Raids at Swift Raise Questions About Employers’ Ability to Check Status
Federal raids on six Swift meat-packing plants resulting in the arrests of more than 1,200 people point out the difficulty employers have in determining who is or is not a legal worker. Concerns are particularly acute in such industries as construction, agriculture and meatpacking, which depend on a large number of immigrant workers to fill physically taxing or dangerous jobs. Swift CEO Sam Rovit said that his firm was using a federal program under which employee identity documents were checked against a database, but found that the database was plagued with flaws, including the inability to detect identity theft. In testimony in June before a U.S. House subcommittee, the company made several recommendations to fix the problem, including proposing a national ID card or protection from liability for companies using the verification system. “Swift was in a position to be able to be cutting edge….Small businesses can’t afford to do this kind of thing,” said NAHB Executive Vice President Jerry Howard. Many home builders hire immigrants and check their legal status by looking at common documents such as Society Security cards or driver’s licenses, he said. But small builders don’t even have the computer savvy to tap into more high-tech systems. (www.usatoday.com)
USA Today (12/14/06); Sue Kirchhoff
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As FEMA Housing Nears End, Some May Be in Trailer Trouble
Residents of the more than 31,000 trailers still in use in South Mississippi expect their FEMA-provided post-Katrina housing to be extended by 12 months, as requested by Gov. Haley Barbour; the program is slated to end in just two months. The peak occupancy was around 43,000 units at the end of last year and the average cost per unit is between $16,000 and $17,000. The majority, 84%, are on private property. When FEMA housing is terminated, said FEMA official Eugene Brezany, trailers may be sold to tenants who have a place to put them. They also are subject to local permitting. Units not sold to occupants would be returned to a FEMA staging area in Purvis for refurbishment. Some will be returned to inventory for use following some future disaster and others will be auctioned off through the General Services Administration. “In some other disaster recovery situations, the units have been provided to disaster victims as rentals. Some have been donated to local jurisdictions. No decision has yet been made with respect to this future disposition of trailers in Mississippi,” said Brezany. Biloxi Major A.J. Holloway said that a one-year extension on FEMA-provided housing is realistic, but he urged occupants to get their affairs in order as soon as possible. “I think the important thing here for people to know is this: these trailers are temporary and transitional housing,” he said. “The bottom line is that we don’t want these temporary trailers in our city for the next three to five years.” (www.sunherald.com)
Sun Herald (12/18/06); Priscilla Frulla
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India’s Real Estate Sector Booms, But First-Time Buyers Beware
India’s real estate market is in overdrive as developers snap up land to build malls and housing enclaves, but high prices and opaque rules make it hard for first-time buyers to land a dream home. The sector, worth $12 billion, is growing at 30% a year, according to the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and prices have risen sharply in the last five years, analysts say. In the first quarter of this year, rent and house prices soared more than 45% in New Delhi, according to real estate consultants Colliers International. About 80% of the country’s real estate development is in housing, not surprising given that the government has said that demand exceeds supply by 24 million units. Middle-class consumers who are buying a home for the first time face many hurdles as syndicates of buyers snap up properties, lured by returns as high as 100% within two years. “Seventy percent of purchases are for investment and only 30% are real property seekers,” said real estate advisor Vikas Jaggas. (www.afp.com)
AFP (12/15/06); Tripti Lahiri
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'Living Loners’ Pressure UK Housing
In 20 years time, the number of single-person households will increase by 53% in the United Kingdom, as the disintegration of the nuclear family proliferates. As the traditional family with 2.4 children declines and the number of “singletons” living on their own increases, the housing market will come under even more pressure as less people fill homes together. By 2006, there will be 9.9 million “living loners,” equal to three-quarters of the total annual household growth in the same time period, according to a report from Alliance and Leicester Mortgages, and the number of married couple households is projected to fall by an average of 34,000 per year. To meet the demand from more people living by themselves, 200,000 homes will be needed annually. “We can expect to see an increase in flats and converted houses in the future due to the rise in the one-person household,” said Stephen Leonard, director of mortgages at Alliance and Leicester, “as understandably, people living on their own will be less likely to splash out on a larger property.” (http://news.assetz.co.uk)
Assetz® Property News Service (12/18/06)
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The Expanding Latino Housing Market Must Be Addressed
Between 2000 and 2010 alone, an estimated 2 million more Latino families will be in the market for housing, making it increasingly important for builders to pay careful attention to the traditions of Latino households, according to Henry Cisneros, the former HUD secretary in the Clinton Administration and the founder and chairman of CityView, a real estate development company in San Antonio. The growing demand will require that: home builders design homes and neighborhoods that satisfy the space needs and appeal to these families; housing-finance experts tailor mortgage instruments to this group; industry markets imagine and implement new sales strategies; and the housing sector in general institutionalize practices that will better serve the nation’s burgeoning Latino population. “Builders must take care to find local themes that satisfy traditional preferences in locations as varied as South Florida, the Chicago area, New Mexico and Southern California,” he writes. “Each area has its own traditions and heritage of architecture, colors and styles.” (www.ocala.com)
Ocala Star-Banner (12/17/06); Henry Cisneros, Scripps Howard News Service
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High-Cost Mortgages Putting Many Home Owners at Risk
A record number of home owners with high-cost mortgages have fallen behind on their payments or are facing foreclosure, according to a third-quarter survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. About 16 times as many of these subprime loans are past due as in 1998, when the industry began tracking subprime statistics as part of its quarterly delinquency analysis. About 223,000 households with subprime loans lost their homes to foreclose in this year’s third quarter, and about 750,000 had missed payments. The survey tracked about 42.6 million mortgages, of which 5.8 million were subprime. Subprime borrowers generally pay interest rates about three percentage points higher than “prime” borrowers with good credit. The deterioration in the subprime market is likely to continue for several years, industry analysts said, noting that the growth of this sector has contributed to near-record levels of homeownership, but that it has also left some owners unable to handle the payments. About 12.5% of all subprime loans were delinquent in the third quarter, up from 11.7% in the second quarter. “It’s almost certain that the number of delinquent subprime loans is higher than it has ever been,” said Douglas Duncan, the association’s chief economist. The number of borrowers is also much larger than it has ever been, he noted. (www.washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (12/14/06); Kirstin Downey
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