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agritecture · 7 years

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Lebanon's Startups Pioneering Hydroponic Farming

By Federica Marsi

Lack of space and harsh environmental conditions often translate into limited farming opportunities, but several Lebanese companies are tackling the problem with a farming method allowing plants to grow without soil. Hydroponics is at the heart of a number of futuristic green initiatives set to bring agriculture to previously hostile environments. Plants cultivated by means of hydroponic agriculture are suspended in a water solution, enriched with the necessary nutrients. By controlling the temperature and nutrients’ concentration to match the needs of a specific crop, hydroponic farms are able to cultivate any kind of plants, including those that would not survive in the natural environment.

LifeLab is one of the companies pioneering this farming revolution in Lebanon. The startup won the Hyundai Startup Competition in 2015 and was recently commissioned to create its first hydroponic farm on 400 square meters in the northern Koura area. Crops on the farm grow nestled in “Live Cubes” that extend vertically and horizontally.

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“We are about to see the onset of a new breed of farmers,” Ali Makhzoum, chief executive of LifeLab, told The Daily Star.

“For decades we have seen farmers throwing away their crops [due to a bad harvest]. We wanted to find a solution to this.”

According to Makhzoum, taking advantage of space through hydroponics can increase a farm’s output by a factor of 15. In addition, by recapturing run-off water that is not taken up by the plants and reusing it, what he calls “super farms” can save up to 95 percent of the water they use.

Each of LifeLab’s “Live Cubes” is a fully controlled environment, meaning there is no need for pesticides. The plants’ growth is monitored by sensors that send live updates both to the farmer and LifeLab through a custom-made app.

Through the app, both parties are able to monitor the crops’ optimal growth and control temperatures and nutrients levels.

Given the high degree of computerization, this method of farming requires a smaller workforce.

However, Makhzoum believes technology will attract new generations to farming. “The sons of farmers do not want to continue an activity that is physically tiring and does not pay much,” Makhzoum said.

“If we want to reverse this trend we have to innovate.”

Tarek Khoury, the owner of the hydroponic farm in Koura, confirmed that discovering new ways of farming is what kept him interested in his family business. “I started with my own small organic farm and I wanted to expand it by using hydroponic farming,” Khoury told The Daily Star. Khoury heard about LifeLab’s work when they won the Hyundai Startup Competition, and decided to make an investment.

To date, Khoury has set up the first 100 square meters of his “super farm.” While its cost is still relatively high – in the range of $175 per square meter – Khoury believes the cost will be recovered in a little over a year.

“I wanted to invest in something that could help Lebanon as well,” Khoury said, adding that the hydroponic farming saves water, increases the food output and eliminates the use of pesticides and hormones currently employed in farming to increase its profitability.

Hydroponics and vertical farming are also pioneered by the Lebanese company Eco Industries in other countries in the region.

According to Naomi Debbas, daughter of CEO Roy Debbas, Eco Industries is successfully selling its technology in Dubai, where products from hydroponic farms are more competitive on the market thanks to the absence of transportation costs.

Hydroponics is at the heart of another company whose aim is to bring nature back into urban environments. Thanks to the invention of a sponge-like fibrous “smart hydroponic skin” that allows complete temperature insulation, Green Studios is able to grow all types of plants in extreme climates – both indoors and outdoors, horizontally and vertically.

“There is so much unexplored vertical and horizontal space in cities, for example on roofs and on building facades,” Jamil Corbani, CEO of Green Studios, told The Daily Star. “Vegetation not only decreases the carbon dioxide in the air, but insulates the buildings from both the cold and the heat and allows the residents to save on energy consumption.”

Urban community gardens are already gaining popularity in Europe. By tweaking available technology and inventing the fibrous skin layer to protect plants from harsher climates, Corbani’s team won the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum for the Pan Arab region in 2011 and pioneered the urban garden concept in the Middle East.

At present, a vertical garden costs an average of $350 per square meter, mainly due to the presence of sensors that monitor the plants’ nutritional levels. However, Corbani is confident prices will go down as sales increase.

In future, as the technology becomes more widespread, hydroponic farms also have the potential to become lifesavers in conflict and post-conflict scenarios, enabling postwar agricultural development and providing a sustainable livelihood to populations displaced or under siege.

While Green Studios targets cities, Corbani sees the potential benefit of this technology in contexts such as refugee camps. “If horizontal gardens were placed on top of the tents, this would give them both insulation and a sustainable source of livelihoods,” Corbani said. “[Refugees] would also have the opportunity to become pioneers in this innovative field.”

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Harmony Hammond’s Art Is Bold and Prickly as Ever

RIDGEFIELD, Conn. — With all the hullabaloo around the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, it’s easy to forget that, well into the 1970s and beyond, to be an out gay artist was to court mainstream-career suicide. Harmony Hammond, who began exhibiting and curating in the very early post-Stonewall years, was one of the people responsible for defying and reversing this repression.

In the 1970s, in New York City, she organized the first local exhibition devoted entirely to art by gay women, and called it what it was: “A Lesbian Show.” She co-founded the feminist Heresies Collective and coedited a lesbian-themed issue of its journal. In 2000, she published “Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History,” the first and still only comprehensive survey book on the subject. (It’s been out of print for years.) From the start, in her own sculpture and painting, she bucked the trend that equated political art with figurative work, and invented her own modes of queer abstraction.

She did pay a price for such focused boldness. Only now, at 75, is she having her first career retrospective, “Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art.” And it’s not at a big-guns urban institution, but at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in leafy suburban Connecticut. Wherever, the show is taut, moving and beautiful, and well worth traveling to see.

As organized by Amy Smith-Stewart, senior curator at the Aldrich, the survey doesn’t follow a chronological path, though biography clearly shaped this art. Ms. Hammond grew up in a working-class town near Chicago. She studied painting in college, married a fellow artist, and for a while supported herself with minor art-related jobs.

But after the couple moved to New York City in 1969 — the Stonewall year — her trajectory became less conventional. Within a year, she had a daughter, separated from her husband, and began the process of coming out as a lesbian. Plunging headlong into the roiling downtown cultural scene, she joined a feminist consciousness-raising group, studied weaving and tai chi (she would later practice and teach the Japanese martial art of aikido), and, in 1972, became a founding member of the all-women A.I.R. Gallery, which is still going strong.

The earliest work at the Aldrich, a set of six fabric sculptures called “Presences,” reconstitutes the main element of her first A.I.R. solo. Each sculpture, suspended from the ceiling by a rope and lightly brushing the gallery floor, is roughly human size and composed of layered strips of dyed and painted cloth. The forms, of uncertain gender, look archaic, ceremonial, and communal in spirit. Significantly, most of the fabric strips were from recycled clothing donated by members of the women’s group Ms. Hammonds was involved with.

