PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Invierno 2025

[sudden and sharp]

El Malo, no hay discrepancia de fondo, en tanto en cuanto la arquitectura regresiva del sistema fiscal actual provoca que las clases trabajadoras - incluyo aquí a los asalariados en general -soporten el peso del mismo, lo que las sobrecarga - el esfuerzo fiscal -. Un sistema en el que las rentas del capital apenas cotizan en comparación con las del trabajo es regresivo.

Sus 100000 euros de ingresos por rentas del trabajo cotizan el 40 por ciento o más, mientras que los 100000 euros de rentas del capital cotizan el 21 o el 22 - no me acuerdo ahora.

Si eso se equilibra subiendo las cargas sobre las rentas del capital, ahora exentas, automáticamente se pueden bajar las del trabajo, con lo que el problema queda resuelto.

Que el sistema está mal diseñado sin duda. Pero que un trabajador dedique 228 días a pagar impuestos es un esfuerzo al que no obligaban ni los sátrapas. Es una aberración al nivel del Derecho de Pernada.

Y que se paguen esos impuestos por unos servicios cada vez más decadentes no se ni cómo llamarlo. Si ya no tenemos ni trenes funcionales (Renfe ha abierto la licitación para su servicio de autobuses).

Hola. Malo, no dejas de tener razón ojo, pero:

Pero tal vez no es ése enfoque: tal vez la cosa no va de qué balance individual tienes en lo fiscal...

Centrémonos, de momento, en lo colectivo. Los curritos  lo pagamos tó--; lo nuestro... y lo del lumpen(*)...

Pues ya está. Pagado, listo y olvidado.




Son muy hotros los que te recuerdan.... hay una guerra, un conflicto.... ¿Y a propósito de qué...? ¿Que coño nos afecta esto y lo hotro...?





Ahí te esperaba yo... Pues resulta que hay por ahí unas hélites, asustadísimas o no, que haspiran a que pagues tú la factura, o parte de ella...

¿Están gilipollas, dirás?... Deberían... pero el caso es que se lo creen, tócate la vaina. Es más, créen que son capaces de henviar a tus hijos a una guerra, o de "rendir" a tus hijas al gran vencedor. (Dejar que las violen, debes entender.)

Esta panda de hijos de puta, créen que siguen en el siglo XIX... Tanto da.

Lo que nos vamos a reír SÍ está escrito. Pero es mejor que piensen que NO. Que aún manejan ellos los hilos. (,No sé muy bien qué mierdas hablan de Leyes de la  Historia.... y demás.

Tranquilo. Esto está ganáo. Sólo hay que esperar... un poco más.






@MAESTRO: Sin acritud... gracias por tanto... Pero desaparezca ya, ya, ya... porque NO le puedo garantizar protección NI siquiera aquí.... donde tengo "mano"... más de la que usted piensa.

Pero entiéndalo NO se PUEDE TRAICIONAR a todos TODO el tiempo.


ADEU. traidor... de merde.
------
(*) En términos marxistas.

[CHOSEN]

No entiendo ni la mitad de lo que dices.

[AbiertoPorDemolicion]

No entiendo ni la mitad de lo que dices.

(Yo menos todavía...)

en otro orden de cosas, después del episodio de Fuck the UE, llega la nueva entrega de sus-vais-cagar

Trump warns NATO (again) of ‘very bad future’ if allies don’t secure Strait of Hormuz
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-warns-nato-very-bad-future-allies-iran-strait-of-hormuz/

March 16, 2026 9:17 am CET

U.S. President Donald Trump warned NATO allies they face a “very bad future” if they refuse to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, pressing Europe to support an American effort to reopen the key maritime corridor.

In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, Trump said countries benefiting from oil shipments through the Gulf should help safeguard the waterway.

The U.S. and Israel launched a war on Iran late last month, triggered regional retaliation from Tehran. The Iranian regime has moved to close the Strait of Hormuz in response, driving up oil prices around the world and aiming to create massive economic pressure on Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fold.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump said. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

Trump said allies could contribute naval assets such as minesweepers — vessels Europe has far more of than the U.S. “Whatever it takes,” he said when asked what help Washington expects. In recent days, he has namechecked China, France, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. as countries he expects to assist in the Gulf.

