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As more first-time homebuyers are priced out, what can revive the American starter home?
Felicia Ellis is actively looking to buy her first home by the end of the year. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a tree-lined street in Houston seemed like it could be a perfect fit.
But the starter home Ellis desperately wants seems to be priced like a forever home she can’t afford. Someone else put in an offer, and it was accepted.
“[It was] the one that got away,” Ellis said.
Ellis says she has a good job earning around $70,000, but her student loans have made her debt-to-income ratio a turnoff for lenders. She’s previously been approved for a $200,000 loan, which falls more than $150,000 short of the homes she’s been looking at in an area with good schools for her young daughter. Currently Ellis and her daughter share a room in an apartment Ellis rents with her sister.
Five years ago, one in three American families could afford a starter home in 63 of America’s largest 100 cities, CBS News found. Now, it’s down to just 10 cities.
Buyers like Ellis need builders like Sharone Mayberry, who is committed to building affordable starter home projects by taking advantage of city zoning and subsidies.
Mayberry is financing a 40-unit build in Houston using nearly $5 million in city reinvestment funds. The typical price of a 1,650-square-foot, three-bedroom, two and a half-bathroom home in the development costs $250,000, which is about average for a Houston starter home.
Without those subsidies, the homes would average about $350,000 to $400,000, Mayberry said, due to the price of the land.
This housing crisis is at least a decade in the making, according to Chris Vincent, vice president of government relations and advocacy for Habitat for Humanity. The nonprofit, one of America’s largest builders of starter homes, now focuses on advocacy as much as building.
“A lot of this is from the tailwinds, even from the ’08 financial crisis,” Vincent said. “We’ve essentially not been building enough homes for the last decade to keep up with demand.”
In Silver Spring, Maryland, Carolyn Hipkins got lucky. She was making $54,000 a year when she bought a starter home rehabbed by Habitat for Humanity. The sale price was $360,000 with a 0% mortgage.
“I was so happy when I got that call on the phone. I had to control myself because I wanted to scream,” Hipkins said.
Habitat for Humanity doesn’t just build single family homes anymore, either. They’re the ninth largest builder of starter homes in the U.S., offering condos and apartments to a range of incomes. One in six families now spend more than half of their income on housing, according to the organization. Vincent says they’re advocating for access to credit and land in “communities of opportunity.”
The housing shortage is also a key economic issue for American voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed providing $25,000 in down payment assistance for Americans who have paid their rent on time for two years. She has also proposed building 3 million affordable new homes and rentals by the end of her first term, offering tax incentives for developers who build starter homes, and a $40 billion fund to help local governments find solutions to the shortage.
Former President Donald Trump has proposed making federal land available to help with housing supply, but his campaign hasn’t offered any further details.
Meanwhile, for every Hipkins, thousands of people like Ellis keep looking. Ellis is determined to buy a home, and a Post-It note in her bedroom serves as a reminder.
“You will be a homeowner,” the note reads.
It’s the American dream on a Post-It note — and it has sticker shock.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
