Imagine your daily routine: Do you brush your teeth or take a shower? Do you grab a coffee on your way to work? Drive your car? Pay bills? Shop for groceries? Now imagine that you have less than $2 a day to accomplish those tasks. Suddenly, obtaining even the most basic essentials — food, clean water, electricity, shelter — seems out of reach.
Despite the impossibility of living on so little, more than 700 million people globally manage to survive on just $1.90 a day or less. This is called absolute poverty, and while the term may seem almost self-explanatory, living in absolute poverty is a much more complex problem than the lack of money. Being born into these circumstances, many families lack the knowledge or opportunities to lift themselves out. Living in survival mode means experiencing limiting daily challenges that compound into a cycle, making it incredibly difficult to escape because those challenges directly prevent the pursuit of economic uplift. When you live in absolute poverty, meeting the minimum requirements for basic needs is a daily, sometimes hourly, struggle. Things like food, safe drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, and housing are often scarce or even outright unattainable.
What does it mean to live in absolute poverty?
When we talk about absolute poverty, we’re talking about a condition characterized by a severe lack of basic human needs over a prolonged period of time. What many of us take for granted — clean water from the faucet, a roof over our heads, several meals a day — is an impossible struggle for those facing absolute poverty. In fact, they will have limited or no access to these basic needs:
Food and nutrition
Clean drinking water
Adequate housing or shelter
Education and information
Basic healthcare
Also known as extreme poverty or abject poverty, absolute poverty isn’t necessarily caused by one deciding factor. Often, it’s a combination of circumstances such as unemployment, political and civil conflict, social inequality, natural disasters, disease, and more that culminate in an endless cycle that’s difficult to escape. The solution is usually multi-tiered, and having a job does not necessarily guarantee reprieve from absolute poverty. According to the United Nations, 8% of employed workers and their families worldwide lived in extreme poverty in 2018. Absolute poverty also disproportionately affects children, with one out of five kids living in this condition.
Absolute Poverty vs. Relative Poverty
Absolute poverty is often confused with relative poverty, but the terms are not interchangeable. Relative poverty refers to a household income that falls a particular percentage below the median income. In other words, if you’re living in relative poverty, you lack the minimum income needed to maintain your society’s average standard of living. While not nearly as extreme as absolute poverty, relative poverty still affects 46.2 million Americans, with 22% of the population under the age of 18 living in this condition.
How Homes Can Help
We’re firm believers that homes can create futures for children in absolute poverty, and here’s why: Having a place to live promotes safety, health and sanitation, education, and community. When you have a safe shelter, you have personal security — one of the most basic deficiency needs that includes protection from the elements, stability, and freedom from fear. Having a home complete with proper restrooms also means water contamination is less likely, greatly reducing the risk of illness. Finally, when people (specifically children) have a roof over their heads, they have somewhere to study and get a good night’s sleep — factors that significantly improve their ability to focus on schoolwork and complete their education.
What You Can Do
For families living in poverty, even a small donation can make a monumental impact. When you contribute to a charitable organization like New Story, you’re giving people the foundation they need to escape the in-opportune cycle of survival-mode living. That’s because New Story works with local partners to build holistic communities around the world using innovative technology and a completely transparent donation model. When, for example, you give to homebuilding, 100 percent of that money goes directly to building a home for a family in need. And with your help, we can hope to end global homelessness for the one billion people who are living without adequate shelter.
Running an Airbnb in L.A. has never been more profitable.
As the city tries to crack down on illegal listings, and advocacy groups complain about the company’s effect on L.A.’s housing crisis, hosts are charging higher rates than ever while raking in bigger and bigger payouts.
But don’t expect them to talk about it.
Data show that a vast number of homes are operating without an active registration, which is required by the city to operate a short-term rental. Several such hosts spoke to The Times anonymously for fear of being fined by the city or, worse, getting their listing shut down by Airbnb.
“This is my primary source of income,” said one host who operates three different listings. “I’m finally making a decent living off of this. One listing alone wouldn’t cut it.”
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Since 2020, revenues for hosts have steadily risen far beyond pre-pandemic levels. The average revenue climbed to $17,654 in 2022, up more than $4,000 year-over-year, and the numbers are at a similar pace for 2023, according to data from short-term rental analytics company AllTheRooms.
In total, L.A. hosts earned a combined $375 million last year, a spokesperson for Airbnb said.
A few factors contribute to the rise. For one, daily rates for Airbnb rentals have spiked over the last four years, swelling from $152 in 2019 to $244 in 2023. It’s a trend that’s happening across the short-term rental industry, as hotel and VRBO rates have steadily risen since the COVID-19 pandemic as well.
Basic supply and demand is another factor. Save for a drop during the first few months of the pandemic, Airbnb occupancy rates have largely stayed consistent, with the average rental occupied more than 40% of the time. But the amount of listings has dropped dramatically.
In August 2019, there were 16,973 Airbnb listings in L.A. Currently, there are 7,360.
Supply is down for now, but advocates worry that if revenues continue to rise, more homeowners will convert properties into Airbnbs.
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Much of the drop was due to the pandemic, but the supply hasn’t risen since 2020 partly due to the city’s enforcement of its Home-Sharing Ordinance, a law that went into effect in 2019 that limits Angelenos to hosting only short-term rentals in their primary residence — homes where they can prove they live at least six months per year.
L.A. and Airbnb have worked in tandem over the years to enforce the law, launching a system in 2020 that streamlines the process of identifying and taking down illegal short-term rental listings.
It has been effective; the number of listings for short-term rental units across all home-sharing sites has dropped more than 70% over the last four years, going from roughly 36,600 in November 2019 to just under 10,000 in June 2023, according to the city planning department.
But plenty remain.
The Times previously reported that thousands of listings violate the law, and last year, a report claimed that 22% of L.A. listings host guests for more than 180 days a year.
“I can’t afford to rent out my place for only six months a year. I’d lose half my revenue,” said one host who rents a two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood on Airbnb.
Two other Airbnb hosts hung up the phone mid-interview when asked about whether their listing was their primary residence, or whether their registration number was valid.
