housing

Taiz, Yemen – Um Yousef knew that living on the front line in Taiz was dangerous. The area had been quieter for the past few years thanks to a general de-escalation of the war in Yemen, but it still lay between territory controlled by Yemeni government forces and Houthi rebels.

Destroyed buildings mark the city’s front line areas, evidence of the brutal fighting that has lasted for more than a decade.

But Um Yousef felt that she didn’t have a choice. A single mother of four children in her 40s, she couldn’t afford the typical market rate of about $130 for a three-bedroom house in the central Yemeni city. Her husband died years ago while working abroad, so she was the sole breadwinner for the family in a country where poverty has increased sharply since the war began more than a decade ago.

“There is a huge demand for houses, and all my efforts failed while I was living in a single room with my children,” recalled Um Yousef, who asked to use a pseudonym for security reasons. “It was very difficult to stay in that one room.”

After eight months of moving from one area to another, and even searching on the outskirts of Taiz, she ultimately decided that her only option was a home near the front line. Yes, it was dangerous, but with little money coming in, the home she found for about $13 a month couldn’t be ignored.

In January 2025, the family made the move. Two months later, her 11-year-old son came into the house from playing outside with blood pouring out of his mouth – he’d been shot.

Sniper danger

“I couldn’t understand what happened – I didn’t hear any gunfire,” Um Yousef said.

She still doesn’t know the exact cause of the shooting, but many of the casualties near Yemen’s front lines are the result of sniper fire.

Taiz is particularly dangerous in this regard. The front line going through the city is one of the few in the country in an urban area. The city’s geography, hilly and with a mountain overlooking it, offers numerous vantage points for snipers.

A United Nations monitoring project found that 66 percent of all civilian casualties from sniper shootings in Yemen last year were in Taiz. Of the 21 cases recorded, nine were children.

Thankfully, Um Yousef’s son’s injuries were not as serious as first feared. After being immediately taken to hospital, he received medical treatment and was discharged the next day.

The incident woke Um Yousef up to the reality of where she had brought her children to. But she still can’t afford to move. Instead, she has had no choice but to stay and learn ways to reduce the risk.

“Residents here take precautions I wasn’t aware of, like turning off lights at night in rooms visible from a distance, and keeping children from playing in open areas,” she explained. “They have to play behind the houses instead. I’m aware of these things now and follow them to keep my children safe.”

Damaged homes

Taiz governorate is the most populous in Yemen, with a population of almost 4.5 million and more than 400,000 internally displaced people, according to Khalid Alwan, director of the local statistics office.

“More than 10,000 houses were completely or partially damaged by the conflict in Taiz, and there are many more we couldn’t reach to count,” Alwan told Al Jazeera. “Reconstruction is expensive, and most residents cannot afford to repair their homes even if they are in safe areas. This further worsens the housing crisis in the city.”

He noted that while some humanitarian organisations have repaired partially damaged homes in safe areas, these efforts are a drop in the ocean compared with the sheer number of affected properties.

The Nahda Makers Organisation (NMO) is one such group rehabilitating homes in several Yemeni governorates. To date, NMO has repaired 2,389 houses in Taiz, Lahj, Hodeidah, Aden and Abyan governorates – the vast majority of them in Taiz.

While this initiative has helped some families return to safe areas, the overall need remains overwhelming, with an estimated 4.8 million displaced people across the country still unable to return.

Housesitting

Mohammed Saeed has been living in the al-Thawrah neighbourhood of Taiz near the front line since 2023. He believes the war has taken a heavy toll on society, with soaring rents being one of its worst consequences.

“I’m not happy living here as we frequently hear the sounds of gunfire at night. Even if we aren’t targeted, just hearing it is enough to terrify us,” the 53-year-old told Al Jazeera. “In the beginning, my children couldn’t sleep when they heard the shooting, but now they’ve adapted. Adapted to what? Adapted to living in a dangerous area.”

Mohammed, who is unemployed and cannot afford rent, lives in a house for free in exchange for guarding it. Because the neighbourhood is near the front lines, many residents here do not pay rent.

“Nowadays it is calm, but if there is any escalation, we will be trapped in the crossfire,” Mohammed said. “I hope I can find a job that enables me to rent a house in a safe place and leave this one.”

Khalid Abdulhadi, 46, is one of the people who could afford to leave. He was born in the al-Kamb neighbourhood of Taiz city and owns a house there. However, he fled during the heavy fighting in 2018 and has not returned, as the proximity to the front line makes it far too unsafe.

“It is not the right decision to return and live in a dangerous area,” he told Al Jazeera. “Even though I am paying rent while owning my own home, going back could cost me my life.”

Khalid, who works as an accountant for a local company, said some of his neighbours did return and one of them lost their son, shot dead by a sniper.

He has allowed a family he knows to live in his house free of charge, knowing that they are impoverished and willing to guard the property. But he has decided to stay far away.

“I would prefer to live in a safe camp for displaced families rather than a dangerous house,” he said.

“We lost everything during this war; our lives are all we have left, so we must protect them.”

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor against incumbent Karen Bass, seized on significant decreases in street homelessness in her district Friday while blasting increases citywide.

Street homelessness — people living outdoors or in their vehicles — went down by 49% in Raman’s district compared to the previous year, she said at a press conference Friday.

Citywide, street homelessness increased nearly 8%, while overall homelessness, which includes those living in shelters and other temporary facilities, increased 3.4%, according to numbers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s January point-in-time count that were released Friday.

The contrast between her district and the city overall offered Raman an angle to present herself as more effectively handling the homelessness crisis than Bass.

An estimated 45,194 homeless people live in the city, with about 36% of them in shelters, according to LAHSA.

“Far fewer people living outside. Far more people indoors,” Raman, who has served on the council since 2020 and is chair of the City Council’s housing and homelessness committee, said at the press conference. “As mayor, that is the approach, and the results, that I want to deliver citywide.”

The numbers across the city were a setback for Bass, who has made homelessness one of her signature issues and previously touted two straight years of drops in street homelessness.

Raman cited her office’s homelessness team and their “aggressive interventionist” approach as reasons her district — which extends from Los Feliz and Silver Lake into Studio City, Sherman Oaks and other parts of the San Fernando Valley — did not suffer the same increases as other parts of the city.

She said her team is very familiar with homeless individuals in the district and knows many by name. The team tracks homeless encampments on a map and makes sure that empty shelter beds are filled, she said.

Bass’ campaign said Raman was attacking the mayor’s Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people from the streets to shelter and motel beds, at the same time that it contributed to the decreases in her district.

Raman has critiqued Inside Safe as too costly and insufficiently transparent.

“Nithya Raman is taking credit for the results of Inside Safe while campaigning against it,” Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Bass’ campaign, said in a statement. “While Raman takes credit for the City’s work in her district, ignoring the fact that she’s the Chair of the Homelessness & Housing Committee for ALL of Los Angeles, Mayor Bass is working to move our city forward and address years of neglect.”

Raman responded to those critiques at her press conference, saying that her district only had three Inside Safe operations over the past four years — fewer than some other districts.

She deflected when asked Friday about her responsibility for citywide homelessness, as chair of the city’s housing and homelessness committee.

“Council can pass legislation … move motions forward, but it is the mayor that has charge of the implementation and outcomes,” she said.

Citywide, Inside Safe has moved more than 6,000 people into hotels, motels and other types of interim housing since Bass took office in December 2022. But by May 31, 41% of those people had returned to homelessness, according to LAHSA figures collected separately from this year’s homeless count.

Bass attributed the citywide homelessness increases in part to funding cuts by the state and federal government. She also said the county has not provided adequate mental health or substance counseling services.

“This crisis was ignored by city leaders for decades, it’s only now that we’ve seen a historic decline,” she said in a statement Thursday. “I will never stop fighting until we end street homelessness, because no Angeleno should be sleeping on the street.”

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

The price of resale housing in Spain ended the second quarter of 2026 with a year-on-year increase of 17.2%, according to the Fotocasa Real Estate Index.

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Between April and June, prices also rose by 4%, bringing the average to €3,133 per square metre in June. Spain’s resale home prices have hit new record highs in four of the first six months of the year and are now at their highest level in the past 21 years.

Fotocasa’s head of research and spokesperson, María Matos, attributes this trend to a sharp imbalance between strong demand and limited supply. She explains that the shortage of available properties, financing conditions and demographic pressure in the main markets are driving prices up and making it more difficult to access housing.

According to Matos, “the result is ever faster price growth that makes it harder to access housing and widens the affordability gap for a large proportion of households.”

Fotocasa’s data is in line with the trend shown by statistics from the National Statistics Institute (INE), although the two use different methodologies.

While the property portal analyses the asking prices of advertised listings, the INE measures the prices of homes that are ultimately sold. According to the institute, the overall price of housing rose by 12.9% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, while second-hand homes became 13.5% more expensive.

