September, 22 2010, 03:42pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Alan Barber, (202) 293-5380 x115
Right to Rent Legislation Would Slow Growing Rate of Foreclosure
Costs of renting still considerably cheaper than ownership in many areas.
WASHINGTON
As the number of homes around the country entering the foreclosure process continues to steadily rise, a recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggests that giving homeowners the right to rent their house at a fair market price may be one of the best ways to address the nation's foreclosure crisis.
"With roughly one-in four mortgages underwater, the loan modification plans put forth so far have done little to help homeowners facing foreclosure," said Dean Baker, Co-Director of CEPR and an author of the report. "Right to Rent, on the other hand, would benefit millions, provide families with real housing security, and could go into effect immediately."
The report, "The Gains from Right to Rent in 2010," analyzes the costs of renting versus owning a house in several major cities and finds that the Fair Market Rents in these metropolitan areas is often much lower than the cost of ownership.
"Ordinarily, the gap between owning and renting is not that large," continued Baker. "Due to the enormous run-up in house prices over the housing bubble years, however, ownership costs now vastly exceed rental costs in many of the bubble markets and homeowners in these markets have much to gain from having the opportunity to remain in a home as a renter following a foreclosure."
The report documents the costs of renting and owning before and after taxes in 16 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and details substantial savings gained from renting across all scenarios depicted. The various scenarios consider the costs of mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance and maintenance costs, and mortgage deductions. An appendix is included that compares ownership and rental costs across 100 MSAs as well.
Under Right to Rent legislation, such as HR 5028, sponsored by Representatives Grijalva (AZ) and Kaptur (OH), Congress would temporarily alter foreclosure laws to let foreclosed homeowners remain in their homes as renters for a substantial period of time. This would save families from being kicked out of their homes and would go far to stop the blight of foreclosures affecting many of our communities. This plan requires no taxpayer dollars and no new bureaucracy to implement.
The full report on homeownership and rental costs can be found here. More details on the Right to Rent plan can be found here.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
(202) 293-5380LATEST NEWS
Internet Archive to Appeal 'Chilling' Federal Ruling Against Digital Books
"For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books," said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. "This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors."
Mar 25, 2023
Internet Archive vowed to appeal after a U.S. district court judge on Friday sided with four major publishers who sued the nonprofit for copyright infringement.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Internet Archives operated a controlled digital lending system, allowing users to digitally check out scanned copies of purchased or donated books on a one-to-one basis. As the public health crises forced school and library closures, the nonprofit launched the National Emergency Library, making 1.4 million digital books available without waitlists.
Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued Internet Archive over its lending policies in June 2020. Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York on Friday found in Hachette v. Internet Archive that the nonprofit "creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those authorized by the publishers."
A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands.
Internet Archive "argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by making books widely accessible on the Internet," the judge wrote. "But these alleged benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers."
In a statement responding to the ruling, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle pledged to keep fighting against the publishers.
"Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books," Kahle said. "This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it."
Internet Archive's supporters have shared similar warnings throughout the ongoing court battle, including after the ruling Friday.
"In a chilling ruling, a lower court judge in New York has completely disregarded the traditional rights of libraries to own and preserve books in favor of maximizing the profits of Big Media conglomerates," declared Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the digital rights group Fight for the Future.
"We applaud the Internet Archive's appeal announcement, as well as their steadfast commitment to preserving the rights of all libraries and their patrons in the digital age," they said. "And our admiration is shared—over 14,000 people having signed our pledge to defend libraries' digital rights at BattleForLibraries.com this week alone."
Holland continued:
From a basic human rights perspective, it is patently absurd to equate an e-book license issued through a surveillance-ridden Big Tech company with a digital book file that is owned and preserved by a privacy-defending nonprofit library. Currently, publishers offer no option for libraries to own and preserve digital books—leaving digital books vulnerable to unauthorized edits, censorship, or downright erasure, and leaving library patrons vulnerable to surveillance and punishment for what they read.
In a world where libraries cannot own, preserve, or control the digital books in their collections, only the most popular, bestselling authors stand to benefit—at the expense of the vast majority of authors, whose books are preserved and purchased by libraries well after publishers have stopped promoting them. Further, today a disproportionate number of traditionally marginalized and local voices are being published in digital-only format, redoubling the need for a robust regime of library preservation to ensure that these stories survive for generations to come.
A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands. No book-lover who wants an equitable and trustworthy written world could find such a future desirable. Accordingly, we plan to organize an in-person action to demand robust ownership and preservation standards for digital books and libraries. For updates on when and where, check BattleForLibraries.com.
More than 300 authors last September signed an open letter led by Fight for the Future calling out publishers and trade associations for their actions against digital libraries, including the lawsuit targeting Internet Archive.
"Libraries saved my life as a young reader, and I've seen them do as much and more for so many others," said signatory Jeff Sharlet. "At a time when libraries are at the frontlines of fascism's assault on democracy, it is of greater importance than ever for writers to stand in solidarity with librarians in defense of the right to share stories. Democracy won't survive without it."
Fellow signatory Erin Taylor asserted that "the Internet Archive is a public good. Libraries are a public good. Only the most intellectually deprived soul would value profit over mass access to literature and knowledge."
Koeltl's ruling came just two days after the American Library Association released a report revealing that in 2022, a record-breaking 2,571 titles were challenged by pro-censorship groups pushing book bans, a 38% increase from the previous year.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed the so-called Parents Bill of Rights Act, which education advocates and progressive lawmakers argue is intended to ban books and further ostracize marginalized communities.
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'Extremely Dangerous Escalation': Putin to Station Russian Nukes in Belarus
"Putin's nuclear provocations are dangerous and unacceptable. U.S. and NATO must resist calls to respond in kind and avoid injecting nuclear weapons deeper into this war," said Global Zero's Derek Johnson.
