19 Oct 2023

Havana’s once stately homes crumble as their residents live in fear of an imminent collapse

by | posted in: Politics | 0

HAVANA — The house on Villegas Street, in the heart of Old Havana, looks nothing like the stately two-story home it used to be a century ago, with its high ceilings, wrought iron railings, semicircular arches and stairs covered in white marble. Its former elegance is such that local lore says it used to belong to a marquise.

Today, everything inside the six-family unit is chaos.

The roots of a tree protrude through the wall of a makeshift toilet where birds have made their nests. The roofs of the first and second floors are propped up. There is rubble and fresh sand scattered everywhere. The walls seem to tilt and the façade has completely disappeared, exposing a patio where one can see freshly washed clothes hanging.

The structure is one of many once luxurious houses in the island nation that in recent years have partially collapsed — or suffer visible damage. Barely 100 meters (yards) away, also on Villegas Street, a similar building fell in earlier this month, causing three deaths.

Residents say they have repeatedly asked authorities for help to no avail. Years of neglect, inclement weather and a deepening economic crisis only aggravate the fear that their home will eventually collapse.

“How can we not live in fear? Every time it rains I feel like small pebbles come falling down on me,” said Maricelys Colás, a retired 64-year-old who has lived in the house with her 85-year-old mother for 59 years. “And a collapse doesn’t warn you.”

The Cuban government has in the past acknowledged the problem of housing deterioration, but says the lack of material resources prevents it from tackling it. Yet, many Cubans wonder why the pace of investment in tourism megaprojects such as hotels — a vital business sector that has failed to take off in at least the last two years — is not slowing down to address the dire housing crisis.

The house on Villegas Street was built at the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th on a plot measuring about 15 meters (50 feet) wide by 60 meters (about 200 feet) deep. Three families live on the ground floor, where there used to be a main patio and rooms for the domestic staff. Three other families live on the more deteriorated top floor, where cracks abound and the staircase creaks as you climb it.

All of the residents say the building once belonged to the Marquise of Pinar del Río, a title granted by the Spanish crown when the island was part of its domains. The Associated Press could not verify that, but its elegant design is visible.

Nowadays, everything smells of mold.

AP interviewed all the residents in the unit, except for an elderly man who was temporarily staying in a relative’s house. They unanimously reported having made efforts before the government, requesting to live elsewhere or to have access to materials for repairs. They said they never received a response.

The Cuban government did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Mario Luis Poll, a 57-year-old art restorer who has lived in the building for 19 years, walks around his unit showing a reporter all the repairs he has done to try to hold the ceiling together after the floor of the room above collapsed.

Right above him, 47-year-old musician Marcos Villa faces a different problem: Foliage from a tree is growing out of his improvised bathroom.

“The struts (the wooden posts that support the roof of the entire construction) are almost just for decoration,” Poll said, shrugging in a sign of resignation.

Cuba’s housing crisis is one of the most pressing challenges facing the island, where a humid climate, the passage of hurricanes and other storms, poor maintenance and a low completion rate of new ones are usually among the top complaints of Cubans.

Cuba’s director of housing, Vivian Rodríguez, said earlier this month that the island has a housing deficit of 800,000 homes, especially in the provinces of Havana, Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey.

Government figures from 2020 say Cuba had 3.9 million homes, out of which nearly 40% were deemed to be in only fair or poor condition.

“The situation is critical,” said Abel Tablada, professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technological University of Havana, adding that rebuilding and restoring partially collapsed buildings “requires many resources that the Cuban state does not have in these moments of acute crisis.”

The residents of the house in Villegas Street, tired of asking authorities for help, can only sigh about the fate of the former mansion they inhabit.

“If those marquises came back to life and saw this house, they would surely die again,” joked Elayne Clavel, 26, wife of musician Villa.

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19 Oct 2023

Ticker: New claims for unemployment fall; Netflix subscribers surge

by | posted in: News | 0

Applications for unemployment benefits fell to their lowest level in eight months last week as businesses continue to retain workers despite elevated interest rates meant to cool the economy and labor market.

Jobless claims fell by 13,000 to 198,000 for the week ending Oct. 14, the Labor Department reported. That’s the fewest since January and about 14,000 fewer than analysts expected.

Despite the low level of weekly first-time jobless benefit applications, the number of Americans remaining on the unemployment rolls — known as “continuing claims” — jumped to its highest level in three months.