“It’s a don’t ask, don’t tell system. I can’t afford to have my business threatened over a registration number,” one said.
As of August, there are 4,293 active home-sharing registrations, according to the city’s planning department. But on Airbnb alone, there are currently 7,360 listings up for rent.
“L.A. has a big enough rent problem on its own, and then you have a rogue industry that swoops into the city and starts taking rental properties off the market,” said Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College.
Dreier worked with the team that drafted Measure ULA, a new tax that funnels money toward affordable housing initiatives, and said that the short-term rental industry is contributing to both the housing crisis and homelessness crisis.
“When you take units off the market and rent them to tourists, one consequence is that it leads to more people fighting over fewer units. And that leads to higher rents,” he said.
The planning department is preparing a report with other departments analyzing enforcement of the Home-Sharing Ordinance. It will provide recommendations to the City Council on how to improve the program.
In the meantime, more listings bring more tax dollars. L.A. charges a 14% transient occupancy tax, often called a “bed tax,” paid by guests in a hotel or a short-term rental such as an Airbnb.
In the 2021-22 fiscal year, the city collected $33.88 million in transient occupancy taxes, according to the planning department.
It’s a hefty amount, but a report from McGill University urban planning professor David Wachsmuth suggests that the city could be raking in even more by fining illegal short-term rental listings.
The study claimed that 45% of all short-term rental listings are illegal in one way or another, and that the city could have levied between $56.8 million and $302.2 million in fines in 2022.
“I’ve never paid a fine, but my guests pay the tax. As long as the city’s getting money from somewhere, they’ll be fine,” said the Hollywood Airbnb host.
Randy Renick, an attorney with Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai LLP, serves as executive director of Better Neighbors LA, a coalition that includes hotel employees, renters’ rights groups and housing advocates. He co-founded the group in 2019 as a public education campaign to emphasize the impact that short-term rentals have on communities.
He said rental hosts bend the rules in a few ways. One strategy is the bait-and-switch, where a host will advertise that a property is somewhere near the border of Los Angeles, such as West Hollywood, and thus not subject to L.A.’s stringent rules. But when renters show up, the property is actually in L.A.
Others give false registration numbers — some more cleverly than others.
“1234567 was popular for a while,” Renick said.
Some simply use expired registration numbers, and others used an active registration number but for several properties.
The organization’s website keeps a hotline for Angelenos to call and report illegal listings in their neighborhood, and Renick said they receive multiple calls per week.
From there, they urge the city to take action for matters both small and large. Sometimes it’s a call asking to enforce a fine on a certain property, and sometimes it’s a campaign on how short-term rentals can drive up long-term rent in an area by taking homes off the market and renting them to tourists.
“We try to show the impact of short-term renting and how it’s contributing to the housing and homelessness crisis,” Renick said. “Robust enforcement will result in returning thousands of units back to long-term rental.”
He pointed to Santa Monica and New York City as two cities that L.A. could model itself after. Santa Monica has a robust enforcement system, including multiple full-time staff focused on interviewing owners and issuing fines to illegal listings.
The coastal city allows only short-term rentals (less than 30 days) if the host lives on the property throughout the visitor’s stay. New York City adopted a similar rule last year, and the enforcement begins on Tuesday.
Though it has a long way to go, Renick said L.A. has raised the bar on proof required to show that a listing is the host’s primary residence.
Frank Tai, the owner of a luxury beachfront rental in Playa del Rey, has seen that process firsthand. He has only one listing and makes sure to renew his license every year, but the process has gotten more laborious over the years as both the city and Airbnb look to catch illegal listings.
“I’m in compliance, but it’s a lot of work. I fill out a 40-page application every year and send in property tax statements, utility bills and other documents,” he said. “Every year, something gets kicked back. They’re trying to stay on top of things.”
Tai said the process is well worth it. His rental is very profitable; it’s booked throughout the entire summer, and nightly rates double during vacation season. He didn’t even experience a slowdown during the pandemic, simply a switch from out-of-town customers to L.A. locals looking for a staycation.
“I don’t sneak around the system, but I’m guessing people do because it’s so profitable,” he said.
Are you interested in the intersection of housing and technology, want to see demonstrations of emerging solutions from startup companies, and meet people from throughout the housing value chain?
A Geek Estate Mastermind member, Matt Hoffman from InnovationVentures, has curated a great event, HousingTech Interactive, taking place in Washington DC on November 7th.
5:30-7:30pm 421 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004
There will be presentations from six cutting edge startup companies with new business models and tech-driven solutions changing the housing market:
CityBldr: unlocking trapped land value through machine learning.
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Module – modular infill that transforms to meet occupants’ changing needs.
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Common: co-housing to meet new living needs.
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Arrived: enabling renters to earn equity in a REIT-like entity.
New Story: ending homelessness through 3D-printed homes.
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Urbaneer: mobile wall systems and furniture for denser living.
Pre-orders now available for LOVE™ throw blankets with delivery by holiday 2023; Faribault Mill will donate 10% of all sales to the grantLOVE Project fund
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA , UNITED STATES, August 17, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — Faribault Mill, a legendary American heritage brand and maker of handcrafted premium wool and cotton throw blankets, bed blankets and accessories, has announced a collaboration partnership with the grantLOVE Project, an artist-owned and operated project created by Los Angeles-based artist Alexandra Grant. grantLOVE x Faribault Mill LOVE throw blankets are designed by Grant and feature the LOVE™ symbol using the mill’s natural materials.
For each LOVE throw blanket purchased from Faribault Mill, 10% of sales will be donated to the grantLOVE Project at the Entertainment Industry Foundation, with funds directed to nonprofits that support arts education and youth experiencing homelessness. Since its inception in 2008, the grantLOVE Project has worked to raise awareness and money for numerous nonprofits through the gift and sale of collaborative artworks and editions made with Grant’s LOVE symbol.
Pre-orders for the LOVE throw blankets are now live here, at $295, through September 15th with delivery in late November in time for the holidays.