The sculptures that immediately followed, called “Floorpieces,” were also made from cloth, in this case commercial knit scraps that Ms. Hammond scavenged from sweatshop dumpsters in SoHo. She braided the cloth in a traditional rag-rug technique, then painted the surfaces. The tondo-shaped pieces — five of the original seven are in the show — are a cross between paintings, sculptures and domestic accessories. As such, they cast all three categories into question, and erase hierarchical distinctions between fine art and “women’s work” craft. To emphasize their versatile identities, Ms. Hammond insisted they be displayed on the floor in an otherwise empty gallery, as they are, to striking effect, at the Aldrich.

The art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson, one of Ms. Hammond’s most astute critics, has suggested that the “Floorpieces” were the first works to consciously introduce a queer, and specifically lesbian identity, into Ms. Hammond’s work. The artist herself gives the nod in her extraordinary series of “Wrapped Sculptures” from later in the decade.

Once again, fabric is the chief material, but now tightly wrapped around wood armatures — ladders, stretcher bars, furniture parts — in thick, bulging, skin-stretching layers like muscles pumped to the point of explosion. The artist has said she modeled the work on aspects of the female body, exterior and interior, and she comes up with some tender tableaus: In one, a small, dark “ladder” leans, as if seeking support, against a larger, light-colored one. But the same technique can produce ominous things. A large, four-pronged wrapped sculpture called “Kong” protrudes from the wall like an immense grasping hand.

When these sculptures first appeared, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they looked like nothing else in the art world. They still look that way. So does much of what came after.

In 1984, Ms. Hammond moved to New Mexico, where she still lives, and her art reflected the changed environment. With expanded studio space, she explored larger formats. In place of dumpster-diving, she collected relics of abandoned farmhouses. A 1992 installation called “Inappropriate Longings” includes three abstract collage-paintings that incorporate fragments of old linoleum flooring. In front of them stands a coffin-shaped water trough filled with dead cottonwood leaves.

At a glance, the installation gives off a nostalgic Dust Bowl vibe, though a close look delivers a nasty contemporary surprise: razor-carved into one of the panels, and smeared with red paint, are the words “Goddamn dyke.” The artist made the piece in response to reports of a hate crime committed during Colorado’s 1992 passage of an amendment to the state constitution denying gays protection from discrimination. (In 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the amendment as unconstitutional.)

Ms. Hammond entered art as an abstract painter and continues to be one, though of an emphatically un-Modernist kind. She has written: “My work is NOT pure, isolated, authoritative, universal, self-referential, self-sufficient or removed from social function.” This declared impurity is obvious everywhere in the show, from drawings made using watercolor, ink, and menstrual blood to a series of painting-like works made of straw mixed with acrylic pigment. (Some of these pieces look like blocks of spun gold, others like clods of dry earth.)

What is consistent is an unrelenting stress on materiality and a non-binary approach to form: Everything is painting and sculpture. In certain recent paintings, strips of cut canvas, secured by tacks or pierced by grommets, crisscross the surface in sculptural relief. And although this work is nonfigurative and even technically imageless, it very clearly suggests bound or bandaged flesh. In short, her monochromatic abstraction is never fully abstract. It is always, in some way, about actual tension and pressure, physical, political, psychological.

Tons of abstract art has been churned out in the past five decades, yet not much new has happened. Galleries and museums are filled with walk-on-by works that, whatever their ingenuities, are basically just variations on old models, wall-filling exercises in easy, comfortable beauty. Ms. Hammond’s art has beauty too, but of a prickly, irritant kind: it’s burlap — sometimes sandpaper — as opposed to silk. No surprise that, in a market-driven art world resistant to what can’t be classified and resentful of work that refuses to ingratiate, the spotlight has been a long time coming her way. At the Aldrich, it shines.

Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art

Through Sept. 15 at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, Conn.; 203-438-4519, aldrichart.org.

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rebbecadonaghy-blog · 5 years

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MEL. Property Development, Building Contracting And Project Management In The Midlands

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As a nation who is renowned for moving to ‘where the work is’; knowing you can provide your tenants with a rental property in a rapidly evolving city, is truly gratifying. After all, if they are happy with your property they will not be looking for a new place to live anytime soon, will they? And in this particular location you could also provide your tenants with a city steeped in history, culture and 8,000 acres of beautiful landscape. Would that be worth just 2 hours of your time? Well, you can. At Property Mentor we feel we have found an incredible location.

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lodelss · 5 years

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In a cover story for the Chicago Reader, urban planner Pete Saunders writes about how Black residents are fleeing Chicago in large numbers for suburbs and metropolitan areas in other regions as the city’s white, Asian American, Latinx, and multiracial populations increase. This “Black flight” reverses demographic trends of last century, which saw an estimated 7 million African Americans pouring into cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast from the rural South during the Great Migration. The Encyclopedia of Chicago says that more than 500,000 of those who left settled in Chicago; according to Curbed, “At some points during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, more than 1,000 new arrivals a week came through booming areas such as Bronzeville, many of them hoping to work in the heavy industry and steel plants on the city’s southeast side.”

Saunders suggests a combination of factors have caused the current exodus, including slow declines in Chicago’s violent crime rate, school closures and a lack of investment in important local institutions. Shifts in the kinds of jobs available and, perhaps, a pull to the South of generations before have driven Black Chicagoans to Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego are also losing Black population, but the decline in Chicago, at “four to ten times the rate of the other three,” has been most dramatic. According to the Urban Institute, by 2030, it’s estimated that Chicago will have lost more than 500,000 Black residents in 50 years. Saunders believes that systematic racial discrimination, the biggest driver of Blacks to cities during the Great Migration, is the key driver of the new pattern as well:

Segregation has created a lack of economic mobility. I’d argue that Chicago is economically stratified to the extent that upward mobility for blacks here is particularly difficult. The CMAP [Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning] report noted that the unemployment rate for blacks in Chicagoland stubbornly stays at more than twice the region’s rate, and that more than 60 percent of blacks who left the region were without a local job when they did so. Networks are hard to penetrate. The power structure is rigid. There’s also a lack of residential mobility. Chicago and its suburbs are more open to people of color than ever before, but blacks here are acutely aware that people still attach stigmas to places we move to. This has the impact of stagnating or lowering property values and rents where blacks move in large numbers, often wiping whole chunks of the region from the minds of many. The south side and south and southwest burbs don’t even occur to many whites seeking affordable options.

