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Our
firm, Delamere-Pennine
Associates has been involved with clients in the construction
industry and also owned its own building company, Delamere Construction,
for many years. Plus our company owned estate agencies in Cape Town, namely
Delamere Estates and Pennine Estates. Projects related to the construction
of new houses, renovating and subdividing properties
and sectional title (see footnote)
development, have all contributed to the experience of our company,
which assisted toward researching information for this page on our
website.
The
main thrust of our construction services are now connected
primarily to consulting, research of existing products and services,
researching new products in the construction industry and directing
our clients or website visitors to the most reliable sources of information
and suppliers. We trust that this page will prove to be an invaluable
aid to the owner-builder or contractor.
Is
Housing For Everyone a Reality in the USA?
-
America
faces a crisis that has been largely unreported and ignored: Millions
of American families cannot afford adequate housing. The statistics
are clear and they are disturbing. Fourteen percent of American
families today, 13.7 million households, have critical housing
needs, meaning that they spend more than half of their income
on housing or live in seriously substandard conditions.
-
Two
factors are contributing most to this growing problem.
-
First,
is a significant increase in population. The recent census
reports that 1.35 million households were formed in this country
every year during the last decade. That's 200,000 more households
per year than previously believed. Those new housholds need
housing. To keep up with the underlying demand, we need to
build about 1.6 million new homes and apartments units each
and every year.
-
The
second factor is the resistance to construction of new
multi-family housing. This is a national trend, and it is
having a significant impact on the supply of housing available
for low-income families.
-
Environmentalists, home builders, advocates for the poor and homeless,
and urban planners all agree on one aspect of growth policy, that
is the need to construct more housing in our cities and inner
suburbs.
-
The
only people who don't agree with this strategy are the homeowners
who live near any proposed new housing development. The problem
is that individual resistance to rental and other multifamily
housing presents a formidable barrier. Those barriers often cause
the homebuilder to look elsewhere, and that means housing that
is affordable to low-income families often do not get built.
-
The new term we are hearing more and more is "snob zoning."
Local governments, often pressured by their constituents, are
adopting zoning patterns that greatly restrict where and how much
multifamily housing can be built.
-
Put these factors together, a burgeoning population, a decreasing
supply of low-income rental units, local governments that adopt
zoning plans that restrict multifamily development, and neighborhood
activists who fight new development, and its not hard to see why
it is increasingly difficult for low-income families to find adequate
housing.
-
The
answer to this nation's housing crisis is for all the stakeholders
in this process to do their part. There are solutions. But to
get from here to there, we will need creativity, cooperation,
and, perhaps most important, the political will to make the right
decisions.
These
comments are a reprint of a news release on 4 November 2001 by the
Home Builders Association of the Greater Salt Lake Region of the USA
Footnote:
Some of our readers have requested clarification on the property ownership
system of Sectional Title used in South Africa. Please visit
this page for a brief synopsis of the topic. We currently have
several Duplex and Simplex units in the Garden City Heights Complex
in Central Pinelands, Cape Town, for sale. If you would like more
information please contact
us.
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