Murcia leads the increases

Prices rose during the second quarter in 16 autonomous communities.

The Region of Murcia recorded the largest rise, at 8.6%, followed by Cantabria (6.3%), the Valencian Community (5.9%), Castile and León (5.6%) and La Rioja (5.1%). The Canary Islands was the only region where prices fell, with a drop of 0.7%.

On an annual basis, Murcia once again came out on top with an increase of 28%, ahead of Cantabria (20%), the Valencian Community (19.8%), Asturias (17%) and Andalusia (16.9%).

The report also highlights that “June 2026 ended with 14 autonomous communities posting double-digit year-on-year increases, compared with 11 in 2025, six in 2024 and seven in 2023”.

The Balearic Islands and Madrid remain the most expensive regions to buy a resale home, at €5,441 and €5,410 per square metre respectively.

They are followed by the Basque Country (€3,925), Catalonia (€3,418) and the Canary Islands (€3,374). At the opposite end of the scale are Extremadura (€1,352), Castile-La Mancha (€1,407) and Castile and León (€1,816).

Provinces, provincial capitals and major cities

Forty-six provinces recorded quarterly increases, with León (10.7%), Palencia (10.2%) and Murcia (8.6%) seeing the sharpest rises, while Cuenca, Huelva, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Ávila were the only ones where prices fell.

The Balearic Islands remains the most expensive province to buy a resale home, at €5,441 per square metre, followed by Madrid (€5,410), Guipúzcoa (€4,695) and Málaga (€4,690). Jaén continues to be the most affordable, at €1,112 per square metre.

Among provincial capitals, León recorded the largest quarterly increase, while Donostia-San Sebastián maintains the highest average price in Spain, at €7,158 per square metre, ahead of Madrid (€6,630), Barcelona (€5,368), Palma (€5,275), Málaga (€4,320) and Bilbao (€4,157).

At municipal level, Santa Eulària des Riu in Ibiza tops the national ranking with €8,491 per square metre, followed by Sant Antoni de Portmany (€8,284) and Eivissa (€7,441). In Madrid, the Salamanca district reaches €10,786 per square metre, while Sarrià-Sant Gervasi leads the way in Barcelona at €7,540 per square metre.

Democrat Xavier Becerra holds a commanding lead in the California governor’s race in a new poll, which also shows broad voter support for a ballot proposition to reform the state’s landmark environmental law to speed up housing and infrastructure.

The survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, released Wednesday night, focused primarily on questions related to climate change and environmental policies.

The results show Californians have a strong distaste for building data centers for artificial intelligence technology, and largely favor the state’s efforts to protect the environment and cut emissions — with some exceptions.

The survey showed Becerra with a big lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the race to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom. Becerra, a longtime Democratic officeholder, received support from 61% of likely voters, compared with 36% for Hilton, a populist conservative who once advised a British prime minister.

Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in L.A. on Wednesday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The results are not surprising in a state where Democratic voters significantly outnumber Republicans. The GOP has not won a statewide election since 2008.

Just 2% of likely voters said they were unsure which candidate to support in the November election. The poll results skewed heavily partisan, with more than 9 in 10 Democratic and Republican voters picking their party’s respective candidate. Most independent voters leaned toward Becerra, 60%, over Hilton, 34%.

The results are similar to data from a poll conducted just before the June 2 primary election that asked voters to pick between the two candidates. In that survey, 52% said they supported Becerra and 31% were for Hilton.

In a statement Wednesday, Hilton characterized the race as “wide open,” contending that Becerra’s support was weaker than the poll’s headline figures would indicate.

“Instead of a 36-year career politician, we need a positive, energetic problem-solver with business experience and plans to make our state ‘Califordable’ — that’s me,” Hilton said.

Becerra spokesman Jonathan Underland said in a statement that “Californians got to know Xavier Becerra during the primary, and they’re ready to make him their next governor. We’re keeping our eyes on the prize — hitting the trail every day ’til November to turn that support into votes.”

Support for CEQA reform

A ballot measure aimed at reforming the California Environmental Quality Act to speed up construction notched a strong showing in the poll.

Nearly three-quarters of likely voters, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, said that they would vote for Proposition 45. The measure would shorten windows for environmental review, public comment and legal challenges for certain housing, transportation, water infrastructure and other projects.

“At this early stage in the campaign, California voters are feeling more aligned with Democratic candidates on the environment, and it shows in the polling,” said PPIC survey director Mark Baldassare. “But strong support for Proposition 45 reveals their desire to balance environmental priorities with housing and infrastructure needs.”

Strong data center opposition

The poll found large majorities of Californians do not want new data centers to support the AI boom built in their area; 44% of adults say they “strongly oppose” such projects, and 29% “somewhat oppose” them.

The majority opposition holds across political parties, geographic regions, gender, race and income. It’s especially pronounced in the Inland Empire, where plans for a 950,000-square-foot data center came to a halt after fierce resident pushback. Three-quarters of people surveyed in that region said they oppose building new data centers.

“Every day, we are hearing about how local communities across the nation are responding to plans for data centers,” Baldassare said. “Californians have weighed in and they share this growing concern.”

Support for environmental policies — except if they cost more

The poll also shows strong, if somewhat qualified, support for California’s efforts to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment.

Three-quarters of adults said policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been a good thing overall, and 65% said they support California leaders’ efforts to make their own environmental policies separate from the federal government.

While most respondents — 62% — said they favor a law requiring 100% of the state’s electricity to come from renewable energy sources within the next two decades, just 38% said they were willing to pay more for electricity sourced from renewables.

“With energy prices spiking and affordability a growing concern, Californians are just not willing to pay more for renewable energy,” Baldassare said. A near-unanimous majority, 96%, said the cost of energy — including gasoline, natural gas and electricity — is a problem.

Newsom’s move to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035 also appears to have fallen out of favor. Two-thirds of Californians oppose the policy, a significant slip in approval from 2021, when a PPIC survey showed 49% supported the move.

Still, majorities of likely voters — 53% and 51%, respectively — said they approve of Newsom’s and the state Legislature’s handling of environmental issues.

At 28%, President Trump’s approval rating on the environment was much lower. In his second term, Trump has moved to slash environmental regulations, including easing pollution regulations on coal-fired power plants and pushing for oil drilling off California’s coast.

“Given this ratings gap, it’s not surprising that Californians want to see the state take the lead on climate change policy,” Baldassare said.

The survey polled 1,578 California adults, 1,003 of whom were likely voters, in English and Spanish from June 29 to July 6 and had a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points in either direction.

Mérida, July 14, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly preliminarily approved two laws granting expanded benefits to landlords and the private real estate sector as part of authorities’ post-earthquake reconstruction plans.

The Tuesday session was held at Simón Bolívar Park in La Carlota, Caracas, after the legislative palace suffered damage from the June 24 double tremor.

The Venezuelan legislature voted in favor of a Law for the Special Regime of Housing Property Leasing and a partial reform of the Law Against Real Estate Fraud. Both projects will now be subject to consultations and revisions before being put to a second and final vote.

“Our main task with this reform is to stimulate the housing rental market,” National Assembly Vice President Pedro Infante stated. “We have to strengthen the legal certainty for property owners and also protect tenants. It’s a legal balance.”

Infante added that officials estimate that there are around 200,000 homes that could enter the rental market but that parliament has to “untie the knots that are holding this market back.”

The existing legislation governing housing rentals was enacted by former President Hugo Chávez in 2011 and it is highly protective of tenants. Grassroots movements participated directly in several housing laws.

In a recent press conference, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez called the current law “regressive” and argued that parliament needed to make property owners feel “more secure in renting their properties.” Real estate chambers have long lobbied for reforms to housing laws.

The preliminarily approved bill expands conditions for landlords to evict their tenants, including two months of unpaid rent, deterioration of the property, or unauthorized subletting. It additionally establishes that disputes are to be resolved via mediation or municipal courts. Tenant movements have recently denounced a growing trend of landlords bringing “invasion” charges against tenants as a way to evict them, with the complicity of public prosecutors.

The partial reform of the law against real estate fraud, likewise approved during Tuesday’s session, loosens conditions for the sale of housing properties yet to be built or under construction while also reducing collateral requirements for developers.

“The reform seeks to guarantee better conditions, legal security, and financing capacity so that the private sector initiates an aggressive, accelerated process of housing construction,” Infante explained, adding that it “removes rigid price schemes,” allowing real estate developers to factor “variations in the costs of materials in supplies” into house prices.

Under the updated law, house sale and pre-sale contracts no longer need to be individually approved by government housing authorities. Instead, the governing body will publish a set of general rules. According to the reform text, banks that finance real estate projects will no longer be liable for their non-completion, with legislators arguing that the measure will boost credit options.

Deputy Alejandra Rodríguez, from opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo, endorsed the preliminary housing reforms for seeking a “balance between the right to housing, the protection of private property, legal security, and the promotion of responsible investment.”

