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The student housing sector’s solid fundamentals and positive outlook continues to gain the attention of capital sources. Both debt and equity are widely available as traditional sources of capital mix with newly available debt and equity vehicles. More institutional players are active and a lot of foreign capital is coming in through them or directly through joint ventures with local operators. Similarly, well capitalized, large homebuilders and military housing contractors are also entering the space

The National Council on Aging (NCOA) and the Bank of America Charitable Foundation are teaming up to help older adults improve their financial outlook by connecting them to credit and debt counseling, employment, housing, and other money management tools.

Two urban parks—one in Oklahoma City, the other in Foshan, China—have been selected as winners of this year’s Urban Land Institute (ULI) Urban Open Space Award. Myriad Gardens in Oklahoma City and Thousand Lantern Lake Park System in Foshan, Guangdong, China were honored today at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced the winners of the annual ULI Housing Awards. Winners for both the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and the Robert C. Larson Workforce Housing Policy Award, selected by jury of renowned housing experts, were honored today at ULI’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco

Collegiate teams involving hundreds of students from around the world have assembled at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif., to showcase their highly energy-efficient, solar-powered houses for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2015. Today’s opening ceremony, headlined by U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz, kicked off the highly anticipated biennial competition that challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate houses powered by the sun that are affordable, energy efficient, attractive, and easy to live in

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded $100,000 to Advanced Recovery and Recycling, LLC of Onondaga County, New York to continue its development of an efficient technology that recycles circuit board components to reduce electronic waste from going to landfills and incinerators.

U.S. Senators Bob Menendez and Cory Booker (both D-N.J.) applauded the unanimous passage today by the Senate Small Business Committee of the Menendez-authored Superstorm Sandy Relief and Disaster Loan Program Improvement Act which would extend, expand and improve access to federal disaster loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)

Today, a group of Senate Democratic leaders including U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sent a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urging him to schedule consideration of a bipartisan bill that would permanently reauthorize and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced today that it is awarding over $3.5 million under HUD’s Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) to eleven organizations in New York State to fight housing discrimination. The funding announced today will benefit fair housing organizations in Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Westchester, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island. It is part of a national award totaling over $38 million. See chart below for a listing of grant recipients and read summaries here of the activities these organizations will conduct with the grants.

Congresswoman Doris Matsui (CA-06) announced that the Sacramento region has received nearly $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support local and regional food programs

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5) today announced that the United States Postal Service (USPS) has listed the Historic Franklin Station Post Office in downtown Napa for sale. The property has been placed on multiple real estate listing databases (link is external).

Tuesday, Congresswoman Aumua Amata, announced today that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a grant in the amount of $11.5 million to American Samoa for environmental protection work.

The House on Wednesday passed bipartisan legislation to help homebuyers avoid delays and disruptions when closing on their new homes by a vote of 303-121. The bill, the Homebuyers Assistance Act, provides a four-month grace period for businesses that are working in good faith to comply with a new 1,888-page rule from the CFPB that went into effect Oct. 4

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) today announced up to $30 million in funding for a new program focused on improving the energy efficiency of commercial and residential buildings. ARPA-E’s Single-pane Highly Insulating Efficient Lucid Designs (SHIELD) program seeks to reduce heat-loss for improved building efficiency by developing innovative materials that are both transparent and insulating to retrofit existing single-pane windows.

A new report from the Urban Land Institute, Bay Area in 2015, suggests that the San Francisco metropolitan region is at risk of losing Millennials in the years ahead, as high housing costs are making them increasingly skeptical about their ability to eventually move into homes in neighborhoods with the high livability attributes they desire.

As climate change poses greater financial risks to real estate in the form of near-term extreme weather events and longer-term impacts like sea-level rise, developers and owners are increasingly investing in new infrastructure and technologies, innovative design and construction methods as well as other resiliency strategies to not only protect their properties, but to create value for their developments, according to Returns on Resilience: The Business Case, released today by the Urban Land Institute (ULI)

As climate change poses greater financial risks to real estate in the form of near-term extreme weather events and longer-term impacts like sea-level rise, developers and owners are increasingly investing in new infrastructure and technologies, innovative design and construction methods as well as other resiliency strategies to not only protect their properties, but to create value for their developments, according to Returns on Resilience: The Business Case, released today by the Urban Land Institute (ULI)

The commercial real estate industry is increasingly focused on the needs of small firms employing fewer than 50 people where job growth is outpacing larger firms by nearly five to one, according toEmerging Trends in Real Estate® 2016, co-published by PwC US and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will speak at a ribbon cutting ceremony today, Wednesday, October 7, 2015, at 11:00 a.m., at Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant (5000 Overlook Avenue SW), at which the DC Water and Sewage Authority (DC Water) will dedicate its latest green project, the DC Water Digester Project, which is the first thermal hydrolysis facility in North America and the largest in the world

Ten real estate developments have been selected as winners of the 2015 Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Awards for Excellence, widely recognized as one of the land use industry’s most prestigious award programs. This year’s winners—five in North America, three in Europe, and two in Asia—were honored today at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco.