NYC considering housing migrants in now-shuttered jail on Rikers Island

Rikers Island Jail Complex

Deuteronomy 28:43-53 43 “Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours. 44 They will have money to lend you, but you will have none to lend them. In the end they will be your rulers. 45 “All these disasters will come on you, and they will be with you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep all the laws that he gave you. 46 They will be the evidence of God’s judgment on you and your descendants forever. 47 The Lord blessed you in every way, but you would not serve him with glad and joyful hearts. 48 So then, you will serve the enemies that the Lord is going to send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, and naked – in need of everything. The Lord will oppress you harshly until you are destroyed. 49 The Lord will bring against you a nation from the ends of the earth, a nation whose language you do not know. They will swoop down on you like an eagle. 50 They will be ruthless and show no mercy to anyone, young or old. 51 They will eat your livestock and your crops, and you will starve to death. They will not leave you any grain, wine, olive oil, cattle, or sheep; and you will die. 52 They will attack every town in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and the high, fortified walls in which you trust will fall. 53 “When your enemies are besieging your towns, you will become so desperate for food that you will even eat the children that the Lord your God has given you.

Important Takeaways:

  • New York City officials are seriously considering a plan to house migrants in a Rikers Island jail that was shuttered last year
  • The move…is one of several being considered by Mayor Adams’ administration to house a wave of migrants entering the city.
  • “It is really not a good idea,” she said. “It is already a very isolating place that really should not be utilized to house anyone.”
  • In recent weeks, the administration has placed migrants in upstate hotels and confirmed a plan to house them in as many as 20 public school gyms, costing the city millions of dollars per day.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Billionaire warns Education rates have increased 160% but TV only costs a few hundred bucks

Marc Andreesen

Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’

Important Takeaways:

  • Billionaire Marc Andreessen warns we’re headed to a world where a college degree costs $1 million and a flat screen TV costs $100
  • Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen warned that the prices of education, healthcare, and housing are “going to the moon,” in a recent blog post.
  • Andreessen pointed to a chart that pulled data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics from January 2000 to June 2022 to prove his point. The chart showed the price of television sets had decreased more than 80% in two decades, while college tuition and hospital services had each increased more than 160%.
  • The Silicon Valley investor said that sectors provided or controlled by the government have become “technologically stagnant.” Innovation in certain highly regulated sectors, like education and healthcare, “is virtually forbidden,” causing high prices, he wrote. Andreessen said that over time the price of highly regulated products will continue to climb, while less-regulated products, like flat screen TVs, will become cheaper.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Survey shows 41% of Americans are looking for more hours or side jobs to make ends meet

Rev 6:6 NAS “And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”

Important Takeaways:

  • ‘Everyone Is Struggling:’ As Inflation Soars, 41 Percent Need Side Jobs to Help Pay for Monthly Expenses
  • Before prices at the pump and supermarkets started taking off, economists noticed a growing number of Americans putting money toward credit card debt or building their savings.
  • Now, according to a new survey by Bankrate, 41 percent of Americans need a side income just to help pay for monthly expenses from housing to utilities to food.
  • According to Bankrate, inflation is driving more than a third of Americans to increase working hours due to rising prices.
  • 23-year-old Shaina Bourne felt the need to drop out of college due to her tight budget.
  • After becoming a full-time nanny, Shaina soon realized she would need more money to make ends meet. That forced her to turn a hobby into a second job.
  • As the cost of living continued to go up, Shaina then picked up a third job. “The extra money is going towards my immediate bills,” she said. “I’ve gone through my finances over and over and over and it’s like there’s a little extra needed in each place. Whether it is gas or groceries, even rent has actually taken an uptick in the last few months.”

Read the original article by clicking here.

As pandemic lifelines expire, Americans in housing free fall

By Michelle Conlin

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Clarence Hamer doesn’t expect to hang on to his house much longer.

His downstairs tenant owes him nearly $50,000 in back rent on the four-bedroom duplex he owns in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Without those rental payments, Hamer has been unable to pay the thousands he owes in heat, hot water and property taxes. In September, after exhausting his life savings, he stopped paying the mortgage, too.

“I don’t have any corporate backing or any other type of insurance,” said Hamer, a 46-year-old landlord who works for the city of New York. “All I have is my home, and it seems apparent that I’m going to lose it.”

America’s mom-and-pop landlords, along with their tenants, have been dangling by a thread for nine months. Now, with Congress still deadlocked over the contours of a second pandemic stimulus package, they are entering a new housing abyss, a perilous period of pandemic limbo as the last of the safety nets are set to expire.

The day after Christmas, the extended unemployment benefits that have kept 12 million people and their families afloat are scheduled to expire. Then, mere days after that cliff, on New Year’s Day, a national ban on renter evictions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also set to lapse.

Overnight, an unprecedented bill of $70 billion in unpaid back rent and utilities will come due, according to estimates by Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. In all, up to 40 million people could be threatened with eviction over the coming months, research from the Aspen Institute says.

Much of the focus has been on tenants. But Stacey Johnson-Cosby, president of the Kansas City Regional Housing Alliance, says more than 40% of the landlords surveyed in her coalition said that they expected to have to sell their units in the coming months due to rental income losses.

“They are sheltering our citizens free of charge and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Johnson-Cosby. “This is their retirement income.”

She added that small landlords are also terrified of speaking out for fear of drawing the ire of tenant rights groups who promote “Cancel Rent” and have bombarded landlords with publicity campaigns featuring their pictures and barricades at apartment buildings and local courthouses.

“What they don’t realize is that if they run us out and we fail, it will be private equity and Wall Street firms that buy up all our properties, just like they did with houses after the last foreclosure crash.”

PANDEMIC DEADLOCK

A $908 billion second stimulus relief package proposed by a bipartisan group of senators is gaining traction in Washington but it is unclear if President Donald Trump will support the plan, and it only includes $25 billion for rent relief—far from the $70 billion needed in January.

President-elect Joe Biden has indicated he will sign executive orders the day he takes office extending moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures as well as other relief measures.

But that will not address a brutal 20 days in January, between the safety net expirations and Biden’s inauguration, when the free fall will begin. And economists say this period of uncertainty has already contributed to economic scarring that could threaten the U.S. economic recovery, which is showing signs of slowing and veering back into recession.

Though Biden will likely be telegraphing his administration’s solutions in the coming weeks, “the reality on the ground is going to be very dark, with people losing homes in the dead of winter during a pandemic, said Moody’s Zandi. “It’s going to be very painful and devastating. There’s going to be a lot of people who fall through the cracks.”

Underscoring the urgency of the situation is the fact that new research shows that evictions have led to increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

A report released Nov. 30 by a consortium of university researchers found that there were 433,700 excess cases of COVID and 10,700 excess deaths associated with the lifting of eviction moratoriums during the summer, before the blanket CDC ban began. States that let moratoriums expire had a 2.1-times higher incidence of cases and 5.4-times higher mortality, according to the researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other four other universities.

The cost of this housing instability is not spread evenly, as Blacks, whose employment has been hit the hardest during the pandemic, comprise 80% of those facing eviction in major cities and are also more than twice as likely to die of COVID than whites.

ZOMBIE PROPERTIES

At first, it all seemed easy. In May 2019, Clarence Hamer’s new tenant had passed a background check and said she would live a quiet life with her elderly father and boyfriend in the $3,250-a-month duplex.

Two months after moving in, she stopped paying the full rent. Hamer tried everything: calling her, texting her, knocking on her door—but to no avail. In August 2019, he filed an eviction notice. But the court date kept getting delayed until March 2020, when COVID-19 hit and the courts ground to a halt.

Then, his tenant sublet the unit to other people –Hamer is hamstrung from getting them out, too. He says they have trashed the once tidy unit, and that there is a constant odor of marijuana, and foot traffic in and out of the home at all hours of the day. He watches it all and feels powerless, his net worth now turned into a zombie property.

“They are going to foreclose. It’s only going to be a matter of time,” said Hamer. “And rightfully so, I can’t blame them. Apparently we are all in this together—unless you are a landlord.”

(Reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by Tom Lasseter and Lisa Shumaker)

New Orleans renters face toxic mix of crumbling homes, weak rights, eviction worries

By Kathleen Flynn and Makini Brice

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Fifteen years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and triggered a mass exodus, the Crescent City is bracing for new storms as it faces an entirely different crisis – the beginning of a possible wave of evictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The final eviction protections from the coronavirus relief bill, dubbed the CARES Act, expire nationwide on Aug. 24. Millions of renters around the country are worried, and evictions typically hit Black communities hardest. But those in New Orleans face a particularly toxic combination of steep housing costs, low incomes, weak tenant rights, and housing stock that is crumbling and decrepit.

New Orleans was battered early by the coronavirus, and as tourism shut, nearly one in five residents were put out of work in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As the city slowly tries to reopen, that dropped to 12.9% in June, but many people are still trying to catch up to lost coronavirus income, advocates say. Up to 56% of Louisiana’s renters are now at risk of eviction, the Aspen Institute calculates, the second-highest percentage of at-risk renters in the country after Mississippi.

Potentially making matters worse, Tropical Storm Marco and Tropical Storm Laura are bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico, and threaten to flood the city again.

KATRINA’S LASTING IMPACT

After flooding from Hurricane Katrina damaged 70% of the city’s housing stock in August 15 years ago, tens of thousands of New Orleans buildings stood blighted for years. Large public housing buildings were demolished, over residents’ protests, and replaced with mixed-income housing that pushed many apartment units out of reach for the city’s poor.

According to the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, a housing rights organization, New Orleans rents have increased by 50% since 2000, while wages have only risen by 2%.

More than half of the city’s 390,000 residents are renters, and of those 61% are considered cost-burdened, paying more than a third of their income on rent, Jane Place calculates.

“People are paying more rent now than they’ve ever paid in their lives,” said Frank Southall, lead organizer at Jane Place. “It’s not uncommon to never see a one-bedroom apartment that’s in good condition for less than $1,200 in a city where the area median income for a single mother with a child (is) $25,000.”

A CEILING IS NOT UNREASONABLE

Amid the pandemic, housing advocates say some landlords are taking advantage of renters’ vulnerable position.

“We are seeing landlords, that if you owe them money right now, they’re refusing to make necessary repairs that they’re legally required to do,” said Amanda Golob, a housing lawyer for Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.

De Borah Wells, a 49-year-old chef who worked at the landmark Creole restaurant Commander’s Palace before being furloughed in March, said her landlord threatened to evict her after she spoke up about her landlord’s treatment of tenants and complained about the repairs her home needed, including the collapse of her kitchen ceiling in June.

“I just wanted something decent. I don’t feel like a ceiling is that unreasonable!” said Wells, who negotiated with her landlord over the August rent because of the needed repairs but the deal fell through, according to correspondence between her and her lawyer. “I can see outside from my kitchen, inside.”

Wells took her landlord to court. On Friday, the landlord let her out of her lease, she said. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

In Louisiana, landlords only need to give five days’ notice before filing eviction notices, which they can do if payment is even one day late.

And, though landlords are supposed to make repairs to keep homes inhabitable, renters cannot withhold rent until they are made, leaving them with little recourse.

“The hard thing is, especially with low-income folks, it is difficult to move,” Golob said, citing unreturned deposits or first month’s rent and particularly COVID-19’s impact on rental searches. “Some people are staying in pretty terrible conditions because it is better than sleeping in their car.”

Brandie Barrow, a 25-year-old cook and mother of two, said she was able to stay current on her rent despite the restaurant where she works cutting her hours during the pandemic.

Still, after she complained last week of mold, maggots and mildew she found in her daughters’ closet, she said her apartment complex gave her 30 days to move out. Her landlord did not respond to requests for comment left by voicemail.

“How inhumane. Why should I have to pay for somewhere that I’m not happy?” Barrow said.

Tammy Esponge, the executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater New Orleans, an association of rental housing owners, said she thought worries about mass evictions were overblown.

The group had been encouraging landlords to work with residents to develop payment plans. So far, in Louisiana, the eviction rate was 5%, she said, though she acknowledged it was higher for some individual properties.

“Landlords don’t want to evict. They lose money,” said Esponge.

Nonetheless, Wells, who moved into her house last September, said she is thinking about leaving the city altogether. “Worse case I can go back home to Chicago where my parents and boyfriend are,” she said.

