N. Texas shingle problems turn to blame game
Shingle manufacturer CertainTeed has been working with Lennar Homes to replace or reseal shingles at no cost to homeowners. Also, CertainTeed extended their five-year wind warranty to ten years. But when April's powerful storms wreaked havoc on North Texas, that warranty suddenly ended. Homeowners in The Colony are caught in the middle of a storm between their builder, a shingle manufacturer and their insurance companies. They said no one wants to take responsibility for the damage to their roofs.

Rosa Rosales on Mirasol & HUD
League of United Latin American Citizens passed a resolution calling for an investigation by the appropriate federal agencies into the “disturbing trend in substandard new home construction” in the affordable-housing market. LULAC also called for subcommittee hearings in Congress on the deregulation of HUD and its lack of oversight for the past decade...We very much endorsed that. As we have seen through the years it’s become a nightmare. People thought they were buying their dream you might say, their home for the first time, and then everything starts falling apart. Then aside from that, not only is it falling apart, it’s affecting their health and that of their children. Start from step one when [Mirasol] first started and then, aside from that, you’ve got to compensate them for all the problems that they caused because the homes were not built correctly. Without hurting anyone’s feelings, if the task force has been in existence for a year and indeed the problems still exist, and we don’t have a plan of action, with all due respect then we would have to look to something other than this task force.  See LULAC Resolution

SAHA retrenches
The President and CEO of the San Antonio Housing Authority announced his resignation last Thursday, one of several recent internal changes in the department that may represent a deeper shift in the City’s approach to low-income housing...his four-year run at SAHA was marred by lawsuits and public criticism over the Mirasol Homes project, a low-income housing development completed in 2001...Ahmad and League of United Latin American Citizens have been working to aide the Mirasol residents,... The five-neighborhood, 247-home development on the West Side was funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI program.  The City sued Magi realty, the original contractor that hired KB Homes, and created a task force to address the residents’ problems. Magi then sued KB Homes for the poor construction. The Mirasol Task Force consists of 11 committee members, including representatives from SAHA, residents, and KB Homes. “That’s like putting KB on the jury,” Ahmad said... “I don’t think the offers are fair enough concerning buying their homes,” Cavazos said. “The threat of the mold is being resolved through the homes being fixed right now, but the residents that want to move out, we want to make sure we give them fair benefits.”

Twin Cities builder files for Chapter 11
Twin Cities homebuilder MW Johnson has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, in the latest fallout of the housing market collapse. The Builders Association of the Twin Cities ranked the company as the 11th-largest home builder in 2007, based on gross revenues, which it estimated to be $41.4 million.

How homeowners, speculators and Wall Street rode a wave of easy money
It was the peak. It was the embodiment of business success," Connelly said. "We underestimated the bubble, even though deep down, we knew it couldn't last forever." Indeed, Pinnacle's party would soon end, along with the nation's housing euphoria. The company has all but disappeared, along with dozens of other mortgage firms, tens of thousands of jobs on Wall Street and the dreams of about 1 million proud new homeowners who lost their houses...The aftershocks of the housing market's collapse still rumble through the economy, with unemployment rising, companies struggling to obtain financing and the stock market more than 10 percent below its peak last fall... Seen in the best possible light, the housing bubble that began inflating in the mid-1990s was "a great national experiment," as one prominent economist put it -- a way to harness the inventiveness of the capitalist system to give low-income families, minorities and immigrants a chance to own their homes. But it also is a classic story of boom, excess and bust, of homeowners, speculators and Wall Street dealmakers happy to ride the wave of easy money even though many knew a crash was inevitable.

Builders to pay $4.3 million in settlement over runoff
Four of the biggest U.S. homebuilders will pay a total of $4.3 million to settle federal and state allegations that they violated clean water laws at construction sites across the country. entex Corp, KB Home, Pulte Homes Inc. and Richmond American Homes also agreed to improve their environmental compliance programs and put safeguards in place that will keep 1.2 billion pounds of sediment annually out of U.S. waterways, the U.S. Justice Department said yesterday.

Oregon home builder files for bankruptcy
1 of Oregon's largest home builders has filed for bankruptcy after its parent company made some bad land investments. Legend Homes' chief executive officer, David Oringdulph, says ill-timed purchases made in the once hot areas of Bend, Vancouver, Washington and Southern California prompted the bankruptcy.

Controversial president of SAHA posts resignation
But current Chairman Ramiro Cavazos said Alvarez likely would have received mixed results on his evaluation by the new board...Cavazos said. “I think an area where we probably would have said might have needed improvement would be in connecting better to grass-roots organizations ... that really are the service providers of the folks that we house.”

SAHA Forced To Remove People From Voucher Program
The San Antonio Housing Authority handed out more vouchers than federal government will fund. SAN ANTONIO -- The San Antonio Housing Authority must now find a new president and CEO after its previous head decided to move to the West Coast. Henry Alvarez leaves the authority after four years at the helm to become the executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority. That agency is the 17th largest in the country, boasting more than 6,000 public housing units. The SAHA Board of Commissioners is still discussing the process to replace Alvarez.See video report

The Magazine of the National Association of Home Builders
Parallel Universe
The worldview of Home Builders versus that of the people who post negative web sites about them is so different that some might wonder whether the two groups live on the same planet.
The negative Web postings depict builders as unscrupulous businesspeople who market shoddy, hastily built products and force people into binding arbitration agreements that forfeit the legal rights of home buyers.

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