The fight over Lake Berryessa's future is taking a detour through federal court, with the recent filing of a lawsuit by two mobile home owners renting prime lake-front spots from the federal government.

The government wants the

79 mobile homes at Pleasure Cove Marina off the lake's shore by year-end and is voiding the month-to-month leases that have allowed them there since the 1950s.

Two renters, Oscar and Andrea Braun of San Mateo County, have owned their trailers for six years and say the government has no right to evict them and other "permittees."

It's a small part of a larger effort by the Bureau of Reclamation, which built the reservoir 50 years ago and owns the lakeand land, to revamp the shoreline. But it's a crucial one, as the legal fight could clarify just what rights the mobile home owners have as the bureau attempts to open the coveted spots to other users.

The agency's blueprint, still in the making, calls for many of the 1,200 long-term mobile home sites dotting the lake to be converted over time into RV spots, camp sites and rental cabins to attract a more varied and short-term crowd.

That has caused considerable consternation among the mobile-home set, some of whom can trace generations of family visits to the popular Napa County lake, a 90-minute drive from the Bay Area.

"Before someone tells you to abandon your property, they better have a pretty good legal reason," said Oscar Braun. "The route the bureau has taken has given us no choice but file this action before the district court. The question is quite simple: By what authority do they do this?"

At first blush, the permittees appear to have little legal standing. Their contracts run month-to-month and are with the private concessionaires running the seven resorts ringing the reservoir, not the government.

The concessionaires lease land under their resorts from the government under long-term contracts that start expiring in 2008.

For Pleasure Cove, where the Brauns have their vacation trailers, the government's agreement with concessionaire Forever Resorts requires the mobile homes be gone by year's end. The Arizona-based company intends to comply, said spokeswoman Darla Cook on Friday.

The Brauns insist the law is on their side. The mobile home phase- out, Braun said, is akin to an investor buying a rent-controlled apartment building and evicting the tenants to convert the units to condominiums.

The Bureau of Reclamation declined to comment on Braun's litigation. Regarding Napa County's authority, agency spokesman Jeff McCracken said this: "It's federal property. The federal government has authority to manage the property as it sees fit."

Not that Napa County would necessarily agree with the Brauns, either. In a 2004 letter commenting on still-ongoing efforts to reshape the lake, Napa County supervisors endorsed the bureau's effort to push the trailers off the lakeshore.

Those pushing for change see little chance of the Braun lawsuit delaying Berryessa's makeover. "Just because you don't like what the government is trying to do, doesn't give you the right to sue," said Carol Kunze, executive director of Berryessa Trails and Conservation. "Frankly ... I see this as really being irrelevant."

Could the British love affair with home ownership be the chief culprit behind the upward trend in unemployment over the past few decades? It is a timely question just as the housing market appears to be teetering on the brink of another boom, and the answer appears to be yes.

New research* by Professor Andrew Oswald at Warwick University, which he will present at the Department for Education and Employment after the election, suggests that the consequences for the jobs market of an upward trend in home ownership have been profound. Increasing owner-occupancy and declining private renting have been associated with an upward trend in unemployment. Private renters have a noticeably faster rate of movement out of unemployment into jobs.

