July 29, 2022

Inflation is financially stressing rural America and motivating some rural residents to move closer to cities. "Rural people have to drive long distances for work, for school, for health care, just to get the daily necessities of life like groceries ... there is no public transportation,” explains Iowa State University professor Dave Peters. If the trend continues, it could “accelerate rural depopulation in parts of the Midwest and Great Plains,” he says.

Only 5.8 percent of the 3,365 emergency housing vouchers awarded to the city of Los Angeles have been used to help people experiencing homelessness move into new housing. Many who have been through the approval process for new homes say the city’s housing authority had been unresponsive to their requests or slow to act. The housing authority’s president, Doug Guthrie, attributes delays to staffing shortages, the Los Angeles rental market, and other factors.

New research shows nearly 40 percent of Philadelphia evictions result in default judgements, and tenants who live far from the courthouse where eviction proceedings are held are mostly likely to get served with one. These findings underscore housing and public transit inequities and point to the need for more frequent virtual eviction hearings, posits study coauthor David Hoffman. “What we find is essentially, almost no one successfully reopens these defaults after they’ve been issued. Not showing up the first time is basically tantamount to losing in the end.”

Organizers from the California Deaf Community are leading an effort to create affordable housing for teachers at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. They are calling for construction on vacant state-owned land near the school’s campus. Many teachers at the school are unable to afford housing near the school, and some resort to sleeping in their cars. According to Redfin, the median sales price for a single-family home in Fremont was approximately $1.7 million in June, and salaries haven’t kept up with soaring costs of living.