Apartment Look

This article is the last of a series of articles based on new research into the place of lower-income and disadvantaged households in a compact city. More and more of us living in denser cities where apartments and high-rise developments are increasingly common. This creates specific health concerns for residents of these areas, and for lower-income households in particular. We already know socioeconomic status is closely related to health and wellbeing. The importance of equity was highlighted in the 2016 Boyer Lectures. Entitled Fair Australia : Social Justice and the Health Gap, the lectures were delivered by a world leader in health inequality research , Professor Sir Michael Marmot . Further reading: Social determinants – how class and wealth affect our health Marmot examined the challenges for poor communities in achieving good health from early life to old age. His message focused on the social determinants of health. And the built environment , including its environmental co...

by Jean M. Twenge Jean M. Twenge has been writing about generational differences for 25 years, producing bestsellers like Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic . In her latest book, Twenge zeroes in on iGen, the kids born in 1995 and later who have grown up with smartphones, had an Instagram page before they started high school and do not remember a time before the internet. The average teen checks her phone more than 80 times a day. The oldest iGen-ers, as she calls them, were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and high school students when the iPad entered the market in 2010. Twenge argues the complete dominance of the smartphone among teens has had ripple effects across every area of iGen-er lives, from their social interactions to their mental health. Twenge draws on national surveys of 11 million Americans, conducted since 1960, to reach her conclusions. From about 2012, she started seeing "large, abrupt shifts in teens' behaviour and emoti...

For more than two years, city inspectors have documented unsafe and squalid conditions at a weekly hotel near uptown that houses low-income families with children, the disabled and others with nowhere else to go. Inspectors found rooms with no heat or air conditioning , piles of garbage, bedbugs and broken windows among other problems at the Airport Parkway Inn and Suites. Former tenants and a neighboring business complain the building on Wilkinson Boulevard is a magnet for drugs and crime. Now, Charlotte officials are taking steps that could lead to the demolition of the hotel, a rare move the city has not taken in at least seven years against a lodging establishment. The building is part of a virtually unnoticed housing sector in Charlotte, where hundreds of people suffering from addiction and mental illness or simply with few other options depend on weekly hotel rooms for permanent shelter. While tenants avoid sleeping on the streets, they often stay in decrepit and vermin-in...

One resident narrowly escaped a mass murderer, another prefers parrots over people for company and a third is a a retired conman who just wants to be left alone to enjoy some of the best inner-city views in Sydney. Welcome to Northcott towers, Sydney's most notorious housing commission complex tucked away in what has become one of Australia's trendiest and most exclusive suburbs. About 1,200 residents pay as little as $80 a week for one- or two-bedroom units in the 14-story buildings in Surry Hills, just a stone's throw from the CBD where average rents for a two- bedroom home run to more than $900 a week. Known as the 'suicide towers,' the complex is Australia’s largest single block of public housing units and has a notorious reputation involving with drug abuse, mental health and unemployment. Invited by members of the tight-knit community of residents, Daily Mail Australia spent a day in the towers to 'meet the family' and explore the colourful neig...