The remarks revive Trump’s long-running criticism of NATO. “We’ve been very sweet,” he said, arguing the U.S. had helped European allies over Ukraine and now expects support in return.

European governments have reacted cautiously to Trump's persistent pressure to help him reopen the strait. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said he was “very skeptical” that expanding the EU’s naval mission would improve security.

EU foreign ministers are meeting Monday in Brussels to discuss a push by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to deploy additional ships to the bloc’s maritime mission.

Trump also pressed China to help unblock the strait before a planned summit with President Xi Jinping later this month, warning his trip to Beijing could be delayed.

The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of global oil shipments, raising the stakes for European allies as Trump presses NATO to take a larger role in keeping the strait open.

No hemos salido de una, y ya estamos metidos en otra:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000010781392/trump-nato-strait-hormuz-ships.html?smid=url-share

Que cachondo el Pistorius, le ha dicho a Trump que...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/ab860148-6d39-403b-a810-a906bd9ce414

Biggest Nato allies reject Trump’s Hormuz armada demand

UK, France and Germany refuse to be drawn into wider war with Iran, risking a showdown with US President


German defence minister Boris Pistorius said: ‘It is not our war; we did not start it’ © Britta Pedersen/dpa

The UK, France and Germany have rejected Donald Trump’s demand for them to participate in a naval mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, despite his threat that doing so would mean “a very bad future” for Nato.

Europe’s three biggest military powers all said on Monday that they did not want to be drawn into direct conflict with Iran, even as they expressed concerns over the closure of the waterway critical to a fifth of global oil and gas supplies.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK would “not be drawn into the wider war”, indicating that sending Royal Navy warships to the Gulf was not under consideration while the war was ongoing.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who initially expressed support for the US-Israel strikes on Iran, said on Monday that “Nato is a defence alliance and not an intervention alliance”. His defence minister Boris Pistorius added: “It is not our war; we did not start it”.

The European response risks a showdown with Trump whose war against Iran has led to missile and drone attacks across the Gulf and upended global energy markets, with oil and European natural gas prices up about 70 per cent since the start of the year.



Trump on Sunday demanded Nato allies assist in reopening the strait, which has been blocked to almost all vessels since the war began in late February.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the FT in an interview. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.”

The UK, France and Greece, three of Nato’s biggest naval powers, all declined on Monday to commit to a naval mission in the strait while the conflict was ongoing, a position echoed by Japan and Australia.

Trump claimed on Monday that “numerous countries” have “told me they are on the way” and suggested countries the US had provided protection to would be viewed as ungrateful if they did not contribute.

“Some are very enthusiastic about it and some aren’t,” Trump said.

“Some are countries that we’ve helped for many many years, we’ve protected them from horrible outside sources, and they weren’t that enthusiastic. The level of enthusiasm matters to me.”



European officials have highlighted that Nato is a defensive alliance and that targeting Iran and its nuclear programme was a “war of choice” by the US and Israel. But they remain keen to maintain the Trump administration’s backing for Ukraine against Russia and are reliant on US support for the Nato alliance.

Europe’s energy system is still recovering from the loss of Russian supplies following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Oil prices rose in early trading on Monday to reach $106.50 a barrel, before slipping slightly to $102.35. Oil had traded close to $60 a barrel in January.

Iran has struck at least 19 vessels in the Gulf in the past two weeks, killing 13 seafarers, as well as attacking storage tanks and other energy infrastructure.

The total number of strikes recorded on Gulf countries has surpassed 3,400 since the conflict began, according to figures compiled by the FT.

More than half of all attacks have targeted the UAE, and on Monday Dubai international airport was briefly forced to suspend operations after a drone strike.

Starmer said that European allies wanted to find a “credible, viable plan” to protect the Strait of Hormuz with assistance from Gulf states as well as the US.


Luxembourg’s foreign affairs minister Xavier Bettel also warned that leaders must not forget about the war in Ukraine © Virginia Mayo/AP

At a meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers discussed how members could assist in reopening the strait, though all have indicated there is little interest in action that could result in engaging Iranian forces.