Venezuelan authorities have prioritized finding housing solutions with over 20,000 people forced into temporary shelters after losing their homes in the June 24 double earthquake, most of them in coastal La Guaira State. The latest official figures placed the death toll at 4,734, with nearly 17,000 injured.

Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has launched the “Venezuela Renace” program to conduct inspections and repair works in affected buildings, as well as revitalize the construction sector to generate new housing complexes in a short time frame. She likewise called on public and private banks to expand mortgage programs, vowing that the government would subsidize them up to 80 percent.

On Monday, Rodríguez met with representatives from business chambers, including construction and real estate, and reiterated calls for the private sector to participate in the post-earthquake reconstruction. 

“Every person who lost their home should have hope of being under a new roof in the short term,” she stated.

Rodríguez announced that the government is working on construction plans in La Guaira alongside the Venezuelan Construction Chamber and the Venezuelan Real Estate Chamber. Authorities are conducting soil studies and identifying potential land plots. She recalled that the export of construction materials is presently banned.

The acting president assured those present that Venezuela remains on a path of economic growth and that household consumption had risen by 33 percent in June.

Rodríguez reiterated calls for the removal of economic sanctions against the country and ongoing efforts to secure the release of frozen Venezuelan assets, including gold reserves held by the Bank of England.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

Following the passing of Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani on Sunday, his solidarity with the Palestinian people remains one of the defining legacies of his leadership. He is being remembered not only as a regional statesman, but also as a steadfast ally of the Palestinian people and the only Arab leader to physically break the crippling siege on the Gaza Strip.

In October 2012, Sheikh Hamad visited the embattled Gaza Strip, six years after Israel imposed its crippling international blockade on the territory, following the 2006 Palestinian elections.

Accompanied by his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and a high-level delegation, the emir bypassed the political isolation imposed on the enclave by Western powers and regional actors, leading to a massive official and popular reception.

The head of Hamas’s diaspora office, Khaled Meshaal, told Al Jazeera that the visit to the Strip means that “Jerusalem, Gaza and Palestine mourn him.”

“He was the first Arab and Muslim leader to visit Gaza, standing by its side with chivalry and magnanimity, as if officially announcing the breaking of the siege in its darkest circumstances,” Meshaal told Al Jazeera. “He was intelligent, brave and a man of principles.”

Ahmed al-Sheikh, a senior journalist, Arab affairs commentator and former news director at Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, said the Father Emir had ”a special kind of love for Palestine”.

“Has any other leader in the Arab world done that [visit to Gaza], except Hamad bin Khalifa?” al-Sheikh reflected in a recent interview.

”Why did he go to Gaza? It’s because he saw that everyone around Gaza is neglecting it”, he added.

During that landmark visit, Sheikh Hamad announced an increase in Qatar’s reconstruction grant to the enclave from $254m to $400m, laying the foundation for vital housing, infrastructure and healthcare projects that benefited thousands of Palestinians.

Addressing crowds at the Islamic University of Gaza – which awarded him and Sheikha Moza honorary doctorates for their humanitarian efforts – he praised the resilience of the Palestinian people, while criticising the international community’s double standards.

Personal pain and the ‘spearhead’ of liberation

His commitment to the Palestinian cause predated the blockade on Gaza. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since 1967, meeting with the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during a critical political impasse.

According to al-Sheikh, the emir viewed the Palestinian struggle through a deeply personal lens. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon besieged Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, the emir was profoundly pained. He told his aides that when Sharon attacked the Muqata’a, it felt as though he was attacking Qatar itself.

His connection to Palestine was coupled with a regret that he had never visited Jerusalem before its occupation in 1967, According to al-Sheikh, that prompted him to commission an extensive three-hour documentary on the holy city to capture its history and identity.

Rather than relying solely on international intervention, he believed in the agency of the Palestinian people and that they were the essential spearhead of their movement. “You will do the primary action and without this action there can be no liberation,” the emir once told al-Sheikh.

Defying regional consensus

This stance put him frequently at odds with the regional consensus. During Israel’s devastating 2008–2009 war on Gaza, deep divisions emerged among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members over how to respond to the crisis.

Sheikh Hamad called for an emergency Arab summit in Doha, proposing a $250m reconstruction fund and a maritime corridor to bypass the blockade. He famously expressed his disappointment on live television about the lack of an Arab quorum for the emergency meeting. “God is sufficient for us and he is the best disposer of affairs.”

Some of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure projects before the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023 were the result of financial pledges made by Sheikh Hamad.

Qatar funded the rehabilitation of vital highways and the flagship Sheikh Hamad City in Khan Younis—a $58m public housing project with 53 modern apartment buildings for thousands of low-income families.

Additionally, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, which officially opened in April 2019, became the territory’s premier facility for amputees and children with hearing impairments.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has systematically erased much of the infrastructure Qatar helped finance during Sheikh Hamad’s leadership. Satellite imagery from May this year confirms that Hamad City and other areas in southern Gaza have been wiped from the map.

The Sheikh Hamad Hospital managed to resume its vital services last December, despite suffering direct attacks, severe shortages and the broader collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Operating the only CT scanner in northern Gaza, the hospital has even opened a new branch in the south to cope with a 225 percent increase in amputation cases.

Sheikh Hamad Hospital’s continued operations during the ongoing genocide in Gaza remain a tangible remnant of the late emir’s unprecedented efforts in the besieged enclave. His support for Gaza will remain for generations to come.

The largest single piece of federal housing legislation to come out of Congress in at least a generation is is now law.

It happened in the middle of night early Saturday, without fanfare — or even President Trump’s signature — and it might be a while before many Californians notice its effects.

That’s because the bill, though politically monumental — both chambers approved it overwhelmingly — doesn’t do one big thing. Instead, it does a lot of little things. Individually, none of the bill’s 56 regulatory tweaks, pilot programs and low-cost loans and grants are likely to move the needle on the nation’s housing affordability woes, nor on California’s specifically.

Supporters hope that collectively, they just might.

Even the law’s path to enactment had an under-the-radar quality to it. The White House abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony late last month, with Trump vowing not to sign the bill until Congress first passed his restrictive national voter ID proposal. That bill has stalled out in the Senate.

Still, Trump did not veto the housing package, so it automatically became law Saturday just after midnight, as per the Constitution.

For all that, supporters say this is still a big deal: a major, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at boosting housing construction from a hyperpartisan legislative body that doesn’t typically touch the topic.

“We don’t often gather to celebrate federal housing legislation,” Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, said at a news conference Thursday. “I think the last time Congress passed anything of this magnitude, many of you were not even alive. … It is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

That’s thanks in part to a growing caucus of lawmakers aligned with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement that helped push the bill into law. Many hail from California, a state that has had more experience than most contending with wildly unaffordable housing. But the cause of making housing more affordable, and attributing high housing costs to a lack of sufficient supply, has become a national and bipartisan concern. Case in point: The bill originated as a joint proposal by Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), an ardent conservative, and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), among the most liberal members of the Senate.

While the constituent parts of the bill are relatively narrow and none is specifically focused on California, experts highlight a few provisions that could leave a notable imprint on the state.

Build now (or else)

For high-cost cities that don’t build much housing, as in much of urban California, the federal bill includes a novel carrot and stick.

This portion of the bill would change the Community Development Block Grant, one of the largest sources of federal funding for affordable housing and local economic development. Pricey cities — defined through a variety of data benchmarks like median prices and vacancy rates — with a track record of under-building that continue to see below-average housing construction will have their grant funds cut by 10%. The savings will go to their municipal counterparts that build at a faster clip.

That’s likely to have “real implications for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that have traditionally lagged behind” in adding housing supply, said David Garcia, the deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The city of Los Angeles received $48.4 million in its last award from the block grant program in 2024, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. San Francisco received $18.9 million.

Those numbers aren’t enough to make or break the budget of either city.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, in an email. “Which taken across the country could still have a good impact! Little nudges add up.”

More dramatic than the number of dollars involved may be the precedent the policy sets. Even in California, where the state government has aggressively incentivized cities to plan for more housing development and penalized those that don’t, lawmakers have never punished municipalities for failing to actually grow — an outcome that may not always be under a city government’s control.

Such an idea would have been “inconceivable in previous congresses,” Garcia said.

Despite that, the provision hasn’t engendered much public opposition from local government groups yet. In an online summary, Michael Wallace, a lobbyist with the National League of Cities, applauded the overall housing bill as an example of the federal government “choosing partnership with local governments over preemptions.” He singled out other provisions of the bill that provide expanded flexibility for Community Development Block Grant spending, new incentive programs for adding supply, and new supports for local urban planning.

Chassis change

Manufactured housing units are often colloquially referred to as mobile homes, but they don’t tend to move around much. Built on assembly lines and shipped to where they’re needed, these naturally affordable houses — the likes of which lawmakers across California and the United States claim we need in droves — are often placed upon permanent foundations where a fewer than 1 in 10 ever move again.

