Housing

Shots – Health News : NPR

Tiny houses are cropping up around the country to give shelter to the homeless : Shots – Health News : NPR

Tucked inside a residential neighborhood in Madison, Wis., and surrounded by a wooden fence and greenery, are nine little houses. With multicolored siding and roofs, they look like people-sized birdhouses. And they fit right in.

So does Gene Cox, 48. He hasn't been homeless in more than seven years. That's the point of this little development.

"This is the longest time I've stayed in one place," said Cox, nursing coffee and a cigarette outside his tiny home after working second shift as a benefits administrator. "I'm very nomadic. I've moved around Wisconsin a lot over the last 22 years."

There are 21,986 log homes in NY State.

There are 21,986 log homes in NY State.

CountyNumber of Log Homes
Albany314
Allegany350
Broome317
Cattaraugus307
Cayuga275
Chautauqua335
Chemung167
Chenango437
Clinton68
Columbia347
Cortland192
Delaware977
Dutchess583
Erie409
Essex925
Franklin485
Fulton392
Genesee135
Greene777
Hamilton485
Herkimer498
Jefferson415
Lewis389
Livingston286
Madison347
Monroe217
Montgomery126
Niagara154
Oneida728
Onondaga376
Ontario495
Orange542
Orleans134
Oswego547
Otsego416
Putnam229
Rensselaer440
Rockland17
Saratoga664
Schenectady115
Schoharie478
Schuyler180
Seneca111
Steuben513
St. Lawrence711
Suffolk34
Sullivan617
Tioga309
Tompkins274
Ulster781
Warren1288
Washington501
Wayne279
Westchester3
Wyoming265
Yates242

The Surfside Tower Was Just Another Condo Building – The Atlantic

The Surfside Tower Was Just Another Condo Building – The Atlantic

Behind much of the skepticism of the condo system were tensions between private rights in property and community obligations. Between the 1880s and World War I, co-owned buildings in the United States were mostly sponsored directly by future tenants (foreshadowing the recent wave of baugruppen in Berlin). By the 1920s, though, speculative developers came to dominate. To sell apartments, they learned to emphasize lifestyle, including ease of physical maintenance (“no lawn to mow,” read many an ad), while downplaying responsibilities.

But owning an apartment, like any other property, comes with its own burdens—just ones less tangible than a lawn. No matter the system, ownership turns tenants, ready or not, into landlords: Members of a condominium automatically become co-owners of a corporate entity responsible for common elements. As nearly everyone who has ever owned an apartment in a large building knows, however, rare is the condo owner who’s attuned to this duty, and rarer still is the one who attends association meetings, let alone serves on the board of directors.

And yet developers and sales agents recognized this gap early on. While honing their marketing strategies, they began to encourage buildings to hire “professional” management, leaving associations with few direct responsibilities. Governance could still be challenging. In co-ops in New York and D.C., where associations typically screen new buyers (ostensibly for reasons of financial security), battles erupted over whether to allow resales to Jewish people and, later, single women, Black people, and gay men. In more recent decades, residents of condo buildings have feuded over everything from cosmetic upgrades (redecorating lobbies) to the installation of EV charging stations. These disputes hint at why some early critics believed that condos would inevitably result in huge problems, including premature physical decay.

Assessor Manuals

Assessor Manuals

Assessor Manuals are published by the Office of Real Property Tax Services and distributed to local assessors in order to help them perform their duties. These manuals contain information on how to maintain assessment and tax rolls, collect information on properties in their municipality,?estimate market value and administer exemptions on qualified parcels. Updates are issued annually where appropriate.? The information contained in these manuals is intended to supplement the training that each local assessor must receive in order to retain their position. While these manuals provide information of aid to local assessment officials, they do not contain all that an assessor must know in order to fulfill their responsibilities.