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Wednesday, November 6, 2024

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Trump claims 'powerful mandate' after Fox News projects he has won the US presidency; experts express caution over post-election AI deepfakes; Colorado's housing crisis linked to billionaire investors; Election Day is over; now it's a waiting game.

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Trump wins the White House. Republicans will take over the Senate after flipping several seats, and seem to be on track to hold the House. In spite of bomb threats and charges of fraud, a very high-turnout election mostly went smoothly.

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A Cambodian poultry farmer who lost his livelihood could be a hero for others, rural Montanans are anxiously awaiting a court ruling over a climate lawsuit brought by young people, and Northeast states say more housing for working families could boost jobs.

Report: Colorado’s housing crisis linked to billionaire investors

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Wednesday, November 6, 2024   

Denver's homeless population hit an all-time high in 2024 but there is actually no shortage of available housing units, according to a new report.

Omar Ocampo, researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and the report's co-author, said much of the housing built over the past two decades is not homes for people. Those units, many of which remain vacant, are being used by hedge funds and the wealthy as a safe and profitable place to park large sums of untaxed wealth.

"We have seen, over the past decade or so, a boom in luxury real estate," Ocampo observed. "Basically, the only people who can afford it are people who are ultrahigh net worth, or at the top of the income distribution."

The report showed how corporations and wealthy investors from across the globe have amassed large tracts of single and multifamily residential units since the housing market crash in 2008. The scale of the purchases has put upward pressure on prices, causing rents to skyrocket and putting homeownership out of reach for millions.

There are 16 million vacant homes across the U.S., which means there are 28 homes for every American experiencing homelessness.

Developers can apply for tax incentives to build affordable housing but the profit margins for luxury units are simply too large for all but nonprofit builders to resist. Ocampo pointed to the Homes Act, recently introduced in the U.S. House, as one way to turn things around for the vast majority of Americans who cannot afford what the marketplace is building.

"We need public investment and to establish a housing development authority, which authorizes hundreds of billions of dollars to develop permanently affordable housing," Ocampo contended

Corporations have also increased their earnings by converting rental stock into short-term vacation homes. Ocampo noted a shareholder report by executives at Blackstone, which now owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., promising profits as rental stock went down.

"Chronic housing shortages meant their ability to raise prices and be able to extract more wealth from vulnerable working-class tenants," Ocampo added.


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