(courtesy image/used under Creative Commons license) Finance guidelines say housing should not cost more than 30 percent of household income. But in 2013, thousands of Michigan rental households fall below that standard. Michigan Two-bedroom fair market rental: $768 Hourly wages needed to afford two-bedroom fair market rental: $14.77 Mean renter hourly wage: $11.62 Rent […]
Saginaw
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life” — Ralph Ellison, 20th century American author. * The Downtown Development Authority in Kalamazoo is looking to cut off funding for a police officer for the downtown area because it needs money to repay a $700,000 loan. […]
Posted inQuality of Life
CMU eyes locals to relieve doctor shortage for rural Michigan
Northern Michigan needs to take a gardening approach to solve its shortage of medical services, and grow its own doctors. That’s the advice of Ernie Yoder, dean of the yet-to-open Central Michigan University College of Medicine. The shortage of physicians in the northern half of the Lower Peninsula and in the U.P. causes some rural […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability” — Henry Ford. * Colleague Ron French directed my attention to this report on what is, in certain circles an old story now: […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours” — John Locke, 17th century English philosopher * Propublica says the EPA has a report linking fracking chemicals to an instance of groundwater contamination in Wyoming. This has huge import for the state of Michigan, where hydrofracturing, […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
All Michigan regions grew in 2010
Michigan’s regional economies surged ahead in 2010, propelled by a surprisingly robust manufacturing sector and solid growth from the “information economy.” The latest figures are a positive pivot from a decade that saw most Michigan regions lag economically. Between 2001 and 2009, 11 of 14 Michigan metropolitan areas recorded declines in real gross domestic product […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Scoring the '00s: How Michigan's 14 regions changed
Despite billions of dollars in construction projects on the University of Michigan’s campus and Ann Arbor’s reputation as a high-tech business hotbed, the regional economy there contracted slightly over the past decade. Gross domestic product in the Ann Arbor metro area fell 1 percent between 2001 and 2009 as several major businesses left town. Pfizer […]