The hallmark of Chicago (and rust-belt) segregation has been black avoidance. Since the Great Migration the practice has been to explicitly or implicitly contain blacks within certain areas. But as metro areas got bigger, transportation more of a challenge, and city living more desirable, new attention was given to long-forgotten places. Here in Chicago that started with former white ethnic areas (Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, etc). Within the last ten to 20 years that expanded to include largely Latino areas (Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Pilsen). But for the most part the pattern of black avoidance remains.

In places with stronger economies, like New York and Washington, D.C., there’s been more direct engagement—even conflict—between white newcomers and longtime black residents in many communities. Spike Lee famously ranted about gentrification arriving in black neighborhoods in Brooklyn five years ago, and the area surrounding D.C.’s historically black Howard University has witnessed significant change in the last decade. But the rust-belt pattern is one of indirect conflict. Places collapse, then new groups come in.

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globalfilesystem · 5 years

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This Charlotte politician is accused of helping ‘Wall Street slumlords’

When Mel Watt became the nation’s most powerful housing regulator, his supporters predicted that he would advocate for the working class and help homeowners still reeling from the mortgage crisis.

But now, as his five-year term at the Federal Housing Finance Agency nears an end, some say the former congressman from Charlotte is partly to blame for higher rents and fewer opportunities for first-time homebuyers. A Charlotte Observer investigation found that rents and home prices soared in Charlotte over the past six years as corporate ownership of the housing stock grew — a trend Watt resisted taking action to stop.

Some former allies now say Watt enabled Wall Street firms to capitalize on the nation’s mortgage crisis by refusing to use his authority to help average homeowners avoid foreclosure at the height of the financial recession.

It worked like this: Investor-backed rental companies bought thousands of foreclosed properties and “distressed mortgages” at steep discounts during the Great Recession and converted them to rental properties. Investors made more money as rents went up and the firms expanded into more cities.

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The poor are getting ‘priced out of Charlotte’ by a single company, critics say

Some advocacy groups remain upset Watt did not ensure more troubled mortgages were sold to non-profit and local community groups. Instead, critics now say, the federal government saw sales of distressed mortgages go mostly to private equity firms and hedge funds.

A letter signed by more than 100 social justice groups and non-profits from across the country says renters are paying more per month, poor people are having a harder time finding affordable housing and many would-be first-time homebuyers have been priced out of the housing market.

The Nov. 10, 2017, letter, addressed to Watt, accuses his agency of helping create “a new class of Wall Street slumlords.”

“When he was appointed, people hoped he would be an advocate for affordable housing,” Peter Dreier, a professor of urban and environmental policy at Occidental College in Los Angeles, told the Observer. “Instead, he was an advocate for Wall Street. Again and again, he chose Wall Street over Main Street.”

Watt’s role was created during the recession to safeguard the health of the housing market. The agency oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee loans and buy and sell mortgages totaling $5 trillion. One of their primary goals is boosting home ownership opportunities, particularly for people with moderate incomes.

Watt refused multiple requests from the Observer for an interview through an agency spokeswoman. She referred a reporter to comments Watt made in May during a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

That’s when Watt defended Fannie Mae’s decision last year to guarantee a $1 billion loan for Invitation Homes, which is the largest landlord of single-family houses in the nation.

The loan from Wells Fargo involves the purchase of more than 7,000 houses nationwide, including 428 in the Charlotte area, according to government documents.

“We are gathering information, which is the reason that we approved the Invitation Homes transaction….,” Watt, whose term ends in January, said in the hearing. “And we are trying to figure out whether this is really reducing homeownership or whether it is paving the way for more people to get into homeownership. I think you can argue both sides of that.”

Changing roles

In late 2013, the housing market was still feeling the effects from one of the worst economic downturns in U.S. history, when Watt left Congress to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

He served for roughly 20 years as the representative for the 12th District, which then touched six counties stretching from Charlotte to Greensboro.

In his new role, he was charged with directing public policy to deal with millions of soured mortgages and foreclosure and abandoned properties. Taxpayers were on the hook for homes the government had insured against default.

Housing activists and left-leaning politicians initially saw Watt’s nomination by then-President Barack Obama as a victory. He had garnered a reputation as a reliable liberal vote in Congress.

“Mel Watt has never failed to fight on behalf of homeowners facing foreclosures,” U.S. House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a 2013 press release.

However, campaign contributions Watt received as a congressman from financial services firms such Bank of America and Goldman Sachs came under scrutiny, says a McClatchy report from July 2010.

Watt was among eight Democrats and Republicans investigated by a congressional ethics office about fund-raising near the time of an important vote on financial regulatory reform. Watt denied wrongdoing and authorities later dismissed the case.

Watt started a few initiatives aimed at helping low-income and first-time buyers afford homes, including allowing down payments as low as 3 percent, according to a McClatchy report in August 2015.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claim to be part Native American shows a disregard for what culture is really about.

Steven Senne AP

But after about a year on the job, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was already questioning why Watt and his agency had not lowered the balance owed — sometimes called a principal reduction — on millions of mortgage loans controlled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That would have reduced the mortgage payments for struggling homeowners to reflect the homes’ new, lower market values and helped families avoid foreclosure, affordable housing advocates said.

“You’ve been in office for nearly a year now, and you haven’t helped a single family, not even one” through principal reduction, said Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Watt during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, according to a McClatchy report.

“Chairman Watt, you’ve had a year to do that. You’ve known for five years what the problem is,” Warren said.

Warren, who called Watt “a champion for working families” when he was nominated, said he had missed an opportunity to help 5.4 million borrowers with loans backed by Fannie and Freddie.

Watt said his agency helped homeowners and warned that wide-scale forgiveness of outstanding loans was unlikely to happen.

“It’s just a very difficult issue,” Watt said, according to a McClatchy report in November 2014.

Asked in a 2015 interview with McClatchy why he had not taken more sweeping steps, including principal reductions for homeowners, Watt said that as a regulator he had a duty to guard against easy access to credit for borrowers who were unreliable.

“I kept trying to tell people, even when I was in Congress, I’ve never been an advocate for unreasonable access to credit,” he said, according to the McClatchy report. “I wouldn’t make a loan to my brother-in-law unless I thought he was going to pay me back.”

Maximizing profits

Investor-backed rental companies now own 300,000 single-family houses nationwide, according to the Urban Institute, a non-profit research agency that tracks housing trends.

Diane Tomb, executive director of the National Rental Home Council, a trade industry group, said critics fail to recognize the positive role investors played in reviving the national housing market and improving neighborhoods by renovating and fixing blighted properties.

“Each home needed $20,000 of rehab to get them back on the market, and that includes paying back taxes,” Tomb said. “And when you look at it like that, that’s schools, that’s fire departments. So when these communities were impacted by these homes going under and folks having to leave, they weren’t only losing good members of their community, they were also losing the revenue that supported a lot of the local libraries, schools, all of that.”

