lake City. Office vacancy rates, following a decade-long trend, had shrunk to 9.7 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2019, compared with 13 percent in the third quarter of 2010, according to Deloitte.

Developers were confident that the demand would remain strong. But the pandemic darkened the picture.

“There is a pause occurring as companies more broadly consider their real estate needs,” said Jim Berry, Deloitte’s U.S. real estate sector leader.

The timing is unfortunate for Mark F. Irgens, whose 25-story BMO Tower in Milwaukee opened in mid-April at the peak of the statewide lockdown in Wisconsin. A month later, a small fraction of typical daytime foot traffic was passing by as most businesses adhered to the governor’s stay-at-home directive, which expired last week. A restaurant that was slated for the ground level was canceled, and three potential tenants have delayed their plans.

Instead of showing off the building’s sparkling Italian marble floors and panoramic vistas of Lake Michigan, Mr. Irgens is worrying about who is going to pull out next and what type of corporate landscape he might face when the pandemic finally ends.

But he is not putting on the brakes. The BMO had been planned for five years, and he has leases to negotiate, investors to please, tenants to woo and loans to pay off.

“Development projects are different than making widgets,” he said. “You can’t stop; you can’t turn it off. You have to continue.”

Slowly, workers are filling their BMO offices. Managers, who were scheduled to report on Monday, constitute about 15 percent of the building’s occupancy. Mr. Irgens thinks it will be the end of the summer before it gets up to 50 percent. Without a coronavirus vaccine, it may be year’s end before the building approaches a “normal” occupancy, he said.

Other developers around the country are also dealing with the fallout, especially for towers with Class A space, regarded as the highest-quality real estate on the market. In most cases, new buildings are not fully occupied, and developers were counting on a strong economy to do the work for them. For instance, the BMO Tower was 55 percent leased before the pandemic.

The question facing the owners of office towers is: Will anyone still want the space when coronavirus crisis fades?

If the economic pain drags on, there could be long-lasting changes to the way people work and how tenants want offices to be reimagined, said Joseph L. Pagliari Jr., clinical professor of real estate at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Some of the changes — like more spacious elevators — could be costly to put into place, he said.

The pandemic could be a “pivot point,” Mr. Pagliari said, and that would be bad news for building owners. The office towers were designed to be “best in class,” he said, but the pandemic has suddenly made their most salable amenities — common areas, fitness centers and food courts — into potential liabilities.

The economic crisis could also spur high interest rates on debt, which would cause building values to fall, Mr. Pagliari said. That may happen even if the crisis diminishes in the weeks ahead.

“The current pandemic has raised perceptions about the likelihood and consequences of future pandemics,” Mr. Pagliari said. Developers who can factor in such events will gain an advantage, but any skyscrapers that are built with pandemic fears in mind are years away.

The prospect that workers may want to continue working from home does not worry John O’Donnell, the chief executive of Riverside Investment and Development, which is developing a 55-story tower at 110 North Wacker Drive in Chicago. The tallest office building erected in the city since 1990, it is scheduled to open in August and will be anchored by Bank of America. Other tenants include law firms, many of which are doing business from home.

“There is a need for collaboration, team building, common business cultures and a continuous desire to have social contact within a business,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

The building is 80 percent leased ahead of its August opening. One tenant signed for 40,000 square feet of office space at the height of the lockdown, which Mr. O’Donnell took as an encouraging sign.

The building is already being adjusted to meet post-pandemic needs, something Mr. O’Donnell said newer structures were better able to do. Amenities are being updated to be touch free. And owners are talking with tenants about walk-through thermal imaging to monitor workers and visitors for fevers.

The pandemic will result in a demand for more office space, not less, said Paul H. Layne, the chief executive of the Howard Hughes Corporation, a national commercial real estate developer based in Houston. Developers will move away from the industry-standard 125 square feet per person toward roomier workplaces.

But others say it is too early to tell when demand for office space will return. Jamil Alam, managing principal of Endeavor Real Estate Group, said the situation would vary by city.

“There will be winners and losers,” Mr. Alam said, explaining that he thinks denser metro areas like New York and Boston, which have been ravaged by the coronavirus, could find their luster lost in favor of smaller markets.

Endeavor, which is based in Austin, Texas, has a portfolio that includes 15.6 million square feet of commercial real estate in cities like Dallas, Denver and Nashville. One of its projects, the 20-story Gulch Union, will be the largest office tower in Nashville when it opens in August with 324,254 square feet of office space.

Smaller markets like Nashville are well positioned for companies wishing to pull up stakes from major metropolitan areas with higher density and costs, Mr. Alam said. Gulch Union has leased 27,000 square feet, and four more deals totaling 40,000 square feet are near completion.

“Deals are still being done,” he said.

There will be an appetite for urban, walkable, mixed-use office environments, Mr. Alam said, and changes will need to be made in buildings over time, like fewer touch points on handles and elevator buttons.

But projects that have not been started yet will be paused, said Chris Kirk, managing principal of the Salt Lake City office of Colliers, the commercial real estate brokerage firm.

“If you are a developer or landlord or C.F.O., you are concerned,” he said. “Everyone is feeling the impact.”