(Reporting by Makini Brice in Washington and Kathleen Flynn in New Orleans; Editing by Heather Timmons and Lisa Shumaker)

Three of ten Americans laid off in coronavirus crisis worried about food, shelter: Reuters/Ipsos poll

By Chris Kahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three of 10 Americans who lost work during the coronavirus pandemic said they may have trouble paying for food or housing after a $600-per-week enhanced unemployment payment expired last month, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

The poll conducted Monday and Tuesday found that Americans divide blame for its expiration – and the weeks-long standoff in Congress over how to replace it – pretty evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

The $600 weekly payments, approved as part of a $3 trillion package that Congress approved early in the crisis, became a lifeline for the tens of millions of Americans thrown out of work in a pandemic that has prompted widespread business closures.

It expired on July 31, and weeks of talks between top congressional Democrats and the White House failed to produce agreement on a new round of funding. Republican President Donald Trump on Saturday signed a memorandum aimed at restoring half that federal payment, though economists wanted that even if the maneuver overcomes possible legal challenges, it will likely have little impact.

The poll was conducted amid a surge of coronavirus cases in many states and as the Nov. 3 presidential and congressional elections draw closer.

Three out of 10 people surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos reported that they will have “a very difficult time meeting basic needs,” which includes paying for rent or buying groceries. Half said they are under some stress “but we will be able to meet our basic needs.”

The poll found that Americans blame negotiators on both sides of the partisan divide for the government’s inability to extend benefits for those who have been struggling to manage during the pandemic. Twenty-eight percent of American adults said congressional Democrats should receive most of the blame, while 15% said they blame congressional Republicans and another 14% said Trump was most at fault. Thirty-two percent said all share the blame equally.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,215 U.S. adults, including 139 who said they had received the weekly coronavirus unemployment benefit. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 3 percentage points.

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

Lantern-waving Hong Kong protesters take to hills, as leader pledges housing reform

By Jessie Pang and Lukas Job

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters took to the hills to form flashlight-carrying human chains on Friday, using the colorful Mid-Autumn Festival as a backdrop to the latest in more than three months of sometimes violent unrest.

The peaceful protests, on a day when families traditionally gather to gaze at the moon and eat mooncakes while children swing colorful lanterns from the end of sticks, came after Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam promised to focus on housing and jobs to try to end the turmoil.

Lam, who said she caused “unforgivable havoc” by igniting the crisis and would quit if she had the choice, said in a Facebook post her government would increase the supply of housing in the Chinese-ruled city.

“Housing and people’s livelihoods are the main priorities,” Lam said. “The government will add to housing supply measures which will be continuously put in place and not missed.”

Hong Kong has some of the world’s most expensive real estate and many young people say the city’s housing policy is unfair, benefiting the rich while forcing the less well-off to live with their parents or rent “shoe box” apartments at exorbitant prices.

Sun Hung Kai Properties, which reported its earnings on Thursday, said the current unrest was a wake-up call to both the government and private companies to build more housing.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan told reporters a new vacancy tax aims to push developers to launch completed apartments on to the market as soon as possible.

As darkness fell on Friday night, protesters armed with flashlights, mobile phones and lanterns gathered at Victoria Peak and Lion Rock.

They lined the path running along the north face of the Peak, looking across the harbor to Lion Rock in the distance, with mainland China beyond.

Protesters gathered in their hundreds across the territory, singing and chanting, in contrast to the violence of many previous weekends when police have responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon.

“Today, there’s not many here because we have an event in every district, and because this area is not a residential area, it’s a working area full of offices,” said protester Jason Liu in the Admiralty district of government offices and hotels.

The spark for the protests was a now-withdrawn extradition bill and concerns that Beijing is eroding civil liberties, but many young protesters are also angry at sky-high living costs and a lack of job prospects.

The demonstrations started in June in response to a bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts, but have broadened into calls for greater democracy.

The former British colony returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland – including a much-cherished independent legal system.

At lunch on Friday, hundreds of pro-Beijing supporters packed into a shopping mall waving China flags and singing the Chinese national anthem.

Sit-ins at shopping malls are also planned over the weekend.

Activists also plan to gather outside the British consulate on Sunday to demand that China honors the Sino-British Joint Declaration that was signed in 1984, laying out Hong Kong’s post-1997 future.

