Chula Vista, California becomes model for blight control laws in the US

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The San Diego, California suburb of Chula Vista has responded to the recent housing crisis with an aggressive blight control ordinance that compels lenders to maintain the appearance of vacant homes. As foreclosures increase both locally and throughout the United States, the one year old ordinance has become a model for other cities overwhelmed by the problem of abandoned homes that decay into neighborhood eyesores.

Chula Vista city code enforcement manager Doug Leeper told the San Diego Union Tribune that over 300 jurisdictions have contacted his office during the past year with inquiries about the city’s tough local ordinance. Coral Springs, Florida, and California towns Stockton, Santee, Riverside County, and Murietta have all modeled recently enacted anti-blight measures after Chula Vista’s. On Wednesday, 8 October, the Escondido City Council also voted to tighten local measures making lenders more accountable for maintenance of empty homes.

Lenders will respond when it costs them less to maintain the property than to ignore local agency requirements.

Under the Chula Vista ordinance lenders become legally responsible for upkeep as soon as a notice of mortgage default gets filed on a vacant dwelling, before actual ownership of the dwelling returns to the lender. Leeper regards that as “the cutting-edge part of our ordinance”. Chula Vista also requires prompt registration of vacant homes and applies stiff fines as high as US$1000 per day for failure to maintain a property. Since foreclosed properties are subject to frequent resale between mortgage brokers, city officials enforce the fines by sending notices to every name on title documents and placing a lien on the property, which prevents further resale until outstanding fines have been paid. In the year since the ordinance went into effect the city has applied $850,000 in fines and penalties, of which it has collected $200,000 to date. The city has collected an additional $77,000 in registration fees on vacant homes.

Jolie Houston, an attorney in San Jose, believes “Lenders will respond when it costs them less to maintain the property than to ignore local agency requirements.” Traditionally, local governments have resorted to addressing blight problems on abandoned properties with public funds, mowing overgrown lawns and performing other vital functions, then seeking repayment afterward. Chula Vista has moved that responsibility to an upfront obligation upon lenders.

That kind of measure will add additional costs to banks that have been hit really hard already and ultimately the cost will be transferred down to consumers and investors.

As one of the fastest growing cities in the United States during recent years, Chula Vista saw 22.6% growth between 2000 and 2006, which brought the city’s population from 173,556 in the 2000 census to an estimated 212,756, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Chula Vista placed among the nation’s 20 fastest growing cities in 2004. A large proportion of local homes were purchased during the recent housing boom using creative financing options that purchasers did not understand were beyond their means. Average home prices in San Diego County declined by 25% in the last year, which is the steepest drop on record. Many homeowners in the region currently owe more than their homes are worth and confront rising balloon payment mortgages that they had expected to afford by refinancing new equity that either vanished or never materialized. In August 2008, Chula Vista’s eastern 91913 zip code had the highest home mortgage default rate in the county with 154 filings and 94 foreclosures, an increase of 154% over one year previously. Regionally, the county saw 1,979 foreclosures in August.

Professionals from the real estate and mortgage industries object to Chula Vista’s response to the crisis for the additional burdens it places on their struggling finances. Said San Diego real estate agent Marc Carpenter, “that kind of measure will add additional costs to banks that have been hit really hard already and ultimately the cost will be transferred down to consumers and investors.” Yet city councils in many communities have been under pressure to do something about increasing numbers of vacant properties. Concentrations of abandoned and neglected homes can attract vandals who hasten the decline of struggling neighborhoods. Jolie Houston explained that city officials “can’t fix the lending problem, but they can try to prevent neighborhoods from becoming blighted.”

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CEO Robert Klein of Safeguard, a property management firm, told the Union Tribune that his industry is having difficulty adapting to the rapidly changing local ordinances. “Every day we discover a new ordinance coming out of somewhere”, he complained. Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman from the California Association of Mortgage Bankers agreed that uneven local ordinances are likely to increase the costs of lending. Hobbs advised that local legislation is unnecessary due to California State Senate Bill 1137, which was recently approved to address blight. Yet according to Houston, the statewide measure falls short because it fails to address upkeep needs during the months between the time when foreclosure begins and when the lender takes title.

