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Newsweek
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Woman Relaxes in High-Rise Bedroom—Then Sees Someone at the Window
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A video of an apartment resident caught in an unexpected "embarrassing" moment while attempting to enjoy a lazy day in bed has gone viral on TikTok. The clip was shared by @sweatyratz and has garnered more than 24.1 million views since it was first posted on April 9. The footage begins with a view of a couple of window cleaners strapped into harnesses while dangling outside a floor-to-ceiling glass bedroom window. The camera later pans to a woman in the bed wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Text overlaid on the video reads: "POV [point of view]: Thought you'd be safe to bed rot in ur high-rise apartment but ppl [people] come out of the LITERAL sky to judge u." "Stay safe," the poster advised in the caption shared with the post. There are soaring housing costs in the United States. A rise in rent prices during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an "unprecedented affordability crisis," with around half of U.S. renter households burdened by housing costs, according to a 2024 report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Around 12.1 million households are "severely cost-burdened," with more than half of their income spent on housing expenses. Millions of potential homebuyers in the United States have been "priced out of the market by elevated home prices and interest rates," the report found. 'So Embarrassing' Viewers on TikTok were mortified on behalf of the apartment resident in the viral clip, with several raising various concerns. User richindaisies posted: "THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING one time this happened while I had my back to my bedroom window & was scoffing down a big mac watching a movie. I thought it was raining til I realized it was a window cleaner." User @yourmomma876 commented: "Don't they send notices when they're gonna do a window cleaning on the building?" User bunnydollxo added: "How do you sleep without curtains." User YoinkerBadu wrote: "People who don't own curtains are just begging for this to happen." User kaylaaa_425 said: "idc [I don't care] HOW high my windows be, I will NEVER not have blinds idc, I'm convinced there's nosy ahh ppl across the skyline w[ith] binoculars, I ain't takin NO chances." User KO asked: "WHAT IF YOU WERE CHANGING??" User @finequeenbean posted: "This would be so problematic, I am a nudist at home. Do they warn you in advance at least??" Ems noted, "The things those guys must see," and Charlie said: "I can only imagine what those guys have seen." Shaq wrote: "they must love and fear their job." A screenshot from a viral TikTok video about a resident in high-rise apartment who is startled by window cleaners that appear outside her bedroom. A screenshot from a viral TikTok video about a resident in high-rise apartment who is startled by window cleaners that appear outside her bedroom. @sweatyratz on TikTok Do you have a home-related video or story to share? Let us know via life@ and your story could be featured on Newsweek.
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
If so many people are leaving Massachusetts, why aren't housing costs going down?
Nearly everyone agrees that perhaps the biggest threat to Massachusetts' economy is that But if so many people are moving away, why don't housing prices go down? The state's combination of slow population growth and sky-high prices would seem to contradict the basic laws of supply and demand. Related : The simplest explanation is this: Even if people leave the state, Massachusetts is so short on homes that There is no true estimate of exactly how many homes Massachusetts needs to meet demand right now, because different economists have different ways of measuring these things. Advertisement So researchers tend to defer to the most obvious indicator: the 'There is no one perfect measure of the housing shortage,' said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. 'The easiest thing to look at is the housing market and the way prices are growing here. That is indicative of extreme demand that the state isn't meeting.' One recent example: In many parts of the country, home prices have modestly dipped over the last two years due to rising interest rates. Not here. Statewide, Advertisement That alone, said McCue, is enough of an indicator that the state needs to build more, much more. And then there's the broader picture of the state's population trends. Related : Much of under President Trump. But immigration has driven population growth here for some time. Domestic migration was negative well before COVID — every year going back to 2014 — while international immigration has been positive. Then there are births in the state, which have outpaced deaths here for years, though that growth has slowed recently. So while people are leaving the Massachusetts, the population is still growing. And on top of the number of people who live in the state is the number of households they form. That number is also expected to grow over the next ten years, said McCue. Related : Advertisement Someone forms a new household when they move into a new living arrangement. The simplest example of this is when a young person moves out of their parents' home, and what was one household becomes two. Household growth has surged in the US in recent years — driven mostly by Millennials — and the same has been true in Massachusetts. Between 2025 and 2035, the state figures some 500,000 Millennial and Gen Z residents will form new households here, exceeding the pace at which Baby Boomer and other older households shrink or move away. A condo development under construction in Jamaica Plain. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff The easiest way to think of that dynamic and how it impacts the housing market in Massachusetts is like this: Picture a couple who raised two children in a Boston suburb. Eventually, those children will move out on their own, forming new households of their own that require housing. Most won't find any place to live in the town they grow up, unless that town has built new housing. At the same time, their parents will still be living in the house they grew up in, now with empty bedrooms, because there are so few smaller options. What this dynamic means is that the number of people who need housing in Massachusetts will keep growing, even if the overall population does not. Those are the new households the Healey administration accounted for when it called on the state to build 222,000 new homes between 2025 and 2035. The researchers who helped create that recommendation assumed zero population growth; if they're wrong, of course, the state will need even more. Advertisement One somewhat common refrain is that population loss wouldn't be such a bad thing for Massachusetts, because it could lower housing costs. Why is it such a bad thing if the kids move away from the town they grew up in, or even out of the state, if it means demand for new homes will go down? The answer, said McCue, is that those kids are future workers, who power the state's companies and economy. If they leave, good jobs will follow. Housing costs would drop because of a downturn in the state's economy marked by job loss, companies leaving the state, and a generally weaker Massachusetts. 'That is not a scenario that anyone should be rooting for,' said McCue. 'States with healthy economies don't shrink.' Andrew Brinker can be reached at