Even so, the federal building code applied to manufactured housing includes a costly, vestigial reference to its mobile origins: a permanent chassis.

A giant steel frame with removable axles and wheels, the chassis ostensibly exists to make it easier to pick up and move a manufactured house by truck. In practice, it serves as a 10- to 12-inch-thick floor beneath the floor. Because it cannot be removed upon delivery, it just serves as “dead space and wasted money,” said Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute, the industry’s trade group. Aside from adding thousands of dollars in added costs per unit, it also makes it harder for manufactured units to be stacked into double story homes or multifamily apartment buildings.

The federal housing bill removes the permanent chassis requirement, something that manufacturers and some housing policy experts have been pushing for since the mid-1980s.

“That relatively minor change will expand access to one of the most affordable forms of home ownership available,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) said at the Thursday news conference.
Maxcy said he doesn’t expect the end of the chassis requirement to trigger an overnight building boom in the manufactured home industry. But especially in California, where, due to the high price of land, new single-family homes are more likely to be built stacked on small lots, the regulatory change “provides more opportunities and helps us reduce the price.”

Recovering after disaster

In the months after a natural disaster, long after emergency federal dollars have come and gone, Congress has provided communities with long-term rebuilding grants through the Community Development Block Grant—Disaster Recovery program. Over the last three decades, the program has spent more than $100 billion on the long-term work of recovery, like home construction, infrastructure repair and rental and relocation assistance. That money tends to be reserved for low-income people and communities “who are not going to bounce back without the funds,” said Marion McFadden, who used to run the program under the Biden administration and now works at the disaster preparation and recovery consulting company IEM.

Unfortunately for California, the program only kind of exists. Since the mid-1990s, it’s been stood up and funded on an ad hoc basis, one appropriation bill at a time. That presents a challenge for communities planning in the middle of post-disaster planning. It also means the rules that govern the program — when the money goes out, to whom, under what conditions and for what purposes — are redrafted with each political administration. That’s had the effect of slowing things down considerably. No program funding has gone to Los Angeles in the wake of the 2025 fire storms, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Congress has yet to appropriate any.

The new housing bill would officially write the program into law for at least three years.

“It creates the ability for HUD to have money on hand before a disaster and then make a decision within 15 days about whether they’re going to provide funding,” McFadden said.

What the housing bill doesn’t do: provide fresh funding. Disaster-prone communities will need to wait for Congress to take that up later.

A ‘bottleneck’ removed

For the last two decades, public housing authorities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have been turning to the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program to help repair and upgrade their aging stock of increasingly dilapidated public housing. The program works by switching up funding sources in a way that gives locals more flexibility to borrow money and attract private investment dollars.

Until the new law took effect this weekend, the federal government was only authorized to permit 455,000 of these conversions. The law raises the cap by an additional 100,000.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years and that bottleneck just got removed,” said Russell with the San Diego Housing Federation.
Not all affordable housing advocates are cheering the development. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has consistently opposed expansion of the program on the grounds that the change in funding source could weaken existing tenant protections. It’s unclear whether and to what extent that might be true. A study from last year found no evidence that conversions under the program lead to more evictions.

Wall Street out of suburbia

If you’ve heard only one thing about this housing bill, it’s that it bans “large institutional investors” from buying up more single family homes.

Caveats apply in the final version of the law. The bill defines “large” as any of a number of business structures with control over more than 350 single-family homes. It doesn’t apply retrospectively, so current investors with portfolios brimming with houses need not divest. Exemptions exist for new construction, renovations and senior housing. In California specifically, where corporations and other major investors do not play a significant role in the housing market, the effect is likely to be muted.

The measure “takes a hyper-salient issue for lots of people across the country and does a pretty modest intervention to address it,” said Chad Maisel, a fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress and a former housing policy advisor to President Biden.

Even so, the provision has plenty of bipartisan appeal. Earlier this year, Trump called for an even stricter crackdown on so-called corporate landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom followed suit the same week.

The anti-investor language was considerably watered down from earlier this year, when a related provision threatened to undermine “build-to-rent” projects: well-financed subdevelopments of single-family homes reserved for renters. That prompted a revolt by many developers and YIMBY activists who had otherwise enthusiastically supported the bill, who argued that such communities are one of the fastest growing sources of the U.S. housing stock and provide some of the few opportunities for renters to live in suburban-style, family-sized housing.

After the build-to-rent provision was left on the cutting room floor of Congress, state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat who is now running for Congress, introduced a bill that picked it back up again. SB 880 would have banned the bundled sale of multiple single-family homes, striking at the heart of the build-to-rent business model. That bill died in the Assembly Judiciary committee in late June.

Christopher writes for CalMatters.

July 11 (UPI) — A housing bill passed by Congress became law at midnight Saturday when President Donald Trump refused to sign it, but didn’t veto it.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is a comprehensive law that was designed to make housing more affordable and increase housing supply. Trump refused to sign it because he wanted Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, an election reform bill that would require those registering to vote to provide proof that they are U.S. citizens.

But Congress doesn’t have the votes to pass the SAVE Act.

On Friday, Trump announced that he again would not sign the ROAD to Housing bill.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he said on Truth Social.

The housing bill includes measures that modernize building standards, encourage renovating older homes, encourage communities to build more housing with funding and grant programs, local governments to reform restrictive zoning policies around building housing and effectively ban private equity from buying up single-family homes. Critics of the bill say it doesn’t go far enough, but they acknowledge it’s a good first step.

“This bill becoming law is a genuine milestone — and I don’t use that word lightly,” Dennis Shea of the Bipartisan Policy Center told the BBC. “Getting Congress to move on housing supply and affordability has been a long time coming, and the American people made clear they were ready for it.”

Earlier this year, a BPC survey found that 89% of voters wanted congressional action to make housing more affordable.

Congressional leaders had planned a bill signing ceremony last month, ready to show voters that they are trying to bring down costs, a key issue to Americans. But hours before it was scheduled to begin, Trump canceled it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Trump’s ongoing refusal to sign Friday.

“At the stroke of midnight, a huge bipartisan bill to lower housing costs became law without the President’s signature. Why did President Trump sit on the landmark housing bill for more than 2 weeks? Maybe because there was nothing in it for him personally – no gold-encrusted ballroom, no Qatari jet, no $2 billion crypto deal. Nothing in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing except ways to make housing more affordable,” she said in a statement. “Donald Trump couldn’t pick up the pen because he just isn’t interested in lowering costs for American families.”

At 4 a.m. Saturday, she posted on X: “BREAKING: the clock struck midnight and our bipartisan housing bill is now law. Trump refused to sign it, but he couldn’t stop it.”

“This law is GROUNDBREAKING. It will build more housing, bring down costs, and for the first time, stop private equity from buying up homes,” she said.

Trump had called the housing bill “so unimportant” and “a yawn.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., defended the bill without criticizing Trump’s comments.

He said, “the president has a lot going on, and I think it’s safe to say he’s not read through every line of that piece of legislation.

“What he was saying is in comparison to ensuring election integrity, which is now represented by the SAVE America Act, nothing is as important,” Johnson said. “That’s not to say that there are not also incredibly important issues, and the cost of living and affordability is among them. It’s top of mind.”

“So I hope he does sign it. If he doesn’t, it’s still law; we’ll still celebrate it,” Johnson said. “But he’s trying to make a point and I think he’s making it very effectively.”

Edward Pinto, co-director of the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center argues that the new US housing bill is unlikely to significantly ease the country’s housing crisis. He says it’s too limited to address the core issues – like restrictive local zoning. For the full segment, watch Al Jazeera’s ‘This is America’.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will let the bipartisan housing bill approved by Congress become law without his signature, saying Friday that he was refusing to put his name on it because of the little progress made in passing a strict voter ID bill that he has been pushing.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media.

Trump had 10 days until the Friday deadline to sign the bill, issue a veto, or allow the measure to take effect without his signature. He has chosen to let the measure become law without his express approval, undercutting his administration’s claims that he considers it a priority to combat inflation.

Trump’s rejection of the bipartisan housing legislation exacerbates tensions with his own party in a midterm election year and cuts short their efforts to address a key voter concern about rising costs. His post comes more than a week after he canceled plans to sign the bipartisan legislation, announcing he was using it as leverage in his push for a strict voter ID bill.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to lower the cost of housing and spur more home construction. It’s the broadest federal effort in decades to address America’s housing affordability problems, as state and local regulations have made it difficult to build in many of the communities that are also sources of job growth and economic opportunity. White House economists estimated earlier this year a national shortage of 10 million homes and the bill could help to close a portion of that gap.

But Trump called the bill “a yawn” and “so unimportant” compared to legislation that would require proof of citizenship for all voters.

He surprised Republican lawmakers on June 24, when, shortly before a planned signing ceremony at the Capitol, he announced he would not approve the bill until lawmakers first passed the voting legislation.