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Belgium stops telegram services

Saturday, December 30, 2017

After 171 years of existence, telegram services were permanently stopped in Belgium as of yesterday. The service was launched in 1846, and about 9000 telegrams were sent across the country from January 2017 to November 2017.

On December 12, Belgian telecommunication company Proximus, who provided telegram services in the country, announced they “will definitively end [our] telegram service” on December 29. Jack Hamande, board member of the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications, said, “It is mainly 10 customers using the telegram in Belgium today […] in finance, judicial services and insurance”.

The first telegram line was laid from Belgium’s capital Brussels to Antwerp. Usage of telegram has decreased enormously over the decades. According to Proximus’s statistics, about 1.5 million telegrams were sent during the early 1980s, with many telegrams coming from Italy, but the number dropped to fifty thousand in the early 2010s. Sending a twenty-word message via telegram in Belgium would cost around €16 (about US$19). Hamande said, “Most of the current users of telegram will shift to registered mail […] we see no reason to force the company to maintain this service.”

Telegram is still functional in Italy. It was invented in Great Britain in the 1830s, but was stopped there in 1982. The United States stopped telegram services in 2006, and the last telegram in India was sent on July 14, 2013 which began in 1850. In the mid-1980s, about 600 thousand telegrams were sent across India each day.

“If you ask young people […] they don’t know what a telegram is”, Hamande said.

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Emerging Trend Of Forex Trading In India

Emerging Trend of Forex Trading in India

by

Andrew Hudson

On Indian soil, Stock market is not a novice. Many trading communities have established over the years lending growth to the Indian economy. Stock market regulators in the form of SEBI, control the regulations of the share and Forex trading. Foreign exchange currency trading market is the biggest and fastest growing trading market in the world. Even in India, economic reforms and policies by RBI enabled trading in foreign exchange.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsCOjBXUlmA[/youtube]

The biggest stock exchange in India, the National Stock Exchange, started providing the currency trading platforms for the benefit of the common man. A currency trading platform provides a type of trading software used to help currency traders with Forex trading analysis and trade execution. Though Online Forex trading started in the 21st century, the Forex trading in India stands as 16th largest in terms of total daily turnover. However, common man is yet to get acclimatized with currency trading and particularly with the advantages it provides. More and more retail customers are getting themselves into the Forex trading with help from the Currency Trading Platforms provided by the national stock exchange. Though the trading platforms are being used by the agents who trade on behalf of the retail customers, the customers still have access through the Online Forex trading softwares. It is already a common pattern among the corporate houses to hedge the currency risks. It is a growing trend among the common people to trade foreign currencies. We have more and more Forex Traders in India in this decade because a large population in India earns lot of foreign exchange from overseas. There is awareness among the retail customers. Those people, who are available as Forex traders in India, are opting to join firms and helping manage the currency trading platforms for the retail customers. This is being made possible by the digitized and hassle free softwares. The agents will only guide and update about possible scenarios and the Forex market trend. However, the software available will give the short term and long term trend. These software tools will help being informed and help in reducing the risk. Above all the platforms available, the latest offer by the securities firms are to provide seminars and forums to the investors about the latest on Forex trading. Information, easy affordability, easy accessibility, low transaction costs, standardized contracts, etc. are few reasons why Forex traders in India are on a rise. Very deftly India is taking the steps to go up the ranking from being 16th now.

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Article Source:

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Study says poor African American women less likely to receive pap smears

Wednesday, December 28, 2005Black American women living in communities with high poverty rates are significantly less likely to be screened for cervical cancer, a study finds.

