Latest news with #Gay
Business Insider
8 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Housing boom, baby boom
Ayanna Gay was in her 30s and had been married for three years before she and her husband, Nakhaz, began seriously thinking about having a baby. A slew of considerations kept them on the fence, including not just the astronomical cost of childcare and fears about bringing a kid into a world in political and economic turmoil, but also a prohibitive mortgage. Finally, they decided to take the leap. Gay is due to have her first child in mid-August. "We got to a point where we were like, we can afford this more than we could have afforded it before," Gay tells me. "But it was never, like 'Oh, yeah, we're going to be smooth sailing.'" The Gays are far from alone. While there are myriad reasons the birth rate in America has been falling since 2008, surveys have found the rising cost of having a kid is at the top of the list. Childcare often costs more than a typical mortgage, nearly three-quarters of private sector workers still don't get paid parental leave, and the inflated price of everything from eggs to minivans is putting extra pressure on family budgets. Rising housing costs are a major part of those concerns. A record number of Americans are struggling to afford their rent or mortgage. Restrictive building and land-use regulations and developer norms have made starter homes and family-sized apartments scarce. Birth rates have fallen the most in parts of the country where housing costs have risen fastest. And families now make up the fastest-growing group of Americans falling into homelessness. The homeownership boom starting in the 1930s helped create the baby boom. This isn't a new problem. There has long been a close relationship between housing costs and birth rates in America. While parts of the US with the cheapest housing tend to have higher birthrates (a 2018 Zillow report found that fertility has risen in some places with the least cost inflation), areas with stricter land-use laws that prevent denser, cheaper housing from being built are closely correlated with lower fertility rates. A 10% increase in home prices led to a 1% decrease in births among non-homeowners in the 1990s and early 2000s, the economists Lisa Dettling and Melissa Schettini Kearney found in a 2012 paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. In a 2025 paper, Dettling and Kearney also found that the advent of the modern, low-down-payment mortgage in the 1930s made homeownership far more accessible to younger people and was responsible for more than three million additional births — meaning the homeownership boom helped create the baby boom. These days, rents are unaffordable for half of US tenants, and homeownership is out of reach for a growing share of 20- and 30-somethings. The typical first-time homebuyer in 2024 was 38 years old, a record high. Sixty percent of Gen Z worry they might never own a home, one recent survey found. And that lack of affordable, stable housing — as the prospective parents, new parents, and housing experts I talked to for this story repeatedly told me — is deepening the financial concerns many younger people have about having kids. While Gay and her husband bought their home in Orlando, Florida, in 2022, their housing costs are straining their budget, especially with the added expenses of a kid. And with both working from home, she thinks they'll need a bigger house if they ever want to have a second kid. Without cheaper housing options, they won't grow their family. "If there's a world where only one is sustainable, then we will only have one," she says. The country's declining birth rate isn't all bad news. Fewer teens are becoming parents. American women are getting more education, making more money, and delaying or not having kids of their own accord. But it's also a symptom of darker trends. American women aren't having as many kids as they say they want. Young people are having less sex and fewer of them, especially those with lower incomes, are getting married or living with romantic partners. As men struggle economically, fewer women are as interested in marrying or having kids with them. A third of US adults over 50 say they're childless because they never found the right partner. The conversations Americans are having about starting a family or having another kid are "very layered," Paige Connell, a mother of four and parenting influencer, tells me. She hears from mothers who feel burned out working and caring for their kids, and worry that having another would overwhelm them or hurt their careers. She also hears from childless people who don't know how they could afford childcare or a bigger home. Affordability is the biggest concern she hears from parents and people considering having kids. Housing costs are the single biggest factor preventing Americans from having as many kids as they want, according to a recent report published by the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think tank. In IFS's recent survey of more than 8,000 Americans 18 to 54 years old, a quarter of respondents listed housing costs as a concern, while 30% cited the cost of childcare, and 26% said they wanted more leisure time. But of those factors, housing costs had the largest total effect on family size. "Housing is the biggest affordability hurdle facing families," Lyman Stone, a co-author of the report and the director of IFS's Pronatalism Initiative, tells me. "It's the thing that everybody thinks about first, as soon as they're thinking about fertility." It really is the case that if you give people more bedrooms in their apartments, they're more interested in having children. Lyman Stone In Connell's case, being able to afford her three-bedroom home has allowed her to have the number of kids she wanted, she says. She's among the lucky millennial homeowners who landed a 3% mortgage interest rate on her suburban Boston house back in 2020. If housing costs had been as high then as they are now, she doesn't think she and her