China says Hong Kong is now its internal affair. It denies meddling in Hong Kong and has accused the United States, Britain and others of fomenting the unrest.

Britain says it has a legal responsibility to ensure China abides by its obligations under the Joint Declaration.

Hong Kong is facing its first recession in a decade as a result of the unrest. A surge in migration applications suggests more locals are making plans to leave.

China has called on its biggest state firms to take a more active role in Hong Kong, including stepping up investment and asserting more control over companies.

Multiple Hong Kong events and conferences have been canceled and the number of visitors plunged 40 percent in August. The city’s premier women’s tennis event scheduled for October has been postponed.

Organizers also called off the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Matilda the Musical”, due to run from Sept. 20 to Oct. 20.

Police on Tuesday set up an “anti-violence hotline” on which people could call in giving intelligence on planned unrest.

On Friday they announced it had been shut down because of “different opinions”.

(Reporting by Twinnie Siu, Clare Jim, Noah Sin, Marius Zaharia, Poppy McPherson, Lukas Job, Amr Abdallah and Farah Master; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Giles Elgood and Alex Richardson)

Texas shale towns grapple with growth as oil-bust fears fade

FILE PHOTO: A sign soliciting applicants is seen outside of a truck stop in Midland, Texas, U.S., February 13, 2019. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

By Jennifer Hiller

ODESSA, TEXAS (Reuters) – In west Texas, the center of the U.S. oil boom, about 3,800 students at Permian High School are crammed into a campus designed for 2,500, with 20 portable buildings to help with the overflow.

School officials had expected enrollment to fall after the last oil price crash, starting in 2014, but it kept rising – one sign of a growing resilience in the region’s oil economy as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other majors continue pouring billions of dollars into long-term investments here.

For most of the last century, oil money has flowed into this region like a rising tide during booms – but residents here had enough sense to know it would flow right back out again when the next bust hit. That cycle has always made officials, developers and voters wary of investing too much during the good times on everything from school construction to roads to housing.

That hesitance is fading fast as oil majors make ever-larger and longer-term commitments to drill in the Permian Basin and residents grow weary of traffic jams on once-rural roads, long waits for medical appointments, pricey housing and overcrowded schools. Local governments, industry and foundations are joining forces to tackle the region’s overwhelmed infrastructure and public services.

“When you have more students, you need more teachers,” said Danny Gex, principal at the Odessa school, which was made famous as the home of the Permian Panthers football team in the book and screen adaptations of “Friday Night Lights.”

Texas has a statewide teacher shortage, Gex said, and “when you’re in a desert, it makes it a lot more difficult to find them.”

Also in severe shortage: housing. The median price of a home in Midland, $311,000 in April, was higher than any other Texas city except the hip tech-industry hub of Austin, according to data tracked by Texas A&M University.

(For a graphic comparing Midland home prices to the rest of Texas, see: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Zd7YIS )

Former convenience store manager Ruben Garcia came to the region and now earns $2,000 to $2,500 a week hauling sand to fracking sites. But he had to sleep in his truck until he could find an RV to rent.

“I had to go where the money is, and the money is here,” Garcia said.

The city of Midland, the local hospital district and other employers are considering banding together to build apartments for workers, said Jerry Morales, mayor of Midland, the de facto capital of the Permian. In neighboring Odessa, the school district has considered buying a hotel to house new teachers.

“That’s crazy to even think that,” said Gex, the principal.

STAYING POWER

The oil industry, of course, still has its ups and downs, like any business involving global commodities subject to rapid market shifts.

Some of the smaller producers that pioneered shale drilling in the Permian, such as Concho Resources, Laredo Petroleum and Whiting Petroleum, are downshifting as West Texas oil prices have lost 16% and natural gas has tumbled 36% over the past year.

But the world’s biggest oil majors are increasingly taking control of the Texas shale business, and their drilling plans – sometimes sketched out in decades rather than years – are envisioned to withstand the usual price drops.

That means they will need to lure more staff to live permanently with their families in cities such as Midland and Odessa, rather than depending on “man camps” for transient roughnecks or relying on temporary worker-training schemes.