“The LOVE throw blanket is a unique way to express how much we want to nurture our relationships and show we care—that we can wrap ourselves and each other in LOVE!” Grant said. “Working with the Faribault Mill team brings over a century and a half of experience in quality, sustainable blanket-making to the collaboration, weaving new combinations of color into my LOVE artwork.”
The collaboration with grantLOVE is Faribault Mill’s latest artist project, addressing growing consumer interest in fine art, premium design and social impact. The LOVE throw blankets are woven at the company’s mill in Faribault, MN out of 85% wool and 15% cotton. Faribault Mill blankets, throws and accessories are created with the highest quality wool and cotton—the world’s most naturally sustainable fibers— for breathable, hypoallergenic, and easy care products.
“Our brand delivers warmth, well-beyond the utility of a blanket, and to pair it with the meaning of LOVE is incredibly powerful,” said Ini Iyamba, vice president, product design & development, Faribault Mill. “The grantLOVE Project Fund proceeds are a testament to the importance of artist collaborations to the next generation of Faribault Mill customers, who care deeply about design, quality and social impact. We are delighted to bring the exceptional art practice of Alexandra Grant, through the grantLOVE Project, to our customers in such a fresh and meaningful way.”
The grantLOVE Project is a fund of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), based in Los Angeles, CA. The grantLOVE x Faribault Mill collaboration was established in partnership with fine art licensing and creative consulting agency Alice Riot.
For more information and details on the pre-order window, follow @faribaultmill and @grantloveproject on Instagram.
About Alexandra Grant
Alexandra Grant is a Los Angeles– and Berlin–based visual artist whose work explores issues around communication across languages, literary traditions, and cultures. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries globally and she is represented by Miles McEnery Gallery in New York and carlier|gebauer in Berlin and Madrid. Grant is the creator of the grantLOVE Project, which has raised funds for arts-based nonprofits, and her work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions around the world. She’s also co-founder of independent publisher X Artists’ Books and an advisor to the Futureverse Foundation. Grant received her Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts and her Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College.
About the grantLOVE Project
grantLOVE is an art project started by Los Angeles and Berlin–based artist Alexandra Grant in 2008 to help raise awareness and money for various arts nonprofits through the gift and sale of collaborative artworks and editions made with Grant’s LOVE symbol. For more information, visit www.grantlove.com.
The grantLOVE Project is a fund of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a Charity Navigator Four-Star Charity that meets all 20 Better Business Bureau charity standards and carries the Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency. EIN: 95-1644609. Learn more at www.eifoundation.org/grantlove.
About Faribault Mill
Founded in 1865, Faribault Mill is renowned for producing timeless, handcrafted blankets, decorative throws, apparel, and accessories. Throughout its storied history, the company has provided woolen blankets to pioneers heading west and comforted our troops through two world wars. Today, Faribault Mill continues to create products that are built to stand the test of time, with a commitment to 100% Made in USA manufacturing using naturally sustainable fibers like wool and cotton. The company and its workers are woven into American history. Visit them online at faribaultmill.com or at retail stores in Faribault, Edina, and Excelsior, MN to learn more about their iconic brand.
A landslide struck Laguna Beach’s Bluebird Canyon in 1978 — smashing cars, buckling streets and destroying 24 homes. An adjacent swath of earth broke loose in 2005, wiping out 12 more homes.
That wasn’t enough to keep Scott Tenney away. In 2010, Tenney and his wife, Mariella Simon, bought a 15-acre hillside ranch near the disaster area despite the listing warning that the property was on the site of an ancient landslide.
“We knew we’d have to do a bit of terracing and retaining, but California is what it is,” Tenney said. “It’s a dynamic place not just culturally, but geologically.”
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From an outside perspective, his might seem a confounding decision. But in Southern California it’s an extremely common one, because that geological diversity, as Tenney calls it, is not just the danger. It’s the allure.
Elevation has long been aspirational here — an escape from the urban flats.
Since settlers first started pouring in from the relative flatness of the East Coast and Midwest, they were captivated by California’s vertiginous landscape. Plein air painters flocked to capture the light of the arroyos. Health seekers sought the clean air of the San Gabriel foothills. Folk rockers found inspiration in Laurel and Topanga canyons. And the moneyed elite started building their houses higher and higher above the basin, forever seeking the trophy perch with the show-off view.
But that perch has always come at the risk of catastrophe. Homes slide into a gulch in Palos Verdes. Fires roar over the Malibu hills. A debris flow kills 23 people and destroys 130 homes in Montecito. Heavy snow traps thousands in the San Bernardino Mountains. And winter storms pull fragile bluffs into a rising sea.
These natural disasters so often occur where the tectonic plates collided and folded into beautiful vistas.
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While other regions may face only one main disaster threat — tornadoes in the Midwest, hurricanes on the Gulf and East coasts — California’s extreme topography brings siege from all sides: the ocean, the trees and brush, the sky above and the ground below. And oftentimes, the most attractive areas are some of the most dangerous.
A land of disasters
More and more people are crowding into the Wildland Urban Interface — the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development. It’s where properties mingle with undeveloped (and often steep) land, and it’s uniquely susceptible to natural disasters.
According to the U.S. Fire Administration, this area grows by 2 million acres a year as people fan out to the edges of wilderness in search of affordable houses, more space or simply a break from life in the city. And California holds more homes in this dangerous zone than any other state in the country.
And prices keep soaring. It doesn’t matter if a house sits on stilts on the side of a cliff, if it’s a landslide complex slowly sliding toward the sea, or if it’s predicted to be knee-deep in water in a couple of generations — there will always be a buyer.
As Californians flock to risky areas, disasters take a greater toll. Over the last decade, the state has experienced 20 disasters that each cost at least $1 billion in damage from flooding, wildfire and extreme heat. Those 20 alone combined for 783 deaths, according to National Centers for Environmental Information.
According to the real estate listing database Redfin, the trend is nationwide. Last year, the country’s most flood-prone, heat-prone and fire-prone counties all saw more people move in than out. Redfin researcher Sheharyar Bokhari blames one primary factor: the housing affordability crisis.