Overall, 1.73 million people were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended Oct. 7, about 29,000 more than the previous week and the most since early July.

Netflix subscribers surge

Netflix added 9 million subscribers during the third quarter, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming video giant said, citing popular original shows and older licensed content, as well as the company’s crackdown on password sharing.

Revenue was $8.5 billion in the quarter, up 8% from the same period of time last year, which was in line with analyst estimates. Net income was $1.68 billion, compared to $1.4 billion a year ago.

In an effort to bring in even more revenue, Netflix also announced it’s raising the price for its most expensive streaming service by $2 to $23 per month in the U.S. — a 10% increase — and its lowest-priced, ad-free streaming plan to $12 — another $2 bump. The $15.50 per month price for Netflix’s most popular streaming option in the U.S. will remain unchanged, as will a $7 monthly plan that includes intermittent commercials.

19 Oct 2023

MBTA knew years ago that GLX tracks were too narrow and needed repairs, Eng says

by | posted in: News | 0

MBTA officials knew as far back as April 2021 that large swaths of Green Line Extension tracks were defective and too narrow – but the agency opened the lines anyway – General Manager Phillip Eng said Thursday as he pledged that the public would not carry the burden of paying for needed repairs.

The issue extends far beyond what was previously known and the MBTA made public this fall. Eng said half of the Union Square branch and 80% of the Medford-Tufts branch require repairs only a week after the MBTA said it had cleared slow zones that forced trains to run at walking speeds in some areas.

“That does not mean that the trains are running today unsafely,” Eng said. “It means that we’re going to have the GLX Constructors re-guage the track to bring it back to what the project called for. And once we have a plan in place, we’ll share that with the public. And the goal is to make sure that we do that in the least impactful way, the most efficient way and put this behind us.”

Gov. Maura Healey said she was frustrated and disappointed by the revelation that “senior MBTA officials under the previous administration knew about issues with the Green Line Extension tracks years ago and did not disclose them to our administration or address them on their watch.”

“The people of Massachusetts deserve better. I applaud GM Eng for uncovering this and taking swift action to hold people accountable and demand a work plan from the contractor to fix the narrow gauges on their own dime,” Healey said in a statement.

A political spokesperson for Baker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A public dashboard first showed multiple slow zones last month on brand-new tracks where trains were running at 3 mph, the average walking speed of any given person, which the transit agency said were put in place after finding some areas along the extension narrowed.

Questions were immediately raised over how long the agency had known about the issue and who was at fault for defective tracks that first opened in March and December 2022 under former Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration.

Eng previously said a case of narrow tracks “certainly is unusual.”

The first instance of narrow tracks were observed in April 2021 by inspectors for the contractors building the project, GLX Contractors, Eng said. Another inspection in November 2022, prior to the opening of the Medford-Tufts line, found 29 locations where tracks were narrow, which were addressed prior to the start of service, he said.

The November 2022 inspection also found “significant portions” of both the Union Station and Medford-Tufts branches that had tight tracks where repairs were needed but trains could run safely over, Eng said.

Eng said he believes there was an opportunity before opening the Green Line Extension to address the tight tracks, which he said eventually led to future conditions that required speed restrictions.

“The early indication as I mentioned that there was tight gauge in this yard facility, that was back in April 2021,” he said. “We also had other reports in November 2022 that indicated the widespread need to address more than just these isolated conditions. Back in April 2021, it’s my belief that it could have been and should have been more proactively investigated prior to opening and prior to installing what we’ve done.”

Baker opened the Medford-Tufts branch in December 2022 with a ribbon cutting that signaled the end to a project that cost the state $2.3 billion dollars and promised to bring reliable Green Line service to more areas of Greater Boston.

Officials said at the time that almost all of Somerville would be within a 12-minute walk of an MBTA station when taking into account Red and Orange Line stops. The five GLX stops were estimated to serve 50,000 riders each day and take about 45,000 car trips out of traffic, the MBTA said.

But issues with the tracks that surfaced in the past month have cast a long shadow over the extension at a time when the MBTA is already facing myriad problems, including the need to comply with a raft of federal safety orders.

Eng said he met with GLX Constructors last week and instructed them to come back with a proposal to address the large-scale need to bring track width into compliance with dimensions laid in the original project requirements.

He said GLX Constructors provided a proposal that MBTA officials are reviewing.

“This is not something that the public should be paying for. It’s not going to pay for. We’re reviewing the root cause still. What I’ve given you is my thought process on where I see some of the challenges,” he said.