In Midland, a group of local foundations started by wealthy area families, as well as a consortium of energy firms, recently put up $38.5 million to finance 14 tuition-free charter schools to relieve the stress on local classrooms.

“The mindset is changing,” said Mayor Morales. “There are those who understand we’re growing and we need these things.”

But it’s a scramble to catch up: “We’re behind, because we never invested in ourselves.”

On the New Mexico side of the Permian, local governments, schools and foundations joined together to build a $63 million sports complex with a water park in Hobbs. Hotel taxes from visiting energy workers will pay part of the facility’s operating costs, said Hobbs Mayor Sam Cobb.

Hobbs’ next proposal involves a $60 million vocational high school that would help turn out welders, electricians and other skilled blue-collar workers. Oil firm executives will consult on the curriculum by offering insight into the skills they need in new hires, he said.

“I think there’s more sustainability because all of the supermajors have come back into the area,” Cobb said.

While many local officials and civic leaders say the region has permanently left its boom-and-bust cycle behind, others remain wary. Alan Herig arrived in Midland in 1977 to sell oilfield equipment and later opened an office supply store. He went from flying to Houston for steak lunches to painting houses after oil prices crashed.

“Midland became a ghost town,” said Herig, who now owns three hotels in the area and believes hard times could come again any day.

Still, Herig understands why city officials and civic groups are scrambling to upgrade local infrastructure and services.

“Midland is way behind,” Herig said. “They need to invest.”

ORANGE BUCKETS AND FOLDING TABLES

The latest shale boom, which started about three years ago, has brought jobs and wealth but also many hassles to day-to-day life.

Midland resident and energy executive Kaes Van’t Hof had a hard time scheduling an eye-doctor’s appointment for new contacts before his wedding earlier this year.

“Simple things have to be planned far in advance here,” Van’t Hof said.

Max Campos, a tattoo artist who lives in Odessa, recently sold his motorcycle after concluding it was no longer safe to ride alongside heavy truck traffic.

Odessa, a city of 120,000 people, drew unwanted attention last year after a school teacher equipped a classroom with orange buckets and folding tables because of a lack of chairs and desks. The school found tables after photos of students using the makeshift furniture went viral online.

Several groups have formed to bring change to the region, and local officials are finding that voters are more receptive to approving new spending on services such as schools and roads.

Priority Midland – a long-range planning initiative formed this year by officials in government, business and philanthropy – plans get-out-the-vote efforts to press for increased school financing and a possible sales tax hike to pay for hospital services or improved roads, Morales said.

The Permian Strategic Partnership, a group of 20 energy companies operating in the area, promises to spend $100 million to promote training, education, health care, housing and roads. The partnership chipped in $16.5 million for the charter school initiative, which will open its first campus in August 2020 and plans to offer public education to 10,000 students over time.

One member of the organization is Travis Stice, chief executive at Midland’s Diamondback Energy, which has been among the Permian’s fast-growing firms.

It’s time for the community, he said, to trust that the oil industry is here to stay.

“We’ve allowed ourselves to be rangebound by thinking: ‘Don’t invest during the boom time because the bust time is coming,'” Stice said.

(Graphic: How shale booms affect Midland, Texas, home prices link: https://editdata.thomsonreuters.com/#/portal/groups/editorcharts).

(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller in west Texas; Editing by Gary McWilliams and Brian Thevenot)

U.S. new home sales hit seven-month high; services sector rebounds

FILE PHOTO: A real estate sign advertising a new home for sale is pictured in Vienna, Virginia, U.S. October 20, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sales of new U.S. single-family homes rose to a seven-month high in December, but November’s outsized jump was revised lower, pointing to continued weakness in the housing market.

Other data on Tuesday showed an acceleration in growth in the vast services sector in February, powered by a surge in new orders. But hiring appeared to be slowing, with a measure of services industries employment dropping to a six-month low.

The moderation in the pace of hiring fits in with expectations of slower economic growth as the stimulus from a $1.5 trillion tax cut and increased government spending ebbs. The economy’s outlook is also being clouded by slowing growth in China and Europe.

The Commerce Department said new home sales increased 3.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 621,000 units, the highest level since May 2018. November’s sales pace was revised down to 599,000 units from the previously reported 657,000 units.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales, which account for about 11.2 percent of housing market sales, falling 8.7 percent to a pace of 600,000 units in December.