“L.A. and most other coastal cities are expensive. With remote work becoming more of an option, people are finding they can have more space and finally afford a home if they move to riskier areas,” he said.
Bokhari said another L.A.-specific factor is development — mainly that there’s not as much being built in the city compared to the more rural areas surrounding it.
He points to the Inland Empire, which is typically more affordable than L.A. County. In Riverside County, roughly 600,000 homes face a high risk of wildfire, the most of any of the 306 high-fire-risk counties in the country. Despite that, the county’s population grew by 40,000 over the last two years.
Even if experts — and common sense — say to stay away from certain areas, Bokhari said that won’t likely happen because local governments aren’t incentivized to push people out.
“These disaster-prone cities need revenue and people paying taxes,” he said. “They just claim that they’ll be more resilient and take more safety measures going forward,” he said.
Where else would I go?
Since moving onto the ancient landslide zone, Tenney and his wife founded Bluebird Canyon Farms, which offers workshops and grows food for local markets. His time is split between that and taming the erosion-prone land beneath the farm.
To combat sliding land, Tenney installed a gravity wall, 200 feet long and 9 feet tall, to retain the hillside. In addition to grading the terrain to make the slopes gentler, he added powerful drainage systems and timber-and-concrete cribbing to keep structures in place.
The work never stops, and Tenney keeps a monthly schedule to keep up with tasks. Clear brush in spring. Clean storm drains in September. Inspect terracing every few months.
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“You can run but you can’t hide,” he said, adding that urban centers such as L.A. have their own laundry lists of things to worry about: crime, homelessness, etc. “You won’t experience a wildfire in downtown L.A., but there are plenty of other things to be concerned with.”
Cribbing systems used by Tenney have become commonplace in Portuguese Bend, a small coastal community on the Palos Verdes Peninsula situated on a slow-moving landslide complex. Land moves up to 8 feet a year, and at that rate residents would rather ride the sliding earth toward the sea than sell and move somewhere else.
“I’ll be here until I can’t be here anymore. I’ll slide away with the land,” Claudia Gutierrez told The Times in July after a nearby landslide in Rolling Hills Estates sent a handful of homes careening down a canyon.
You’d think the real estate market in disaster-prone areas would eventually slow down, but there are no deals to be found for house hunters. Longtime residents often stay put post-disaster, and incoming residents consistently pay a premium to live in a scenic, though potentially dangerous, area.
In cities tucked among the foothills of the Verdugo and San Gabriel mountains such as Altadena and La Cañada Flintridge, buying in a high-fire-risk zone might be ever-so-slightly cheaper than buying in a safer place. And buyers pounce.
“My clients try to choose low-fire-risk zones, but if the house in the fire zone is the right price, that is more important,” said Brent Chang of Compass.
When Lisa and Michael McKean got home to Malibu Park from their honeymoon on Nov. 8, 2018, they were so exhausted that they went straight to sleep. The newlyweds didn’t even bother unpacking their suitcases of swimsuits still wet with Caribbean saltwater.
When they woke up, Lisa looked out her back window and saw a 10,000-foot cloud of billowing black smoke.
The Woolsey fire was ravaging the Malibu hills.
The pair grabbed their still-packed suitcases and fled to the Zuma Beach parking lot, where they spent the day surrounded by horses, dogs, cats and neighbors all wondering if their homes would survive.
Theirs, built a year earlier, did not.
“The entire neighborhood burned,” Lisa said. “Everything was black, scorched earth.”
Devastated, the pair spent six months crunching numbers on the cost of rebuilding versus moving. The home that was destroyed had taken four years to approve and three years to build. Their next one could take even longer.
Despite the damage, and despite the ceaseless, inescapable risk of a future fire, they ultimately decided to stay and rebuild.
Cheryl Calvert has lived in Malibu since 1985 and has adapted to a life of fire. To her, the flames are nearly routine.
“Once you make it through your first one, you realize it’s manageable. But you have to plan ahead,” Calvert said.
She keeps two bags packed at all times: one full of goggles and N95 masks and one with dog supplies.
Calvert has experienced plenty of fires during her time in the coastal community, but the worst was the Corral fire in 2007. She was in the driveway as the flames arrived, and she sprayed the corner of her wooden home with a hose as it ignited. Her guesthouse and garage burned down, but the house was saved.
She never considered leaving. Instead, she became more prepared, installing an extra water tank and leaving a pair of shoes by the front door at all times for quick escapes.
“We have to do crazy things, but it’s only crazy for an hour or two every five or 10 years,” she said.
She ran down the usual list of reasons why people move to Malibu: the beautiful landscape, the ocean breeze, the sweeping views. But she said the main reason her and so many of her neighbors stay is because of the community.
“We’re all living near like-minded people who are willing to risk themselves for each other,” she said. “It’s a bunch of hippies. Rich hippies.”
The psychology of staying
A life among the trees, coasts and cliffs is often what lures Californians to disaster-prone communities, but according to experts, the factors that make them stay after a disaster strikes are much more complicated.
Age, race and class can all indicate whether someone is more or less likely to move after experiencing a disaster. For example, Zhen Cong, professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, found that in the wake of tornados, the middle class might be the most inclined to move since the upper class has the resources to stay and rebuild, while the lower class is often trapped and has no other choice but to stay.
Other relocation factors include the level of damage to the home and whether the person owns the place or rents. But often the most important factor is one that can’t be easily quantified: “People who have a strong sense of place and a strong sense of community are less likely to move,” Cong said.
Ironically, some disasters can even encourage people who otherwise would have left to stay.
In studying post-tornado relocation decisions across the country, Cong found that after a disaster, people increase their disaster preparedness. Part of that includes gathering supplies, but it also includes social engagement: talking to neighbors, sharing information on social media and attending meetings. That engagement, which might not happen if a tornado doesn’t strike, brings a greater sense of community, leading people to stay in that community.
