Apartment Look

Section of rendering by architect Stephen Jacobs . A proposed five-story mixed use building with 116 apartments and ground-floor restaurant and retail uses on East Main Street and McDermott Avenue won approval of the Riverhead Town Board Tuesday night . In a split 3-1 vote, the board approved a pair of resolutions that simultaneously dispensed with extended environmental review and approved a site plan and special permit for the “ Riverview Lofts ” project proposed by Georgica Green Ventures LLC of Jericho. The actions green-light the construction of the five-story building with 12,623 square feet of first- floor commercial space , 55 on- site parking spaces and four-stories consisting of 116 workforce rental apartments : 31 studio, 37 one-bedroom and 28 two-bedroom units. Councilman Tim Hubbard , without comment, cast the lone vote against both measures. Councilwoman Jodi Giglio , an owner of Summerwind Square — the first mixed-use apartment building built in the downtown dis...

Heather Smith says affordable housing isn 't always affordable. The single mother of two said when her $880-per-month rent in southeast Rochester jumped by $85 in the second year, it left her struggling to pay for rent and food, even though she has good job at Zumbro Valley Health Center . "Why am I not able to afford the basics I need to live?" she asked during Tuesday's community meeting held by CURE — Communities United for Rochester's Empowerment — a social action group affiliated with SEIU Healthcare. She said the unexpected increase on an already tight budget could have been unbearable without outside family support. "I got a 46-cent raise at work," she said, noting it didn't cover the rent increase, or her rising food costs . "How am I supposed to save for a house?" she said. Homeownership, said Zach Winter, doesn't necessarily solve the problem of a tight budget. He said he bought a house near Silver Lake, which ...

The city of East Palo Alto , a wedge of modest houses and light industrial sites in the heart of Silicon Valley , has been passed by in the great tech boom . A historically black area , it has seen a big Hispanic influx in the past two decades, with more than three out of four residents now coming from one of those two groups. It is still living down its reputation, gained a quarter of a century ago, as the murder capital of the US: one out of every 571 of its residents was the victim of a homicide in a single year. Things have improved since then. But over the same period, it has become the poor neighbour to some of the world's richest companies. In one of the ultimate signs of the divide between the haves and have-nots of the western US, the municipal government of East Palo Alto didn 't own the rights to draw more from the state's water reserves, which it would need in order to grow. In June this year, it took a gift of cash, from the private foundation set up by Mar...