New home sales are drawn from permits and tend to be volatile on a month-to-month basis. They fell 2.4 percent from a year ago. Single-family home sales rose 1.5 percent in 2018.

The release of the December report was delayed by a five-week partial shutdown of the federal government that ended on Jan. 25.

The housing market hit a soft patch last year amid higher mortgage rates, expensive lumber as well as land and labor shortages, which led to tight inventories and less affordable homes. Reports last month showed homebuilding dropping to more than a two-year trough in December and home resales in January hitting their lowest level since November 2015.

Though house price inflation has slowed and mortgage rates are hovering at 12-month lows, economists expect the housing market to remain weak for a while because of persistent land and labor shortages. Investment in homebuilding contracted 0.2 percent in 2018, the weakest performance since 2010.

The soft housing data added to weak December construction spending, retail sales, factory orders, exports and business spending plans on equipment in setting the economy on a slower growth path in the first quarter.

SERVICES INDUSTRIES HUMMING

Despite the anticipated first-quarter weakness, the economy’s fundamentals remain favorable. In a separate report on Tuesday, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its non-manufacturing activity index increased 3.0 points to a reading of 59.7 last month.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. January’s drop in the services sector index was largely blamed on financial market volatility and the government shutdown.

The ISM’s new orders sub-index for the services sector surged 7.5 points to a reading of 65.2 last month, the highest level since August 2005. But the survey’s services industry employment measure fell 2.6 points to 55.2 in February, the weakest reading since June 2018.

U.S. Treasury yields jumped after the ISM report, while U.S. stocks pared losses. The U.S. dollar was trading slightly higher against a basket of currencies. The Commerce Department report showed new home sales in the South, which accounts for the bulk of transactions, increased 5.0 percent to a seven-month high in December.

Sales rose 1.4 percent in the West and jumped 44.8 percent in the Northeast. But they fell 15.3 percent in the Midwest to their lowest level since April 2016.

The median new house price fell 7.2 percent to $318,600 in December from a year ago. There were 344,000 new homes on the market in December, the most since December 2008 and up 3.0 percent from November. Supply is, however, just over half of what it was at the peak of the housing market boom in 2006.

At December’s sales pace it would take 6.6 months to clear the supply of houses on the market, down from 6.7 months in November. Just under two-thirds of the houses sold last month were either under construction or yet to be built.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)

U.S. mortgage requests rise as loan rates hold near 10-month low: MBA

A view of single family homes for sale in San Marcos, California October 25, 2013. PROPERTY REUTERS/Mike Blake

(Reuters) – U.S. mortgage applications increased for the first time in five weeks as most home borrowing costs hovered near their lowest in 10 months, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday.

The Washington-based industry group said its seasonally adjusted gauge of loan requests to buy a home and to refinance one rose 3.6 percent to 365.3 in the week ended Feb. 15. The prior week’s reading was the lowest in a month.

“Mortgage rates held steady on mixed economic news, as core inflation remained firm, while retail sales in December were much weaker than expected. However, overall application activity picked up over the week,” Joel Kan, MBA’s associate vice president of industry surveys and forecasts, said in a statement.

Interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances of $484,350 or less ticked up to 4.66 percent from the prior week’s 4.65 percent, which was the lowest since March 2, 2018.

U.S. Treasury yields, which are benchmarks for most mortgages, rose last week as underlying inflation trends remained intact and traders reduced their safe-haven bond holdings on optimism that China and the United States would resolve their trade conflict.

The other mortgage rates that MBA tracks were unchanged to 8 basis points higher on the week.

“Most rates remained close to 10-month lows, which allowed some borrowers with an incentive to refinance to capitalize,” Kan said.

The group’s seasonally adjusted barometer on home refinancing requests rose 6.4 percent to 1,084.4.

The refinance share of total mortgage applications was 41.7 percent last week, compared with 41.8 percent the prior week.

MBA’s seasonally adjusted gauge on applications to buy a home, which is seen as a proxy on future housing activity, climbed 1.7 percent at 232.7 last week.

(Reporting by Richard Leong in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)