A house for rent on Orchard Grass Court in Steele Creek. Build-to-rent homes could be the newest model in the Charlotte real estate market, as housing supply remains tight and companies start building new houses designed exclusively for renters.

Davie Hinshaw [email protected]

But corporations tend to raise rents faster than mom-and-pop landlords since they need to satisfy investors, said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president of real estate tracking firm Attom Data Solutions.

“They have pressure to maximize profits,” Blomquist said.

Damage done?

The government “legitimized” single family houses as a Wall Street investment after the mortgage crisis, said Maya Abood, a former researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Urban Planning Program who co-authored a recent study titled “Wall Street Landlords Turn American Dream into American Nightmare.”

Government agencies sold thousands of distressed mortgages to Wall Street firms at deep discounts, the study says.

Watt and other leaders failed to reverse course soon enough, Abood said in an interview.

“We have seen what happens when you get this kind of hyper-capitalism before,” Abood said. “We are seeing it again. When you tie the roof over someone’s head to the (Wall Street) market, the result is usually not good.”

Abood said Watt and his agency allowed some of the same Wall Street players responsible for the 2008 mortgage crisis to profit from the foreclosures, distressed mortgages and abandoned homes they help create.

Meanwhile, housing advocates said, the U.S. homeownership rate of about 64 percent remains below the pre-recession levels in the mid-2000s, which were roughly 69 percent.

The trend is troubling because homeownership allows families to accumulate wealth and helps build stable neighborhoods, activists said.

“They made it cheaper and easier for these companies to get financing,” said Kevin Stein, deputy director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a non-profit that advocates for equal access to credit. “They established this business model. The damage has been done.”

Fred Clasen-Kelly: 704-358-5027; @fred_ckelly

Anna Douglas: 704-358-5078, @ADouglasNews

Source Article

The post This Charlotte politician is accused of helping ‘Wall Street slumlords’ appeared first on Why You Should Take Big Homes For Rent Ln Charlotte NC.

Read full post at: http://www.globalfilesystem.org/this-charlotte-politician-is-accused-of-helping-wall-street-slumlords/

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topinforma · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Mortgage News

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2jyQhP1

home-point-puys-stonegate-citi-bails-on-servicing-biz-demographics-helping-lenders

I certainly am hearing some dire numbers from appraisers out there – like their business, which kind of gets the ball rolling for a loan so could be considered a leading indicator, is down upwards of 50%. Let’s hope it’s a temporary blip. What if your appraisal was off by a couple mil? Rocker Stevie “Guitar” Miller may have something to say about values of hard to appraise properties. And no, it’s not even a yurt.

How much is your company worth? If you own a multi-channel lender doing about $800 million a month, and earning about $17 million a month in revenues on that, what is your company worth? Answer: $211 million. I am, of course, simplifying things immensely, but those are the stats in the Home Point Financial Corp. deal to acquire Stonegate Mortgage Corp. in an all-cash transaction. Willie Newman, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Home Point’s CEO, stated that as a result of the combination, the business will have full national coverage across all channels of mortgage origination, as well as vertical integration across the mortgage value chain. Stonegate’s current HQ is in Indianapolis, did $2.62 billion in volume in the 3rd quarter of 2016, up 12% from the prior quarter, and total origination revenues reaching $51.8 million, up 35% from the prior quarter. It’s been a year and a half since Stonegate’s founder and former CEO Jim Cutillo abruptly announced he was leaving the company.

What does it mean? Well, it won’t be the last big company news of 2017 (see below). John M., an industry vet, wrote to me saying, “They probably should have sold in 2014 when their stock price was 15. Still, a nice premium over the $5-$6 range the last few months, I am guessing the NOL carryforward of $163.5 million was of particular interest to Home Point. Lesson learned…when you run out of MSRs to sell you just sell the whole company!” It summed up several other comments that I received on the deal.

And in other company news, Citigroup announced its “strategic exit” from mortgage servicing by the end of 2018 and the sale of its servicing to NRZ. “Citi has executed agreements that will accelerate the transformation of the U.S. mortgage business by effectively exiting servicing operations by the end of 2018 to intensify focus on originations. The strategic action is intended to simplify CitiMortgage’s operations, reduce expenses, and improve returns on capital.”

Citi has seen its origination market share slide over the years, and it has gained the reputation for being “in the market, then out of the market.” But what does the deal say about New Residential? NRZ announced that it was acquiring $97 billion of agency mortgage servicing rights (MSR) from Citibank. Since the end of 3Q, the company has announced roughly $250 billion of acquisitions. The company also announced a 49.2 million share common stock offering to fund the acquisitions. NRZ has announced several significant MSR acquisitions since the end of 2Q including a $72 billion MSR acquisition from PHH announced in December 2016. Servicing UPB at the end of 3Q16 was $354 billion. Since then the company has announced roughly $250 billion in UPB of servicing acquisitions.

Analysts expect the company can fund the MSRs at around 50% debt, and the advances at around 90% debt. NRZ will be using Nationstar (NSM) to subservice the Citi portfolio.

Know your borrowers

While we’re on the topic of trends and shifts, one of the additional HMDA fields is “borrower’s age.” Many lenders are trying to expand their offerings to capture borrowers in their 20’s as well as Baby Boomers. Fool.com reports the average college graduate this year will have $37,112 in student debt, a 6% increase compared to last year. At the other end…some view reverse mortgages as the last chance to lend to this generation, born between 1946 and 1964. The youngest are 53 this year! And 10,000 a day of those codgers are turning 62 – eligible for reverse mortgages. Regardless of race, creed, color, or age, it is important for residential lenders to have a working knowledge of the demographics of their client base.

The Pew Research Center gives us an examination of mortgage-market data indicates some of the continuing challenges black and Hispanic homebuyers and would-be homebuyers are facing.

Meanwhile, years ago Asian all-cash buyers rocked the market in certain local communities, but in some areas that has nearly vanished.

Research done by Bank of America Merrill Lynch finds that millennials are the #1 workforce demographic in the US and account for $1.3 trillion in direct annual consumer spending. Meanwhile, millennials will account for 75% of the workforce by 2025. Millennials want to live closer together and that dense urban living is better for our economy and our environment, they seem to be drawn to communities that have access to all the amenities but also integrate “naturally” into denser cities, and that the freelance economy is allowing many, including millennials, to select where they’d like to live. Smaller/medium cities in North Carolina, Oregon, Colorado and Kentucky have seen an influx in these types of workers. Anna Loehr wrote in Fast Company recently that many freelancers are moving even further out into rural settings. Our digital economy allows workers to live pretty much wherever reliable internet service can reach.