That bill, the SAVE America Act, doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after submitting the housing bill to the White House that he told Trump he should get the “fattest black marker you have, and sign your name really big on that.”

“I hope he does sign it,” Johnson told reporters at the time. “If he doesn’t, it’s still law. We’ll still celebrate it.”

He said he also understood Trump was trying to make a point that the elections bill is the top priority. “And I think he’s making it very effectively,” Johnson said.

Still, Trump’s decision not to sign the bill gave Democrats an opening to criticize him on the issue of affordability.

“His priorities couldn’t be clearer: higher cost for families and more power for himself,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on X.

The housing bill passed the Senate on an 85-5 vote and the House approved it with an 358-32 vote.

That legislation seeks to cut federal housing rules, slim-down environmental reviews, make it faster to build homes and limit the ability of corporations to buy single-family homes.

The bill does not address all of the causes of the country’s housing woes, including a shortage of construction workers, climbing insurance costs and wages that have not risen fast enough for renters and buyers.

But the bill has drawn support from the real estate industry and housing advocates.

The U.S. housing market has been a driver of recent affordability challenges as skyrocketing prices have kept aspiring buyers out of the market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that the median sales price increased 1.8% in June from a year earlier to $440,600, an all-time high on data going back to 1999.

Price and Boak write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

The housing legislation will become US law at midnight with or without President Donald Trump’s signature.

United States President Donald Trump says he will not sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill in protest at the Senate not passing the controversial SAVE America Act voting legislation.

In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said he would not support signing the unrelated housing bill, which would speed up environmental reviews for construction projects, expedite development, and limit the number of single-family homes institutional investors can buy.

The bill will become law with or without the president’s signature. Once a bill reaches the president’s desk, the officeholder has 10 days to either sign it into law or veto the legislation. If he does neither, it becomes law at midnight.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the president is unlikely to issue a last-minute veto.

The housing legislation, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Trump called a “yawn” on June 29, was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in a starkly divided US Congress. It passed the Senate by a vote of 85-5 and the House by a vote of 358-2.

The provisions included in the legislation are popular. A Bipartisan Policy Center poll suggested that 70 percent of Americans support banning institutional investors that own more than 350 homes from buying additional single-family homes.

The legislation would also establish incentive programmes for communities to build more housing and encourage the development of modular homes. It also includes provisions that would make it easier for communities to convert underutilised land into residential housing.

Housing remains a major pressure on Americans, with 79 percent saying the cost of housing is either “an extremely important” or “very important” issue, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The US median home price hit a record $440,600 in June, while mortgage rates remain elevated. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is currently at 6.49 percent.

Voting act pressures

Trump cancelled the original signing ceremony for the housing legislation on June 24 in an effort to pressure Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act. Among its provisions, the bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and create a national voter database using state records.

It would also impose new limitations on mail-in voting, even though roughly one-quarter of Republicans voted by mail in the 2024 presidential election, according to an MIT survey.

A version of the voting legislation passed the House but failed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Under current election law, states administer elections, not the federal government.

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

July 10 (UPI) — A bipartisan housing bill that swept the House and Senate is set to become law at midnight Friday if President Donald Trump doesn’t veto it, and he said Friday morning on social media that he won’t sign it.

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act was passed on June 29 by a wide margin of Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress, but the president canceled a signing ceremony at the last minute and said he wouldn’t sign it until Congress passed Trump’s pet project, the SAVE America Act, which they don’t have the support to do.

On Friday, he posted on Truth Social that he refuses to sign it.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” he wrote.

He didn’t mention a veto, but it’s still a possibility.

“The Act states, quite simply, that to Vote a person must show PHOTO VOTER I.D., PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP, AND THAT THERE WILL BE NO MORE CROOKED, CORRUPT, & DESTABILIZING MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPTIONS for Military, Disabled, Illness, and Travel!). THE SAVE AMERICA ACT’S non-passage is CRAZY, and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it! If the Dumocrats, or any RINO (or worse!) working with them, do not allow a positive Vote on SAVE AMERICA, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and pass this, and every other Bill that true Republicans have ever dreamt of (In addition to the upcoming Budget BOMB and the 1929 catastrophic style DEBT CEILING BILL!). The Dumocrats will TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, if and when they ever get the chance to do so, in their very first hour – And I will no longer be able to call them Dumocrats again! The title of DUMB will revert to the Republicans who allowed this horrible calamity to happen to our Party, and our Nation, itself! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote.

If the president vetoes the bill, Congress will likely have the votes to override it. It would need a two-thirds majority to pass the override in the House and Senate.

“This is the exact kind of bill they want to point to and say Republicans are working on issues that their voters care about, and Democrats would want the same,” Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University, told The Washington Post. “That’s not the signal that the administration is sending.”

Since the bill passed and Trump refused to sign it, he has called it “a yawn.”

“To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, everything is a big yawn,” he said.

The SAVE Act is an election bill that would require voters to prove they are citizens when registering to vote. Critics argue that it would disenfranchise too many voters because of the types of proof it would require.

The housing bill includes measures that modernize building standards, encourage renovating older homes, encourage communities to build more housing with funding and grant programs, local governments to reform restrictive zoning policies around building housing and effectively ban private equity from buying up single-family homes. Critics of the bill say it doesn’t go far enough, but they acknowledge it’s a good first step.

It’s the first bipartisan measure that’s passed this Congress.

Some Democrats have been publicly pushing the president to sign the bill.

“It’s been sitting on President Trump’s desk long enough. Sign the bill,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., posted on X.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said on X, “Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass a bill to build more housing and stop hedge funds from buying up single-family homes, but Trump is holding it hostage. He needs to stop playing games and sign the bill so more Americans can finally afford homes.”

On my way through Skid Row to meet up with Estela Lopez, things looked pretty much as they did when I spent time there more than 20 years ago and first heard the promises that things would be better soon.

Tents lined some of the sidewalks, making them unpassable. Some people wore the damage of physical or mental disease, addiction, poverty, or all of the above. Outreach workers with ID lanyards strode through the trash-strewn landscape like lifeguards working against endless tides of fresh emergencies.

When I arrived at Lopez’s office in the 700 block of Crocker Street, where she runs a business improvement district on behalf of 600 or so beleaguered merchants, she had just completed a tour of the neighborhood with John McKinney, a candidate for city attorney.

She held a note card in her hand and shared some numbers, telling McKinney that by her latest count, 131 of the 702 streetlights in the district were out, 27 children were living on Skid Row, and 72 RVs were parked in the area.

“I came out here because I think this symbolizes the greatest failure in government,” McKinney said. “I think it’s the result of bad law and bad policy. I think it’s the result of a lack of leadership and indifference to the way people are living out here. To me, it’s completely untenable.”

But will anything ever change?

It’s a question two people in particular need to address, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

A lot of people I trust and admire work tirelessly to make a difference on Skid Row, and they’re always eager to share the success stories of those who move through and move on. (I’ve got a column on that coming up soon.)

The long-standing problem is that Skid Row is both a social service center and a mecca of drugs and other vices, with traps on every block. And so it’s a neighborhood at war with itself, with some viewing Skid Row as one of the largest recovery centers in the country while others see a snapshot of social collapse.

Estela Lopez has reached out to me several times over the years. About illegal dumping. Typhus. Calls to City Hall that don’t get answered. About the relentless plague of fires, overdoses and assaults.

“Can you imagine, in 24 years, how many people I’ve seen dead on these streets?” Lopez asked me near her office last week.

Estela Lopez runs a business improvement district on behalf of 600 or so beleaguered merchants.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

When the local post office closed recently in part because of security issues, Lopez told The Times’ Melissa Gomez that “we have reached a point in this city where we are unable to address criminal activity. … It’s surrender.”

We walked to the corner of 8th Street, where paramedics had just pulled away from a medical emergency. Cars and pedestrians stopped at tents for brief transactions, leaving little doubt as to the nature of the business being conducted.

We passed a caged dog and saw a puppy on a short leash being loaded into a vehicle. There’s a lot of talk about dogs being bred and sold, and Lopez said she’s seen evidence of animals being mistreated.

On 7th Street we passed the charred residue of a recent fire. A half block east, four men were slumped on the sidewalk, hitting pipes. Lopez gets calls from exasperated merchants dealing with vandalism and with people blocking their storefronts.

“I’ve never seen so many people overdose right here,” said Sergio Moreno, who runs a check-cashing business and said his family has been in business going back to the ‘70s. He said he’s seen paramedics use naloxone to revive opioid users, only to see the same people go down again just days later.

“How can you run a business?” asked Moreno, who chairs the board of the business improvement district Lopez runs. “This business is our life. This is how we got through school, this is how we put our kids through school.”

And yet despite paying city taxes and BID fees, Moreno said, problems persist and his customers fear for their safety.