Miami Herald
05-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
The number of new apartments is at a 50-year high, but states expect a slowdown
More new apartments were built in 2024 than in any other year since 1974, but the Trump administration's tariffs and deportations of potential construction workers, plus higher interest rates, could be a wet blanket on the boom. A U.S. Census Bureau survey found almost 592,000 new apartments were finished last year, the most since the 1970s, when baby boomers sparked a construction surge as they moved out of their childhood homes. There were 693,000 new apartments built in 1974, when the country had about half as many households. But there has been a steep slowdown in construction starts, as the newly completed apartments come online. The increased supply has lowered rents and increased vacancy rates, making new development less profitable. Some experts also say tariffs on construction materials and labor shortages caused by dips in immigration will create headwinds for new construction. Apartment starts were down 27% in 2024 compared with 2023, and down 37% from a recent peak of 531,000 in 2022, despite the historic rate of completions. Apartment starts were at their lowest ebb since 2013. Housing experts have long lamented that there aren't enough apartments and single-family houses in the U.S. - at least not in places where people want to live and at prices they can afford. Estimates of the national housing shortage last year varied widely, from 1.5 million houses and apartments to 20.1 million; since then, another 1.6 million houses and apartments have been built. Most experts estimate a shortage of 1.5 million to 5.5 million, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Some states are building apartments faster than others, according to a Stateline analysis. Though completions aren't tracked by state, permits that lead to new apartments have been granted at high rates in recent years in South Dakota, Utah, Arizona and Colorado. Rates are lowest in Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Oklahoma and Alaska. The massive jump in apartment construction has its roots in 2021 and 2022, when interest rates were low and rent growth was high, said Rob Warnock, senior research associate for Apartment List, a company that posts rental listings online. "Those new apartments came online in 2023 and 2024, and while those deliveries are slowing down today, there are still many apartments in the pipeline," said Warnock, who added that "supply and demand are coming back into balance." In response to greater supply, rents have fallen by about $50 per month (3.5%) from their 2022 peak, according to a report released last week by Apartment List. Apartment vacancy is at a 15-year high of 6.3%, keeping a lid on rents, but that could turn around as construction slows, according to an April report by Moody's, a financial services company. Apartment building has been a bipartisan priority as single-family home prices soar further out of the affordability range for young families. In South Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature worked to prolong the building boom with grants and loans under the state's Housing Infrastructure Financing Program. The program put$200 million of state and federal funding toward defraying the costs of development in new neighborhoods, such as roads, sewer lines and streetlights. Republican state Sen. Casey Crabtree, sponsor of the proposal signed into law in 2023, told Stateline it was needed to address a housing shortage, especially in rural parts of the state. "We have a drastic shortage of workers," Crabtree said before a vote in 2023. "South Dakota businesses need more workers in our state. To get more workers, we need more housing." Armand Domalewski, co-founder of YIMBY Democrats for America, said overregulation is a barrier to housing construction in many areas that his party controls. "A lot of blue-government areas and cities have extremely restrictive zoning, impact fees and other rules that make it very difficult to build housing," said Domalewski. Another barrier is local opposition, he said. "If it was just a free market, developers would want to build in the places like California, where prices are the highest and rents are the highest, because they'd make more money," he added. In California, the 2021 HOME Act was meant to spur more affordable housing and ease labor shortages, but it's faced local opposition in some areas. At the end of last year, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several measures that aim to streamline regulations and crack down on local resistance to the 2021 law. South Dakota approved nearly 6,000 permits for apartment units in 2023 and 2024, which when completed would add about 1.4% to its 2023 total of 417,000 housing units. That's the highest rate in the nation. By contrast, Mississippi during that same period approved about 660 apartment units - a fraction of 1 percentage point to its 2023 base of about 1.4 million housing units. Chas Olson, executive director of the South Dakota Housing Development Authority, said the full impact of the state infrastructure funding isn't apparent yet, as many developments that received the help are still under construction. Completions are still strong this year with about 39,000 apartments finished in March, not much different from the 41,500 in March 2024, which was the biggest March number since 1985. Another impediment to apartment construction has been high interest rates, which make it harder to borrow money to build, said Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, an assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis at the National Association of Home Builders. She expects apartment building starts to slow until later this year. "We are going to be short of workers for a long time. That's the way it is. And of course tariffs are going to have an impact," Nanayakkara-Skillington said. ____ Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached atthenderson@ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Forget the Sunbelt. More people are moving to the Snowbelt.