Jeremy Potter points out that, “We’re shaking up old notions of household formation, home ownership, economic centers and even so-called work-life balance. Not just millennials, everyone. Hispanic and Asian households can span generations and/or include extended family in addition to nuclear family. The digital economy has us reworking solutions and efficiencies. The traditional economy is evolving and considering bringing manufacturing back to American towns. The period of questioning has begun and is in full swing. I think housing and home ownership are just two issues that top the list for most people.”

Builder Magazine reports that Canuso is introducing large, multi-generational homes in New Jersey that feature more than 3,000 square feet of living space.

By 2035, more than one in five people in the U.S. will be aged 65 and older and one in three households will be headed by someone in that age group, according to Projections and Implications for Housing a Growing Population: Older Adults 2015-2035, a report released recently by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).

Do rising mortgage rates pose a problem for millennials entering the housing market? Sure they do, but higher rates impact all borrowers regardless of age. The interest rate move in November and December has lowered the median-sized mortgage that borrowers can qualify for by 9%.

Companies are certainly following the demographic shifts. For example, National Mortgage Insurance Corporation (National MI), is helping to educate mortgage lenders on how to best reach out to multicultural borrowers. The company is educating lenders through speaking engagements, webinars and social media. For the second year, National MI has joined forces with Kristin Messerli, founder of Cultural Outreach Solutions.

Changing demographics in the U.S. are leading to an increase in the number of millennials as well as a more ethnically diverse population, per Messerli. One in three home purchases today are made by Millennials, who comprise the most ethnically and racially diverse generation in the U.S. Hispanics are the fastest-growing group in the U.S. home buying market, according to a Freddie Mac report. And per the MBA by 2024 there will be 33% more new minority home buyers.

Multicultural home buyers represent an important market for mortgage lenders as they look to grow their purchase loan originations business, notes Christina Bartning, VP of marketing and product development with National MI. “It’s also critical that private mortgage insurance companies work to help address the multicultural segment, as some of those borrowers may not have a 20% down payment to purchase a home.”

Interest rate news?

Regarding current origination volume, Fannie’s trading desk reports that, “The continued light supply reconciles with what the desk has heard from customers who reported that overall lock activity was down about 5-10% week over week. Primary rates continue to be posted in the 4.125-4.375% range on most rate sheets. Using 4.375% as the prevailing rate, the primary/secondary spread is ~117bps which is pretty much flat from the previous week. The primary/secondary spread is the spread between the 30yr primary rate and the interpolated MBS par coupon. It is used as a rough proxy for trends in originator margin.” Well said.

Friday rates improved both Durable Goods and U.S. GDP growth for the fourth quarter were slightly lower than expected. Despite the bond market sensing the Fed won’t move overnight rates until June, there is plenty of scheduled news this week to nudge long-term rates one way or another. Jobs and housing constitute a huge portion of the economy, and we’ll have our fill of updates this week.

This morning we’ve already seen Personal Income and Outlays/Spending/Consumption (+.3% & +.5%, respectively, as expected) as well as the core PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditure) figures (+.1%). Coming up is Pending Home Sales.

Tuesday has the Employment Cost Index, S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index from November, Chicago PMI, and Consumer Confidence. Wednesday brings the usual MBA mortgage applications, ADP Employment Report, PMI Manufacturing Index, ISM Manufacturing Index, Construction Spending and the FOMC meeting announcement (don’t look for any change). Thursday brings Challenger Job-Cut Report, Jobless Claims and Productivity and Costs. Friday closes out with the big boy Employment Report, Factory Orders and ISM Non-Manufacturing Index. The 10-year is currently yielding 2.49% and agency MBS prices are pretty much unchanged from Friday’s close.

Jobs and Announcements

Homeside Financial, one of the fastest growing independent mortgage banks in the country, is actively seeking Sales Managers in its Ohio market. “From the very beginning, we wanted to create a company that was designed around the fast-paced demands of our sales associates,” announced Mark Greaves, SVP of Homeside Financial. “By actively focusing our efforts first around serving the sales process, we have been able to grow from just a few employees to over 400 employees across 20+ locations in our markets nationwide. We consistently are re-evaluating what it takes to provide our originators the cutting-edge tools and support they need to keep and grow their top performer status.” If you are a sales manager looking for more opportunity, or a top producer looking for the next big step after production, reach out to Mark directly. Click here for a closer look at what it’s like to work at one of the only mortgage companies Glassdoor acclaimed as a “Best Place to Work.”

New America Financial Corporation, a fast growing 5-star rated mortgage lender headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, released its annual Year in Review for 2016. New America Financial achieved record growth in 2016, expanding its presence in the region with four new branches located in Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and adding over 80 employees company-wide. Despite a busy 2016 with over 1,000 purchase loans closed and over $600MM in funded loans, the company also expanded on its community outreach and its “Give Where You Live” initiatives, dedicated to strengthening, enriching and supporting local communities. As 2016 ended, New America Financial President, Michael Rappaport, expressed his vision for continued growth and expansion in 2017, emphasizing the company’s strategic goal areas: talent recruitment, staff development and learning, operational efficiency and service excellence and community outreach. Click here for New America Financial career info.

In a turn of events, I have learned of a lender and its lawyer who are considering actions for malicious prosecution and/or abuse of process against borrower’s lawyers who have asserted spurious litigation claims for the purpose of obstructing foreclosure and/or possession following foreclosure. If anyone has been involved in a similar situation, and is interested in sharing any such information or in speaking with the lender’s lawyer who is contemplating bringing the action, please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the attorney.

A national title Insurance agency in New York State is looking for a partner to increase its sales. The title and escrow agency has been around for over 10 years with a staff of 12 including two attorneys. The ideal partner is someone with many banking and real estate connections looking to either merge, joint venture or become partners with the sole principal of the title agency. This individual or company understands the profitability within the title industry and is looking to get involved on the title side. It’s a dream scenario for someone(s) to walk in here and use this national platform to get involved in the title industry. Interested principals should send a confidential note of interest to me and I will pass it along to the president of the company.

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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8 incredible innovations helping homeless people around the world

Homelessness is widespread and hard to solve, affecting more than 560,000 people in the U.S. and hundreds of millions around the world.

It’s a complex and intractable problem, with countless agencies and nonprofits working to tackle root causes and provide systemic solutions. But while there may not be a one-size-fits-all formula for homeless people in every community, technology and innovation can help fill in the gaps.

