The 234 Apartment

David Engberg wheels through the third apartment he’s had in two years. PHOTO BY KARLOS RENE AYALA David Engberg and James Clark cling to their independence by a thread. Both men were born with cerebral palsy and live off Supplemental Security Income , or SSI—a stipend that puts them under the federal poverty line . So far, they’ve managed to keep a roof over their heads by splitting the cost of rent. But since the affordable housing crisis hit , the roommates have been priced out of two apartments in just two years. The stressful shuffling was witnessed by Jennifer Schmidt, their case manager at InAlliance, a nonprofit that provides employment and living services for people with disabilities. Advocates such as Schmidt are becoming increasingly alarmed by the way skyrocketing rents are affecting Sacramento County ’s 14, 000 disabled residents . Several independent surveys suggest Sacramento is experiencing some of the largest rent increases in the nation. Few feel those tectonic ma...

Along Florida's Turnpike in South Miami -Dade, where potato farms and fields of row crops stretched all the way to the visible horizon at the time when Hurricane Andrew struck , it’s virtually all rows of close-packed houses and townhomes today. Now the unavoidable noise walls are going up to forever block vistas once among the most beguiling in South Florida. Along South Dixie Highway , where scraggly lots, small farm fields and vegetable- and fruit-packing houses once mixed it up with used-car lots and budget motels, the landscape is a cornucopia of strip malls, Publix and Wal-Mart stores and fast- food chain restaurants . And everywhere there is traffic, backed up one way in the morning, when three-quarters of all employed adults in South Miami - Dade head north to downtown Miami , Coral Gables or even Doral to work, and the other way when they drive back home in the evening. Lightning struck as thunderstorms swept through the ruins of Homestead in the days after Hurricane...