Latest news with #AndrewHay
BBC News
13-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
York residents fear being priced out of housing market due to rentals
York has long benefitted as a hotspot for both tourists and students - but residents are worried its popularity is causing major issues for the housing market. We meet people fearful for the city's future if action is not taken. Painter and decorator Andrew Hay is standing on the York street where his grandparents used to live - and where his dad grew said it used to be a busy, lively community - but was now a "ghost town" during the university holidays, when the students renting houses have gone Hay said similar streets could be found across the city - with a huge impact on York's housing stock, pushing prices through the roof."This street - and others like it - are being neglected," he said."It's unrecognisable and it's all down to student lets and holiday lets."They've made it pretty much impossible for the next generation - like my children - to buy a house in the area." Mr Hay said his two sons - both aged in their 20s - both worked in York, but would have to look to the city's outskirts, or further away, to buy homes of their said: "They will have to commute back into York - that's not ideal."They are saving for a property, but when you look around there's nothing in their price range in the York area."Even the surrounding towns - which are a bit cheaper - are getting more expensive because people are being pushed out of York."Asked what the solution was, Mr Hay said he feared it was too late for some streets in York."I don't know how many people would want to, or be able to afford, to buy a house in those areas," he said."It is just too expensive."If nothing is done, in 15 to 20 years' time local people won't be living in York."It will all be tourists and students." In a joint statement, York St John University and the University of York said students were "our future key workers and professionals," and "contribute hugely to the local economy, workforce and cultural life of our city"."We continue to work with our partners to lobby for better planning that takes student needs into account, reduces pressure on local housing and promotes thriving communities," the statement said. York Central's Labour MP, Rachael Maskell, has long campaigned on problems linked to the city's housing shortage and the growth of the short-term letting said a house that was turned into a short-term let was no longer available as a family home, and those in the city centre were often used as "party houses".The MP has put a private members' bill before Parliament - it is due back in the House of Commons in the autumn - which would mean a property had to be licensed before it could become a short-term said: "That means the local authority would get money to fund the scheme but real controls would be put in place."Tourism is really important, so much of our economy is built on it, it is important for jobs and for showing our incredible city across the world."So it is hugely important, but we have to hold it in balance." Airbnb is a major player in York's short-term letting about the issue in Parliament in 2023, Maskell said there were about 2,000 Airbnbs in her firm said York's housing pressures were not down to short-term lets, but to the failure to build enough new homes.A spokesperson said listings rented on Airbnb for 90 nights or more in York made up just 0.55% of local housing stock."Many hosts on Airbnb are everyday people renting their place casually to make ends meet, while travel on Airbnb brings £44m to the local economy, supporting nearly 700 jobs and spreading the benefits of tourism to all," they said. As Mr Hay was speaking, a conference was being held a couple of miles across the city at York St John was being held to look for ways to make tourism more "sustainable," so it benefitted everyone living in a popular tourist spot, and not just people who work in the event was run by Good Organisation, which has set up a tourism assembly - made up of York residents - to give locals a voice in a £1.7bn industry that brings 9m visitors to the city every Almond, the organisation's director, said: "House prices going up is a huge issue."Lots of people love the city, want to come and have a second home here, they know they can make money out of holiday accommodation."But the situation with Airbnb and house prices has tipped over - and we've seen an increase in homelessness because of that."Ms Almond said one solution suggested by Good Organisation was a "Fair BnB" system - based on the original Airbnb system of renting out a room."People would still be earning money, benefiting from tourism, but not taking the whole house off the market," she said. Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Soldiers, Strykers and 100-degree temps: Inside Trump's border military zone