Anamaria Bukvic, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech who studies coastal hazards and population displacement, found that after Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast in 2012, non-geophysical factors mattered the most in deciding whether to stay or leave. For example, confidence in adapting to future disasters was a more relevant indicator if someone would stay than how close they lived to the ocean.
“The experience of flooding can be emotionally disturbing and traumatic,” Bukvic said. “When facing problems, some people try to avoid them. Others try to resolve them.”
She added that confidence in government plays a major role as well. If a person believes the government responded well to the disaster and will keep them safe during the next disaster, they’re more likely to stay.
That’s something that Malibu Mayor Bruce Silverstein thinks about when overseeing the city’s disaster response plan. Although L.A. County is responsible for physically fighting the fires that plague the area, Malibu has instituted a free service in which residents can request a fire-hardening expert to inspect their property to better prepare them for the next blaze.
The city also outlaws certain types of vegetation susceptible to fire and tries to prevent excessive population growth in order to make evacuation from hills and canyons easier during emergencies. It’s the main reason accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are harder to build in Malibu than L.A.
“Unlike L.A., we don’t have standards that encourage growth,” Silverstein said. “We maintain the status quo and try to keep space between properties so if one catches on fire, it doesn’t extend to the neighbors.”
Michael Dyer, a former Santa Barbara County fire chief who now serves as public safety director for Calabasas, said safety became a top priority for the city after Woolsey, energizing the community into forming multiple volunteer commissions that plan for disaster preparedness.
“We have to provide that service as a government,” Dyer said while monitoring a brush fire in Topanga from his front porch. “No one has forgotten Woolsey yet. And as long as I’m here, we won’t.”
No simple fix
As the climate crisis worsens and the Wildland Urban Interface grows in size, experts are eyeing ways to mitigate the effects of natural disasters to save both the environment and human lives.
L.A. is currently considering an ordinance that would limit development in the Santa Monica Mountains. Using recent wildfires and the Rolling Hills Estates landslide as examples, supporters said the measure would make it harder to build mansions and large hillside homes as a way to limit damage caused by disasters, as well as protect open space and wildlife.
In addition, national insurers such as State Farm and Allstate are no longer selling insurance policies in wildfire-prone areas after a series of catastrophic fires raised premiums. Without insurance, people might be disincentivized from buying and building homes in risky areas.
Redfin is also tinkering with a way to warn people of a home’s potential dangers. The company conducted an experiment in which it showed a listing’s flood risk score to certain users but not others and found that those who were shown the scores were less likely to bid on the home.
The scores have since expanded to show risk for fire, heat, drought and storms.
In the meantime, Californians continue to build, and rebuild, in disaster-prone areas. Lisa and Michael McKean, whose home burned down in 2018, moved back into Malibu Park in 2021.
As neighbors slowly filter back into the neighborhood, they walk around to measure progress and congratulate those who have returned.
“We used to hate cement trucks and jackhammers, but now we celebrate them,” Michael said. “The cheery sound of construction.”
Just down the street from my family’s Venice home, workers are smoothing plaster inside a 6,000-square-foot new house whose owners, a young couple from the Bay Area, will soon have a property worth $7 million.
Across from that mansion-to-be is an 11-unit apartment building whose cracked stucco could use a new coat of its mustard-colored paint. The families that live there come mostly from Oaxaca, Mexico, and many of the adults work as employees at restaurants in Venice and Marina del Rey.
Los Angeles is a city historically segregated by race and class. But in our slice of the city, multimillionaires in newly built villas live side by side with the affordable apartments of the people who clean their pools, watch their children and cook their El Pollo Loco orders.
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My family’s neighborhood may be an outlier — or moving inexorably toward full gentrification — but at least for the last three decades, it has also served as vibrant proof that the notion that affordable housing lowers property values is overblown, if not flat-out wrong.
That enduring belief has contributed to widespread not-in-my-backyard opposition that makes building affordable housing in higher-income areas so difficult.
“It is total NIMBYism,” said Adlai Wertman of USC’s Marshall School of Business. “It’s ‘I want to help poor people, just not in my neighborhood.’”
Our neighborhood provides plenty of anecdotal evidence that mixing housing and income levels doesn’t sink property values. In a four-block area, low- and moderate-income apartment buildings and multifamily units are sprinkled among six mega-mansions and older, middle-class single-family homes like ours, which was built in 1924. The lower-income units are not government-subsidized.
In the mustard-colored building, Marin Ceja, a self-employed pool technician, pays $2,000 per month for his two-bedroom apartment, more than $3,000 less than the average for a two-bedroom rental in Venice. Assuming Ceja’s across-the-street new neighbors financed their home with 20% down, they’ll be paying $20,000 per month.
The presence of lower-cost multiunit buildings hasn’t driven down the resale value of homes. The average sale price of homes in Venice has increased by a million dollars in the last 10 years. In the last year, while home prices have declined by 7% countywide, in our neighborhood they rose over 4%.
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Numerous studies show our corner of Venice, east of Lincoln Boulevard and north of Venice Boulevard, is not unique. Low-income housing has a positive impact, or no impact, on neighborhood house values, according to a majority of studies reviewed by A-Mark Foundation, the research and policy nonprofit I lead. Two studies concluded that low-income housing had negative effects on property values in some specific cases.
One 10-year study that looked at property values in the least affordable housing markets in the U.S. — 45% of which were in California — found that newly built low-income housing had no effect on state property values.
That’s been the experience of affordable housing builders too. Loren Bloch, who spent decades developing affordable housing in Southern California, told me that when he insisted on building 22 low-income housing units along with 37 market-rate units in Oxnard in 2001, other developers thought he was crazy.
“But people sucked them up,” he said, “and they lived side by side together.”
Oxnard real estate prices around Bloch’s development have risen by double digits since then.
Tom Safran spent four decades convincing wary, lawyered-up residents that mixed neighborhoods work for everyone, so long as the building quality is high.
After finally winning city approval for 154 affordable units in Del Rey on Culver Boulevard, Safran faced off against a handful of neighbors whose lawsuits delayed construction two and a half years, before they settled on 124 units — which more than 1,800 people applied for in 2013.