The Harvard School of Public Health’s Geetanjali Dabral Datta investigated the relationship between individual characteristics and larger socioeconomic factors and cervical cancer screening rates. The Febreuary 1 issue of Cancer carries the study. More than 40,000 black women from across the United States participated in the Black Women’s Health Study.

“African-American women have twice the mortality rate from cervical cancer as white women,” said Elizabeth Ward, the director of the American Cancer Society. “Researchers need to investigate how those differences are related to socioeconomic status. One of the big factors that may account for this finding is access to high-quality medical care. Often communities that have high poverty rates either lack access to good quality care, or people have to travel longer distances to obtain high-quality care.”

David L. Katz at Yale University’s School of Medicine said; “While this finding is not surprising, it is noteworthy just the same. No one should die of cervical cancer, because a simple screening test reliably finds the condition in its earliest stages when cure is almost universally achievable. Yet, several thousand deaths from this cancer occur each year in the U.S.”

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UK vending machines begin selling sex toys

Thursday, March 9, 2006

Bars and nightclubs in London, Manchester, and Newcastle, UK, now carry vending machines selling sex toys for about £5. These fuchsia-pink Tabooboo machines are usually located near toilets to render deliberating customers a modicum of privacy. However, some hairdressing salons are giving the machines “center stage”. Products available from these unconventional vending machines include mini vibrators, “silicone ticklers”, “lust fingers”, and bottles of “love liquid” (an edible lubricant).

The Alphabet Bar in London’s West End, host to the first sex toy vending machine in the U.K., claims many people visit especially for the machine, and describes it as a “great success”. Alan Lucas, the managing director of the company behind this enterprise, Tabooboo, suggests that the success of the machines is due to younger people having a more liberal view of sex toys. He stated, “The most popular product is a vibrating rod ring which is something [the man] wears [on his penis]”.

The machines are expected to begin appearing in the U.S. and Italy.

An Easy Introduction To Salt Therapy

An Easy Introduction to Salt Therapy By Livia Tiba

It is no question that the pharmacy industry grows every day. Any symptom you are feeling can easily be treated with a pill or a daily dose of medicine. It’s very easy to get caught up in how easily problems we have with our bodies can go away. But taking pills or medicine sometimes is not the best option. With reoccurring illnesses or problems in the body, by taking the same drug one too many times, your body can build an immunity to it, requiring larger doses to have an effect. Natural treatments have been becoming popular once again because they can be done safely and effectively at home, and with fewer risks.

A well-known natural treatment is salt therapy. Salt therapy has been around as early as the twelfth century. This natural and non-invasive treatment involves inhaling microscopic salt particles, targeted at cleansing the respiratory system. The salt’s negatively charged ions (which can be found in places like the beach or waterfalls) are found to reduce the amount of mucus and inflammation in the lungs. This effect improves respiratory conditions such as asthma, allergies, bronchitis, sinus infections, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and many more. By liquefying the mucus and the inflammation going down, the airways become more cleared for the patient. It is also easier to cough and expel what is unwanted out of the lungs.

Salt therapy does more than just cleansing the respiratory system. According to one study published on PubMed, “It inhibits the growth of bacteria and, in some case, kills them. Phagocyte activity is also increased. It has beneficial effect on the well-being of the patients, and a relaxation effect on the central nervous system. It can prevent, or at least decrease the frequency of the respiratory tract inflammations. It produces better lung function parameters, diminishes bronchial hyperreactivity, which is the sign of decreasing inflammation.” By killing the growth of the bacteria, it’s much more difficult for it to spread and infect the body. Due to this, you will find yourself getting fewer colds and infections because of how strong your body has become. Overall, these additional bonuses of salt therapy will only continue improving your quality of life.