SEE ALSO: Survivors of homelessness talk about the one item they carried through it all

Gadgets, apps and prototypes are temporary fixes, of course we need to tackle poverty, lack of affordable housing, unemployment and more to truly arrive at solutions. But in the meantime, innovations can offer much-needed support to some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

From a winter coat that takes contactless donations in Amsterdam to commercial shower trailers that offer hygiene and dignity in San Francisco, these eight inventions think outside the box when it comes to the issue of homelessness.

1. The EMPWR coat

The Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based nonprofit that aims to lift people out of poverty and homelessness through employment, created an innovative coat that doubles as a sleeping bag and an over-the-shoulder bag for homeless populations.

The EMPWR coat is a durable, water-resistant jacket made of Cordura fabric from workwear company Carhartt,upcycled automotive insulation from General Motors, and materials from other donors. It costs $100 to “sponsor” a coat, distributed to those in need.

EMPWR coats have been donated across 40 states in the U.S., seven Canadian provinces and a few other countries around the world, according to the Empowerment Plan website.

2. Lava Mae mobile showers

Image: Lava Mae

Launched in June 2014, Lava Mae is a San Francisco-based nonprofit offering mobile showers and sanitation to people experiencing homelessness. The goal isn’t just cleanliness it’s to provide dignity and “radical hospitality.”

The effort started when founder and CEO Doniece Sandoval converted a defunct San Francisco city bus into a mobile shower unit, and has grown to provide commercial shower trailers and other hygiene services to more than 2,400 people.

Lava Mae is currently expanding to Los Angeles. At the end of 2016, Sandoval received KIND Foundation’s $500,000 grand prize for “transforming her community through kindness.” She plans to use the money to help other organizations reproduce Lava Mae’s model.

3. The WeatherHYDE tent

WeatherHYDE is a reversible tent created by billionBricks, a nonprofit working with homeless and displaced communities in South and Southeast Asia.

It protects homeless populations and impoverished communities in lieu of affordable shelter, with one side keeping out cold temperatures, and the other side lined with reflective panels to keep out extreme heat. The goal of the easy-to-assemble tent, according to billionBricks, is to save children’s lives, offer privacy for women and allow for adaptation to urban environments.

A Kickstarter campaign to provide 500 tents to families in need raised more than $145,000 in November 2016.

4. Helping Heart contactless payment jacket

Image: N=5

Amsterdam media company N=5 came up with a new, high-tech way for people to give money to people experiencing homelessness: Wireless payments, through a jacket pocket.

The Helping Heart jacket is a prototype that takes contactless donations all you need to do is hover your smart credit card over the front pocket to help someone in need. Donations have a 1 Euro limit, and all of the money has to be redeemed through an official homeless shelter. It’s never redeemed as cash; all money goes toward food or places to sleep, or things like vocational training courses and even savings accounts.

Trials within the homeless community garnered positive feedback, while advocacy organizations support how the jacket helps people toward long-term goals. While still in early stages, N=5 hopes to produce the Helping Heart jacket at scale in an affordable and compact way.

5. The GiveSafe app

Image: GiveSafe

GiveSafe is an organization that distributes quarter-sized “beacons” to homeless people through shelters in Seattle, Washington. People with the GiveSafe app will receive a notification when they pass someone holding a beacon, providing more information about the person and an opportunity to donate money.

People experiencing homelessness can use the donations at select stores or through a nonprofit counselor on things like clothing, transportation, haircuts and more.

The goal is to “remove the friction and barriers to giving.” Currently running as a pilot program, GiveSafe is available on iPhone and Android.

6. WeCount

WeCount is an online platform and app that allows homeless people to safely ask for items they need, and provides a way for people in their community to donate directly. Anyone can sign up with an email address or a text message-enabled phone number, and users choose whether they want to donate or receive help.

Categories for donations include outdoor gear, home goods, children’s needs and clothing. People can either donate gently used items they have on hand, or see what homeless people in their community need specifically.

WeCount then matches the donated items with those in need at specific pick-up sites. The service is currently available in Seattle.

7. DoNotPay chatbot

An undergrad student at Stanford University created an AI chatbot to help people get out of parking tickets, but he soon found another use for his innovation: Providing homeless people and refugees with free legal aid.

DoNotPay, launched by 19-year-old Joshua Browder, asks a user a series of questions to figure out the best way to help them. The bot then takes that information to draft a claim letter, saving people on legal fees that can run into hundreds of dollars.

He conferred with lawyers to help him craft responses for homeless people specifically, and also researched trends on why public housing applicants are denied in order to help particularly vulnerable populations (those living with mental illness, for example).

While currently focusing on the UK, Browder hopes to expand DoNotPay to the U.S. soon.

8. PSINET algorithm

Image: Tri-City Herald, Kai-Huei Yau / Associated Press

Algorithms aren’t just for Facebook News Feeds. One algorithm, created by a team of social workers and computer scientists at the University of Southern California, can actually help prevent the spread of HIV among homeless teens.

Through artificial intelligence, the algorithm (called PSINET) helps organizations identify the best person in a given homeless community to spread HIV prevention information among young people. The selection is made using math and data, based on a mapped-out network of friendships.

The algorithm was developed in collaboration with My Friend’s Place, a local homeless drop-in agency in Los Angeles, and showed that the use of PSINET resulted in 60% more information spread than through the typical word-of-mouth efforts.

BONUS: Helping homeless LGBTQ youth get free prescription glasses

Read more: http://ift.tt/2k0p6Rx

from 8 incredible innovations helping homeless people around the world

#8 incredible innovations helping homeless people around the world

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ds4design · 7 years

Text

8 innovations helping homeless populations around the world

Homelessness is widespread and hard to solve, affecting more than 560,000 people in the U.S. and hundreds of millions around the world.

It's a complex and intractable problem, with countless agencies and nonprofits working to tackle root causes and provide systemic solutions. But while there may not be a one-size-fits-all formula for homeless people in every community, technology and innovation can help fill in the gaps.

Gadgets, apps and prototypes are temporary fixes, of course — we need to tackle poverty, lack of affordable housing, unemployment and more to truly arrive at solutions. But in the meantime, innovations can offer much-needed support to some of the world's most vulnerable populations.

1. The EMPWR coat

The EMPWR coat is a durable, water-resistant jacket made of Cordura fabric from workwear company Carhartt, upcycled automotive insulation from General Motors, and materials from other donors. It costs $100 to "sponsor" a coat, distributed to those in need.

EMPWR coats have been donated across 40 states in the U.S., seven Canadian provinces and a few other countries around the world, according to the Empowerment Plan website.

2. Lava Mae mobile showers

Launched in June 2014, Lava Mae is a San Francisco-based nonprofit offering mobile showers and sanitation to people experiencing homelessness. The goal isn't just cleanliness — it's to provide dignity and "radical hospitality."