And the city is experiencing a building spurt downtown. A 24-story Class A tower developed by City Creek Reserve, the development arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is scheduled for completion next year. The building, which will have 589,945 square feet of office space, is already 80 percent leased.

Salt Lake City has been averaging a new Class A office high-rise every decade, and the pace is increasing. Still, the pandemic might put the brakes on that.

“Anyone who would be coming out of ground speculatively now without the commitment has got to be thinking about their timing,” Mr. Kirk said.

Mr. Irgens hopes to ride out the pandemic and continue with other projects. In February, his company broke ground on a six-story building in Tempe, Ariz., and it is moving forward with a 235,000-square-foot Milwaukee office project that is 42 percent leased.

“My partners in my business are working really hard to figure out how to have business continuity, and it is really hard to do that,” he said. “Things are changing daily.”

Not My Backyard!

Literally “not in my backyard” is the new cry from affordable housing advocates.  It is a catch 22 as they say as it offers what used to be called a Mother-in-law unit, a AUD or just extra space for guests, family and small income generator (in today’s Air BnB even more so) is now the nemesis of the neighborhood.  Lots that once housed a single family unit now hold multiple dwellings, often called tall skinny’s or what I call the coffin boxes.  The idea is to build urban density and in turn enable more environmental use in the process. 

Does anyone ever watch Property Brothers? Flip this House? Fixer Upper?  I have never seen any sense of green build or environmental consciousness in any of the projects let alone inspections or assessments made prior to the property’s purchase and eventual remodel.  Of course planning, design, permits and process don’t make for good TV.  But what you do see is gentrification in process.  There is no energy saving consciousness and environmental awareness when you are looking at the dollar sign. 

I love the shows but then again I take offense at the hideous Million Dollar Listing and the weird mannerisms and inflated sense of self worth that these idiots have. At least the Brothers, Flippers and Fixers swing hammers and you do see some sense of budget and basics when it comes to remodeling and building. 

Green building is I think less excitement and now simply more of demand, need and less of choice.  I loathed the silly LEED star system and while you see it now and then it is not something I think regular folks care about.  Energy savings and cost performance yes.  I do shudder when I see conventional duct HVAC systems installed and in turn few and never alternative energy options.  Only once did I see radiant heat be installed at a clients demand and that was because the home already had a boiler which was easily converted.  Otherwise nothing.  Remember the Green Channel? Yeah, me either.

The current vogue is the tiny house and again I see that as a mother-in-law or second home arrangement and totally inapprorpriate in an urban setting as a single family dwelling.  But as we are seeing this here in Nashville it is an issue surrounding a Church and their use of these for the homeless.  Again a great transition use for those in need.   And way preferable to the “cell” blocks or single unit apartments that are now being touted as a great alternatives for single dwellers.  Funny that these are not being built or used for that cohort. Nope not the best way to make money per square foot by people too stupid to do the math.

The crisis is real.  The reality is that many of the Apartments and housing units being built are for a luxury market and not the mainstream.   Here in Nashville we have just opened the 505 which is the address of a high end condo/apartment in “downtown” Nashville.  There are no services what so ever for residents to avail themselves unless they have a car.  It is directly adjacent to the park that now serves as the homeless campground so I suspect residents will push for them to be moved elsewhere.  Where is that exactly?  At least centrally located it makes it easier for the charities that serve them and they do on a daily basis.  From hot food to foot washing it is something to see.

But many of the apartment buildings here are all over the top with coffee bars, gyms, lounges, computer rooms and roof top gardens and bbq’s.  One woman wrote the local paper that on a Friday night she was the only one using the main lounge and that less than half the building is occupied and rent reductions are being made which infuriates her as she did not get hers reduced and was the first occupant.  I see her point. 

While the building is welcome especially in those cities where housing is at a premium the catch up game is not going well. In Seattle it is leading to lawsuits and massive debates over what was originally a push to go green. Well green but not that green when the tall skinny’s and the single SRO’s starting showing up.  The push for density has made Seattle now hit the 700K mark and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  Nashville with their crazy altering 80-100 people a day moving here is facing growth but the reality is that property is starting to max out as I already about in the Bubble post earlier.   The current prediction is that Nashville will hit a burst in the next two years.  It is what I have suspected and most of it has to do with wages and the rising cost of living which is not parallel.  Add to that the additional costs of commuting, taxes on food and the simpleton nature of the conservancy as I now call it does not help.

When I read this article in The New York Times about Berkeley I was not surprised as that is the most extreme of liberal melting pots I have ever lived.  I moved to the Oakland/Emeryville adjunct as it was undergoing gentrification and it was desperately needed, Berkeley has its own mindset and with it a mind of its own and in turn it has led to a new show “Housing Wars” coming to HGTV. Well it would be great as Fixer Upper is shutting down production.