husband would have had a fourth. "There's a growing conversation about not having children unless you, quote unquote, have enough space for them," she says. "Like, if you can't afford to give them their own bedroom, then you should have shouldn't have that child." Stone's research has found that the problem isn't just the cost of housing, it's the scarcity of the types of homes most appealing to families: those with two or more bedrooms in communities that are safe, walkable, and have decent schools. People who have kids or want families tend to prefer single-family homes over apartments. Above all, they just want room to grow. "It really is the case that if you give people more bedrooms in their apartments, they're more interested in having children," Stone tells me. The fundamental driver of soaring rent and mortgage prices is a steep housing shortage. Family-sized housing is particularly scarce. When rents rise, single adults can live with housemates to split costs, says Emily Hamilton, a housing researcher at the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University. People with kids aren't likely to do the same, meaning they can't as easily defray rising housing costs. A group of roommates "can generally pay more for housing than one or two working parents with kids could," Hamilton says. Developers also aren't incentivized to build affordable family-sized housing, especially in expensive cities. They tend to build two more profitable types of homes: detached single-family houses with lots of lawn and square footage on the outskirts of cities, and large apartment buildings with cramped one-bedroom and studio units in the urban core. Neither make for affordable homes for families. That's in large part because land-use regulations, building codes, and financing models have made it very difficult or impossible to build anything in between, Michael Eliason, a Seattle-based architect and founder of Larch Lab, tells me. Affordable housing designed for families is increasingly relegated to far-flung exurbs and rural areas. "We've hit the limits of sprawl," Eliason says. At the same time, we "aren't good at building urban, multi-family housing that is of a quality similar to living in a detached house or a townhouse." Bobby Fijan, a real estate developer who's been pushing for more family-centric dense housing, tells me there's a lot developers could do under the current constraints to make their buildings more family-friendly. That could include designing two-bedroom apartments for a couple and a child, rather than two roommates, by featuring just one bathroom and reallocating square footage to an additional bedroom. Or apartment buildings could include a children's playroom in their common space instead of a dog washing station. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance talk openly about their concerns with the falling birth rate. Vance has famously blamed society's ills on "childless cat ladies," while Trump has promised to usher in a baby boom. Their pro-natalist policies are focused on expanding federal cash benefits for parents, including Trump's proposal for a $5,000 baby bonus. But they've also talked about opening up federal land for housing construction. Some Democrats have gotten behind the idea as well. Brad Wilcox, cofounder of IFS, previously told BI that the group has had conversations with the Trump administration's Domestic Policy Council about pronatalist policies. He pointed to the administration's efforts to sell federal land for housing construction as a promising path forward. As part of their "big beautiful bill," Republican lawmakers expanded the child tax credit from $2,000 per kid to $2,200. The proposal excludes the neediest families who don't make enough money to be eligible for the full benefit. The reconciliation package also includes a baby bonus in the form of investment accounts with $1,000 of seed funds for every American baby born from 2025 through 2028. While some researchers, including Stone, have found that an expanded child tax credit would increase birth rates, it wouldn't be enough for many Americans. Catherine, a 43-year-old physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, and her husband, a neuroscientist, make about $500,000 a year combined. But the couple and their two young daughters live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country and bought their three-bedroom house in Carmel for nearly $1.7 million in 2023. While their 1,700-square-foot home has enough space for a third baby, Catherine worries that expanding their family would deplete their financial safety net and make their fixed costs — mostly their mortgage — unaffordable. If either she or her husband takes a step back at work to help take care of a third baby, they'd likely struggle with their sky-high mortgage payments. She asked that her last name be excluded from the story because she fears her employer would discriminate against her if they knew she was considering having a third kid. "For us, it's not so much maternity and paternity leave guarantees that would lead us to have a third child, it's really about reducing that fixed cost long term," Catherine says. "We're doing OK now, but if we add this third element and something else happens, how are we going to pay our bills?" Moving doesn't make sense for them. A cheaper three-bedroom home is nearly impossible to come by in their school district. And Catherine's job, which requires her to be in the office five days a week, means they can't decamp to a cheaper state. If she or her husband were to lose their jobs or want to find other work, the opportunities in their niche fields are much more abundant in the Bay Area than they are elsewhere. Not to mention, they love living in Carmel. There are robotics and surfing camps, a plethora of museums, and access to the outdoors — all great for raising kids. "We're paying for the neighborhood, for the school options, for the safety, for our jobs," Catherine says. "The Bay Area is just really, really, really expensive."
