Housing
The Press has a nice story on the Seeds of Hope Development Corp., which got planning approval to build five tiny homes on two vacant lots behind the PAL building on New York Avenue, which could provide an innovative solution to the problem of affordable housing.
Well affordable housing is a problem anyway. Admittedly, I’m a weirdo who’s never owned a home, tiny or otherwise, but aren’t apartments a better way to put people up? Building more of them would reduce housing costs/increase affordability, though I realize that is controversial in certain quarters.
With the important caveat that I’m a) not a lawyer and b) kind of an idiot, these incentive programs they’re fighting over in Trenton set aside $250 million for housing in South Jersey, including Atlantic City, where there’s a robust foreclosure rate and loads of people paying half their incomes on shelter. Then the EDA used $68 million of that $250 million on the Stockton campus, which provided 121 units of beachfront housing to Stockton students at $561,981 per unit. How big can I get my tiny home for $561,981? (As the EDA and Stockton would probably point out, some $30 million of that total $68 million incentive actually went to the South Jersey Industries office and parking-tower mixed-use development. But yeah, no housing.)
On the other hand, all this could be underwater in a few years, anyway, according to this Longread writer. “There’s no doubt that Atlantic City is going under. The only question left is: Can an entire city donate its body to science?”
Coffee Substitute?
There’s a caffeine spray you can keep at your bedside and shoot directly into your mouth the moment your alarm goes off. It’s being marketed to former Olympic athletes or something.
Anyway, Ashu Jain, the CEO, has small kids and sleep apnea. We should commiserate Ashu Jain. I’m right here, you have my number.
For more feats of journalism…
EIGHT SCHOOL DISTRICTS SUE NJ DOE OVER CUTS IN STATE AID–Eight school districts are suing the state Department of Education over planned cuts in their school budgets, saying the reductions will devastate the learning environment for thousands of students. www.njspotlight.com
‘He was a big brother to everyone’: A.C. mourns death of youth football coach–ATLANTIC CITY — Philip Brooks was praying inside his Presbyterian Avenue home Sunday morning when he heard gun shots ring out, a sound he first thought was a loud fender bender. www.pressofatlanticcity.com
Atlantic City mourns community leader lost to violence–Demond Tally knew the feeling of deep loss. He tried to explain it just weeks after his only son was fatally shot the day after Thanksgiving 2016. breakingac.com
23,629–Gov. Phil Murphy has made it clear that he’s committed to expanding the state’s medical marijuana program, and he has the numbers to back up that promise: 23,629 people have been added since he announced the expansion early in 2018, bringing the total number of enrollees to 40,652 as of yesterday. www.njspotlight.com