Dr. Susan Partovi, a street medic for 22 years, has been advocating for more proactive intervention for those in obvious distress. Partovi told me she recently saw a man rise from a gutter, pull down his pants and defecate in front of her. She called to get help for him but said neither paramedics nor police determined him to be gravely disabled.

Lopez walks past residents of Skid Row last week. By her latest count, 131 of the 702 streetlights in the district were out, 27 children were living on Skid Row, and 72 RVs were parked in the area.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“We have become complacent with having people lying in the gutter, having diarrhea, speaking nonsensically and putting their lives at risk,” said Partovi, whom I once accompanied as she administered long-acting anti-psychotic injections, arguing that people need clear heads to make better choices.

One sore point for Lopez is the Skid Row Care Campus in the 400 block of Crocker Street, which opened a little more than a year ago and offers all sorts of social services, meds that reduce drug cravings, and supplies that allow for safe use of drugs.

Lopez said she understands the theory of harm reduction: Engage people with a goal of getting them into treatment and back on track. But she wonders how successful such programs are, and argues that they become magnets for lawlessness.

As we talked, a young man approached and told Lopez he’d seen her airing her grievances on TV news.

“I’m wondering, what would be your solution?” he asked.

“I would hope that people could return to life in sobriety,” Lopez responded.

The man said he is “trying to elevate” himself, but that he’d been on a waiting list for housing for six months.

Lopez is tired of being on a waiting list, too.

“If something is working down here,” she told me, “you can’t prove it by me.”

Progress is undeniable, said Sieglinde von Deffner, a social worker and Skid Row coordinator for the Los Angeles County Department of Homeless Services and Housing. But given the “highly vulnerable” nature of the population, “the need is colossal,” she said.

A man stands among his belongings along 7th Street in Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“I have not yet met someone here who doesn’t want housing of some kind. We just don’t have enough affordable housing for everyone,” Von Deffner said, and long-term homelessness makes people harder to reach. “Now, if we could just stop the inflow.”

Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor who researches homelessness and served as an L.A. County consultant, said there are other ways to get people indoors than investing billions of dollars in new housing that takes years to build. Culhane said single adults who are not veterans, including the elderly and disabled, constitute a majority of the homeless population. But assistance is scarce.

“It’s like you have a famine, and you’ve only got food for 15% of the people,” Culhane said.

Rapid rehousing is critical for the newly homeless, he said. But it can take two years for them to qualify for Social Security disability, and once they do, the $1,000 a month “is completely deficient in the face of rising rents.”

Culhane recommends faster approval of SSI benefits and supplementing that income with additional sources of rental assistance. He believes there are enough vacancies at the low end of the housing market to make a sizable dent in homelessness without new construction.

Judy Mauricio, 65, who has been homeless for nine years, rests inside her tent next to her walker. She says her drug addiction has kept her on the street. She receives state disability funds and says she has cancer.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

As campaign season warms up, I’d like to know if Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, Councilmember Nithya Raman, agree.

The mayor of L.A. is limited by a power split with the City Council, and the county oversees most addiction and mental health services. But Skid Row sits just a few blocks from the seat of city authority, and nobody has more power or responsibility to address the decades-long human catastrophe on Skid Row than the mayor.

Estela Lopez and the merchants deserve better. The people on the street deserve better. Thousands of housed residents deserve better.

Does Bass have a plan other than what’s currently in place? Does Raman have a better one?

If so, I’d like to hear the details, and I’m available.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Published on
06/07/2026 – 11:38 GMT+2

The South Korean government intends to set aside the extra tax income flowing from its record-breaking chip industry in a dedicated “future response fund”, the presidential office said, using the proceeds of the AI boom to bankroll public projects ranging from industrial infrastructure to support for younger generations.

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Behind the windfall sit Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, whose memory chips have become essential to the data centres powering the global AI race.

Their record profits this year have propelled the wider economy, and swollen the government’s tax receipts along the way.

Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik outlined the plan at a meeting between the government and the ruling party on Sunday, saying the fund would help finance large-scale projects built around AI and semiconductors, while also tackling inequality and helping young people with housing, start-ups and work.

Kang warned that the extra revenue thrown off by the chip boom must not be squandered at what he described as a decisive moment for the country’s future.

No figure was provided for the fund’s size, as the government will consider its use at a fiscal strategy meeting this month before consulting the public.

In an interview with the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, Kang added that part of the money would go towards the utilities on which chip plants depend, above all power and water.

A boom that keeps giving

The windfall reflects an extraordinary run for Korea’s chipmakers.

Samsung shares surged more than 170% in the first half of the year, and SK hynix shares rose more than 300%, carrying both companies past $1 trillion (€874bn) in market value.

Samsung is due to publish preliminary second-quarter earnings on Tuesday, while SK hynix plans to raise 45 trillion won (€25.7bn) through a listing on the Nasdaq.

Both are also part of an 800 trillion won (€457bn) public-private push, unveiled last week, to build a new chipmaking hub in the country’s southwest.

How the windfall should be spent has become a live political debate.

In May, presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom floated using it for start-ups, young people, basic income schemes in rural and fishing communities, and support for artists.

The boom has also emboldened workers as Samsung averted a major walkout in May by agreeing to a bonus deal with its largest union.

Additional sources • AFP

Caracas, June 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has created a Presidential Commission for the Assessment of Housing and Infrastructure Habitability following the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that struck the country on June 24.

The commission, chaired by structural engineer Francisco Garcés, began its work on Monday, June 29, in the states of La Guaira and Miranda, as well as in Caracas, carrying out scientific and technical evaluations of buildings, bridges, overpasses, and road infrastructure.

The inspections will deliver a traffic light-style assessment system developed by the Venezuelan Seismological Research Foundation (FUNVISIS) and the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) to classify the level of structural damage through a rating system that is easily understood by the public.

“We have created a traffic light system to determine whether a building is habitable, using the colors green, yellow, and red, so that this commission on housing and infrastructure can decide whether a home is safe to continue occupying,” Rodríguez said during a televised broadcast on Monday.

Under the system, green identifies homes that are structurally stable and safe for occupancy without significant risk. Yellow indicates buildings with moderate or partial damage that require repairs before they can be safely reoccupied, while red designates structures that have suffered total loss or critical structural damage.

“We have found buildings whose structural systems—beams, columns, and frame structures—have not sustained significant damage. However, the masonry has been severely affected. This means these buildings are repairable but cannot be inhabited until damaged walls and enclosure elements are removed and rebuilt,” Garcés explained to Venezuelan media.

The commission brings together specialists from the Ministry of Habitat and Housing, the Ministry of Public Works, the Venezuelan College of Engineers, the Venezuelan Chamber of Construction, Funvisis, and the Engineering Corps of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces.

It is also supported by several academic institutions and will coordinate efforts with governors’ and mayors’ offices from the hardest-hit regions.

“We have deployed several teams of engineers specialized in structural engineering,” Garcés added. “After receiving training in the use of the damage assessment forms, they are able to determine the condition of a structure and recommend the appropriate course of action.”

The acting government has also launched training programs so that professors, graduates, and senior engineering students with the required technical background can join the inspection teams. Authorities say the initiative likewise aims to address public fears among residents who remain hesitant to return to their homes.

Rodríguez additionally announced plans to build thousands of new homes by the end of the year.

According to official figures, the earthquakes have left 189 buildings completely destroyed as well as 585 structures with severe damage or partial collapse. There have been 38 hospitals and 44 shopping malls affected, and 1,645 additional structures, mainly bridges and roads, have sustained damage.

Multiple corporate media outlets have launched claims that the buildings from Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission (GMVV) were especially damaged by the earthquake. However, analysis from open-source tracking of damaged buildings has shown that only a very small percentage of affected structures belong to the housing mission. Former President Hugo Chávez launched the massive program in 2011 to provide housing at next-to-no cost for working-class families.

So far, Venezuelan authorities have reported 1,943 dead, 10,571 injured, and over 15,000 displaced families as a result of the double earthquake. The disaster has seen emergency teams arrive from 27 countries to assist in search-and-rescue operations. For its part, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has deployed multiple military assets and is managing operations at Simón Bolívar International Airport, the South American country’s main air hub.

Alongside the disaster in Venezuela’s northern central region, the Caribbean nation has been struck by further emergencies in recent days. Torrential rains caused rivers to overflow in western Portuguesa state, leaving an initial toll of 100 displaced families. Further west, firefighters have been working to bring forest fires under control since last Friday.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

Rescue teams in Greece are combing through the rubble for survivors after a four-story apartment building in Athens collapsed on Tuesday. Four people have since been rescued from beneath the debris. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the collapse.

The embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority sued the Trump administration on Monday to stop it from depriving the region of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, saying the effort is unwarranted and violates federal laws.

The authority, better known as LAHSA, said in its Monday filing that cutting off the funds would put more than 11,000 people — 1,900 of them children — at risk of losing housing or other services.

LAHSA, a joint city-county agency overseen by political appointees, is seeking a temporary restraining order to bar the federal Housing and Urban Development Department from suspending the funds.

