Apartment City

RIO DE JANEIRO ― Seven years ago, Vila Autódromo was little more than a tranquil fishing village on the edge of Jacarepagua Lagoon, next to the racetrack for which it was named. Like the hundreds of other favelas that dot Rio de Janeiro ’s landscape, it had long been neglected by the city government , and it lacked many basic public services that are standard in the fast- growing wealthier neighborhoods just across the water. But to the more than 600 families that lived there, it was home. “This was a paradise,” said Luiz Cláudio Silva, who lived in Autódromo for more than 20 years. “I thought that I would live here for the rest of my life.” By the time the Rio Olympics are over, just 20 of the families who lived in Autódromo in 2009, the year the International Olympic Committee chose the city to host the games, will remain. The community, which sits less than a mile away from Rio’s Olympic Park, was crushed so that the city could build new access roads to connect Olympic venues . ...

Last Updated Aug 19, 2017 4:54 PM EDT Maryland Democrats are demanding a slew of records from Kushner Companies LLC after reports that its subsidiaries' apartment complexes receiving public housing payments are getting judges to order the arrest of delinquent renters and making rent payments unnecessarily difficult for tenants.  President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner stepped down as CEO of Kushner Companies when he joined the White House, but retains a significant financial stake in the business. The firm has received $6.1 million in federal rental subsidies through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for three apartment complexes in Maryland since January 2015, according to a recent Baltimore Sun report .  Those subsidies help tenants pay their rent. But the Sun reported Kushner Companies is "the most aggressive [firm] in Maryland" in using a debt collection tactic that urges judges to arrest people who fail to appe...

How the fight against displacement calls for New York City’s Asian immigrant communities to defect from the “ model minority ” narrative. Media Gallery When NYU sophomore Sam Kim attended a rally outside Manhattan’s City Hall in March, he didn’t think that he would be ushered into the spotlight. Kim had learned of the rally through the local housing organization CAAAV (Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence), which called on New Yorkers to oppose President Trump ’s proposed $6.2 billion cut to the 2018 budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This cut would dramatically reduce federal funding for New York City public housing , which currently provides rent-subsidized homes to 600,000 New Yorkers. Along the City Hall steps , Kim and two fellow student organizers joined a rare gathering of tenants from otherwise disparate peripheries of the city. Asian immigrants from Chinatown and Queens stood alongside Black and Latino residents of Brooklyn and the Bronx...

On any summer weekend, Venice Beach is the ultimate urban beach carnival : exhilarating, loud, funky and diverse. No wonder Ocean Front Walk is one of the state’s premier attractions: It’s amazing entertainment and it’s 100% free. But unlike other tourist spots — say Disneyland or Universal CityWalk — Venice is still primarily a residential neighborhood . Because of that, Venice has become an epicenter of Los Angeles’ struggle over short-term rentals, what you might call the Airbnb Problem. To get a sense of it, I took what some local housing activists have dubbed a “Lost Housing” tour of Venice on Saturday afternoon. Over the course of four hours, I visited half a dozen buildings on or very close to the Boardwalk that have been converted, without permits, from long- term rental apartments to short-term rentals, or — yes — let’s call them what they really are: hotels. If you are wondering why the rental housing market in a place like Venice Beach is so tight, look no further than y...