His company faced similar opposition to his Thatcher Yard development in Venice, despite bringing in Steve Giannetti, who designed Lady Gaga’s Malibu spread, as architect. Residents fought to scale back the project from 160 units to 98, overruling Safran’s contention that as long as valuable Venice land was available, it should house the most diverse kinds of units, and the largest number of them, that was reasonable.
“Communities work best when they have a range of incomes,” Safran told me. “When people who teach school or do policing or work behind the counter in the dry cleaners don’t have to drive an hour and a half, it creates a more successful society.”
In Los Angeles County, home prices have risen twice as much as wages in the last decade, and the lack of affordable housing drives homelessness, poverty, population loss and glaring income inequality. That’s why Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have both called for every neighborhood, rich, poor or in-between, to accept affordable housing.
But the more upscale the neighborhood, the more resistance there is. Upper-income residents who stand in opposition wield a variety of excuses — increased traffic (Manhattan Beach), overcrowding (Redondo Beach), or potential harm to migrating mountain lions (Woodside, really?).
“We’ll never get affordable housing in the Palisades,” Wertman said of the upscale Democratic-voting neighborhood. “The world will end first.”
Former President Trump, as he often does, said the quiet part out loud in 2020 when he blocked an Obama-era rule intended to reduce racial segregation in communities. “I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood,” Trump tweeted at the time.
But even studies looking specifically at “more affluent” neighborhoods have found the fears of affordable housing tanking housing prices and increasing crime are unfounded. A 2022 UC Irvine study found that on average in such areas in Orange County, home values increased following the opening of affordable housing.
“Overall, the data on actual home sales do not support the claim that affordable housing depresses local home values,” the authors concluded.
A 2019 Stanford University study showed that housing built using low-income housing tax credits led to a decrease in crime in lower-income neighborhoods and “does not increase crime in high-income areas.”
The Stanford study, unlike several others, did find that low-income housing built in higher-income neighborhoods decreased property values by 2.5%. That could be a result of increased housing supply, said Gary Painter, professor of social innovation at USC, or of residents preferring not to live near multifamily buildings. No studies have disentangled the impact of these two possibilities, he said.
Back to my neighborhood, where below-market rents mix with high-dollar mortgages and taqueros live beside techies. The diversity is not the product of planning so much as timing and evolution. It would be hard to replicate now, not least because land costs combined with beachside NIMBYism have made Venice a notoriously difficult place to build new housing of any kind. (The total number of housing units permitted now in Venice is half the number permitted in the late 1950s, according to an analysis by Dario Alvarez, president of community planning firm Pacific Urbanism.)
When I described the neighborhood to Painter, he said there’s a term for the older multiunit buildings around single-family homes like mine: naturally occurring affordable housing. As a building reaches the end of its useful life, it has fewer amenities and is less valued in the marketplace and therefore is more affordable.
But the result, at least for as long as we’ve been living here, is a vision of what L.A. neighborhoods could and should be: economically and racially mixed.
Painter said that to get that ideal citywide, “we need to build units in all areas of the city.” And not just more affordable housing, but more housing of all kinds.
“The reason that’s fair is that if we have more units, they are a lot easier to be made affordable. We need housing everywhere,” he said.
The more we build in every neighborhood, the more we’ll open up opportunities for people of all incomes to live together. Contrary to popular belief, if we do that, the world won’t end — your property values won’t even go down.
Rob Eshman is chief executive of the A-Mark Foundation.
During the first couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles tenants were able to skip their rent payments as renters lost their jobs and businesses shut down, but the first deadline for that unpaid rent is Tuesday.
Eviction protections that were in place at the start of the pandemic expired earlier this year, which means that tenants could face evictions if they’re not able to pay their landlords their unpaid rent from the first 19 months of the pandemic by the Aug. 1 repayment deadline.
What does the deadline mean for me?
If you have rental debt accumulated from March 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021, you have to pay that unpaid rent to your landlord, or possibly face eviction.
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However, the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Karen Bass approved a minimum threshold for evictable rent debt, which means that if you owe less than one month of unpaid rent, you can’t be evicted on the basis of late rent, according to a statement by Bass’ office.
The deadline for rent debt owed from Oct. 1, 2021, through Jan. 31, 2023, is Feb. 1, 2024.
Are there any exceptions?
People who owe rent from March 1, 2020, to Aug. 31, 2020, can’t be evicted if they provided their landlord with a form declaring financial hardship due to COVID-19 within 15 days of receiving the form from the landlord.
Also, tenants who provided that same form by the 15-day deadline and paid 25% of their rent owed from Sept. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021, will also not face eviction.
However, their landlord can pursue action in small claims court for the unpaid rent.
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Are there any resources available for me?
Bass said her office is working to prepare resources for people who may be affected by the deadline.
“We will continue to lock arms with our partners to solve this crisis so that everyone in Los Angeles has a safe place to sleep at night and that no one is sleeping on the streets,” Bass said at a news conference Monday.
Her office plans to propose using money from a tax passed last year on the sales of properties over $5 million — known as Measure ULA — to fund rental assistance programs, such as short-term emergency assistance programs, a tenant outreach and education program and a protections from tenant harassment program, Bass said Monday. The plan will come before the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee the day after the deadline.
The Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles’ program “We Are LA” has also been reaching out to at-risk tenants to help them access legal services and other assistance they may be eligible to receive.
The outreach teams have connected with more than 40,000 people already, according to Bass.
The city will also be reaching out to people who receive eviction notices to help them understand what it means, help them file a response if their landlord filed an unlawful detainer and make sure that they are aware of any resources available to them, Councilmember Nithya Raman, chair of the council’s housing and homelessness committee, said at the conference Monday.
If people receive an eviction notice, they need to respond within five days, Bass’ statement said.
Raman added that the city has partnered with the courts to help make sure that tenants have access to all the resources and services that are available to them, as well as encouraging people to go into mediation or other pathways for alternative resolutions.
Bass’ office along with Raman also recommended tenants reach out to the city’s housing department. Renters can do so by scheduling an appointment at one of the agency’s public counters or calling at (866) 557-7368.