But this story is any city that is the “it” city and is leading a path with industry, immigration and desirability.  The reality is people are not moving at great rates as the costs are prohibitive.  Today’s move is confined to a UHaul and do it yourself.  Frankly I plan on moving one last time with even less for many reasons, but I plan on doing it myself via storage to go units.   I have also written about Allied Van Lines and Hanson’s Brothers role in the debacle that was my last move and no longer trust nor will use a moving company.   Without some legislation and some change in laws with regards to that industry you will find more people cohabitating in major industrial hubs on both coasts with some migration to the South for weather not work.  Although the recent hurricane season and heat waves may change that.

We used to be a mobile society with the idea of having many styles of home options for the many kinds of dwellers. The idea of the startup home and the empty nester with everything in between and then 2008 happened.  I think it has affected how we look at and to housing for its role in the American portfolio.  And in turn it may explain why savings are at all time low, banks do little to encourage said process offering nothing in the rates to accommodate that.  Cheap loans and the idea that one’s home is one’s nest egg that is of exceeding ongoing permanent value forgets that a house like anything is only what your willing to pay for it.  And that is matter of debate that we can thank Realtor’s for for failing to realize that not everyone can pay that price.  They were are another reason housing costs are exorbitant.  Why no one seems to neglect to mention their role in the housing crisis then and now needs to watch that shitty Million Dollar Listing to see my point.

 

Fuddy Duddy

About 4 years ago I proposed to an Architect acquaintance that we colloborate on a book on multi gen housing. It was just starting to become a point of interest and I wanted to be on the front end prior to the big boys (as in business builders) jumping in the pool and drowning out the concept.

And sure enough they are there and in earnest creating the new McMansions under the concept the multi gen home.  They are big, they are sprawling and they are not very green.  To have multiple kitchens, living suites and separate entrances it is akin to housing adjacent, not shared housing.

To understand the dynamics you need a communication system established, clear private areas and clear common areas in which to encourage collaboration on meals, personal needs and of course home management issues.  I was hoping he could draw designs that provided such concepts and that I would discuss the ways people be they related or simply connected by choice to live in a co-op housing arrangement.

He never got back to me and well given that I just read an amazing article by women architects, whom after the death of Zaha Hadid, one of the few women who shone in the industry; her peers however find themselves out in the cold when it comes to both professional respect and recognition I should feel relieved.  I don’t.  It is why I finally packed in my consulting cap and decided to return to the classroom.  It is not what I want to do but have to do as we need men, particularly young men, to realize that women are strong role models and can be influential, interesting even when we are prone versus supine.

I am still a big advocate on multi gen housing but this is not the one I advocate for.

Multigenerational Homes That Fit Just Right Retiring
The New York Times
 By JANET MORRISSEY
APRIL 8, 2016

 Bob and Myrna Conrad, both 65, share a house with their son Wade, 41, his wife Dana, 42, and their grandson Bryce, 21. Isn’t it crowded? Don’t they cramp one another’s style? Actually, no. “We just set some ground rules, and it’s been working great,” said Wade Conrad, who has been living with his extended family since late 2013 in a NextGen multigenerational home, built by the Lennar Corporation, in Spanaway, Wash., near Tacoma.

 The Conrads are among a growing number of families who are seeking specially designed homes that can accommodate aging parents, grown children and even boomerang children under the same roof. The number of Americans living in multigenerational households — defined, generally, as homes with more than one adult generation — rose to 56.8 million in 2012, or about 18.1 percent of the total population, from 46.6 million, or 15.5 percent of the population in 2007, according to the latest data from Pew Research. By comparison, an estimated 28 million, or 12 percent, lived in such households in 1980. “People lost jobs, and with tighter household budgets, a lot of homes consolidated,” said Aaron Terrazas, a senior economist at Zillow, the home pricing website.

 “We’re seeing more children living with their parents and elderly parents moving in with their adult children.” Most multigenerational families, of course, live in ordinary houses, but the homebuilding industry is responding quickly to this shifting demand by creating homes specifically intended for such families. The Lennar homes don’t offer just a spare bedroom suite or a “granny hut” that sits separately on the property or a room above a garage. The NextGen designs provide a separate entranceway, bedroom, living space, bathroom, kitchenette, laundry facilities and, in some cases, even separate temperature controls and separate garages with a lockable entrance to the main house. Family members can live under the same roof and not see one another for days if they so choose.

 Wade Conrad acknowledged he was initially skeptical when his father suggested they buy a home together. Mr. Conrad, along with his wife and two children, had twice moved back home with his parents during job transitions — the most recent lasting a year in 2007 — and it did not go well, he said. Back then, they butted heads over everything: food, parenting decisions, furniture choices and even TV programs. “My dad watches the news 24/7, and I can’t stand the news,” Mr. Conrad recalled. “We’d gather for dinner and he’d just mute the TV, but the news would still be on. It drove us crazy,” he said with a laugh. Mr. Conrad prefers shows like “The Walking Dead” and “Arrested Development,” while his parents, he said, like “cheesy Hallmark feel-goody movies.” “I’m not a zombie fan,” his father conceded. Even doing the dishes was a bone of contention. “They like to hand-wash all their dishes and we like using the dishwasher,” Bob Conrad said. All these irritating memories came rushing back as Mr. Conrad pondered his father’s suggestion. But once he saw the NextGen home, he was sold. Mr. Conrad moved his family from their crowded 1,000-square-foot townhome into the 5,000-square-foot NextGen home. They set some rules: No TV in the large common area, food is bought separately, all other expenses are split down the middle. For the grandparents, who had been living in St. Louis, the spacious new home was an ideal way to reconnect with family. “It ended up being the best decision we could ever envision,” the elder Mr. Conrad said. “And my son can watch all the ‘Walking Dead’ episodes he wants.”