By Andrew Hay SANTA TERESA, NM (Reuters) -The weapons system atop a drab green U.S. Army Stryker swivels, its camera shifting downward toward a white Ford F-150 driving slowly along the U.S.-Mexico border. Under the watchful eye of the 26-ton armored vehicle perched on a sand dune above them, humanitarian volunteers are driving the dirt road next to the border wall to see if they can continue to search for migrant remains inside one of two military zones established along the border by the Trump administration in April and May. Soon, they get their answer. It's not long before an unmarked gray pickup appears, makes a U-turn in the sand, and puts on its siren, here in the desert 5.6 miles (9 km) west of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico border crossing. The driver pulls alongside, introduces himself as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and tells the volunteers they can no longer be there. James Holman, founder of the Battalion Search and Rescue group, whose volunteers also hand water to migrants through the bars of the barrier, acquiesces. Then he vents his frustration. "We're ramping up all this military and taking this public land away, it doesn't make sense, and it's theater, it's deadly, deadly theater," says Holman, 59, a former Marine. They are in one of two so-called "National Defense Areas" set up along 260 miles (418 km) of the U.S. southern border in New Mexico and Texas as part of the Trump administration's military buildup on the border. U.S. President Donald Trump has long shown interest in using the military for civilian law enforcement, sending Marines to Los Angeles this week in their first domestic deployment in over 30 years. The border military zones are one of his most audacious attempts yet to use troops trained for overseas combat in roles normally carried out by Border Patrol or local police. The Army has not made public the zones' boundaries. The New Mexico area may run over three miles into the United States, in places, based on 'restricted area' warning signs in English and Spanish posted along State Road 9 parallel to the border. The zones are classified as U.S. Army installations, giving troops the right to temporarily detain and question migrants and other civilian trespassers caught in the areas. Their primary mission is to detect and track illegal border crossers as part of the Trump administration's quest for '100% operational control' of the border at a time when migrant arrests are near an historic low. Along the international boundary, Reuters saw warning signs posted inside the United States around 45 feet north of the border barrier around every 100 meters, facing south. That meant if you had crossed the border and could read them, you were already in the zone. Migrants caught illegally crossing the border into the zones face new trespassing charges on top of unlawful entry to the country, with combined penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment. Attempts to prosecute them for trespassing have floundered. Starting in May, federal judges in Texas and New Mexico have dismissed trespassing charges against migrants caught within the area and acquitted a Peruvian woman brought to trial, ruling there was no evidence they saw signs before entering the zone. Illegal border crossings fell to a record low in March after the Biden administration shut down asylum claims in 2024 and Mexico tightened immigration controls. Trump, who banned people from claiming asylum on the southern border shortly after starting his second term in January, nonetheless says the military areas are needed to repel an "invasion" of human traffickers and drug smugglers. BORDER BUILDUP In the past four months Trump raised the number of active-duty troops on the border to 8,000 from 2,500 at the end of the Biden administration, according to the U.S. Army. Presidents since Richard Nixon have used regular troops and reservists for support roles on the border. Trump has taken it a step further. The Bureau of Land Management in April transferred 110,000 acres (172 square miles) of land in New Mexico, an area seven times the size of Manhattan, to the U.S. Army for three years to establish a first zone. A second was created in May with a transfer of International Boundary and Water Commission land in Texas. The areas are satellites of the Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss Army bases in Arizona and Texas, respectively. That gives troops the right to hold and question civilian trespassers without the need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. The law lets a president deploy federal forces domestically during events like civil unrest. Some 105 Stryker combat vehicles and around 2,400 troops from the 4th Infantry Division deployed from Colorado Springs in March. They rove in armored personnel carriers across New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Reuters saw Strykers concentrated in a roughly 20-mile ribbon from El Paso west to Santa Teresa, one of the 2,000-mile border's busiest and most deadly areas for migrant crossings. The 8-wheeled vehicles, used by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now by Ukraine in its war with Russia, can be seen parked under a bridge to Mexico, atop a landfill and on a ridge above a gap in the border wall. Their engines run 24/7 to cool crews in the 100 F. (38 C.) plus heat. Vehicles are unarmed but soldiers have personal weapons. Crews take shifts operating the joystick-controlled camera systems that can see for two miles (3.2 km) and have night vision, according to the Army. A person familiar with Strykers, who asked not to be named, said the work was 'monotonous' but said it gave soldiers 'a sense of purpose.' Troops have alerted Border Patrol to 390 illegal crossings in the nearly two months since the first zone was established. They made their first detentions on June 3, holding 3 'illegal aliens' in New Mexico before handing them over to Border Patrol, according to Army spokesperson Geoffrey Carmichael. Border Patrol arrested 39,677 migrants in the El Paso sector in the fiscal year to April, down 78% from the year-earlier period. 