USA Today
21 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
New Dolphins LB has been early star in training camp
After cutting ties with David Long Jr. last year and allowing Anthony Walker Jr. to depart in free agency, the Miami Dolphins hoped one of three veteran linebackers -- Tyrel Dodson, Willie Gay Jr., or K.J. Britt -- would emerge as a reliable starter alongside Jordyn Brooks. Through a week of training camp, it seems there's a clear answer. Gay, a 27-year-old former Super Bowl starter with the Kansas City Chiefs, signed with the Dolphins earlier this year on a one-year, $1.34 million deal. So far, he's looked like a player much more valuable than that. The Kansas City Chiefs drafted Gay in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft and he started 55 regular season games and nine playoff games -- including a pair of Super Bowls -- in four seasons with the team. But a one-year, $3 million deal with the New Orleans Saints produced lackluster results in 2024. 'Like Week 11, man, I kind of clocked out, because I was like, 'Bro, I'm playing 10 snaps a game,' Gay told reporters Monday. 'I was just like, 'Forget it.'" After a change of scenery, Gay is ready to reintroduce himself in Miami. "You learn the playbook, you do what the coaches ask of you to do," Gay said. "You do your job man, you're going to make a lot of plays. That's just this game in general. That's all I've been doing, trying to do the best of my ability, so that's all.' His teammates have noticed, too. "He's all over the place, man," Dolphins outside linebacker Bradley Chubb said Monday. "He flies around. He's a Super Bowl champ. So I always tell him, man, we need that Super Bowl DNA. Whatever bits and crumbs you got for us, man, we need it."
NZ Herald
4 days ago
- NZ Herald
On The Up: Northand's Janice and Robert Clarke mark 70th anniversary
The pair are happily settled in Paihia with three grown children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Their love story began in the early '50s when Janice – who goes by her middle name Gay – was fond of a dance or two. When as a 16-year-old she attended a square dancing event in Dargaville, she had no idea she would meet her future husband that night. Robert was a farmer working on his father's property when he and Gay tied the knot about a month before she turned 18. After they married, the pair moved about 10 minutes down the road to Te Kōpuru, where they worked sharemilking for a few years. The couple eventually said goodbye to Kaipara and headed to the Far North, where they leased a motor camp at Haruru Falls, Waitangi. 'It was a big deal in those days because a lot of people camped,' Gay said. They purchased a section in Paihia and built Aloha Motel. Robert was the first deputy chief for the Paihia Fire Brigade, established in 1965. After 10 years of working in motels and camps and three children later, the pair decided to sell up and move to Africa. The younger children, Jenny and Murray, went to school in the Cape province, while eldest daughter Carolyn worked for the railway. Gay and Robert Clarke married in 1955 – 70 years later they're still going strong. Gay worked in healthcare tending to African women while Robert – as a member of Paihia Lions Club – acted as a Lion at large, helping build accommodation for those in need. The family decided on another big move: they took a ship to England and spent 18 months travelling around Europe. Their children returned home to New Zealand while the couple waited for a ship to that could take their campervan. One of their more memorable moments was when the ship from England carrying their campervan hit a reef off the coast of Dakar – the capital of Senegal in West Africa. They were sent back to Tenerife – the largest of Spain's Canary Islands – until they were able to board another vessel, which took them through the ports of Africa. They waited six months for their campervan to be transported from Dakar to Cape Town, where they were staying. They made lifelong friends during that time, the couple said. When they finally returned to Paihia, they settled in a house there, which they have called home for the past 50 years. Gay worked for Kelly Tarlton from 1976 when the historic vessel, The Tui, was a museum. She said it was on the condition she was able to travel during the winter. After Gay retired, she would go to Indonesia every few months to import silver jewellery. The pair remained keen travellers until recently. They have visited some 90 countries during their marriage. Gay said she and Robert have struggled with having 'itchy feet' since they stopped travelling. Their children seem to have caught the wanderlust gene, though. Grown daughter Jenny had recently visited the Arctic Circle. The couple said they go everywhere together. 'Even if I go to the supermarket, he comes,' Gay said. 'And it's always been like that.' She believed having things in common may have been the trick aiding their marriage and longevity. Brodie Stone covers crime and emergency for the Northern Advocate. She has spent most of her life in Whangārei and is passionate about delving into issues that matter to Northlanders and beyond.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Miami Dolphins roster 2025: ESPN ranked all NFL starting lineups. Where they landed
Miami have been a hot topic this summer and it's not just the weather. The Miami Dolphins have been in news plenty since the end of the 2024 regular season. Tyreek Hill was hinting about departing from the team, pundits and media questioning Tua Tagovailoa and the future for him and the Jalen Ramsey saga started to die down until he was traded to the Steelers. A lot of noise also can mean a bunch of changes and the Dolphins are entering next season with plenty of new people. ESPN ranked the best starting lineup of each NFL team and these changes have pushed Miami towards the bottom half of the league. The Dolphins are ranked 24th in the league based off their starting lineup. ESPN ranks Miami Dolphins starting lineup Although they kept core pieces such as Tagovailoa, Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips, their new additions and multiple rookies in their starting lineup could have pushed them down to the mid 20s. THE BRIGHT SIDE: Dolphins training camp opening: 5 reasons for optimism ESPN projects rookies Kenneth Grant and Jonah Savaiinaea to start in September and trade acquisition Minkah Fitzpatrick to fill in at free safety. The Dolphins rank higher than teams such as the Indianapolis Colts and Atlanta Falcons but rank below the Las Vegas Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars. ESPN also listed the biggest strength, biggest weakness, X-factor for 2025 and nonstarter to know for each NFL team. The Dolphins' biggest strength was undeniably their one-two punch of Hill and Waddle. The two both had a down year for their standards as neither eclipsed 1,000 receiving yards on the season. The speed and separation the duo possess makes them a tough opponent when their quarterback is healthy. The addition of Nick Westbrook-Ikhine will present another weapon to opponents that will cause problems in the optimal situation. Miami lost majority of their secondary in the offseason and their effort to replace what was lost has not been as effective. Acquiring Fitzpatrick through the Ramsey trade was crucial but signing Artie Burns, Ashtyn Davis and Ifeatu Melifonwu, who combined for 468 snaps last season does not replace their missing secondary. They will lean on their free agent signing and draft selections to help create a well-balanced defense. The running game is Miami's X-factor as they need to get it back on track. They had the most efficient running game in the league by EPA per play in 2023, but it dropped to second-worst last year. De'Von Achane, Jaylen Wright, Alexander Mattison and Ollie Gordon II have to bring their A-game this coming season and their offensive line must be ready for that. Two non-starters to know are linebackers Willie Gay and K.J. Britt. The depth at inside linebacker is great and Gay's Super Bowl experience can another level to the position group. Tyrel Dodson and Jordyn Brooks are projected to start but Gay and Britt can cause competition with their skills and experience at the position. Miami Dolphins Pro Bowl Selections TE Jonnu Smith — Pro Bowl Miami Dolphins NFL free agency acquisitions G James Daniels QB Zach Wilson WR Nick Westbrook-Ikhine S Ifeatu Melifonwu S Ashtyn Davis T Larry Borom CB Artie Burns RB Alexander Mattison TE Pharoah Brown LB Willie Gay P Ryan Stonehouse LB K.J. Britt DE Ben Stille Miami Dolphins 2025 NFL draft picks Round 1 (No. 13 overall) - Kenneth Grant, DT, Michigan Round 2 (37) - Jonah Savaiinaea, OG, Arizona Round 5 (143) - Jordan Phillips, DT, Maryland Round 5 (150) - Jason Marshall Jr, CB, Florida Round 5 (155) - Dante Trader Jr, S, Maryland Round 6 (179) - Ollie Gordon II, RB, Oklahoma State Round 7 (231) - Quinn Ewers, QB, Texas Round 7 (253) - Zeek Biggers, DT, Georgia Tech Trades The Miami Dolphins trade CB Jalen Ramsey and TE Jonnu Smith in exchange for S Minkah Fitzpatrick The Miami Dolphins acquire TE Darren Waller and 2027 seventh-round pick in exchange for a conditional 2026 sixth-round pick. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Miami Dolphins roster: ESPN ranks their starting lineup
Barnama
20-07-2025
- Barnama
Kelantan Cites Faith, Community In Curbing Lgbt-linked Activities
KOTA BHARU, July 20 (Bernama) -- Activities linked to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Kelantan remain under control due to consistent enforcement, strong religious values and close community vigilance. State Local Government, Housing, Health and Environment Committee chairman Hilmi Abdullah said the community's alertness and willingness to report suspicious behaviour have played a key role. 'In Kelantan, if something seems unusual, people report it quickly to the authorities,' he told Bernama today.
