No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses'

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

Downtown Ends Building Boom in New York

Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.

Biomass fuels to the rescue?

Nobody loves biomass. When talk turns to global warming and the green movement, it's hardly ever mentioned. Biomass can be garbage (literally) or wood chips or sugar-cane remnants or grass.

Still, among energy experts, biomass has some strong supporters, and for good reason: Right now, virtually all the renewable-energy power in Florida comes from biomass, including three plants in Miami-Dade and Broward.

What's more, it's cheap -- cheaper in some instances even than coal, which is generally considered the nation's least expensive way of producing electricity but is also the biggest producer of greenhouse gases that scientists say are heating up the globe.

How to make your own green cleaning products

By Annie B. Bond

Most modern synthetic cleaning products are based on age-old formulas using natural ingredients that were passed down through the generations because the chemistry was right. Going back to the original naturally derived ingredients is a way to make cleaning products that work, don’t pollute and save you money. Most are found in your kitchen cupboards. Mix and match with well-chosen and environmentally friendly green cleaning products found in health food stores, and you can easily and simply transform your home into a non-toxic and healthy haven.

Non-toxic cleaning can give you a deep feeling of gratification in knowing that your family’s health is protected, and that your home is a place for your bodies to rest and recuperate rather than promote harm.

In Union Square, How to build a Holiday Market

LATE in the evening on a mid-November Wednesday, when Union Square was dark and quiet, a mild-mannered, blue-eyed man named Eldon Scott stood near the bronze statue of George Washington with a surveyor’s wheel in his hand and counted out six paces. Fishing a nub of yellow chalk from the pocket of his green zippered fleece, he stooped down to make a T-shaped mark on the paving stone.
Moving through the park, Mr. Scott mapped out where the edges of booths would sit for the Union Square Holiday Market, which opened the Saturday before Thanksgiving and runs until Christmas Eve.

Audit: NYCHA Capital Program in Trouble

AUDIT: NYCHA CAPITAL PROGRAM IN TROUBLE

An internal report by the inspector general over the Housing Authority says management lapses and cost overruns will severely curtail plans to repair the city’s aging stock of public housing.

Cost overruns and management lapses plague a $780 million plan that outsourced the administration of much of the New York City Housing Authority's construction program, according to internal memos obtained by City Limits.
The problems have contributed to a drastic scaling-back of the work that NYCHA will complete under a crucial initiative to rebuild its aging housing stock. The number of construction projects NYCHA can afford could shrink by as much as 75 percent – leaving thousands of public housing residents in need of new roofs, better kitchens, improved wiring and more.

The memos, penned this autumn by inspector general Robert McSweeney, who is charged with NYCHA oversight by the city Department of Investigation, and former NYCHA chairman Tino Hernandez, indicate that NYCHA management was alerted to the problems years ago but has moved slowly to take corrective action.

Study: Leaner Nations Bike, Walk, Use Mass Transit

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Jim Richards is no kid, but he loves to ride his bike. At 51, he has become a cycling commuter, pedaling 11 miles from his home in the suburbs to his job in downtown Knoxville.

"It really doesn't take that much longer" than driving, he insists.

And he gets 40 minutes of exercise twice a day without going to the gym, which he attributes to a 20-pound weight loss.

NYC Housing Commissioner to Head HUD

President-elect Barack Obama today named Shaun Donovan, New York City's commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development, to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

As head of New York City's housing agency, Donovan, 42, helped lead what was called the nation's largest affordable housing plan, which aims to build or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2013. He also has led efforts to provide legal and credit assistance and financial education to homebuyers seen as being most prone to predatory lending. Most recently, he has worked as an Obama campaign adviser, after taking a leave of absence from his job in the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

This Old House

The 1980s and 1990s made up the era of the great dispersal. Forty-three million people moved every year, and basically they moved outward — from inner-ring suburbs to far-flung exurbs on the metro fringe. For example, the population of metropolitan Pittsburgh declined by 8 percent in those years, but the developed land area of the Pittsburgh area sprawled outward by 43 percent.

New York City Growing More Diverse

Since 2000, the number of young children living in parts of Lower Manhattan has nearly doubled. The poverty rate declined in all but one New York City neighborhood. A majority of Bronx residents are Hispanic.

And the number of white people living in Harlem more than tripled, helping to drive up median household income there by nearly 20 percent — the fourth-highest jump in the city.

N.J. to spread $60M in foreclosure prevention funds

$60 million in foreclosure prevention funds seems like a drop in the bucket for a state with over 8.7 million people. Then again, the northeast's housing prices have not dropped as sharply as prices in the south and west coast, so only about 6% of NJ homeowners are in a situation where their mortgage exceeds the value of their home. Consequently, most distressed homeowners can still avoid foreclosure and sell at a profit, something which is not an option in many other states.

Can L.A. Go Solar?

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has an ambitious plan to get L.A. to go solar. Still, without a proper financial analysis, skeptics find it too lofty to be true.

"Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled an ambitious long-range plan Monday for securing enough solar power to meet one-tenth of the city's energy needs by 2020, a move aimed at making L.A. a hub of the solar-energy industry.

Affordable Housing Deals Are Stalling

This article from Nov. 11th, 2008, points to a slow down that is likely to worsen in the coming year, especially given that low income housing tax credit deals are based on investors' need to reduce their tax burden. Given that many major companies are posting losses this year, tax credits have no value to them.

NYC Apartment Rents Fell in November, Vacancies Rose

By Sharon L. Lynch

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Manhattan apartment rents fell for a fourth consecutive month in November and vacancy rates reached 2 percent for the first time in almost two years as Wall Street's financial turmoil took a toll on the housing market.

Rents dropped 2.2 percent to 4.9 percent across all sizes of apartments, with the biggest drop in the smallest flats. Studios rented for an average of $1,808, down from $1,901 in October, New York-based real estate broker Citi Habitats said today in a report.

Rents are declining as New York City is forecast to lose as many as 165,000 jobs, including 35,000 in the financial industry, as the impact of the credit crisis spreads throughout the economy. Wall Street firms including Merrill Lynch & Co. have produced mortgage-related losses and writedowns of more than $900 billion and are cutting staff as the economy weakens.

Housing-Crisis Grants Force Cities to Make Tough Choices

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS and BOBBY WHITE

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- In this Phoenix suburb, two townhouses stand vacant, filled with trash and abutting an empty neighborhood swimming pool covered with graffiti. But to Gina Ramos Montes and other city officials, the dilapidated properties seem promising.

As part of the $4 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program authorized by Congress in July, Avondale is set to receive $2.5 million to redevelop neighborhoods blighted by abandoned and repossessed homes.

The money, figured Ms. Montes, director of neighborhood and family services, could be used to refurbish the townhouses, fill the pool and build two additional rental units for low-income families. The hitch: Such a project would eat up a quarter of the city's $2.5 million grant, leaving roughly 2,600 other Avondale homes in bank hands or about to enter foreclosure.

Lower East Side Rezoning Adopted by the NY City Council on Nov. 19th

A community initiated rezoning plan for the Lower East Side was adopted on Nov. 19th by the NY City Council after several years of planning, and an 8 months Uniform Land Use Review (ULURP) process.

Despite a bizarre effort by Chinatown residents to derail a plan for a neighborhood adjacent to their own (?), the ULURP was given unanimous support by Community Board 3, the City Planning Commission and the City Council. This strong support was also a strong repudiation of the misguided race-baiting tactics of the Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA) and the Coalition to Preserve Chinatown, the two organizations that led the opposition.

The rezoning plan was admittedly not perfect, as no plan ever is. Members of the Lower East Side Coalition for Accountable Zoning (LESCAZ), a diverse coalition of progressive low income tenants rights groups, housing preservations and low income housing developers supported the plan, but with some reservations about the increased as of right FAR in the new inclusionary zones, the slight upzoning (from 3.44 to 4.0) throughout much of the rezoning area, and the fact that inclusionary zoning was not mandatory. Tenants rights advocates wanted HPD to include anti-harassment and anti-demolition provisions in the plan and a commitment to at least 700 new low income housing units on city-owned sites. HPD made minor concessions, and advocates plan to continue pushing for improvements to the rezoning over time.

Still, height caps of 80 and 120 feet will help preserve the unique contextual low-rise characer of the community, and the inclusionary zoning along the avenues is likely to result in over 400 low income housing units over the next decade. The Chinatown opponents made many dubious arguments about the plan making displacement pressures worse in Chinatown when the reality is that the displacement pressures are already severe. The fear that hotels and luxury housing will overwhelm Chinatown is unsubstantiated. In fact, the downturn in the construction industry, which may last for several years, makes this arguments already severely outdated.

Unfortunately, the media latched onto the racism angle and progressives who supported the plan were undermined in efforts to get a better plan as they had to become more vocal of their defense of an imperfect plan.

NYCHA Propels New Development Process

Around the five boroughs, the New York City Housing Authority controls 2,500 acres of land. This vast swath includes 180,000 of the City's federally subsidized housing units, as well as many acres of land simply landscaped or paved for parking. To the cash-strapped NYCHA, some of these "underutilized" spaces are now viewed as assets whose dollar value needs to be realized.
To that end, NYCHA announced last month that private developers have been selected to purchase property and construct or renovate 1,000 units of affordable housing on four public housing sites in the South Bronx. The sale of land at Forest Houses, Highbridge Gardens, Soundview Houses and University Avenue was arranged through a relatively new type of partnership between the Authority and the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Under this model, HPD and NYCHA work together to create the development proposals. NYCHA then provides the land and nets a profit — in this case, $29 million. The collaboration is touted as mutually beneficial, furthering the mission of both agencies. But some warn that opening the floodgates to development on public housing property may lead to problems if the process isn’t carefully regulated.