 So what’s driving this trend? The 2008 recession, high student loan debt, rising rents, and a tough job market for millennials caused many people ages of 18 to 34 to delay leaving home, said Alex Barron, founder of the Housing Research Center. And then there are boomerang children, who are adults who return to their parents’ home because of a job loss, divorce or other reason.

 On the flip side, baby boomers are living longer than previous generations. Many are planning ahead in hopes that they can devote more attention to their children and grandchildren — and spend little, if any, time in a nursing home. Multigenerational living is “growing in popularity,” said Robert Curran, a managing director at Fitch Ratings. With roughly 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day for the next 17 years, interest in such arrangements is unlikely to wane anytime soon. Lennar was one of the first major builders to tap this market when it introduced its NextGen homes in 2012 in Phoenix.

 “We were seeing a lot of people doubling up as a result of job losses or foreclosures, so we saw this as a solution to help accommodate that,” said Jeff Roos, a regional president at Lennar. Lennar has since expanded the model to more than 200 communities in 24 markets. It sold 1,100 NextGen homes in 2015, compared with 280 in 2012. Mr. Roos estimates that NextGen homes now account for about 5 percent of Lennar’s total home sales, compared with 2 percent in 2012.

 “I think it will be even more popular five years from now,” he said. Other builders, including Toll Brothers and the CalAtlantic Group, have jumped into the market as well. Jim and Becky Cadd bought a Toll Brothers multigenerational home in Baltimore to accommodate Ms. Cadd’s aunt and Mr. Cadd’s mother. After the couple married in June 2013, Ms. Cadd and her aunt, 72-year-old Barbara Spangler, moved into Mr. Cadd’s home, where his mother, Terry Cadd, also lived. Suddenly having everybody living under the same roof was trying. “My wife would be cooking dinner in the kitchen, and my mother, with her walker, would be ratcheting by,” Mr. Cadd said, “and then you had Barb trying to feed the dog.”

 Tensions intensified further when Ms. Cadd gave birth to the couple’s first child, and her mother-in-law broke her hip in 2014. “It was Jim, me, my daughter, my mother-in-law with her walker, my aunt, two dogs and toys in a very small family room — a square box,” Ms. Cadd said. “I like to describe it as a fishbowl.” And when the couple wanted to relax in front of the TV, they said, their older housemates often commandeered the TV controls or filled up the DVR with shows like “M*A*S*H,” “The Golden Girls” or “Matlock.” “We love them dearly, but we needed our own space,” Mr. Cadd said.

 The Toll Brothers multigenerational home resolved this. Now, the elder Ms. Cadd and Ms. Spangler each have their own bedroom, kitchenette and living area. Toll Brothers offers the multigenerational option in all of its 300 locations in 50 markets in 19 states. The niche accounted for about 5 percent of Toll’s sales last year, compared with 1 percent in its first year in 2012.

 As for the Conrads, they say the arrangement has brought the family closer than ever. But they acknowledge it’s not for everybody. “Don’t do it if you don’t have love for each other, a commitment to living life together, and an ability to compromise,” Bob Conrad said. “For us, it was the right thing at the right place at the right time — and it works.”

Help, I’ve Fallen!

The New York Times second in the series of how to fall down and age badly seems to remind me a few years ago when they focused on autism. I thought then as I do now that some Editor or Journalist has a family member with the problem and they are going to make sure we hear about it and then we will never hear about it again as we have been duly warned and informed.

I want to note that not one of the individuals profiled in this series are “boomers” and this takes place in one of the second wealthiest communities in the U.S., San Francisco. I have no doubt that Granny in Oakiskogie is finding herself in the same situation but what seems to be the issue is the denial of aging, the lack of appropriate medical and psychological counseling to assist those adjusting to the physical limitations of aging, home visits by providers or care givers to ensure that homes and lives are safer and more importantly active involvement and communication between family members. Ahh fuck that just put them in a home and let them deal with it.

If this doesn’t scream out for a way of examining the way we live and house ourselves nothing does. The issue of multi generational housing, aging-in-place, opportunities to retrain the mind and body and in turn access to affordable and well trained caregivers who are compensated appropriately for their work, are all possible alternatives than being relegated to institutionalized care or a wheelchair. This is not living nor dying well its aging badly and discrimanantly.

Here are two more articles about offering housing alternatives – to multi generational and its needs and aging in place. We need to see more than these horror articles that do nothing but lend to a fear of aging.

Tiny Stumble, a Life Upended
By KATIE HAFNER
NOV. 3, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO — Joan Rees, 79, had hardly been ill a day in her life. Her biggest problem was arthritis, mostly in her knees, but at home in San Francisco she walked every day and she traveled frequently.
At dusk last November in Istanbul, on the final day of a cruise, she missed a step and lost her footing. When she couldn’t stand up, she knew something was terribly wrong.