The Sunbelt isn't quite as hot — for movers, that is — as it once was. The pandemic and remote work initially drove people to the South, but that trend has slowed. Some Midwestern states, particularly Wisconsin and Missouri, are attracting more residents. Midwestern small towns and suburbs are in luck. Over the last few decades, domestic migration to the Sunbelt has slowed — and the Midwest is becoming the new place to be. In the mid-20th century, large numbers of Americans traded chillier, pricier locales in the North — also known as the Snowbelt — for balmy winters and cheaper homes across the South and Southwest, also called the Sunbelt. When the pandemic hit, the widespread adoption of remote work spurred a new surge of Americans to move to Florida, Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas, and other states across the Sunbelt. But the COVID-related spike in southern transplants obscures a longer-term reverse trend. Over the last few decades, moves to the Sunbelt have significantly slowed. And more recently, some Midwestern and Northeastern states have been losing fewer people than they did pre-pandemic, and a few have even gained population. Rural areas in particular have seen an uptick in movers, creating a reverse Sunbelt to Snowbelt migration trend. Just before the pandemic, Missouri and Wisconsin were experiencing net population losses, but now they're growing, a new paper from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies found. Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan have seen their outflows slow post-pandemic. In the Northeast, Connecticut has also seen outward migration slow. Two economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, Sylvain Leduc, and Daniel Wilson, similarly reported last year that the warmest places in the country have seen their population growth slow while the coldest places are growing. They argue that as temperatures rise with climate change, that trend looks like it's here to stay. "The 'pivoting' in the U.S. climate-migration correlation over the past 50 years is likely to continue, leading to a reversal of the 20th century Snow Belt to Sun Belt migration pattern," they wrote. It's not totally clear why we're seeing this new Sunbelt-to-Snowbelt trend, but cost-of-living issues and climate change could be factors, the researchers wrote. Housing costs have spiked in much of the Sunbelt and South, particularly over the last few years, helping slow southern migration, Riordan Frost, a research analyst at Harvard and the author of the paper, told Business Insider. "Not only in the typically super high-cost states has affordability been an issue, but it's becoming more of an issue in the Sunbelt," Frost said. At the same time, much of the Snowbelt, particularly more rural areas, has stayed relatively affordable. The North is also experiencing less frigid winters, while the Sunbelt grows ever steamier, making the Snowbelt increasingly attractive. "These new migration trends should help mitigate the effects of climate change, as fewer people would be directly exposed to the negative impacts of hotter and more frequent extreme heat days," Leduc and Wilson wrote. Zooming out, it's important to note that many Americans are staying put. Household mobility in the US has plummeted since its peak in the 1980s, falling from a rate of 18% in 1986 to 9.7% in 2019. The pandemic briefly disrupted that trend, but over the last couple of years rates of moving have continued their pre-2020 decline trajectory. And a big part of the problem is elevated housing costs. Many can't afford to move because of elevated mortgage rates, home prices, and rents. Others fear losing the low-interest home loans they secured when interest rates fell in the early months of the pandemic. "In general, the homeowner mobility rate has really plunged, and that's dragging down the overall mobility rate quite a bit," Frost said. Have you moved to the Midwest — or left? Reach out to this reporter at erelman@ Read the original article on Business Insider
Forbes
08-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Care For The Vulnerable: How Businesses Can Address The Housing Crisis
Goro Gupta, founder of Ethical Property Investments, transforms lives with disability-friendly housing, through ethical investment. Record homelessness and a scarcity of affordable housing globally should make all of us consider who's responsible for offering housing and other support for people with disabilities and vulnerable communities. Is it government? Big business? Wealthy property investors? Everyday investors working to build their nest egg? As people continue to hurt across the globe and government interventions plod along, how can business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors help address this burgeoning crisis? The data presents a bleak picture. In England, over 79,000 households were reported as homeless or under threat of it in the first quarter of 2023. For people with disabilities, the situation is even worse. According to a report from Scope, "Disabled people are almost three times as likely to live in material deprivation than the rest of the population (34% versus 13%)." And many are unable to secure