There are also more resources for tenants available on the Tenant Power Toolkit and StayHousedLA website, which can provide information about tenant rights and the eviction process.
At the conference Monday, Bass said there is also help on the way for landlords through rental assistance, which provides money to the landlord for the back rent.
“To address this problem, you need to protect the tenants, but you also need to protect the landlords as well,” she said.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with James Segil from Openpath.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m James Segil, and I am the president and co-founder of Openpath, an LA-based startup which creates smart, secure physical access systems for the modern office. I’m an entrepreneur with proven experience having built and sold three successful technology companies.
I run day-to-day operations and business development at Openpath, where we are helping companies reduce common touch points and make a contactless user experience as part of a new, healthy post-pandemic environment.
What problem does your product/service solve? My fellow co-founders Alex Kazerani, Samy Kamkar, Rob Peters and I had the idea for Openpath when we grew tired of forgetting our office keys at home and were frustrated with having to carry multiple badges to get into buildings. We were also worried about security at work given the state of the world today. We started Openpath in 2016 because saw an opportunity to really improve the office access and the keyless-entry experience by making it more frictionless and secure. We saw that we could use our phone to open the doors instead of having to carry a keycard.
Our solution combines hardware and enterprise, cloud-based software to improve the experience for people accessing buildings with hands-free access and mobile credentials, all through a beautifully designed product. Openpath’s access control platform helps companies across a range of sectors including commercial real estate, manufacturing/industrial, offices, retail, schools, gyms and places of worship, and supported over 5 million unlocks a month.
What are you most excited about right now?
Getting America back to work safely with Germ-Free access to your building and office. We are currently laser-focused on helping building owners, managers and tenants to provide employees and visitors secured access without touching any physical surfaces.
We just announced our “Wave to Unlock” feature, through which users can wave their hand in-front of a reader from a safe distance in order to unlock an entry, removing all surface contact. The patented Triple-Unlock technology works over WiFi, LTE, and Bluetooth, and guarantees a fast and reliable connection, which is critical for efficient and safe access. This is part of our offerings to help companies facing demands to update workspaces for returning employees to work.
We’re hearing from building owners, tenants, city planners, architects, and security consultants that this touchless solution is calming some employee concerns about returning to the workplace as a touchless, hands-free, germ-free experience.
What’s next for you?
Beyond the COVID-19 response, we are looking for new ways to improve the day-to-day work experience of every worker in the world through frictionless access. Our obsession on user experience drives us as we want people to experience the built world in a more personalized and secure way.
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
I’m passionate about reducing homelessness, which is how I became very involved with The Giving Spirit, a grassroots charity that assembles survival kits for the homeless here in Los Angeles. We have helped over 40,000 homeless since we started and continue to focus on helping those who are the most in need during this difficult time.
Thanks to James for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.
We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).
In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Andy White from ClosingLock.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Andy White and I’m the CEO and Co-founder of ClosingLock. In 2017 my wife and I discovered how pervasive wire fraud was becoming in real estate, and decided to create a secure but simple alternative to email to protect title companies, lenders, and property buyers/sellers from wire fraud. Before starting ClosingLock, I worked as a computer engineer for various tech companies – from a startup that raised over $100M to the globally-recognized tech giant Samsung. Prior to that, I completed a BS, MS, and PhD in Computer and Electrical Engineering at Auburn University (War eagle!). I’ve published papers in international scientific journals, been award 7 patents in the computer hardware and software industries, and am named as an inventor on 5 other patent applications. My wife makes me include all of that because she’s proud of me, but I’m cringing right now because I don’t take myself too seriously.
What problem does your product/service solve?
ClosingLock’s main service provides a secure and simple alternative to email for title and settlement companies to send and receive wire instructions. Last year alone the US lost $221M to real estate wire fraud which was up 47% from 2018. By partnering with settlement companies, we now protect over $1B each month from wire fraud. Working with our customers, we’ve now grown to add additional features like eSigning, bank account verification, and loan payoff verification services. Ultimately, we want to ensure every property buyer, seller, lender and real estate agent has a secure and simple closing.
What are you most excited about right now?
We’re currently working on integrations with several title company software services that will be a huge leg up for our company. We are already integrated with RamQuest and can’t wait to partner with the industry’s other heavy hitters. Aside from that, I continually see people losing their life savings to wire fraud so I’m constantly excited to see us protect more transactions each month. It’s really exciting to know that each time we on-board a new company, we’re protecting their customer’s life savings from fraud!
What’s next for you?
Growing our marketing outreach and sales team is next on our horizon. We’ve spent so much of the past year focusing on integrations and adding requested features, now I want to really focus on expanding.
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
Community First! Village here in Austin, TX is an extraordinary program, which is why ClosingLock continually donates to their cause. It’s a 51 acre community of micro and RV homes that provides permanent housing and support for chronically homeless people. The goal is to eradicate homelessness in central Texas, and then grow nationally. I’ve always had a soft spot for homeless people and there’s always a fine line between helping and enabling. Community First! Village is the perfect way to provide support, either through money or time, and know that it will help. Lastly, I also deliver meals occasionally for Meal on Wheels which helps support our local seniors so they don’t have to worry about hunger.
Thanks to Andy for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.
We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).
House Republicans blocked an effort by House Democrats to approve $2,000 stimulus payments for millions of Americans, leaving the fate of the proposed $900 billion stimulus package mired in doubt.
It likely won’t come in time to wrap it up and put it in your stocking, but Congress has officially passed a stimulus package. The $900 billion stimulus package includes a $600 payment to every qualifying adult and child. But before you start planning to spend the money, there are a few things you’ll need to know.
Use your first stimulus check to bulk up your emergency fund – earn a high APY with a Chime® Savings Account
The bill includes relief for those who fall below a certain income threshold, as well as loans for small businesses and support for vaccine distribution. Here’s what you need to know about a possible second stimulus check coming your way.
What’s Ahead:
Who qualifies for the second stimulus?