“The people who will be harmed by this decision are not bureaucrats,” said Gita O’Neill, LAHSA’s interim chief executive officer, in a statement Monday. “They are families, veterans, seniors, and formerly homeless Angelenos who rely on these resources to remain housed.”

The filing in federal court comes nearly three weeks after HUD officials said they were suspending LAHSA from applying for or receiving federal funds, citing financial mismanagement, fraud and a lack of safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest.

In its 46-page lawsuit, LAHSA pushed back on HUD’s allegations, saying they were not supported by the evidence. Lawyers for LAHSA portrayed HUD’s actions as part of a larger political agenda — elimination of the federally approved “Continuum of Care” system, which makes LAHSA the overarching applicant for most federal homelessness funding across Los Angeles County.

The Trump administration “has made clear it wants to scrap the program entirely in favor of a homelessness policy favoring criminal enforcement, drug treatment, institutionalization and civil commitment of the mentally ill,” the lawsuit states.

HUD officials have said they are barring LAHSA from applying for funds on behalf of the Continuum of Care, which covers 85 cities, including Los Angeles. LAHSA secured $220 million in federal funds for various agencies in 2024 and $944 million since 2021, according to the June 11 letter from HUD Deputy Secretary Andrew D. Hughes.

HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the letter, Hughes said his agency had received information that LAHSA “may have committed violations of federal law” while carrying out its obligations as part of its HUD grant agreements.

“HUD has evidence that LAHSA’s repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest, pose a threat to HUD, the public, and those living on the streets of Los Angeles,” he wrote.

In the letter, Hughes said that HUD’s inspector general had opened an investigation. Depending on the outcome, the money could be restored or LAHSA could be permanently barred from receiving funds.

LAHSA, in its lawsuit, said HUD has not provided any investigative findings to show violations of the funding agreements. Instead, agency lawyers said, federal officials relied on “a mash-up of old news articles, comments from public officials taken out of context, and findings from routine public audits that included recommendations that were all appropriately actioned.”

Lawyers for LAHSA contend that HUD’s actions violate the U.S. Constitution and override the dictates of Congress, which established many of the processes for distributing federal homeless funds.

The vast majority of the federal funds secured by LAHSA as a grant applicant goes toward permanent housing, agency officials said.

LAHSA, created in 1993, is overseen by a 10-member commission, half from the city and half from the county. Among those commissioners is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who has made homelessness a central part of her agenda. Each of the five county supervisors has an appointee.

At stake in the battle between HUD and LAHSA is an array of services affecting some of the region’s most vulnerable residents.

LAHSA oversees the Homeless Management Information System, the federally-mandated software that tracks homeless people across the county. It has 8,000 individual users and is used by more than 300 agencies, according to the lawsuit.

HUD’s plan to suspend the funding would prevent LAHSA from using the system to match Angelenos — those on the street and in shelters — with housing and services, the lawsuit said.

LAHSA also oversees the annual “point in time” homelessness count across the county. Agency officials have pointed to the results from those counts as evidence that they have been making steady headway, with homelessness decreasing 4.3% countywide and 5.5% within Los Angeles between 2023 and 2025.

Unsheltered homelessness, which tallies the people living outside or in their vehicles, fell by a larger margin, declining 14% across the county and 17.5% within L.A. during that period.

Despite those numbers, LAHSA’s reputation has been battered by some highly critical assessments.

Last year, a global consulting firm retained as part of a federal lawsuit over the city of L.A.’s response to homelessness found that homeless services provided by LAHSA and the city lacked adequate financial controls, leaving the system vulnerable to waste and fraud.

Several months earlier, county auditors identified lax accounting procedures that resulted in LAHSA’s failure to pay its contractors on time. Even after that report was issued, nonprofit groups with LAHSA contracts continued to report that payments were behind schedule.

Last year, the county Board of Supervisors reached a breaking point, pulling more than $300 million — the vast majority of its funds — out of LAHSA and creating its own homelessness department. City officials have been weighing a similar move in recent months.

June 29 (UPI) — As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson prepared to send a bipartisan, landmark housing affordability bill to President Donald Trump‘s desk on Monday, the president told reporters that he remains undecided on whether to sign it.

Trump called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act” so unimportant,” CNN reported. One week ago, the president abruptly canceled the originally planned signing of the housing bill, which the Senate and House passed by overwhelming margins.

“When I look at the (housing) bill, it’s a bill,” Trump said to reporters Monday, The Hill reported. “When I look at the SAVE America Act, it’s about saving America.”

The housing bill is “a yawn,” the president said. “To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, everything is a big yawn.”

The housing bill’s provisions include measures that encourage renovating older homes, encourage communities to build more housing through funding and grant programs, cut some red-tape issues around building housing and effectively ban private equity from buying up single-family homes.

When canceling the original signing of the bill, Trump said he wouldn’t sign it until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship before they register to vote

Critics say the controversial act could disenfranchise millions of Americans, and Republicans have said that they don’t have the votes to pass it.

Trump acknowledged this Monday, The Hill reported, saying the SAVE America Act is “probably not going to happen because we have four Republican senators, maybe five, that just won’t vote for it. It’s crazy.”

The president said that the housing bill’s bipartisan backing was part of his issue with it.

“It’s very bipartisan — that means the Democrats like it,”he said. “They’re getting things that I wouldn’t necessarily agree to.”

Speaker Johnson, a Republican, said Sunday that he believed Trump would sign the housing bill after it was sent to him, “because we’re delivering for the people, and that’s what he wants to do.”

If Trump does not sign the bill, it could still go into effect. The U.S. Constitution stipulates that a bill will become law automatically if a president does not take action for 10 days, as long as Congress is in session.

Trump could also veto the bill. If that happens, Congress has the power to override the veto by passing the act by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.

SACRAMENTO — President Trump was handed a golden opportunity to upstage Gov. Gavin Newsom in Newsom’s own state on an issue of critical importance to Americans everywhere. But Trump naturally blew it.

The governor and the Democratic-led state Legislature shined.

Trump was victimized by his own self-centered obstinance and inhumanity. And Republican congressional leaders were left looking embarrassed and wimpy.

The issue was housing affordability — the lack of it that is stifling the American dream of homeownership everywhere, not just in California.

In Sacramento, the Legislature lopsidedly passed an $11.25-billion bond proposal aimed primarily at providing government subsidies for building affordable housing. Newsom immediately signed the measure last week, just beating the deadline for getting it on the Nov. 3 election ballot.

“In California, we don’t turn away from the needs of our people,” Newsom boasted in a prepared statement, taking a veiled shot at Trump, his favorite political target.

This came just after both houses of Congress, with members working collaboratively in a rare bipartisan manner, overwhelmingly passed a landmark bill aimed at boosting housing supply. The measure removed regulatory barriers, upgraded federal programs and incentivized new home building.

A Trump “promise kept,” the White House proclaimed.

Whoops! The president then suddenly flip-flopped. He canceled a planned bill-signing ceremony, torpedoing the legislation, an opportunity to gain sorely-needed points for the GOP heading into the fall elections and a chance to outboast Newsom, arguably his most annoying political antagonist.

Trump said he wouldn’t sign the housing bill unless Congress approved his unrelated voter ID legislation, which has practically no chance of passage. The least of his concerns seemed to be struggling homebuyers and renters.

As of this writing, it wasn’t clear what Trump would ultimately do. Nothing ever is certain with him. Shocked and confused GOP congressional leaders even held back sending the president the bill, then ducked out on holiday recess.

At the California state Capitol, by contrast, the governor and legislative leaders were united, working off the same page and successfully negotiating a final agreement on housing help.

As icing on the cake for voters, $1.25 billion was added for the popular CalVet loan program for military veterans. Their home loans are repaid through mortgages, costing the state nothing.

But the remaining $10 billion would need to be paid off by taxpayers over 30 years — at an estimated $580 million annually, bringing the total bond cost to about $17.4 billion, including interest.

Putting this in perspective, the Legislature just passed a $352-billion state budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. Of that, $7.5 billion will go for retiring debt on $73 billion in bonds. And the state has voter authorization to sell $38 billion more in bonds.

During legislative floor debates, some Republicans objected to the additional borrowing.

“We’ve got record revenue, why do we need to borrow money?” asked Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Fresno).

That was answered during the Senate debate by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento), one of the measure’s principal jockeys.

Building affordable housing “simply is impossible, it can’t be done without this bond” to finance government subsidies, Cabaldon told colleagues.

Developers are subsidized so they can build at a cost that will result in affordable consumer prices, mainly rents in this case.

Some Republicans also objected to inserting the CalVet money for voter appeal. Assemblyman Carl DeMaio called it “window dressing.”

CalVet funds normally are acquired through very small, separate bond measures.

But in the end, only a few Republicans voted against the big bond, which was officially authored by the Assembly Speaker and the Senate leader to display political muscle.