suitable accommodation that meets their accessibility requirements. At the same time, the amount of U.K. social housing is in decline, from over 200,000 homes built in the mid-1950s, to under 10,000 in the last couple years. The private rental market, often the last resort for those priced out of the housing market, has become prohibitively expensive. The U.S. situation is just as concerning, with homelessness reaching an all-time high of 653,100 people in January 2023. A stagnant-wage economy and soaring rents have made housing less affordable. The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University notes that in 2022, nearly half of all renters in the U.S. were cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of their income toward housing. The housing crisis in Australia is worsened by escalating rents and a persistent shortfall of social housing. In 2021, "more than 122,000 people were estimated to be experiencing homelessness in Australia." That figure is rising now: Homelessness is up 22% over the past three years, with an additional 10,000 human beings every month who have no place to call home… unless you count the rising number of tent cities and people sleeping in their cars. Nationwide, Anglicare, Australia's Rental Affordability Snapshot, shows an extremely small percentage of listings are affordable for someone with a low income. In Australia, between 2022 and 2023, approximately 25,900 or 9.5% of clients accessing Specialist Homelessness Services (SHS) reported having a disability; 48% were already homeless. As for the waiting lists for social housing for people with disabilities, 37% or 148,000 households, included at least one person with a disability. And homes aren't always built with their needs in mind. Socially ethical investing is one answer. Directing capital toward investments that yield financial returns while having a positive social impact is a win/win/win—for people who need homes, investors looking for good returns and society who'll benefit from the long-term ripple effects of people feeling secure, safe and cared for. This means constructing affordable, accessible and quality homes for the people who need them the most. Ethical investors in Australia are investing in housing for people with disabilities and vulnerable groups through the Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This approach, when done well, highlights how doing good means making money. Properties purposely built with features like wider doorways, step-free access and smart home tech are in such demand that vacancy rates are much lower in my experience, often outpacing traditional rental markets. Co-living spaces and dual-key housing models are also creative solutions that maximize land use and encourage community and inclusion. Housing developments can add shared spaces for social interaction, like communal kitchens or gardens, to stave off isolation and improve mental health. If you're a developer or investor looking to make a real difference in the housing crisis, understand that this involves more than building properties—it means building communities that last. Affordable housing isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. It has to meet the needs of the people living there. That means listening to the communities you're serving, engaging with local organizations, and working directly with those affected by homelessness and housing shortages. Building strong partnerships is crucial. Teaming up with non-profits, local councils and advocacy groups brings expertise and real-world insight into the process. These organizations already know where the gaps are and can help guide your decisions. In Australia, I've found programs like NDIS provide funding support but link investors and developers with initiatives that can help reduce financial risk and increase demand for housing. Ethical investing in affordable housing and homelessness solutions comes with challenges. Given the long-term nature of these investments, these developments often require a higher initial investment. And purpose-built homes, like those for disability accommodation, take time to design and build properly. Investors and developers also need to factor in regulatory changes. Housing policies are constantly shifting. They come with the risk that government funding or rules can change. Staying connected with industry bodies and policymakers to stay ahead of any shifts in legislation. Ultimately, I've found that investing in long-term, ethical housing addresses root causes and reduces the long-term burden on the public purse. The effects of stable housing go well beyond a person having a roof over their head. In my experience, families with secure housing are often more likely to remain intact, children are more likely to thrive in education, and communities can become stronger and more resilient. The question isn't whether ethical investing can address the housing crisis. It's whether we're willing to invest in making it work. Business leaders and entrepreneurs have an opportunity to impact meaningful change. The time to act is now. If not us, then who? If not now, when? Can we do good and make money? Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
