The fallacy of a pain-free path to a healthy housing market

In the mid-1990s, the public policy goal of increasing the U.S. homeownership rate collided with a huge leap in financial innovation. Lenders shifted from originating and holding mortgages to originating and packaging them for sale to investors. These new financial products enabled millions of Americans who hadn’t previously qualified to buy a home to become owners. Housing construction boomed, reaching a postwar high—9.1 million homes were built between 2002 and 2006, a period when 5.6 million U.S. households were formed. ; The resulting oversupply of homes presents policymakers with a formidable challenge as they struggle to craft a sustainable economic recovery. Usually a driver of economic recoveries, the housing market is foundering as an engine of growth. ; Generations of policymakers since the 1930s have sought to increase the homeownership rate. By the late 1960s, it had reached 64.3 percent of households, remaining there through the mid-1990s, in apparent equilibrium with household formation during a period of sustained U.S. economic growth. A fresh push to increase ownership drove the rate up 5 percentage points to its peak in the mid-2000s. Home price gains followed the rate upward.Mortgage loans ; Construction industry ; Housing - Prices

Recovering from the housing and financial crisis

The recent recession was unusual because it stemmed from an unsustainable easing of credit standards and financing, which fueled the prior expansion but also the imbalances that led to the worst recession since the 1930s. When losses on new financial practices ended excessive lending, the economy was hit by housing and credit shocks, culminating in a financial crisis. Home construction plunged, wealth fell, credit standards tightened and financial markets seized up. ; The initial impacts of these four shocks on gross domestic product (GDP) were amplified by cyclical interactions between income and spending. Since the second half of 2009, these negative shocks have been unwinding, setting the stage for economic recovery. An analysis of the shocks and their aftermath offers clues to the direction and pace of the recovery.Global financial crisis ; Construction industry ; Housing - Prices ; Mortgage loans ; Credit ; Securities

When will the U.S. housing market stabilize?

The hope that housing markets had stabilized in mid-2010 was dashed by subsequent declines in home construction and prices (Charts 1 and 2). Homebuilding peaked about five years ago, and housing prices almost four years ago. Amid such a prolonged downturn, a key question becomes, When will the housing market stabilize and support the economic recovery? We suggest that new home construction may stabilize and start recovering slowly within the next year or so. Our econometric results also indicate that national house prices may hit bottom late this year or in early 2012 and then recover slowly.Housing - Prices ; Mortgage loans

A Place to be Together:: Cultivating Spaces of Discomfort and Not Knowing in Visual Analysis. The Collaborative Seeing Studio.

This article describes our transmethodological practice and the affective space of making and making sense of visual research in community. We purposefully embrace complexity and richness in visual data analysis, rather than seeking to reductively avoid doubt and uncertainty. To do this, we bring multiple ways of seeing together into a collaborative, poly-vocal construction. Our ‘studio’ is designed to be a safe space for risk and creativity. We are at different levels of experience and confidence, but we all learn from each other. Seeing collaboratively depends on translating our ways of reading visual material “out of our heads” and “into our shared space.” In the sense that we love what we are doing, we revel at opening ourselves to new possibilities. In-Progress: Victoria Restler Narrates a Collaborative Seeing Studio Session. Wendy Luttrell leads us into collaging as both metaphor and tools of Collaborative Seeing. We end with a brief reflection

Illinois State University University Band Symphonic Band

Center for the Performing Arts Wednesday Evening April 23, 2003 8:00p.m

British Band Classics Wind Symphony

Center for the Performing Arts Sunday Afternoon November 17, 2002 3:00p.m

Autonomous Tennis Ball Collector

Practicing tennis often involves hitting many tennis balls from one side of the court to the other without an opponent to hit the balls back. In training sessions like these, the task of collecting the balls is laborious when performed manually. The objective of this project is to develop a robotic tennis ball collector that can automatically collect the balls from one side of the court so that the player can rest rather than collect the balls manually. This document outlines the process of designing such a robot. Included in this report is background research, prototype, and concept modeling, along with a finalized design, and a complete timeline of our process. We will also detail the manufacturing process and the design verification. In the conclusion we will provide you with recommendations for future projects. Throughout our research, we discovered many similar products, but none met all of the customer’s requirements, thus opening a window for our product. After copious design consideration, we selected the strongest idea that satisfied our customers’ needs and are moving forward with structural modeling and preliminary analysis on it. After the structural prototype revealed issues in the design we went back to work and finalized a design that we felt confident with and still satisfied all the requirements. As seen in this report the final design utilizes structural framing materials to build the robot and allows for ease of attachment for all the electrical components. The final step in the design process was to test the verification prototype to ensure that it met all our specifications. Unfortunately, our design did not pass as many of the tests as we would have liked, and this is detailed in that section. While at the conclusion of this project, we did not complete as much as we hoped, there is a good foundation in place for the project to continue as our sponsor so desires

Clinton Street MAX Visioning

This report documents the initial analysis and visioning process performed in the area surrounding the Clinton Street Station, which is nestled between Hosford-Abernethy and Brooklyn neighborhoods and the Central Eastside Industrial District. This project focuses on the future of the Clinton Street Station and how its development will impact the surrounding area over the next 50 years. This task involved acknowledging and balancing the current needs of the various stakeholders. The purpose of this report is to act as a tool for the Hosford-Abernethy Neighborhood Association (HAND) to more adequately understand the opportunities and constraints that the future station area holds. In order to begin imagining the future of the area, a thorough understanding and analysis is presented. Following this, design principles that shape the vision for the future are described. The document concludes with next steps and implementation recommendations. This project was conducted under the supervision of Donald J. Stastny and Edward Starkie

The 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake: Downdip rupture limit revealed by space geodesy

Radar interferometry from the ALOS satellite captured the coseismic ground deformation associated with the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule, Chile earthquake. The ALOS interferograms reveal a sharp transition in fringe pattern at ~150 km from the trench axis that is diagnostic of the downdip rupture limit of the Maule earthquake. An elastic dislocation model based on ascending and descending ALOS interferograms and 13 near-field 3-component GPS measurements reveals that the coseismic slip decreases more or less linearly from a maximum of 17 m (along-strike average of 6.5 m) at 18 km depth to near zero at 43–48 km depth, quantitatively indicating the downdip limit of the seismogenic zone. The depth at which slip drops to near zero appears to be at the intersection of the subducting plate with the continental Moho. Our model also suggests that the depth where coseismic slip vanishes is nearly uniform along the strike direction for a rupture length of ~600 km. The average coseismic slip vector and the interseismic velocity vector are not parallel, which can be interpreted as a deficit in strike-slip moment release

Covid-19 and Racial Justice in Urban Education: NYC Parents Speak Out

The COVID-19 pandemic and global calls for racial justice surfaced tremendous inequities and revitalized the debate about schooling and its purpose. NYC Parents Speak Out is a public engagement project, based on an interactive survey and interviews that records and reflects NYC family educational experiences during the unprecedented school year of 2020-2021. Our research collective, comprised of researchers, parents, advocates, teachers, and school leaders from the Urban Education Ph.D. Program at The Graduate Center (CUNY) identified three key recommendations based on research findings: to improve communication through family and community engagement; give greater attention to social-emotional and mental health; and teach about systemic racism and racial justice