In The News - 4/8/2025
Boomtown: Spokane Business Association announces 1,000 new housing units in downtown core
The Spokane Business Association announced the new residential units, signaling progress in addressing the city's housing crunch.
As Spokane grapples with a growing population and increasing demand for housing, the city has reached a significant milestone: 1,000 new residential units in its downtown core. The Spokane Business Association (SBA) announced the achievement, signaling progress in addressing the city’s housing crunch.
The milestone includes both completed projects and those slated for completion by summer 2026. According to the SBA, nearly 547 units have been finished, while 504 are under construction.
The Peyton Building is one such development where a historic building is being repurposed into residential space. Other new developments include Spokane Falls Tower condominiums on the North Bank of the Spokane River and KOZ Apartments at 4th and 5th Avenue.
Jordan Tampien, with 4 Degrees Real Estate, is the developer leading renovations at the historic Peyton Building.
He said the building was originally constructed for housing in the late 1800s before being converted to office space following a fire. The building is now returning to its original purpose.
Once completed, the Peyton Lofts will offer 96 residential units downtown, with residents expected to move in as early as summer 2026.
Tampien said this project is coming to fruition thanks to the city’s efforts to streamline the permitting process for housing.
"We've been blessed in Spokane," Tampien said. "They have such amazing developers, city officials, people that are forward thinking enough to do it, and so a lot of stuff in this project wouldn't have happened without that kind of foresight."
“A few years ago, we faced the reality of having very few units available to folks, and then prices went up. In the last several years, the city has been working really hard through permitting and housing policy to help incentivize more developers," Hut said. "And now we're starting to see the fruits of that work."
Last year alone, Spokane issued a record-breaking total of 1,433 residential unit permits—a sign of growing momentum in addressing housing needs. Hut emphasized increasing housing availability is crucial.
The New York Times
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They Work All Day and Go Home to Shelters
Thousands of working people in New York City now live in shelters, unable to afford apartments despite holding down jobs that pay them $50,000 or more.
About a third of families living in New York City’s homeless shelters, not including migrants, include at least one working adult.
By four in the morning, the young woman has already signed out of the Blue Sky Residence, the Queens homeless shelter where she lives, and started her commute to work. The local bus doesn’t run this early, so she sets out on foot, walking along the highway. She arrives at LaGuardia Airport before the first flight of the morning departs. For $22 an hour, she will spend her day directing travelers to their gates.
Around the same time, one of her neighbors at Blue Sky is resting her feet in a Target break room, nearing the end of her overnight shift preparing the store for its 8 a.m. opening. She makes $19 an hour, $20 for every hour she works after midnight.
And as the sun begins to rise, Kuber Sancho-Persad, who lives a few doors down, is napping in his taxi in the Kennedy Airport parking lot, waiting for the first passengers of the day to arrive with the early morning flights.
Their routines, quiet and mundane, signal a growing — and largely invisible — crisis that threatens New York City’s future.
About a third of the families living in New York City’s homeless shelters, not including migrants, have at least one adult who gets up and goes to work. But their salaries — some as high as $40,000 or $50,000 or more — are outmatched by the depth of the city’s affordability crisis and the severity of its housing crunch.
This is not the homeless problem that New Yorkers are most familiar with: people sleeping on subway cars or begging for change on street corners, often struggling with mental illness or addiction. These are the people who help make New York run, now shut out of the city’s rental market.
“We are living in a world of musical chairs where there are not enough chairs for everyone,” said John Kimble, a senior adviser at the NYC Fund to End Youth & Family Homelessness. “Someone is going to be left standing.”
There is perhaps no more visceral symbol of the hollowing out of New York City’s middle class than the emergence of the employment shelter: facilities that cater to people who work in jobs, many of them full-time, that in a different city or a different economy would never make them rich but would not leave them homeless.