World

In mid-May, Paula Sevilla and her roommates joined the many New Yorkers suffering under the city’s crushing housing crisis, which has seen rents soar in the pandemic’s wake.

The tenants argued their landlord had violated rules requiring sufficient notice but ultimately were told if they would have to pay an additional $800 per month if they wanted to stay at their Brooklyn rental.

Sevilla and one roommate began a grueling search for new housing in a market that over the past year has spawned countless apartment search horror stories.

After two months of searching, some 30 apartment visits and constant stress, they finally found a two-bedroom spot for $3,000 dollars per month.

Renting in New York has long been a struggle, but recently costs have skyrocketed, jumping an average 20.4 percent in the second quarter of this year alone, according to the housing search website StreetEasy.

And finding a home increasingly takes longer, with long lines of applicants vying for space.

“One time we lost an apartment because we turned in an application four minutes too late,” recounted Sevilla, a 26-year-old originally from Spain. 

– Boiling point –

Draconian prerequisites to rent in New York aren’t new: earn income 40 times the monthly rent, have perfect credit history, present the last two years of tax returns and current bank balances.

And the city’s housing crisis has been simmering for years, with construction of units lagging behind a growing population. 

Now, as hundreds of thousands of people who fled the city during the pandemic’s early days return — along with the normal flow of transplants to America’s cultural and economic nexus — the situation is growing untenable.

There are “too many clients and not enough apartments,” said Miguel Urbina, a real estate agent.

In some cases, it’s not even enough to arrive first or offer more than the asking price to owners, which are often large firms or investment funds, especially in Manhattan.

Sevilla makes $75,000 annually, slightly more than the average salary in New York — but it’s not enough to rent on her own.

In New York, renters must often also pay significant broker fees to rental agents, generally at least between one month and 15 percent of the annual rental cost.

Many people who stayed in the city in 2020 and 2021 signed leases at a discount, but now many landlords are bumping those prices back up — pushing out more than a third of tenants who can’t afford the increases, according to StreetEasy.

Even New Yorkers lucky enough to live in rent-stabilized apartments — approximately one million units and two million tenants, according to city data — are not immune to the increases.

Those rents can only be raised based on a vote by the city’s rent guidelines board, whose members are appointed by the mayor. 

For eight years under Bill de Blasio, the highest increases were 1.5 percent for one-year leases — but under the board appointed by new mayor Eric Adams, rents are set to see their sharpest rise in nearly a decade.

In June, the board approved a 3.25 percent increase for one-year contracts and five percent for two years, which will affect many of the city’s residents with limited means and triggered outrage among housing rights advocates.

– ‘Staggering financial burden’ –

Manhattan families spend some 55 percent of their income on rent, a figure that is 43 percent in Queens and 60 percent in Brooklyn, according to StreetEasy data.

“Rent is becoming a staggering financial burden,” read a recent report from the online real estate portal.

Gia Elika, the owner of a real estate agency, says average rent in Manhattan is some $5,000 a month — but in a city of stark class division, some agencies are offering monthly rents of $140,000 on Fifth Avenue.

The shocking price tags are driving more middle-class families and young people like Sevilla to seek housing in neighborhoods historically occupied by immigrants, Latinos and African Americans, fostering relentless gentrification.

Elika told AFP that while “there is always a shortage of housing” in New York, “now it’s magnifying” with unprecedented prices.

According to the Washington-based policy research group Up For Growth, in 2019, the New York metropolitan area needed some 340,000 more units.

Rising interest rates in the face of rampant inflation has aggravated the crisis by pushing would-be buyers to rent, in a market “hampered by historically low inventory,” according to Lee’s report.

Decades-old zoning restrictions limit building size in some areas is one barrier, along with construction costs, limited public housing and legislative foot-dragging that has seen state and local politicians largely put off solving an increasingly pressing problem.

And the outlook is grim: much of the skyscraper boom in Manhattan has been for luxury and commercial purposes, and despite high-rise construction in Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey, agents don’t foresee prices to quit rising any time soon.

Rescuers will deploy an underwater drone as part of intensified efforts to save 10 workers trapped for five days in a flooded coal mine in northern Mexico, authorities said Monday.

The device provided by the navy has a high-resolution camera and light to identify possible obstacles without putting lives at risk, civil defense national coordinator Laura Velazquez said.

Work continued to pump water from the mine in Agujita in the northern state of Coahuila to make it safe enough for rescuers to go inside.

The military said that it was hoped rescuers would be able enter to one of the shafts in the middle of this week if the water level drops to 1.5 meters (around five feet).

The mine shafts descend about 60 meters and the water inside the one that rescuers plan to go into was 19.4 meters deep, down from more than 30 meters initially, officials said.

“We’re hurrying to remove the water so that the rescuers can enter,” said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who visited the site on Sunday and urged greater efforts to save the miners.

Around 300 liters were being pumped out each second, he told reporters back in Mexico City.

“Everyone has faith. No one is thinking about anything other than the rescue,” he said.

Authorities said the miners had been carrying out excavation work when they hit an adjoining area full of water.

Five workers managed to escape from the crudely constructed mine in the initial aftermath of Wednesday’s accident, but there has been no contract with the others.

– ‘Very painful’ –

With each passing hour relatives were becoming increasingly desperate and more reluctant to talk to the media.

Authorities reinforced a security cordon around the mine, about 1,130 kilometers (700 miles) north of Mexico City.

Several hundred soldiers and other personnel, including six military scuba divers, are taking part in the rescue effort, according to the government.