In that trivial act of misplacing her foot and falling, she had fractured her pelvis in multiple places. “It was a complete shock,” she said, “that I did something so destructive to my body.”

Her life would change with cruel, unanticipated swiftness.

The number of older Americans who fall and suffer serious injuries has soared. More than 2.4 million over the age of 65 were treated in emergency departments for injuries from falls in 2012 alone, and in the decade ending in 2012, 201,000 Americans over 65 died after falls.

Geriatricians generally agree that some older people possess an exaggerated sense of what they can still do, even as hazards lie in wait: staircases, throw rugs, slick bathtubs, concrete bumpers in parking lots, tree roots, their own pets. And medications like hypertension drugs and antidepressants, which can cause dizziness, are increasingly the cause of falls.

Twenty-five percent of older people who fall and fracture a hip die within a year. Eighty percent are left with severe mobility problems, no longer able to walk a city block. Those who die or become severely disabled after a hip fracture are usually people who were frail or sick — or both — before their fall, said Dr. Mary Tinetti, a geriatrician at the Yale School of Medicine who has studied falls for more than 30 years.

After a fall, life is upended in an instant — a sudden loss of independence, an awkward reliance on family and friends, and a new level of fear for those who fall, and their contemporaries.

A Painful Reality

Like many who fall, Mrs. Rees blamed herself for tripping over the unseen step in the chaos of late-afternoon traffic near the Grand Bazaar. “I just couldn’t believe I did something so dumb,” she said.

In the ambulance to a hospital, she was in so much pain that she insisted the driver put on his siren. She called one of her daughters, Joanna Rees, in San Francisco. “She sounded terrible,” Ms. Rees recalled. “She kept saying, ‘You have to get me out of here. I have to leave.’ But when I talked to the doctor, he said she wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t even stand up.”

Mrs. Rees was a textbook case of a serious injury waiting to happen. Her risks included previous falls, impaired balance, and the arthritis in her knees.

On a trip to London to visit her daughter Barbara in 2008, she stumbled and fell on the sidewalk just outside her daughter’s apartment. Embarrassed, she hoped her daughter hadn’t been looking out the window. She fell twice after that, but each time, she picked herself up without a scratch.

In hindsight, Barbara Rees, who has since moved to San Francisco, realizes that perhaps she should have paid closer attention to her mother’s balance. Yet none of Mrs. Rees’s children thought about suggesting to their mother that she take preventive measures — enroll in a balance class, for instance, or avoid dehydration, which can cause dizziness — just as people take precautions to stave off, say, heart disease.
Continue reading the main story Balance is a complicated equation involving vision, muscle strength, proprioception (the body’s ability to know where it is in space), and attention. As people age, those elements deteriorate.

“Falls are a very difficult thing, because it’s such a scary idea,” said Dr. Judy A. Stevens, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “People don’t want to hear about it and people affected don’t want to talk about it.”

Indeed, one consequence of a fall is the effect on one’s peers. Word of Mrs. Rees’s accident in Istanbul spread rapidly among her friends back in San Francisco. The reaction was one of sympathy, followed by a collective shiver. Desa Belyea, a friend of Mrs. Rees’s who is in her 80s, said she feared falling more than she feared getting sick. “It becomes your worst nightmare,” said Cathy Fiorello, another friend who is also an octogenarian.

A Frustrating Recovery

A retired schoolteacher and former owner of a bed-and-breakfast in Montclair, N.J., Mrs. Rees moved to San Francisco in 2006. Her husband had died 13 years earlier and she wanted to be closer to her children, three of whom lived in California.

She quickly settled into a life of happy independence, renting an apartment in a high-rise overlooking San Francisco Bay. She joined a book club and a walking group, and established a new circle of friends, many of whom lived in her building.

After her fall in Istanbul, she went to stay with her son John and his family in Saratoga, south of San Francisco. But after three weeks there she began to feel like a burden and returned to her San Francisco apartment. Her son tried to persuade her to stay longer, but she assured him that she would be fine, that she needed to be in her place, surrounded by her friends.
At first, her sunny nature helped her through the days. But the excruciatingly slow recovery filed down her spirit. She felt as if she were trying to climb the slippery sides of a glass. The process from wheelchair to walker to cane took months. Friends and family members noticed that she seemed perpetually canted to one side.

Once back in her own apartment, Mrs. Rees soon felt isolated — and scared of falling again. “At first all her friends were around, but people are only going to help you for so long,” her son John said. “Suddenly she was sitting in her apartment on her own, and having trouble getting by with the walker.” Friends brought meals to her but she couldn’t get the food across the room to the dining table. She ate standing in the kitchen.

She kept her apartment door open, in case she fell and needed to call for help, despite her children’s deep fear that a criminal might walk in on her.

Across the nation, places like The Sequoias are trying to reduce the number of falls among their increasingly elderly residents while satisfying people’s desire to live life as they choose.