Lava Mae is currently expanding to Los Angeles. At the end of 2016, Sandoval received KIND Foundation's $500,000 grand prize for "transforming her community through kindness." She plans to use the money to help other organizations reproduce Lava Mae's model.

3. The WeatherHYDE tent

WeatherHYDE is a reversible tent created by billionBricks, a nonprofit working with homeless and displaced communities in South and Southeast Asia.

It protects homeless populations and impoverished communities in lieu of affordable shelter, with one side keeping out cold temperatures, and the other side lined with reflective panels to keep out extreme heat. The goal of the easy-to-assemble tent, according to billionBricks, is to save children's lives, offer privacy for women and allow for adaptation to urban environments.

A Kickstarter campaign to provide 500 tents to families in need raised more than $145,000 in November 2016.

4. Helping Heart contactless payment jacket

Amsterdam media company N=5 came up with a new, high-tech way for people to give money to people experiencing homelessness: Wireless payments, through a jacket pocket.

The Helping Heart jacket is a prototype that takes contactless donations — all you need to do is hover your smart credit card over the front pocket to help someone in need. Donations have a 1 Euro limit, and all of the money has to be redeemed through an official homeless shelter. It's never redeemed as cash; all money goes toward food or places to sleep, or things like vocational training courses and even savings accounts.

5. The GiveSafe app

GiveSafe is an organization that distributes quarter-sized "beacons" to homeless people through shelters in Seattle, Washington. People with the GiveSafe app will receive a notification when they pass someone holding a beacon, providing more information about the person and an opportunity to donate money.

People experiencing homelessness can use the donations at select stores or through a nonprofit counselor on things like clothing, transportation, haircuts and more.

The goal is to "remove the friction and barriers to giving." Currently running as a pilot program, GiveSafe is available on iPhone and Android.

6. WeCount

Categories for donations include outdoor gear, home goods, children's needs and clothing. People can either donate gently used items they have on hand, or see what homeless people in their community need specifically.

WeCount then matches the donated items with those in need at specific pick-up sites. The service is currently available in Seattle.

7. DoNotPay chatbot

While currently focusing on the UK, Browder hopes to expand DoNotPay to the U.S. soon.

8. PSINET algorithm

Image: Tri-City Herald, Kai-Huei Yau / Associated Press

Algorithms aren't just for Facebook News Feeds. One algorithm, created by a team of social workers and computer scientists at the University of Southern California, can actually help prevent the spread of HIV among homeless teens.

The algorithm was developed in collaboration with My Friend's Place, a local homeless drop-in agency in Los Angeles, and showed that the use of PSINET resulted in 60% more information spread than through the typical word-of-mouth efforts.

BONUS: Helping homeless LGBTQ youth get free prescription glasses

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lodelss · 5 years

Text

‘Black Flight’ out of Chicago

Read the story

from Blogger http://bit.ly/2So905v via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

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globalfilesystem · 6 years

Text

Opinion Roundup: New maps not an option for November, Trump’s visit to Charlotte, reflections on the American worker and more

Is Partisan Gerrymandering Legal? Why the Courts Are Divided.

Saturday, Sept. 1, 2018 — A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: New congressional maps not viable option for 2018 elections, judges say revised amendment language now acceptable to go before voters, Trump’s visit to Charlotte, Gov. Cooper calls for action plan to address infant mortality rate, options to expand healthcare for cancer patients and more.

CAMPAIGN 2018 TRAVIS FAIN: Groups challenging NC’s congressional map: Reluctantly, don’t change it before November (WRAL-TV reports) — Attorneys for Common Cause and the League of Women Voters "reluctantly concluded" in a brief filed Friday that trying to redraw the districts now would be "disruptive and potentially counterproductive."

ROBERT BARNES: Plaintiffs in N.C. gerrymandering case say new maps not an option for November (Washington Post reports) — Although the Supreme Court often invalidates plans because of racial gerrymandering, it has never thrown out a plan because of partisan gerrymandering. In the past term, the justices considered a plan drawn by Democrats in Maryland and a Republican legislative map in Wisconsin, but did not reach the merits of those cases. The Supreme Court is required to either affirm or reverse such redistricting decisions, so it will almost surely accept the North Carolina case at some point.

TRAVIS FAIN: Court sides with legislature: Amendment language OK (WRAL-TV reports) — A unanimous three-judge panel sided with Republican legislative leaders against the governor Friday, saying the ballot language for two proposed constitutional amendments is reasonable enough to go before voters.

CRAIG JARVIS: Judges say Cooper — not lawmakers — can control certain boards (Durham-Herald Sun reports — A three-judge panel expanded Gov. Cooper’s authority to make certain appointments, the latest step in a separation-of-powers struggle that began when then-Gov. Pat McCrory sued the General Assembly in 2016.

Maybe chaos will spur reform (Hendersonville Times-News) — Going forward, the solution is for legislative leaders to enact nonpartisan redistricting reform of the kind long advocated by advocacy groups on the left and the right. Until they do, electoral chaos and repeated court challenges are bound to continue.

POLICY & POLITICS It’s Labor Day weekend. Tell us if you’ve read this before (Charlotte Observer) — It’s true that the Republican tax bill has been a windfall for corporations and the wealthy. And yes, wages have increased slightly in the months since, but those increases are in line with inflation. Real wages are actually stagnant, and even some Republicans have admitted that there’s no evidence that tax cut money has been helping the American worker.

ELY PORTILLO & ANNA DOUGLAS: Trump mixed politics and policy during a visit to Charlotte, ‘a very special place’ (Charlotte Observer reports) — It was Trump’s first trip to Charlotte since the March funeral of the Rev. Billy Graham. It comes two years before the president is expected to return for the 2020 Republican National Convention.

BRUCE HENDERSON & ELY PORTILLO: Trump says Lake Norman is the world’s largest man-made lake. (It’s not…) (Charlotte Observer reports) — The Duke Energy-managed reservoir north of Charlotte, filled in 1963, is indeed large. It covers 32,510 acres and has 520 miles of shoreline. NCPedia.org calls it the biggest man-made lake lying entirely in North Carolina.

ANNA DOUGLAS: Gambling ‘epidemic?’ This NC city has more arcades than it does McDonald’s (Charlotte Observer reports) — “There’s just been no enforcement,” Sen. Andy Wells said. “They go where the people don’t have a lot of money. They’re preying on the weakest among us.” He’s talking about the “fish game” — the latest video arcade craze that’s enticed people across North Carolina to part with hundreds of dollars at a time, hoping they’ll win big.