To their credit, the Legislature and governor in recent years have been whittling away at regulatory obstacles to home building. But many cities still balk at rezoning residential neighborhoods to make room for new multifamily dwellings.

The bond proposal is mainly designed to generate affordable rentals for poor people. More money was added at the end for affordable student and farmworker housing.

There’ll be a separate bond proposal on the November ballot that goes in a different direction but doesn’t conflict. It would help middle class homebuyers. And that measure wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent.

“Housing supply is not just about poor people. It’s not just about homelessness,” says the middle class initiative’s originator, former legislative leader Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles County Democrat.

His proposal would authorize $25 billion in revenue bonds. Like the CalVet program, those bonds would be repaid by homebuyers through mortgages — not costing the state anything.

Under the plan, a homebuyer could borrow most of the money needed for a down payment on a newly constructed single-family home or condo. Typically, a 20% down payment is required. Under Hertzberg’s proposal, 17% could be borrowed. Regular lending institutions would arrange the second mortgage.

To be eligible, a homebuyer’s income could not exceed 200% of the area’s median income. In L.A. County, that would be around $213,000 for a family of four, Hertzberg figures. The home would need to be the owner’s primary residence.

The November ballot will be bursting with state propositions — 14 in all, mostly very complex, running the gamut. Besides housing, there’ll be proposals for a billionaires tax, voter ID requirement, local tax limitations and fast-tracking of public works.

Voters could just throw up their hands and reject everything.

“At some point, voters are just gonna say, ‘I don’t know about all this stuff. There’s a lot of stuff,’” says Dan Dunmoyer, who heads the California Building Industry Assn.

California’s housing affordability crunch won’t be solved by just two bond packages. But they’d help.

We and all of America could also use some help from our seemingly unconcerned president, who enjoys free public housing.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom, California Legislature reach $351.7-billion budget deal
Money (That’s what I want): Controversial billionaire tax proposal will appear on November ballot
The L.A. Times Special: Here’s a clue about these mystery books: ‘Papa’ may be California’s next governor

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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June 28 (UPI) — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Sunday he plans to send housing affordability legislation to President Donald Trump for a signature Monday despite his refusal to sign the package last week.

In an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Johnson said he believes Trump will sign the legislation.

“I’m going to send the bill over to him Monday, and it will become law,” Johnson said.

“I certainly want him to take the biggest, boldest marker that he has and do that big Trump signature proudly on that legislation because we’re delivering for the people, and that’s what he wants to do.”

Both chambers of Congress overwhelmingly voted in favor of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week. The legislation seeks to lower housing costs, expand homeownership access, and limit corporate and institutional ownership for rental purposes.

The bill includes 60 pieces of legislation that would also seek to ease bureaucracy to hasten housing development, modernize federal housing programs and banking regulations, and incentivize local governments to prioritize housing.

The non-profit National Low Income Housing Coalition said the United States is facing a shortage of 7.2 million affordable units for low-income renters, resulting in a housing crisis in every state.

The House voted 358-32 and the Senate voted 85-5 in favor of the bill.

Trump was originally scheduled to sign the legislation Wednesday, but he canceled those plans, saying he won’t sign housing legislation until lawmakers approve the SAVE America voting bill.

There haven’t been enough votes to pass the legislation, which would require people to prove their citizenship before they can register to vote. Opponents to the law say it would disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters.

In an appearance Sunday on NewsNation‘s The Hill Sunday, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., said he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump doesn’t sign the housing legislation.

“I don’t know with this president, because he’s said that he doesn’t care about rising costs,” Subramanyam said.

“He said … if he doesn’t have a housing problem and his friends don’t have [a] problem with housing, then it doesn’t matter to him. So I actually wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t sign it.”

As two powerful earthquakes hit Venezuela, west of Caracas, in quick succession on Wednesday, the country’s capital sustained extensive damage.

Authorities were continuing to search for people under the rubble of collapsed buildings on Friday as 235 people were confirmed to have been killed, with 4,300 more injured.

Here is more about why Caracas has sustained so much damage.

How badly damaged is Caracas?

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck about 160km (100 miles) west of Caracas, followed less than a minute later by a magnitude 7.5 tremor, the strongest since 1900, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuela’s national assembly and brother of interim President Delcy Rodriguez, said earlier in the day that 200 people had been trapped, with 250 buildings damaged or destroyed nationwide.

In Caracas and nearby coastal areas, at least eight hospitals, the headquarters of the Venezuelan Red Cross and the French embassy were among buildings reported to have been badly damaged.

Initial assessments released on Thursday put the estimated economic damage at between 1 and 7 percent of Venezuela’s $111bn gross domestic product (GDP). Authorities have not yet provided a separate estimate for losses in the capital.

However, the heaviest damage has been reported in Caracas itself, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Bogota in neighbouring Colombia, said on Thursday.

Public infrastructure was also heavily damaged, with acting President Rodriguez reporting power outages in Caracas.

Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said late on Thursday that 235 people had been confirmed dead at medical centres across Venezuela. He also told state media that about 4,300 people had been reported injured so far. Hundreds more are feared trapped or missing under the rubble.

How badly has the city been damaged in previous earthquakes?

This is not the first time Caracas has suffered heavy damage in an earthquake.

In 1812, a powerful earthquake roiled the cities of Merida and Caracas, killing about 30,000 people, according to the USGS. The tremors caused near-total destruction of Caracas’s colonial architecture, flattening homes, churches and public institutions.

In 1967, another earthquake hit the city, causing several high-rise buildings to collapse and killing 240 people.

Why has Caracas been so hard-hit?

Venezuela has a long history of devastating earthquakes because it is located along the boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates.

Caracas is also in a deep sedimentary basin, which amplifies the seismic waves from earthquakes, Vashan Wright, a geophysicist at the University of California in San Diego, told Al Jazeera.

Another reason Caracas is so vulnerable to damage from earthquakes is that its buildings and infrastructure are not specifically designed to withstand tremors and are often standing on insecure ground.

Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said the heaviest damage in Caracas occurred in the Altamira district, where emergency crews pulled survivors from the rubble of a 22-storey building while relatives searched for missing family members. Officials said they are still assessing the full extent of the destruction.

“For example, in the [hard-hit] area of Altamira in Caracas, many of the buildings that collapsed are built on sediments, and this makes them much more vulnerable to seismic waves,” Bo said.

“Also, there’s lots of informal housing in several areas across the country, and those types of buildings are not prepared to sustain very strong earthquakes,” she added.

Adequate urban planning and building codes, which incorporate seismic activity, require substantial funding, which Venezuela can ill afford as it has long been subject to heavy sanctions from the United States and other Western countries.

While some sanctions have been lifted since the US abducted former President Nicolas Maduro in a military strike on Caracas in January and he was replaced by Rodriguez, Caracas is still grappling with the effects of decades of underinvestment.

Another issue for Caracas is that at about 7.8km, the earthquakes were shallow, which means they were more destructive than deeper quakes of the same magnitude would have been.

In deeper earthquakes, much of the energy dissipates as it moves through layers of rock. By contrast, shallow ones release their energy closer to the ground, producing stronger shaking and greater damage in populated areas.

How many people live in informal housing in Caracas?

People living in informal housing are more at risk than others during earthquakes because low-cost, self-built housing structures, often built on hillsides and other slopes, are not resilient against tremors.

The slums in Caracas are known as barrios and are densely populated, lacking proper infrastructure. They comprise self-constructed housing or structures built with unreinforced cinderblocks or bricks, often without formal foundations or steel reinforcement, mostly on the mountainous hillsides surrounding the capital.

The lack of proper urban planning, coupled with construction on steep slopes, makes the barrios vulnerable to natural disasters.

While there is no official figure for the number of Venezuelans living in informal settlements in Caracas, academic estimates suggest they account for 40 to 50 percent of the city’s nearly five million residents.

According to the latest National Survey of Living Conditions (ENCOVI), about 55 percent of Venezuelans are living in poverty.

Which countries are better prepared for earthquakes?

Many parts of the world have adapted infrastructure with seismic engineering. Many earthquake-prone countries now plan and construct buildings with damage mitigation from tremors in mind.

Japan, one of the most quake-prone nations in the world, has strict building codes, which means many structures survive shaking that would devastate poorly built homes in parts of Indonesia or Central America. In most inland earthquakes, the majority of deaths and injuries are caused when poorly built structures collapse rather than by the shaking itself.

Japan has made enormous public investments in seismic research and has superior access to advanced engineering technologies like base isolation, which involves the installation of massive steel or rubber shock absorbers beneath the foundations of buildings.

This is why global deaths and destruction from earthquakes have reduced in the past decades. For instance, in 1556, the deadliest earthquake in recorded history in China’s Shaanxi killed about 830,000 people. In 2023, an earthquake hit northwestern China near the Shaanxi province, killing 127 people.