EU ministers were fiercely critical of Trump’s demand, with Luxembourg’s foreign minister Xavier Bettel describing Trump’s approach as “blackmail”.

[conejo]

No entiendo ni la mitad de lo que dices.

Yo tampoco pero... ¿y lo que nos reímos?

[sudden and sharp]

No entiendo ni la mitad de lo que dices.

Vuelvelo  a leer. [ Pista: PP.CC nos traicionó hace ya unos cuantos días, ]

[sudden and sharp]

No entiendo ni la mitad de lo que dices.

(Yo menos todavía...)

en otro orden de cosas, después del episodio de Fuck the UE, llega la nueva entrega de sus-vais-cagar

Trump warns NATO (again) of ‘very bad future’ if allies don’t secure Strait of Hormuz
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-warns-nato-very-bad-future-allies-iran-strait-of-hormuz/

March 16, 2026 9:17 am CET

U.S. President Donald Trump warned NATO allies they face a “very bad future” if they refuse to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, pressing Europe to support an American effort to reopen the key maritime corridor.

In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, Trump said countries benefiting from oil shipments through the Gulf should help safeguard the waterway.

The U.S. and Israel launched a war on Iran late last month, triggered regional retaliation from Tehran. The Iranian regime has moved to close the Strait of Hormuz in response, driving up oil prices around the world and aiming to create massive economic pressure on Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fold.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump said. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

Trump said allies could contribute naval assets such as minesweepers — vessels Europe has far more of than the U.S. “Whatever it takes,” he said when asked what help Washington expects. In recent days, he has namechecked China, France, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. as countries he expects to assist in the Gulf.

The remarks revive Trump’s long-running criticism of NATO. “We’ve been very sweet,” he said, arguing the U.S. had helped European allies over Ukraine and now expects support in return.

European governments have reacted cautiously to Trump's persistent pressure to help him reopen the strait. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said he was “very skeptical” that expanding the EU’s naval mission would improve security.

EU foreign ministers are meeting Monday in Brussels to discuss a push by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to deploy additional ships to the bloc’s maritime mission.

Trump also pressed China to help unblock the strait before a planned summit with President Xi Jinping later this month, warning his trip to Beijing could be delayed.

The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of global oil shipments, raising the stakes for European allies as Trump presses NATO to take a larger role in keeping the strait open.

No hemos salido de una, y ya estamos metidos en otra:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000010781392/trump-nato-strait-hormuz-ships.html?smid=url-share

Que cachondo el Pistorius, le ha dicho a Trump que...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

Vuelvelo  a leer. [ Pista: PP.CC nos traicionó hace ya unos cuantos días, ]

[sudden and sharp]

No entiendo ni la mitad de lo que dices.

Yo tampoco pero... ¿y lo que nos reímos?

Vuelvelo  a leer. [ Pista: PP.CC nos traicionó hace ya unos cuantos días, ]




--------
Ojo, sí, reirnos nos reimos lo nuestro....

[asustadísimos]

LA GRAN GUERRA GLOBAL DEL DÓLAR Y POR EL DÓLAR.—

Todo nuestro método de previsión se resume en:

• el ENFOQUE DE LA RENTA: el vídeo de YouTube «Si Ladrillo, sin bolsillo»: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QlGySfxdIk

• los CONCEPTOS CONTABLES DE PATRIMONIO Y CAPITAL: el comentario «Fallo de Mercado + Estafa»: https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2638.msg256967#msg256967

Nosotros no somos nadie. Trabajamos nuestro propio cerebro primitivo, que es el de todos. Las creencias de nuestro yo son irrelevantes. En mi caso particular están sesgadas por mi religión, el cristianismo católico, apostólico y romano.

Estamos en la 3.ª entrega de la misma Gran Guerra Global del dólar y por el dólar: 1914, 1939 y 2022.