JOHN MURAWSKI: As NC babies die at one of the fastest rates in the country, Cooper calls for action plan (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — Thirty years ago the state had plummeted to the nation’s second-worst infant mortality rate, prompting the creation of Smart Start and other government programs to reverse the trend. The state’s infant mortality rate has now improved, but is still the 12th-worst rate in the country, according to the latest data available.

STAN KELLY: Carolina Core is the future of the North Carolina’s growth (Greensboro News & Record column) — The next engine of transformational economic growth for North Carolina lies in the Carolina Core — an emerging megasite corridor between Winston-Salem and Fayetteville, in the heart of the state, which bridges that urban corridor with Charlotte and the Research Triangle.

DR. CHRIS FONVIELLE: Historic context vital for Confederate monuments (Wilmington Star News column) — We cannot alter or change history or right past wrongs and injustices by attempting to erase it or by relocating, removing, or obliterating monuments to people and events of the past. We should study history to remind us, teach us, guide us, and inspire us to be better persons and better citizens. We must not, however, use it to wage cultural warfare against one another or for political gain

EDUCATION JONATHAN DREW: UNC head: Confederate doesn’t belong at campus ‘front door’ (AP reports) — The chancellor of North Carolina’s flagship university strongly indicated Friday that the school won’t return a torn-down Confederate statue to the main quad where it used to stand, but stopped short of confirming its former spot has been ruled out.

JULIA JACOBS & ALAN BINDER: University of North Carolina Chancellor Explores New Spot for ‘Silent Sam’ (New York Times reports) — Although U.N.C. leaders had expressed interest in relocating the statue, they found themselves — to the irritation and aggravation of Silent Sam’s fiercest critics — severely restricted by a 2015 state law declaring that a “monument, memorial or work of art owned by the state” may not be “removed, relocated or altered in any way” without the consent of a state historical commission.

FRANCES SELLERS & SUSAN SVRIUGA: UNC the latest college to grapple with the felling of a Confederate statue amid fears of rising tension (Washington Post reports) — Decades of internal debate about the statue and its prominence on this Southern campus have escalated into a politicized public drama, one heightened by the similarities to the controversy in Charlottesville a year ago, which erupted into a rally that turned fatal after white nationalists and others objected to the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

HEALTH JULIANA REED: An option for expanding care for cancer patients in North Carolina (Greensboro News & Record) — Despite valuable medical advances in prevention, diagnosis and treatment over recent decades, cancer rates remain alarmingly high in North Carolina. Almost 54,000 new patients in North Carolina are diagnosed with cancer each year — one of the highest rates in the United States.

MARK TOSCZAK: Mission and HCA Agree to Terms of Potential Sale (NC Health News reports) — Mission Health’s board of directors has signed an agreement to sell the Asheville-based health system to for-profit hospital operator HCA Healthcare for $1.5 billion. HCA and Mission will each put $25 million into an “innovation fund” to invest in businesses “providing innovations in health care delivery that benefit the people of western North Carolina.” Any deal still has to be approved by N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein before it can be completed, but that looks likely.

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Its Time to Reclaim Americas Leadership in Education

When three female African-American mathematicians—Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson—became unsung heroes at NASA during the 1960s space race, the US was engaged in a fierce competition to become the world leader in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. As told in the recently released movie Hidden Figures, the trio’s groundbreaking calculations for rocket trajectories required programming a complex, first-of-a-kind IBM computer that helped put astronaut John Glenn in orbit. Skip ahead 54 years, and the US is a world leader in scientific innovation and advanced technologies.

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Stanley S. Litow (@CitizenIBM) is president of the IBM Foundation and vice president of corporate citizenship and corporate affairs at IBM. He is a former deputy chancellor of New York City public schools.

But in order for the US to remain at the forefront of innovation and not lag behind, we must address the disconnect between the skills required for 21st century jobs and young people’s ability to acquire those skills. Fixing this will require us to evolve our approach to public education and training. The latest results of the PISA exam, which assesses science, math, and reading performance among 15-year-olds around the globe, show American students noticeably behind in math scores (below the international average), with science and reading scores remaining flat. This is not a small problem.

In one way, Congress took a bold, bipartisan step toward reversing this downward trend and closing America’s skills gap last fall, when the House of Representatives voted 405-to-5 to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, which had languished since 2006. The Perkins Act provides more than $1 billion in funding for career and technical education across the US. The bill aligns career and tech education programs with actual labor market demands. Updating this important legislation can and should be an early win for the 115th Congress and the incoming administration.

The House bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support because leaders from both sides of the aisle recognize the urgent need to better prepare students to succeed in college and career. Backed by hundreds of business, labor, education, and civil society leaders, this much-needed reform will enable the country to invest wisely and prepare America’s young people to fill the hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs that already exist, and that do not always require a four-year college degree. These new collar jobs for holders of two-year degrees do not need to be created or brought back. They’re ready to be filled today by people with the right skills, and early action by Congress is essential.

But many of our young people lack the relevant skills or support to move from school to college to career. Too many of our traditional vocational training programs do not prepare students for meaningful careers. It’s time to link career and technical education to where the high quality jobs are now and where they will be in the future.

Passage of the Perkins Act can ensure that our nation’s essential career and technical education programs will equip graduates for current and future high-wage, high-growth jobs. A revised Perkins Act will help better meet the demands of the 21st century workforce by giving employers the ability to align education directly to needed skills, and blend experiential learning with academic training. The bill also calls for concrete performance metrics to reward success. Such an investment in America’s young people will yield long-lasting returns.

An innovative new educational model called P-TECH lets students earn both a high school diploma and an associate degree in a STEM field. Launched by IBM (where I am a vice president) along with education partners in 2011, P-TECH is a rigorous program that aligns strong STEM curricula with essential workplace skills such as problem solving, writing, and critical thinking. Located mostly in underserved communities and requiring no admissions testing or additional spending, P-TECH schools are already delivering tangible results. The program has expanded to 60 schools in urban, suburban, and rural communities, and IBM is working with states to create 20 more P-TECH schools over the next year. P-TECH’s measurable results prove that it can and will help thousands of youth achieve success.

In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for example, nearly 35 percent of students from the first P-TECH class are completing their “six-year” program in five years or less, moving directly into good new collar jobs, four-year college degree programs, or both—without the need for costly, non-credit remedial courses. With these kinds of results, it’s not far-fetched to envision skilled and motivated P-TECH graduates playing essential roles in America’s next moon shot.

If we are to enable a brighter future for American youth through innovative technical education programs, Congress must act quickly and send the Perkins bill to the President’s desk for early signature. This fundamental and sorely needed alignment is a win-win for our country. It puts our students on a path to success, and positions our businesses to compete and win in the global economy. Given support and opportunity, our young people can and will succeed.