'COVERED BY DESERT SAND' Sitting outside his juice bar in Sunland Park, Harold Gregory says he has seen a sharp drop in migrants entering his store or asking customers for a ride since Strykers arrived. "We feel safer," said Gregory, 38. "They do kind of like intimidate so there's not so many people come this way." In neighboring Santa Teresa, trade consultant Jerry Pacheco says the optics of combat vehicles are not good as he tries to draw international firms to the town's industrial park. 'It's like killing an ant with a sledgehammer,' says Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program. 'I think having the military down here is more of a political splash.' About 90 miles (143 km) west, New Mexico rancher Russell Johnson said he saw five Strykers briefly positioned in a gap in the border barrier on his ranch. He welcomes the zone as an extra layer of security and has testified to the U.S. Congress on illegal border crossers destroying barbed wire fences, cattle thieves driving livestock into Mexico and a pickup stolen at gunpoint by drug smugglers. He is unsure if his home, or over half his ranch, is inside the area but has been assured by U.S. Border Patrol he can continue to work land ranched by his family since 1918. 'I don't know, I don't think anyone knows,' says Johnson, 37, a former Border Patrol agent, of the zone's boundaries. He says the Army has not communicated rules for hunters with permits to shoot quail and mule deer this fall in the military area, or hikers who start or end the 3,000-mile (4,800 km) Continental Divide Trail within it. The Army has been seeking memoranda of understanding with local communities and agencies to continue activities in the New Mexico zone, said Nicole Wieman, a U.S. Army spokesperson. "The MOU process for commercial and recreational activities, such as hunting, mining and ranching, is complex," Wieman said. Jenifer Jones, Republican state representative for Johnson's area, said Americans can keep doing what they did before in the zone. 'They can carry their firearms as they would have prior,' said Jones, who welcomed the troops to her 'neglected' area where only a barbed-wire fence separates the two countries in places. To the east in Las Cruces, the state's second largest city, State Representative Sarah Silva, a Democrat, said the zones have created fear and apprehension 'I see this as an occupation of the U.S. Army on our lands,' said Silva. Back in desert west of Santa Teresa, Battalion Search and Rescue leader Abbey Carpenter, 67, stands among dunes where the group has discovered the remains of 24 migrants in 18 months, mostly women. She is concerned the area could be absorbed into the military zone. "Who's going to look for these remains if we're not allowed out here," she said, showing the jaw and other uncollected bones of a woman her group reported to local authorities in September. "Will they just be covered up by the desert sands?" (Reporting By Andrew Hay; editing by Donna Bryson and Michael Learmonth)
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Migrant acquitted in first trial over US border military zones
By Andrew Hay (Reuters) -A federal jury in Texas on Thursday acquitted the first migrant tried for entering one of the new military zones on the U.S.-Mexico border, marking a legal challenge to the Trump administration plan to raise penalties for illegal crossings. The trial of the 21-year-old Peruvian woman was a test of whether the federal government could levy extra charges against migrants who cross the border unlawfully into areas in Texas and New Mexico designated as restricted military areas. Adely Vanessa De La Cruz-Alvarez faced two charges for entering a Texas military zone and a charge for illegal entry into the United States after her May 12 arrest near Tornillo, about 30 miles east of El Paso, according to court documents. An El Paso jury on Thursday found the migrant guilty of illegal entry to the United States but not guilty of unlawfully entering military property. The judge in the case on Wednesday acquitted De La Cruz-Alvarez of a trespassing charge, ruling federal prosecutors produced no evidence the migrant saw any signs warning her that she was entering a Department of Defense restricted area. "There was zero testimony that Ms. De La Cruz (1) ever saw any such signage, (2) knew that the area was designated as any kind of a military zone, (3) had any intention, willfully or otherwise, to enter upon a military zone," Federal Magistrate Judge Laura Enriquez wrote in her ruling. Federal prosecutors argued they did not need to prove De La Cruz knew she was trespassing on military land to charge her for the act, only that she knew she was illegally entering the United States. Alvarez's lawyer Veronica Teresa Lerma did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The El Paso trial comes after federal magistrate judges in New Mexico and Texas dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of migrants on grounds they did not know they were on military land due to inadequate signage. The National Defense Areas were set up along 240 miles of the border in New Mexico and Texas starting in April. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said migrants caught in them could face combined penalties of up to ten years' imprisonment. (Reporting By Andrew Hay; editing by Diane Craft)