Some were quick to blast the agency Thursday afternoon.

The Conservation Law Foundation, which filed lawsuits in an attempt to open the Green Line Extension, said the level of “dysfunction and irresponsibility defies explanation.”

“The previous administration was clearly more interested in cutting a ribbon than getting this project done safely and correctly. CLF sued to ensure that this extension was built, and this is now an opportunity for the Healey administration to commit to public transit and repair public trust,” Conservation Law Foundation Attorney Seth Gadbois said in a statement.

19 Oct 2023

Joel Griffith: Big box retailers pocketed free checking account perks — now they want your credit card rewards

by | posted in: Society | 0

Most of us don’t give much thought to the process of using a credit card. We just know it’s convenient, and we enjoy the rewards many card-issuers offer. But if Big Box retailers get their way through the Orwellian-named Credit Card Competition Act, that will change. We’ll be paying more in fees and higher interest rates while earning fewer rewards as merchants try to shift their costs onto you.

To see why, consider what happens when you use a credit card.

Quite a bit happens before and after a transaction that takes mere seconds. A network — called an interchange platform — quickly determines whether your credit card is valid and if you have sufficient credit available. And within hours of the purchase, credit supplied on your behalf by your card issuer flows through the interchange platform and is deposited as funds in the merchant’s checking account.

Hundreds of banks worldwide issue credit cards with unique interest rates, repayment terms, and rewards programs — but the number of interchange platforms are far fewer. The most common ones, of course, are Visa and MasterCard. When you apply for a “Visa” or “MasterCard” credit card from your bank, you’ve selected one of those entities as the network that will process the purchases on credit from that bank. Importantly, your bank — not the platform itself — issues the credit.

The merchant pays an “interchange fee” on every credit transaction — typically under 2%, a fee that rose only 0.1% from 2014-2020. Your bank and the merchant’s bank negotiate exactly how to split this fee. This fee enables the card-issuing bank to provide credit card rewards, protection against fraudulent purchases, and responsive customer service.

Of course, this arrangement also enables merchants to sell goods and services on credit to customers despite no pre-established relationship, no credit check, and with no risk to them should you fail to repay the loan. Importantly, your bank, rather than merchant, provides the capital — eliminating this cost to the retailer as well.

Just a generation ago, a merchant desiring to sell on credit found it necessary to conduct their own time-intensive due diligence, along with securing additional funds to finance credit issuance. Merchants also found themselves at risk of loans going unpaid – especially during economic downturns. It’s no surprise that most merchants abandoned their own credit extension programs as credit-card issuers gave them this alternative — and many other merchants who didn’t extend credit previously chose to utilize this service.

Now some in Congress want to take away this choice from you as the consumer. The Credit Card Competition Act would arbitrarily force dozens of the leading credit-card issuing banks to add at least one alternative interchange platform to process the credit transactions. In many instances, the retailer will choose the barebones, low-cost alternative. Perhaps the existing networks will choose to scale back their fees and frills as well.

In both scenarios, this congressional interference in the credit card results in diminished proceeds distributed to your bank for credit card rewards programs, fraud prevention, and customer support.

Some business groups argue that more competition is needed in the credit-card processing market. Certainly, competition helps hold down costs and improve service. However, wide competition DOES exist. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express (in addition to other payment methods) strive to be the preferred choice of the consumer and the business.

A business decides which of these platforms meets his needs. He may choose to accept credit cards regardless of the network utilized. Or a merchant may refuse to accept credit cards utilizing a network the merchant deems too expensive. For instance, it’s quite common for retailers to only accept Visa and Mastercard, rejecting American Express because the processing fees sometimes are significantly higher. Some merchants choose to reject credit-card purchases altogether, relying on cash, check, or self-financed credit purchases.

Don’t think for a second that the big box retailers will at least lower their prices in response to any reduction in processing costs. A similar situation occurred more than a decade ago when the Durbin Amendment regulation under Dodd-Frank limited debit card transaction fees. Most big retailers pocketed the savings — with only 22% lowering prices. Meanwhile, the price cap forced banks to recoup their revenue losses by adding fees and eliminating free checking for some lower-net-worth clients.

This is crony capitalism at its worst. This meddling at the behest of big box retailers amounts to more than just cost shifting — it results in higher total costs and diminished service. This is one so-called reform that should come back “declined.”

Joel Griffith is a Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.