(RECAP: The Charlottesville region faces a serious affordable housing crisis, one that threatens the well being of the community and leaves too many hardworking local families and individuals like Trisha without access to simple, decent affordable housing. The numbers are staggering: 50 percent of Charlottesville residents spend more than one third of their income on housing alone. Based on affordable housing deficits identified in key city, county and Thomas Jefferson Plotting District Commission studies, we find we have a regional deficit of about 16,000 safe, decent, affordable units. As a community, we can do better. And confronting this crisis starts with land.)

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(RECAP: How widespread is the affordable housing crisis? Well, not a single county in the U.S. has enough affordable units to go around. Constructing more housing is vital (albeit not simple), but we can’t just build our way out of the problem: In some cases, the cheaper, better option is to simply preserve the existing affordable housing stock, instead of allowing it to get swept away by development. The need to save housing that’s affordable right now is growing in urgency: Rents have been rising for more than a decade, as have the numbers of renters. According to a previous analysis by the Urban Institute, there are only 28 affordable units for every 100 renter households with incomes at or below 30 percent of area median income. Saving those properties holds significant advantages.)

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(RECAP: Millennials are often described as prioritizing leisure and entertainment, but many are going into debt to fund them. Most financial planners caution homeowners against using home-equity loans to fund small-term expenses, including vacations. Yet that is the most well loved use of the money for the more than half of U.S. homeowners between the ages of 30 and 34 who have owned a home for three years or more and have taken out a home-equity loan, according to results of a Learn Home Equity Loans survey, released on Wednesday. Only 29.4% of those between 35 and 44, 19.9% of those between 45 and 54, 25.7% of those between 55 and 64, and 22.3% of those 65 and older also said they took out a home-equity loan against their home. The results come from a survey of 1,428 consumers, conducted earlier this year.)

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