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Guatemalan migrant who gave birth in US avoids rapid deportation
By Andrew Hay (Reuters) -A Guatemalan migrant who crossed the US border eight months pregnant and gave birth in Arizona has avoided fast-track deportation after intervention by the state's governor, her lawyer and a federal official said on Saturday. The 24-year-old woman gained public attention after lawyer Luis Campos said federal agents denied him access to her in a Tucson hospital after she gave birth on Wednesday and told him she was set for rapid removal after entering the country illegally. The case raised concerns about the treatment of mothers and infants caught in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, prompting Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs to contact federal officials, according to local media. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the woman had been placed in normal deportation proceedings following her discharge from hospital and given the right to contact an attorney. "The woman was transferred to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations with a court date to appear before an immigration judge," said a CBP spokesman. "The child remains with the mother." U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Campos said the woman, who he identified only as "Erika," fled a "violent situation" in Guatemala, according to her mother who requested that he represent her. He talked to the woman on Friday and she said she walked for two days in the desert before being apprehended about 50 miles (80 km) south of Tucson. She has the right to express fear of returning to Guatemala and request asylum, he added. "I'm hoping to get news either today or tomorrow that she's been released," said Campos, adding that Phoenix immigration lawyers had offered him their help at the request of Hobbs. The governor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Hobbs spokesperson told local media her office contacted federal and local officials regarding the welfare of the woman and newborn. "Governor Hobbs has been clear in her opposition to inhumane immigration enforcement practices," the spokesperson said, according to 13News. The CBP spokesman said agents followed the law and adhered to CBP procedures at all times in relation to the woman. (Reporting By Andrew Hay, editing by Deepa Babington)
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Students sue Texas university, governor over Gaza protest arrests
By Andrew Hay (Reuters) - Four current and former University of Texas at Austin students sued the college and Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday, alleging they faced unlawful arrest and retaliatory discipline for demonstrating against Israel's assault on Gaza. The lawsuit is among a wave of legal actions against U.S. universities, law enforcement and state leaders over their handling of pro-Palestinian student protests that erupted in the Spring of 2024. Filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) on behalf of the students, the lawsuit accuses UT Austin President Jay Hartzell, Abbott and law enforcement officers of intentionally suppressing pro-Palestinian speech at an April 24, 2024, campus protest. According to the filing, Abbott, with the consent of Hartzell, ordered state police in riot gear to carry out mass arrests, violating protesters' First Amendment rights to assemble and express their opinions. In response to the lawsuit, UT Austin spokesperson Mike Rosen referred to statements the university made after the arrests saying it acted to preserve campus safety, enforce protest rules, and that most arrests were of people from outside the university. Abbott's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a social media post during the arrests, Abbott said: "Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas." Two students named in the suit said they wanted to protect others from the physical and mental harm they had suffered. "It is reclaiming our narrative because we were treated as antisemitic criminals," said Arwyn Heilrayne, a second-year student, who experienced a panic attack after she was knocked to the ground by police and had her wrists tightly zip-tied. She has since had to leave an internship at the state legislature and been diagnosed with PTSD as a result of her arrest, she said. Mia Cisco said suing the university took on a new urgency as she watched the Trump administration try to deport foreign students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. "It's really vital and crucial right now to make sure that that we say that it's not okay," said Cisco, a third-year student, who had her hijab forcibly removed by police following her arrest. Dozens of demonstrators were taken into custody at the protest then released two days later after the Travis County Attorney's Office said charges were dropped due to a lack of probable cause. All students arrested faced university disciplinary action, according to the lawsuit. ADC Director Abed Ayoub saw most Americans, especially Texans, backing free speech for pro-Palestinian protesters. "Governor Abbott and others are underestimating how much Americans value their First Amendment rights," said Ayoub. (Reporting By Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