Mrs. Rees, who cherishes her dignity and independence, found the requirements of recovery humiliating.
A meticulous dresser who dyes her hair a youthful auburn, she cares about appearances. When a physical therapist told her she would need to fasten a leash-like harness to her for safety when they went outside to practice walking, Mrs. Rees refused to go. “What if one of my friends saw me with a leash on?” she told her daughter Joanna.

For the first time in her life, Mrs. Rees felt truly old. She grew cranky, even bitter. “She was very, very hard on herself, which made her hard on others,” Joanna Rees said.

One depressing setback came shortly after Mrs. Rees returned to her apartment late last fall, when she waited nearly two weeks for Medicare to transfer her case from her son’s location to San Francisco so she could resume physical therapy. Mrs. Rees developed sciatic pain from another byproduct of the fall — a compressed nerve — that was as excruciating as the fracture itself.

Mrs. Rees called the doctor’s office and after speaking with a nurse was prescribed a strong dose of Vicodin, to be taken several times a day. A few days later, Joanna arrived at her mother’s apartment to find her on the couch, unconscious and drooling.

Six months after the accident, with regular physical therapy, Mrs. Rees had recovered remarkably well. But to watch her move through her days was to see a lingering tentativeness. Where once her gait was strong and assured, it had turned cautious.

When stepping off a curb, she searched for handrails, or walls, or just about anything with which to steady herself. The nerve damage persisted, and she occasionally winced in pain. “I feel like I’ve woken up from a coma,” she said.

Nearly a year has passed since her injury, and now Mrs. Rees considers herself nearly fully recovered. Her sunny outlook on life has returned, and she is back to taking lengthy walks around San Francisco, with less hesitation at curbs. She is even planning a family trip to Arizona to celebrate her birthday in January.

Yet as her children see it, Mrs. Rees’s tumble in Istanbul was a defining event in her life, the moment when the roles of parent and child began to reverse. Said her daughter Joanna, “This is Mom 3.0, in terms of how things will go from here.”

Experts who have studied falls wish that people would take measures to protect themselves much as they do against heart disease or viral infections. Here are some recommendations from experts on how to protect yourself or someone you know is susceptible to falls.

They’re Back!

The below article confirms what I have suspected for quite some time despite the entire sustainable walkable communities speeches that Mayors give about their cities.

In Seattle that comes in the place of overpriced undersized micro units that cater to the “jet” set,  the young techs who work for a couple of years until they realize that the supposed stock options won’t kick in or if they do leave regardless to form a silly start up that is largely a lather rinse repeat of some other start up or service that they are sure someone needs on their phone in order to do the shit they have avoided doing for years – such as laundry, shopping, cleaning, getting appointments or well doing stuff.

This is the same in may urban cities, such as San Francisco that has very specific building codes and restrictions you are literally seeing former storage buildings being turned into ‘podments.”

Then you grow up and suddenly you want room to swing a cat, entertain friends, have a family or well have a life.

This summer I have spent most of my time exploring the suburbs and I found out that I like it.  I never grew up nor lived in them I found myself utterly shocked how they have urban elements but they are clearly cleaner, better managed and frankly an improvement over the littered with human waste streets I have become way too accustomed too.

There are numerous multi family dwellings and unlike here they are larger with many extra elements and features that justify the rents and the rents are parallel to the ones in the City only without the sad homeless drug addict passed out at the door.  And if you think that is something to step over on your way to work, that tells me more about you then them.   And in this supposed liberal bastion no one does anything but repeat the echo chamber that something must be done but do nothing.

And yes there are homeless but they are seemingly respectful and dignified as one could be in that situation and I never saw a Police Officer. NEVER.  The Librarian came out and said to one homeless mentally ill man “Rob you need to be over here.”  She called him by name and another man walking his dog spoke to other man in a thruway and called him by name.

I live in a small dwelling but for a single person more than enough space yet my neighbors live two to three and with small children. They turn and burn those units as soon as the lease is up.

So the need for size is not the issue in multi family units unless you have a family it is design.  These are designed for a single dweller but built as multi family. They are horribly constructed and cannot be remodeled or designed to be more functional as they are shared walls.   They are an owners nightmare and a renters dream if they remained affordable, and that is the problem, they are not.

Design matters even for renters.   So we use size as a compensation for design.  Design build companies are usually software programs with a few alternatives and architect designed homes are expensive. We went through the kit housing and pre fab and I think that is gone and done.  Alternative build now is simply green build without too many bells and whistles and a focus simply on energy consumption. With summers getting hotter we need to rethink how we cool our homes. I do think that vendors who provide heating cooling and ventilation are the key to good build.

I am out of the building side of consult now as frankly I see nothing I can offer but I can teach those to find homes that work whether they own or rent and what it means to be sustainable. It has become a talking point frankly that I don’t think has a clear definition.

And you can see that was a passing moment in the shade.  Green is now about money. Period.

 

McMansions not only survive, they’re getting bigger

By Catherine Rampell
Washington Post
September 3, 2014

The Census Bureau recently released some data on the characteristics of newly built housing. There are some fun trends in there — about the increasing popularity of air-conditioning over time, for example — but perhaps the most compelling series has to do with the size of houses.