As with the first stimulus payment, not everyone will qualify to receive a payment. To receive the full amount, your adjusted income will need to have fallen below $75,000 in the 2019 tax year. If your income was $75,000 or more, that $600 will be reduced by 5% for every $100 you made above the AGI limit.
Like the previous payment, the amount phases out entirely for taxpayers who hit a certain income threshold in 2019. Single filers who made $87,000 or more, joint filers earning $174,000 or more, and heads of households earning $124,500 will not receive a stimulus payment at all.
Best of all, the relief payment includes a $600 check for qualifying dependent children. You’ll get $600 for each child under 17 that you claim as a dependent on your taxes. Dependents aged 17 and older won’t qualify for a second stimulus check.
Why do we need a second round of stimulus checks?
The effects of the coronavirus pandemic are still being felt. While unemployment has dropped to 6.7%, it’s been a rough year for the U.S. economy. And there is still growing concern about the economic effects of COVID-19. Shutdowns have begun again as numbers increase, and the Fed has predicted a subdued economy through 2021. Efforts like stimulus payments can help keep businesses open when consumers might otherwise stop spending.
The second round of stimulus checks will inject more money into your pocket, and ultimately the economy (at least that is the hope). In doing this, it could spark another burst of economic growth, combined with other stimulus package dollars being infused, as well as what the Fed is doing to help economic growth (most recently they began buying corporate bonds).
What if my income dropped in 2020??
The stimulus payments are based on your 2019 taxes. But for many, the pandemic has caused that income to drop dramatically in 2020. If you earned $87,000 or more ($174,000 as a joint filer) in 2019, you won’t receive a second check right now, even if your 2020 income was significantly less. But that doesn’t mean you won’t receive one at all.
If your circumstances have changed, though, you’ll be able to claim the COVID relief payments as a credit on your 2020 taxes. Fortunately, this setup doesn’t work in reverse. If your income increased in 2020 and would put you over that threshold, you’ll still receive a second check based on your 2019 taxes. You don’t have to return either payment.
How soon will I receive my stimulus payment?
Your next question is probably, “When will I see the money?” That’s where the good news comes in. As soon as the President signs the bill, payments can begin being issued. According to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, “People are going to see this money at the beginning of next week.”
As with the previous stimulus check, though, your payment turnaround will depend on the payment information the IRS has for you. For the fastest payment, you’ll need to have direct deposit set up. If the IRS doesn’t have your banking information, your payment likely won’t come until after the first of the year. Even then, though, Mnuchin doesn’t expect paper checks or prepaid cards to take as long as they did with the first round.
Will I still get a check if I didn’t file a 2019 tax return?
As with the first round of stimulus payments, the second round will go to both filers and non-filers. As with the first stimulus payment, those who receive Social Security will be automatically issued a stimulus payment. Things get a little more complicated for those who don’t pay taxes.
One thing that’s changed with the second payment is that the IRS won’t consult your 2018 tax return if you didn’t file for 2019. However, the bill has expanded the sources the government can use to issue your payment. Instead of being limited to the Social Security Administration and your tax records, the IRS can now pull information from the Social Security Administration, Railroad Retirement Board, or Department of Veterans Affairs.
Is it taxable?
As with the first stimulus payment, the second one will not be taxable. It’s a tax credit, paid in advance, and it has no impact whatsoever on your tax refund. You’ll include it on your tax return, but it won’t be counted as part of your yearly income. You’ll also get the full amount of any refund you’re due next year regardless of whether you received a stimulus payment or not.
Will part or all of my payment be used to settle debts?
This is where the second payout differs from the first. This new bill specifically states that the funds can’t be garnished by creditors or debt collectors. As before, your payment can’t be held to pay government debts, including past-due taxes.
But what if you owe back child support? Unlike the first round, the second stimulus check can’t be held to pay past-due child support. The first stimulus payment didn’t have that protection.
What if my spouse doesn’t have a Social Security number?
The first payment went only to those who had a Social Security number. This affected spouses who filed jointly with those people. With this second payment, if you’re married and have a Social Security number, you’ll receive a payment even if your spouse doesn’t have one. You’ll also qualify for your under-17 dependent child to get a payment, even if only one spouse has a Social Security number.
This change doesn’t just apply to the second payment, though. If you’re married and one of you has a Social Security number, that person will be able to get the amount of the first credit retroactively. Simply apply for $1,200, plus $500 per qualifying child, as a recovery rebate when you file your 2020 taxes.
What if I’m unemployed? Does the stimulus package include funding for expanded unemployment insurance?
If you’re unemployed, the package includes a little extra relief for you. You may qualify for $300 extra every week in extra unemployment. These benefits will be for 11 weeks, running from December 26th to March 14th. The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for freelancers and any state-specific benefits are also extended under the bill.
Another item in the bill that’s bringing sighs of relief is the expansion of the eviction moratorium. The original protections were set to expire on December 31st, which could have left millions at risk for homelessness. Unlike the unemployment extension, though, the eviction moratorium only lasts through the end of January.
Does the bill include protections for small business owners?
Small businesses have been hit pretty hard by COVID-19, and this bill seeks to help a little. The new bill includes $284 billion for small business loans under the Paycheck Protection Program, which expired in August. The bill expands that program with some changes.
One of the biggest changes is that this new bill targets smaller businesses. To qualify, a small business must have fewer than 300 employees. A business must also have seen at least a 25% reduction in revenues during at least one quarter in 2020.
What else is included in the bill?
In addition to extending the moratorium on evictions, the new bill also includes $25 billion for tenants who are having a tough time paying rent. Those receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will see benefits expanded by 15% for four months.
The bill also includes $69 billion in funding to get the vaccine to the public. This funding will be provided to state, tribal, and local governments to help cover the cost of distributing and administering the vaccine.
Summary
Although the bill is available to read, the IRS will likely provide more information on when the funds will be available. Watch the IRS Coronavirus Tax Relief and Economic Impact Payments news page for the latest information.
In the meantime, check out this list of side hustles so you can make some extra money while you’re waiting on your stimulus check. This way, you can in effect, create your own stimulus.