HBA Newswatch
April 2, 2008
AMERICANS DELAY RETIREMENT AS HOUSING, STOCKS SWOON
By Jennifer Levitz
From The Wall Street Journal Online
As the falling real-estate and stock markets erode their savings, many aging Americans are delaying retirement, electing labor over leisure in uncertain times.
A three-decade veteran at International Business Machines Corp., Dick Boice had planned to sell his house, pack up and move to Arizona with his wife, Lauren, to take early retirement. But two months after the January date he set to exit the work world, Mr. Boice, who is 59 years old, is still on the job. He figures he'll stay put for another couple of years.
The Boices had counted on proceeds from the house sale to boost their retirement income. After a year on the market, the roomy colonial in Blue Springs, Mo., didn't move, forcing the couple to cut the asking price by $40,000 to around $250,000. The house remains unsold. Meanwhile, Mr. Boice has watched the value of his 401(k) and individual retirement accounts fall by roughly 20% so far this year, to a combined $240,000.
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FUTURE REMAINS UNCERTAIN FOR CITY’S CAMBRIA TERRACE
Contractor’s departure puts housing community’s fate in limbo
By R. JONATHAN TULEYA, Staff Writer
COATESVILLE — The three parties most closely involved with development of the city’s Cambria Terrace community have three different thoughts about its future.
On Monday, the senior project manager for developer Community Builders, Jim Eby, said a new company could be in place by mid-April to complete the replacement for the old Oak Street Public Housing Project with 84 new homes in Coatesville and South Coatesville.
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HOUSE-BUILDING CONTEST SUPPORTS KATRINA VICTIMS
By CHRIS WILLIAMS, Special to the Local News
EASTTOWN — On an area of the Devon Horse Show grounds normally reserved for horse trailers and RVs, five houses were constructed last week. You won’t find any of them still there, however: They are en route to Baton Rouge, La.
Each day last week — rain or shine — teams of carpenters and builders worked feverishly to construct panelized framing packages to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The weeklong competition was designed to see which team could construct a house frame the fastest. The house frames were then broken down, loaded onto tractor-trailers and shipped south to Habitat for Humanity of Baton Rouge.
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