Antes de la guerra mundial de 1914, la posición financiera de Estados Unidos era muy muy diferente a la actual. Tenía una deuda externa importante. Pero la guerra cambió drásticamente esto de la noche a la mañana. Se generó una demanda europea inmensa de todo tipo de bienes. Y EE. UU. se convirtió en el granero y fábrica del mundo. Para financiar estas importaciones, Europa se endeudó con su proveedor. Así, EE. UU. pasó de ser deudor neto a convertirse en el mayor acreedor del mundo.

Pero, si los aliados perdían, las enormes deudas contraídas con los bancos y empresas estadounidenses corrían peligro de no ser honradas.

La 1.ª Guerra Mundial fue una guerra «del dólar» porque se libró, en gran medida, con crédito estadounidense. Y «por el dólar», por la necesidad de proteger esos derechos de crédito.

Si la 1.ª Guerra Mundial fue lo que catapultó al dólar, la de 1939 fue la consolidación definitiva de su imperio global. Fue una guerra «del dólar» porque, también, los recursos estadounidenses mantuvieron la maquinaria económica aliada. Y fue una guerra «por el dólar» porque, en su transcurso, Estados Unidos diseñó e impuso un nuevo orden económico global, Breton Woods (1944). Del 'patrón oro' se pasó al 'patrón dólar-oro' y este acabó en el patrón-dólar. EE. UU. se convirtió en el emisor de la moneda global, el primer imperio monetario de la historia y, posiblemente, el único. 

Pero en el pecado, va la penitencia. EE. UU. ha acabado convirtiéndose en el gran deudor del mundo, porque el dinero solo existe si encierra una relación de crédito. «Tú te ensucias produciendo y yo me lo quedo con un préstamo que tú me das en mi moneda».

La actual 3.ª entrega de esta grandísima guerra global monetaria tiene características muy muy distintas a las dos previas. Se diría que estamos en un 1913, solo que a lo bestia. Tan bestia que no nos atrevemos a decir en qué bando están ahora los aliados. Se diría que es un 'usexit', un proceso como el 'brexit' respecto de la UE, pero predicado de su criatura americana y respecto de todo el mundo, Reino Unido incluido —como vemos en las batallas de Irán—. 

¿Pero por qué 2022?

¿No les resulta curioso que las batallas ucranianas comenzaran a la vez que lo que aquí hemos llamado proceso de catacrack —inflexión definitiva de la transición estructural del capitalismo popular al capitalismo planificado—?

Finalmente, por lo que respecta a España, en nuestra modesta opinión, lo estamos haciendo razonablemente bien.

Somos un país inequívocamente miembro de la UE y tocamos nuestros modestos instrumentos musicales muy afinados con ella.

Nuestro enemigo secular es Marruecos, no tan sorprendentemente aliado de Israel: el judaísmo y el islam son dos caras de la misma moneda abrahámica no mesiánica*. Por cierto, en el Estrecho de Gibraltar, desde siempre, se escenifica la entente anglosemítica, aunque no hay que minimizar la presencia de España y la UE en ambos lados del Estrecho.

Esta sinfonía dodecafónica europea no es como la 9.ª de Beethoven. Es de las más difíciles que ha habido en la historia, dada la presencia de intereses estadounidenses hasta en la sopa.

Pero no hay más cera que la que arde y el euro es absolutamente irreversible. Es un río que solo morirá yendo a dar a la mar, que es otra vida monetaria superior, no inferior.

Este comentario se lo dedico al embajador Zorrilla, cuyo canal de YouTube es uno de mis tres más favoritos:
https://www.youtube.com/@euroStrategos
___
* El judaísmo no acepta que el Mesías haya llegado aún, y cuando llegue será humano, no divino. El islam reconoce a Jesús solo como un profeta más, pero rechaza totalmente la idea de un Mesías divino o encarnado. Para las dos amas de la religión de Abraham, Dios no se encarna. Por eso decimos que Al Aqsa es el tercer templo de Jerusalén.

[asustadísimos]

[¿En qué he podido yo traicionar a quién?]

[sudden and sharp]

[¿En qué he podido yo traicionar a quién?]

Olvídelo. Son cosas mías.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/f2ecff80-39c9-4785-947a-92082c634556

‘It’s going to take a lot of work’: America struggles with housing crunch

Former steel town of Bethlehem is at the centre of the US shortage of affordable homes


A residential area of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania © Tracie Van Auken/FT

The 3.8-acre patch of scrub in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is an unprepossessing site for solving one of America’s most acute housing shortages.