The Attorney General’s Office said on Sunday that it asked the labor ministry to provide information on safety inspections carried out at mines in the area to determine the cause of the accident.

Coahuila, Mexico’s main coal-producing region, has seen a series of fatal mining incidents over the years.

Last year, seven miners died when they were trapped in the region.

The worst accident was an explosion that claimed 65 lives at the Pasta de Conchos mine in 2006.

Only two bodies were retrieved after that tragedy and the families have repeatedly urged the Mexican authorities to recover the others.

Rogelio Mireles worked in the Pasta de Conchos mine at the time but by a twist of fate was not there on the day of the disaster.

The latest accident is “something very painful — we experienced it firsthand,” said the 36-year-old, who now works at a supermarket near where the 10 workers are trapped.

Digging for coal in makeshift mines like the one in Agujita is much more dangerous than working in industrial mines, Mireles said.

But “there’s no alternative. People need to work,” he said.

US stocks trailed other global markets and the dollar retreated Monday as investors turned their attention to US inflation data later this week and weighed the prospect of more interest rate hikes.

Wall Street’s early enthusiasm faded by the close, with the broad S&P 500 dipping 0.1 percent, as inflation data coming this week combined with the strong jobs report Friday are boosting the view the US Federal Reserve will announce a third successive rate increase of three-quarters of a percentage point in September.

“With persistent inflation and a strong labor market, the Fed is on a clear path to raise rates,” OANDA analyst Edward Moya said. “This week is all about inflation.”

Data due Wednesday are expected to show inflation in the world’s biggest economy slowed slightly in July, but remained close to the 40-year highs seen in recent months. The June report showed consumer prices soared 9.1 percent over the past 12 months.

However, even if the pace slows, SPI Asset Management analyst Stephen Innes said the reading “seems very unlikely to offer compelling evidence of a slowdown needed for the Fed to pull away from its aggressive inflation-fighting mode.”

Global stocks had rallied over the past several sessions after another negative US GDP report convinced some traders the Fed might be able to ease up on the aggressive inflation-fighting campaign. 

But central bankers in recent days have tried to deflate their enthusiasm, saying more rate hikes are coming.

Oil prices gained, making good some of the losses from last week, when a rise in US crude stockpiles was partly responsible for a 10-percent drop in prices.

Both main oil contracts have lost all the gains seen in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led the United States and Europe to ban imports of Russian crude, hammering already thin supplies.

– Key figures at around 2045 GMT –

New York – Dow: UP 0.1 percent at 32,832.54 (close)

New York – S&P 500: DOWN 0.1 percent at 4,140.06 (close)

New York – Nasdaq: DOWN 0.1 percent at 12,644.46 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 7,482.37 (close)

Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.8 percent at 13,687.69 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.8 percent at 6,524.44 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: UP 0.9 percent at 3,757.90

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.3 percent at 28,249.24 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.8 percent at 20,045.77 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.3 percent at 3,236.93 (close)

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0194 from $1.0184 Friday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2079 from $1.2075

Euro/pound: UP at 84.35 pence from 84.32 pence

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 134.98 yen from 135.00 yen

West Texas Intermediate: UP 1.5 percent at $90.32 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 1.3 percent at $96.18 per barrel

After more than a year, aviation giant Boeing will be allowed to resume deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft “in the coming days,” after the company made changes to its manufacturing process, US air safety regulators announced Monday.

Deliveries of the top-selling widebody plane have been halted since spring 2021, so the news will be welcomed by US airlines and travelers who have suffered from massive delays and canceled flights in recent weeks, partly due to the shortage of aircraft.

“Boeing has made the necessary changes to ensure that the 787 Dreamliner meets all certification standards,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The plane’s travails date to late summer 2020, when the company uncovered manufacturing flaws with some jets. Boeing subsequently identified additional issues, including with the horizontal stabilizer.

The difficulties curtailed deliveries between November 2020 and March 2021. Boeing suspended deliveries later in spring 2021 after more problems surfaced.

Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen met with safety inspectors in South Carolina last week to confirm they were satisfied with the company’s improvements, which were made to ensure they comply with standards and to identify potential risks after defects were uncovered on the plane.

“The FAA will inspect each aircraft before an airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery,” the statement said. “We expect deliveries to resume in the coming days.”

– Cleared for takeoff –

A company spokesman told AFP that Boeing will “continue to work transparently with the FAA and our customers toward resuming 787 deliveries,” but did not confirm the firm had received final FAA approval.

During a July 27 earnings conference call, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun described the company was “on the verge” of garnering approval, though he declined to give a precise target date.

At the end of June, Boeing had 120 Dreamliner planes in inventory and was producing the jet “at very low rates,” the company said in a filing.

The company’s stock price gained ground on the news, closing 0.5 percent higher.

Inability to deliver the Dreamliner has dragged down Boeing’s profits, which plunged 67 percent in the second quarter. And the manufacturing changes have led to billions in additional costs for the company.

The firm has delivered just over 1,000 of the planes since it was first introduced in 2004.

The enhanced regulatory scrutiny of the 787 and other Boeing planes comes on the heels of a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 on the 737 MAX, which led to aircraft being banned from the skies globally for more than a year.

But the MAX has since returned to service, enabling Boeing to ramp up production of the planes, collect meaningful revenues and announce significant new orders at the Farnborough Airshow earlier this month.

Even so, Boeing’s backlog of orders in the pipeline lags behind that of archrival Airbus.