Mar 25, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on state television Saturday plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus—an escalation anti-war campaigners had been warning about and that alarmed disarmament advocates and experts.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) "condemns this extremely dangerous escalation which makes the use of nuclear weapons more likely," the group declared in a series of tweets.
"In the context of the war in Ukraine, the likelihood of miscalculation or misinterpretation is extremely high," ICAN added. "Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences."
"Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences."
The deployment decision comes 13 months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine and after the United Kingdom this week revealed plans to provide the invaded nation with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium (DU).
Putin said the U.K.'s announcement "probably served as a reason" why Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko agreed to the plan and argued that it won't violate Russia's international nonproliferation treaty obligations, according to a BBC translation.
As Reutersexplained, "The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed by the Soviet Union, says that no nuclear power can transfer nuclear weapons or technology to a nonnuclear power, but it does allow for the weapons to be deployed outside its borders but under its control—as with U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe."
The United States, which has the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal after Russia, "long ago deployed their nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe," the Russia leader noted. "We are doing the same thing that they have been doing for decades."
Russia "will not hand over" nuclear arms to Belarus, Putin insisted, explaining that his country has already given its ally an Iskander missile complex that can be equipped with weapons, plans to start training crews in early April, and aims to complete construction of a special storage facility for the nukes by the beginning of July.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and in the five years that followed, nuclear weapons based in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine were transferred to Russia—where they have remained since.
"It's a very significant move," Nikolai Sokol, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, toldReuters of the deployment decision. "Russia had always been very proud that it had no nuclear weapons outside its territory. So, now, yes, they are changing that and it's a big change."
Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project, told Reuters that "this is part of Putin's game to try to intimidate NATO... because there is no military utility from doing this in Belarus as Russia has so many of these weapons and forces inside Russia."
Global Zero managing partner Derek Johnson said that "Putin's nuclear provocations are dangerous and unacceptable. U.S. and NATO must resist calls to respond in kind and avoid injecting nuclear weapons deeper into this war."
In addition to his nuclear announcement, Putin pointed out during the Saturday interview that Russia also has depleted uranium shells. As he put it: "I must say that certainly, Russia has something to respond. Without exaggeration, we have hundreds of thousands, namely hundreds of thousands of such shells. We are not using them now."
A U.K. Ministry of Defense official had confirmed earlier this week that "alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armor-piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium," which swiftly generated concerns about not only Russian nuclear threats but also public health and environmental impacts.
"DU shells have already been implicated in thousands of unnecessary deaths from cancer and other serious illnesses," stressed Kate Hudson, general secretary of the U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has advocated for a moratorium on such arms. "Sending them into yet another war zone will not help the people of Ukraine."
This post has been updated with new comments from Derek Johnson.
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'When We Fight, We Win!': LA School Workers Secure Deal After 3-Day Strike
"The agreement addresses our key demands and sets us on a clear pathway to improving our livelihoods and securing the staffing we need to improve student services," said SEIU Local 99.
Mar 25, 2023
Union negotiators for about 30,000 school support staffers in California's Los Angeles County struck a historic deal with the second-largest district in the United States on Friday after a three-day strike.
Members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, special education assistants, teaching aides, and other school staff—backed by about 35,000 educators of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)—walked off the job on Tuesday and continued to strike through Thursday.
The tentative contract agreement, which must still be voted on by SEIU Local 99 members, was reached with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after mediation from Democratic Mayor Karen Bass.
The deal would increase the average annual salary from $25,000 to $33,000, raise wages by 30%, boost the district minimum wage to $22.52, provide a $1,000 Covid-19 pandemic bonus, secure healthcare benefits for part-time employees who work at least four hours a day, and guarantee seven hours of work for special education assistants.
"The agreement addresses our key demands and sets us on a clear pathway to improving our livelihoods and securing the staffing we need to improve student services," SEIU Local 99 said in a statement. "It was members' dedication to winning respect from the district that made this agreement possible."
The Los Angeles Times reports that during a Friday news conference at City Hall with Bass and Alberto Carvalho, the LAUSD superintendent, Local 99 executive director Max Arias declared that "here in California this agreement will set new standards, not just for Los Angeles, but the entire state."
"I want to appreciate the 30,000 members that sacrificed three days of work, despite low income, to raise the issue to society, that we as a society need to do better for all workers, all working people, for everyone," Arias added.
While the strike meant about 400,000 K-12 students weren't in classes for three days this week, "many parents stood in support of union employees," according toKTLA, with one local parent saying that "it's obvious all over the schools that we're really not putting the support where it's needed and our children are suffering because of that."
In a series of tweets, Local 99 thanked people from across the country for their solidarity this past week and stressed that the LA mayor, who has no formal authority over LAUSD, "was instrumental to getting the district to finally start hearing our demands."
Bass, in a statement, thanked Arias and Carvalho "for working together with me to put our families first" and emphasized that "we must continue working together to address our city's high cost of living, to grow opportunity, and to support more funding for LA's public schools, which are the most powerful determinant of our city's future."
Carvalho said Friday that "when we started negotiating with SEIU, we promised to deliver on three goals. We wanted to honor and elevate the dignity of our workforce and correct well-known, decadeslong inequities impacting the lowest-wage earners. We wanted to continue supporting critical services for our students. We wanted to protect the financial viability of the district for the long haul. Promises made, promises delivered."
Contract talks with district teachers are ongoing. When announcing support for Local 99's strike earlier this month, UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz said that "despite LAUSD having one of the largest school budgets and largest reserves in the nation—teachers and essential school workers are struggling to support their own families and live in the communities they work for."
The strike and pending deal in California come amid a rejuvenated labor organizing movement across the United States, with employees of major corporations including Amazon and Starbucks fighting for unions.
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