But it is here that the Gateway on Fourth project, which breaks ground later this year, will provide 60 new homes for low- and middle-income residents, along with a much needed clinic, by the spring of 2028. An additional 60 will be built a year or two later.

“This is our first large-scale affordable housing development in more than 10 years,” said Sara Satullo, deputy director of community development for the city. “It’s huge.”

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, too few new homes have been built in the US, contributing to a surge in prices that has outstripped wages and left people struggling to find a place they can afford.

The shortage has become a contentious political issue as President Donald Trump tries to convince voters ahead of midterm elections in November that he is addressing the country’s affordability crisis.


Kelly Yan, left, a developer at Pennrose, and Sara Satullo, deputy director of community development for the city, in front of the Gateway on Fourth project © Pascal Perich/FT

The results in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which Trump reclaimed from the Democrats with just 50.44 per cent of the vote in the 2024 presidential election, will show whether his message is successful.

Affordability was a “top focus” for the president, said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson.

“We want homes for people, not corporations,” Trump said in his State of the Union speech last month.

His administration has pledged to address the high cost of housing by banning big institutional investors from buying up houses, and launching a $200bn mortgage bond-buying spree aimed at cutting financing costs for would-be homeowners.

The US Senate last week passed housing legislation that clamps down on institutional investors buying homes and which economists think could help ease regulations holding back builders.

In Bethlehem, providing enough space to house existing residents as well as an influx of arrivals has been hard. The Lehigh Valley’s population is among the fastest growing in Pennsylvania, a state that is 44th in the US for building new homes.

Creating enough rental units for low-income families is a priority. City officials estimate that in 2024 the city’s rental vacancy rate was just 2 per cent — well below the US Census Bureau’s national average of 7.2 per cent.

The shortage has led to what Bob Rapp, a pastor and former executive director of Bethlehem Emergency Sheltering, described as an “exponential” rise in “situational” homelessness — which is prompted by a crisis such as domestic violence or medical emergency — in the city over the past decade, leaving people struggling to return to the rental market.

“They want a safe place to stay where they have a key and can lock their stuff up,” Rapp said. “Why can’t we provide that?”

The starting price for a one-bedroom unit at the Gateway project, which is aimed at people earning between 20 and 60 per cent of the area’s median income, will be $376 a month. This would be a fraction of the city’s average rent, which property site Zillow shows is close to $1,800 per month.

But even when the project is complete, Bethlehem’s 80,000 population will still face a shortfall of nearly 1,000 homes.

A little more than a mile from the Gateway site, in the blue-collar neighbourhood of South Bethlehem, construction workers are busy building a six-storey block. Nearby are several other recently built complexes, many of them advertised as “luxury”, with one-bedroom, one-bathroom units listed at just less than $2,000 per month.


A multistorey luxury apartment building under construction on East Third Street © Pascal Perich/FT

Locals charge that such developments are only serving the upper end of the market. “For many of our residents who are feeling the crunch of a lack of affordable housing, these apartments become sort of a visual representation of exclusion,” said Anna Smith, a director at non-profit Community Action Development Bethlehem.

The apartments also reflected Bethlehem becoming “an increasingly desirable place to live”, said Chad Meyerhoefer, an economics professor at Lehigh University in South Bethlehem.

“It’s correlated with a lot of good things about the area, like the transition from a post-industrial economy to a vibrant, diversified economy,” he said.

Bethlehem’s transformation from a steel manufacturing hub has seen it attract remote workers, often from Philadelphia and New York, where jobs tend to be better paid, as well as new roles in logistics, transportation and healthcare. Many of the dwellings that once housed the city’s steel workers have also been bought up by institutional investors, exacerbating the shortage of affordable homes.

For housing economists, the construction of luxury apartments is better than building no units at all. “All housing is good housing,” said Luke Teater, principal at Thrive Economics, a housing policy consultancy. “We often fall into this framework that luxury housing is bad and if we ban it those high-income people won’t move here.”

