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The BBC has done several interesting news items on News 24 today - almost as if there is a theme on housing. Or perhaps they just stuck them all out on a sunny winter afternoon so that no one will notice. 1. New York now has 60,000 homeless people - a staggering 25,000 of whom are children. But the homeless are increasingly people who have jobs but who cannot afford to actually even rent, let alone buy, a property in NY. The income inequality between what people earn and what it costs to rent is the biggest in the US apparently. 2. Boulder, Colorado - similar to the above re the income inequality between what people earn and what it costs to rent buy. Boulder has become increasingly trendy with a huge influx of people from California, Hollywood types and Silicon Valley types, moving to the area. The town has loads going for it - it feels like a small town and, rare in the US, over the decades the town council has bought loads of land around the outskirts which are basiclaly now public parks. So it is a great place for people who enjoy outdoor activities. The recent drug legislation has also attracted more people with money to the area. But now people born and bred in the area are finding that they cannot afford to live in the town. More and more are now clubbing together to live in 'communes' but Boulder has a law where more than 3 unrelated people cannot live in the same house... so more and more Boulder-born people are finding that they have to break the law to live in their own town. 3. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is an interesting 'Soylent Green' type scenario. One area of Baton Rouge, which is predominantly white, is lobbying to break away from Baton Rouge and become a new town called 'The City of St. George' - leaving the rest of Baton Rouge, which is mainly black, to fend for itself. Most of the taxes, which pay for the schools, libraries, etc, in Baton Rouge come from the predominantly white area and hence, although it was not openly mentioned, you got the impression that there is an undercurrent of why should we pay for everyone else.