Since salt therapy is drug-free, it makes it a wonderful option for children, especially fussy ones. They won’t even notice the salt particles they’re breathing in because they’re so minuscule, making it extremely easy to have them do this treatment. There have also been studies taken on children with asthma and the effects of salt therapy on them. PubMed concluded that “The treatment group showed a statistical improvement in most parameters of quality of life questionnaires.” and “Our pilot study suggests that salt room with halo generator, may have some beneficial effects in mild asthmatic children.” More and more studies show the positive influence and improved quality of life salt therapy had on the patients. Beside recent studies, salt therapy has been used for centuries as folk medicine. Europe has many salt sanatoriums, the treatments being covered by the health ministry in some of the European countries.

Salt therapy can do a lot for you and can also be used easily at home. This treatment isn’t limited to only those who are affected by a respiratory illness. It can help you from preventing many different illnesses before they affect you by strengthening your immunity. It’s safe, it’s affordable, and it doesn’t come with any potential side effects like most prescription drugs do. Go natural and try salt therapy today!

For more information about salt therapy please visit http://www.SalineTherapy.com or call 1-519-641-7258

LTiba WebSite: www.salinetherapy.com Phone: +1 / 519-641-SALT (7258)

Educated and motivated person, having a multicultural background with extensive knowledge in salt therapy, halotherapy devices and natural health practices.

The Ultimate Jump Manual

Submitted by: Tron Flynn

THE JUMP MANUAL: Truly the only program that targets every factor of vertical increase. Effectively training every aspect of vertical leap is the only way to increase your vertical jump explosion.

Here is what you will get with The Jump Manual:

Complete workout guide showing you precisely how to get the maximum effectiveness from your jumping workout. Get rolling quickly, and get more vertical hops each time you train.

Complete work out videos library with video s showing you precisely how to do every jumping workout and stretch safely.

It has a nutrition plan showing you exactly what you can eat to increase gains, and reduce injury. It will show you exactly what to eat to have your body in muscle building mode.

One-on-one training is the only way to guarantee that all your individual private questions are answered so you can have 100% self-assurance in your training for basketball. One-on-one training is provided by email.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhWCOHgUyz4[/youtube]

Muscle training programs are given for those who may not have access to a weight room, in addition to alternatives. So the program can be done without a weight room.

Bonus Features:

Interview with NBA Shooting Coach Dave Hopla: Dave Hopla is currently the assistant coach for the Washington Wizards, and is considered by many to be the best shooter in the world. He is a highly sought after shooting coach and has worked with athletes such as Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, and Gilbert Arenas. Coach Hopla personally shoots regularly over 99%. During a lecture series Coach Hopla shot 35,332 out of 35,979. He also made 1,234 free throws in a row, and he earned the Guinness World Record for most 3 pointers in one minute. In this interview Dave goes over the same system he uses to coach NBA players.

There s a training forum, access to interviews from NBA coaches, shooting coaches, professional athletes etc. How to make a portable nutrition center, Glossary of training vocabulary, complete section on how form enhancements can get you immediate gains on your vertical jumps, and much more all in one easy to use software. Read on to find out more…

But don t take my word for it. Look at some these testimonials and see for yourself how The Jump Manual has helped them.

“As a professional beach volleyball player, I was looking for an edge going into my 9th season on the AVP tour. I am so thankful I found the Jump Manual! After two months on the program, my legs are stronger than they have been in years and my knees feel great! I m jumping higher, hitting harder, and stuffing balls at the net. I d recommend this program to anyone looking to take their game to the next level.”

John Moran, Professional Volleyball Playe

Ranked 29th in the USA

Regarding the Guide:

?Jacob Hiller? has trained high school, college, NBA, and Olympic athletes, and professional dunkers. He has been developing vertical jump explosion techniques for over ten years and training coaches and athletes to further improve their ability. He has unfailingly helped athletes to achieve 40 verticals.

Will be the Jump Manual for me?

The Jump Manual will allow you to make tremendous gains on your vertical and speed. Here are a few questions I get about whether the Jump Manual

Go on and give the Jump Manual a try. Visit www.theultimatejumpmanual.blogspot.com for further details.

About the Author: Check out my blog at

theultimatejumpmanual.blogspot.com

.

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

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