“It’s not like trying to turn off supply is a way to also turn off demand,” Teater added.
Community Action’s Smith and J William Reynolds, Bethlehem’s mayor, agree that the luxury apartments will ease the city’s rental crisis. But they acknowledge that there are victims of the city’s burgeoning economy.

“I’ve been here my whole life. I can tell you that it is a city that is healthier, that has more opportunity, that is safer in every way than it was 30 years ago,” Reynolds said, adding that the city had undergone “a cultural shift from being a city where the identity was tied to Bethlehem Steel”.

Kayla Simon, a 34-year-old university health and wellness director, is part of that change. She moved to nearby Allentown from Knoxville, Tennessee in June 2023 after her husband secured a residency at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

The couple chose a modern corner apartment in the city’s arts district even though the $2,500-a-month rent was “pretty steep”. They will probably move to Bethlehem or Easton, a town at the western fringes of the Lehigh Valley, when their lease expires this summer but they are “on the fence” about whether to buy.

Much of the housing stock in the region was old and in need of repair, Simon added, and “it feels like investing in the stock market feels safer at this point than investing in a home that could . . . need so many renovations . . . that we are at risk of becoming house poor”.

Simon’s reluctance to invest in a house is typical of her cohort, with the average age of Americans buying their first home now at a record high of 40.

She describes Trump’s comments earlier this year that the US cannot become “a nation of renters” as “out of touch”, given the cost of living. “The salaries are not keeping up with inflation. Tariffs are just making that worse,” she said.

The US 30-year mortgage rate has recently dropped below 6 per cent for the first time in four years but Simon says this is still too high — it would need it to fall to between 3 and 5 per cent to make her “feel a lot better” about buying a home.


Kayla Simon: ‘It feels like investing in the stock market feels safer at this point than investing in a home that could . . . need so many renovations . . . that we are at risk of becoming house poor’ © Pascal Perich/FT

The post-pandemic surge in interest rates, along with higher prices for raw materials and labour, has also hit the pipeline of new housing in Bethlehem, making building affordable homes all but impossible.

The Gateway on Fourth project only went ahead after Lehigh Valley Industrial Park, a development corporation, bought the land and donated it to the project.

Satullo and Kelly Yan, a developer at Pennrose, the company managing the project, said without this “unicorn”, the maths would have failed to add up.

Red tape adds to the challenges of building low-cost homes. While the bulk of support for affordable housing comes from the federal government’s low-income housing tax credit programme, a significant minority of funds must be secured via other federal, state and local sources.

Each of these has its own requirements on how the project must be managed. Some require that only American materials and goods are used; others stipulate workers must be paid a certain rate, which is often higher than private sector projects.

“You’re piling all of these costs and expenses and time and effort into something that everyone was so eager to get built. And then you end up having affordable developments that are way more costly and take more time than any of the market-rate developments,” said Yan.

The Gateway project will cost an estimated $500,000 a unit.

The high costs are one reason why there are just 55 affordable rental units for every 100 households earning up to 50 per cent of the local median income in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton corridor.

For low-earners unable to secure a unit in a market where 13 to 16 renters compete for every available unit, the options are often dire.

Amira, whose surname has been withheld for her own safety, had to stay in a motel after a domestic violence incident forced her and her sons out of their apartment in Allentown.


From left, Dawn Godshall, CEO of Community Action Lehigh Valley, with Amira and Anna Smith, director of the organisation © Pascal Perich/FT

She was lucky to eventually find a place in one of non-profit Community Action Lehigh Valley’s Sixth Street shelter. “Struggling with homelessness, you just feel like you are failing your kids and you are failing yourself,” she said, adding that she hopes the two-year stay will give her a chance to rebuild her credit score and eventually be in a position to buy a house.

“We just need to get over a hill,” she said. “We need that help.”

Dawn Godshall, chief executive of Community Action Lehigh Valley, hopes a pledge this month by Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro to invest $1bn into housing would help alleviate the strain.

But Godshall admitted, “it’s going to take a lot of work”.

[conejo]

https://youtu.be/iH_EcT2dfaE?si=7ysi3L9HgCmtU4hq