During the bubble years, American houses got bigger and bigger (especially relative to their counterparts in other rich countries). But guess what? Builders increased the size of new homes built after the bubble burst, too. In 1973, the median newly-completed single-family house was 1,525 square feet; forty years later, in 2013, it was 2,384 square feet. That is a record high.

Source: Census Bureau.

That’s just the median, of course. But the share of newly built homes that are at least 4,000 square feet is now at 10 percent, equaling the series’s peak in 2008, after having dipped slightly immediately after the crash. The share of homes that have at least four bedrooms is also at a historical high, at 44 percent. That’s almost twice the share in 1973.

Source: Census Bureau.

Some of the growth in the size of houses in recent years may reflect the changing composition of home buyers. If the kinds of people able to afford newly built single-family homes are increasingly higher-income, we would expect that the kinds of houses being built might be increasingly higher-end, and thus larger. The size of the typical unit in a multifamily building – which has had a much stronger recovery than the single-family home market, perhaps partly because so many Americans now can’t afford to buy or rent a standalone home — is below its peak in 2007.

Source: Census Bureau.

The CO in Housing

I am always reassured when I see another article about the Aging Class, or aka, the Boomers. As more and more are now entering the “I wish you would die already” stage that the Millennial hope for, there are positive reinforcements showing that many are stepping up to the plate to demonstrate why they remained childless! I kid. Or not.

I have my issues with the ME MINE MINE class who are either to the point of political correctness they are boring and unimaginative or so self involved that they seem to be the progeny of a gay marriage between the fictional characters of Horatio Alger and John Galt. The irony is any progeny of those would take the term “gay bash” to new heights.  The Silicon Valley set seem to personify that group better than any.

And so to read the story of two Golden Girls who realize that family is where you find and make it is reassuring.   Of course the title is utterly offensive and disturbing, so I am guessing that was written by whom – a millennial.  But what I found interesting is they seem to live in an apartment building that  is “aging” and in its own way also supports those who also are not getting any younger.  So in between fading and aging away it doesn’t mean having to do that out of sight and mind at the  old folks home.  Isn’t that what those are really for, to hide aging?

I don’t have children. I have never believed in the biological clock or any other crap thrown at women to either manipulate, control and encourage conformity. It bit me on the ass two years ago as without an advocate I was fodder for the millennial morons to fully abuse and harm me so word of warning, if you have not clearly established “in case of emergency” contacts on your phone or on your person, and in turn ensured that all the documents are in place, do so.

I made the mistake of joking to my former dog walker that she was “in my will” and that I wanted to adopt her but that was frankly to ensure that she took extra care of my dog. When Emma passed I had no intention of doing so and had no real interest in further socializing with this young girl whom I had little in common.  The bite marks on this ass are still sensitive  today when I discuss when she took me without any legal authorization from Harborview Hospital and in turn abused and vandalized my home in the process of “helping me.” Now true she was not given proper or accurate release information about the injuries I sustained and the care I needed, but I can ensure you that is not an excuse or reason for what this psychotic young woman did in my home. I have spent many many hours regretting that I ever let this woman touch my beloved dog.

So that I share that tale as it is also part of my medical malpractice lawsuit against the equally destructive and damaging lunatics at Harborview Hospital for a reason. Get your shit in order.

There is also a need to re-examine the concept of multi family co-housing to be truly multi generation un-family housing. Where people can live co-cooperatively in the sense of a co-op style building, akin to the idea of co-op grocery stores, etc, and establishing close connections and build a new commun-ty.

It is possible, it is being done and it needs to be further explored as we of the boomer age boom towards aging.  And no we are not fading away.

The Childless Plan for Their Fading Days

By ABBY ELLIN
FEB. 14, 2014

HAVING children was never on Francine Tint’s to-do list. A painter of large abstract canvases, Ms. Tint never felt a biological imperative to reproduce or pass on her name to future generations.

“My paintings are my children,” said Ms. Tint, who is “over 65,” and whose work has been featured in galleries and museums across the country. But though she was always clear on her decision, in the back of her brain one thing slightly nagged at her: Without offspring, on whom could she rely in her old age?

“People don’t have children to take care of them later on in life,” said Ms. Tint, who is divorced and lives in Greenwich Village. “It’s not a reason to have children. They may come for a second on your deathbed, and that’s it. But of course, I worry.”

Ms. Tint’s situation is one that more and more elderly people will face over the next few decades as fewer women choose to have children. According to an August 2013 report from AARP, 11.6 percent of women ages 80 to 84 were childless in 2010. By 2030, the number will reach 16 percent. What’s more, in 2010, the caregiver support ratio was more than seven potential caregivers for every person over 80 years old. By 2030, that ratio is projected to decline to four to one. By 2050, it’s expected to fall to three to one.

Unlike China, whose Law of Protection of Rights and Interests of Elderly People requires children of parents older than 60 to visit their parents “often” and tend to their financial and spiritual needs, the United States has no such law.

The trend means that “there are going to be far fewer of the traditional caregivers,” said Donald Redfoot, a co-author of the study and a senior policy adviser with the AARP Public Policy Institute in Washington. “It raises the question: Then who?”

“Many people are extending the notion of family itself, to nieces and nephews, cousins and so on,” he continued. “But it’s also expanding to ‘pseudo kin’ of friends and neighbors. We see this in the L.G.B.T. community, many of whom have been alienated from their families.”

Not only does it raise questions of who will care for them, it also brings up issues of housing arrangements, estate planning and whom to put in charge of financial affairs.

This is something Batya Lewton, 82, a former teacher and librarian in New York who never married and has no children, has been contemplating. “You have to think in advance; you can’t assume that people are going to know what you want done for yourself, or how you want to be taken care of, whether you want to stay in your home or not,” she said. “It’s important that people who you care about and who care about you know exactly what you want.”

About eight years ago, Ms. Lewton appointed two friends who live in her building to oversee her future. Both have power of attorney and are executors of her will. She has filed important papers in clearly marked boxes, and also given explicit instructions on where she would like to be buried, what she wants engraved on her headstone and how the funeral should proceed. (She did not, however, prepay the event. “I’m superstitious,” she said.)

Both Ms. Lewton and Ms. Tint hope to stay in their apartments rather than move into a facility for the elderly. “I know a lot of people in my building,” said Ms. Tint. “It’s like an assisted living center or a dorm,” or, in modern parlance, a naturally occurring retirement community.

“My fear in life is being put in a nursing home,” said Nancy Squires, 58, who owns an I.T. consulting firm in the Washington area. Ms. Squires, who is divorced with no children, has been saving for retirement since the 1980s. “I come from a family that’s thrifty,” she said. “I reuse paper towels. My friends laugh at me; I wipe my hands and put it on the counter until I come back. But I was taught that retirement was very important. My parents were not wealthy. They earned a nickel and saved a dime.”

She and her friends have bandied about the idea of moving in together. “I love the idea of a communal living arrangement with separate spaces and shared expenses,” she said. “Not like in the ’60s with LSD. More of a 21st-century model, like a large farm where someone has horses, another raises/trains dogs for others, some of the people might coordinate an organic garden, some might cook gourmet dinners a few times a month. It’s all about really living to your fullest without eating dinners alone — unless you want to, of course.”

Bill Strubbe, 58, a travel writer and painter living in San Francisco’s East Bay, plans to leave the country. In the fall, Mr. Strubbe, who has no children and is single, is relocating to a kibbutz outside Haifa, Israel, that he has been visiting since he was 20.

“I’ll be living among a community of people I have known all my adult life and has systems in place for care of the elderly,” he said. “Unlike the U.S.A., Israel has excellent health care for all its citizens, and that will take a big load off of my mind, knowing that I won’t be left flapping in the breeze if something happens to me.”

According to Dave Littell, a retirement income program director at the American College of Financial Services, in Bryn Mawr, Pa., children usually provide about 70 percent of long-term care. But they’re not always the best people to make decisions about their parents. A 2012 study of 975 parents and 152 adult children conducted by Fidelity Investments found that only 3 percent of parents agreed that their children would take care of them if they became ill. The study also found that only 10 percent of children believed conversations about health and eldercare were very detailed.

“While it’s great to have kids who are available to help, there are a lot of complications with having kids around,” said Audrey K. Chun, a doctor who is also a medical director at the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York. “A lot of the dynamics, decisions that have to be made around the end of life, disagreements that arise between siblings, what mom or dad may have wanted, can be very emotional. Many of my patients without kids are interested in not wasting resources at the end of life — when it’s their time, they don’t want unnecessary suffering, or to be a burden on society. They want to die naturally. Because they don’t have children to advocate for them, they’re much more open and direct about that.”

Those without children also tend to have the resources to pay for professional assistance. As the Department of Agriculture reports, a middle-income family with a child born in 2012 can expect to spend about $241,080 ($301,970 adjusted for projected inflation) in expenses for that child over the next 17 years. If that money were saved for 35 years, it would amount to about $1.5 million, with compounding interest, Mr. Littell said.

“You save so much money not having a child, not to mention two or three,” said Joni Evans, the chief executive of WowOWow, a website for women, who is married but never wanted children. “And you’re saving millions of dollars when you span it over 20 years. For me, when the time comes I’ll hire someone, or I’ll have a really great friend move in with me. Whatever it takes, I feel like I have the money to take care of myself in my old age.

Of course, one issue facing the childless is what to do with their estates. Some establish foundations in their name or leave money to charity, said David W. Nethery, senior vice president for wealth management at Merrill Lynch in Dallas. Others bequeath money to siblings, nieces and nephews, or friends, as did Ms. Lewton.

In Mr. Strubbe’s ideal world, he won’t have any cash left. “Hopefully I will have used it all up,” he said. Should there be any, he said he would most likely leave it to “nieces and nephews and/or some of the children of close friends on the kibbutz.”

Among the stipulations, he said, he is ordering recipients not to use their inheritance “to pay bills, taxes, rent or other such mundane things, but to earmark it for taking a trip you could never afford, enrolling in an art class that was not in the budget, or do something meaningful, wild and fun.”