Teeth-grindingly irritating as it might be to admit it, there might have been a grain of truth in Norman Tebbit's "get on your bike" message - not that the government he belonged to did anything to make mobility any easier. Quite the reverse - extending home ownership was one of the icons of the Thatcher era. The expense and difficulty of selling a house and buying another is one of the things that prevents people who lose their jobs from moving on. It makes sense to suppose that the markets for housing and for jobs are linked. The "structural" unemployment rate in a country, or the rate below which inflationary pressures will emerge, will depend on a whole range of factors that influence the costs of searching for work versus remaining unemployed. These include obvious things such as the level of benefit payments, but an unemployed person's job search outside a very restricted geographical area will also depend on how easy it is to move house. The fact that it is expensive and difficult to move cements high unemployment rates in particular towns and areas. Yet policies to reduce unemployment ignore the possibility that housing matters. We have had deregulation in the labour market and in product masor Oswald presents is compelling. He looks at patterns of unemployment and home ownership over time across countries, and across regions within countries. In all cases, the higher the rate of owner- occupancy, the higher the (male) unemployment rate. Thus high-unemployment Finland, Ireland and Switzerland have widespread owner-occupancy, while countries like Portugal and Spain, not to mention the US, where renting is far more the norm, have very low jobless rates. The housing market is better than alternative explanations like benefit rates at explaining the international pattern. It is a pattern that holds over time, too. The bigger the increase in owner-occupancy, the bigger the rise in unemployment. A 10 percentage point rise in home ownership adds 1.5 to 2 percentage points of joblessness. In the UK, for example, the home-ownership trend cannot explain all of the trend rise in unemployment, but can account for the bulk of it. With a 30 percentage point rise in home ownership during the past few decades, it can explain around six additional percentage points on the unemployment rate. Events like the oil price shock will lie behind the rest of the increase. If his theory is correct, it has profound implications for economic policy. In 1950 only 29 per cent of families owned their own home. By the early 1990s the owner-occupation rate had climbed to 70 per cent. The proportion renting privately had declined from 53 per cent to less than 10 per cent. Separate research** fingers extensive home ownership as one of the reasons for the regional imbalances in the British economy. One of the driving forces of the late 1980s boom and subsequent bust was soaring house prices combined with equity withdrawal following the relaxation of mortgage controls. Housing wealth increased from pounds 307bn in 1980 to more than pounds 1,000bn by 1989. The housing-driven boom was concentrated in the South-east and led to a widening of the north-south divide. This was amplified by cuts in the upper rate of income tax, which favoured the South-east because that is where most high earners live. The author, Professor Chris Hamnett of King's College, London, writes: "The boom of the late 1980s was not a national phenomenon but was in fact a boom in, and for, the South." This pattern is being repeated in the current housing and consumer boom. The failure of economic policy to take account of the housing market will have serious repercussions for countries which join the single European currency. The main economic concern about EMU is whether some countries would tend to suffer persistent high unemployment if the possibility of a reduction in their exchange rate were removed. If the single currency does turn out to condemn some countries to higher-than-average joblessness, it will be important to devise ways of making it easier for people to move across national borders. In Britain, housing policy must move up the agenda. It is unfinished business in the creation of a flexible and low-unemployment economy, and in the fair distribution of opportunities between the regions.

In cooperation with the German Property Federation (Zentraler Immobilien Ausschuss) and five real estate companies a mail survey among renters and recent owners was conducted in order to learn more about the attitudes of households toward self-occupied property. One important finding is that only a minority of 9 percent of renters would like to buy their apartment. The most often named reasons for the disinterest are fear of financial distress and uncertainty in regard to the social stability of the neighborhood or the surroundings. Yet the results for the owners show that the financial burden of the purchase is limited since mortgage payments do not much exceed former rent payments, in particular for low-income households. To become more interested in buying property respondents would welcome measures like a redemption option, allowances for additional purchasing costs or equal treatment of property and pension plans in taxation. For younger households old-age provision has become the most important motive for buying a home. That owners also use other forms of old-age provision like pension plans shows that self-occupied property is not a substitute but a complement to other retirement arrangements.

Introduction

Over the last years international investors have acquired huge stocks of residential property in Germany. Private equity funds like Cerberus, Oaktree or Fortress assume that rents and prices in the German real estate market will surge in the near future since market prices have remained flat during the last 10 years while all other major OECD countries, except Japan, experienced a housing price boom (OECD, 2005). Their main focus is on hitherto public properties because they presume that the housing stock is under-managed and the financing structure inefficient (Just and Reuther, 2005). In addition, they pursue a strategy of selling the property to the current tenant. Since Germany's home ownership rate (43 percent) ranks low in international rankings, they assume a backlog demand for self-occupied property.

The first experiences of the privatized enterprises with the sale of flats to tenants have been modest. Deutsche Annington, Germany's largest landlord with a stock of currently 220,000 flats, has only sold 2.5 percent of its units in 2006, although 5 to 6 percent were originally planned (Deutsche Annington, 2007). Others, like the formerly state-owned GSW in Berlin which owns 65,000 apartments, sell less than 1 percent of their flats per year to the current tenants. Nevertheless, in the future a higher demand for owner-occupied property is expected since private old-age provision has gained importance. Recent reforms of the pay-as-you-go retirement system have reduced the replacement rate of statutory pensions by 10 percentage points to 40 percent and made them liable for taxation.

Against this background it is particularly interesting to know more about the attitudes of tenants in order to estimate the potential for future sales. With respect to old-age provision the experiences and motives of new home owners are also of importance since it is unclear whether ownership substitutes or complements other forms of savings. Rational portfolio optimizers would divide their savings between different asset categories. However, since the purchase of property can bind the bulk of private households' capital funds it is uncertain if home owners continue to diversify their pension portfolio.

In cooperation with the German Property Federation (Zentraler Immobilien Ausschuss) and five real estate companies (Alt & Kelber, Deutsche Wohnen, GSW, Patrizia and Treureal) a survey was conducted by mail to shed light on these questions. This survey is unique since only tenants and recent purchasers of multifamily apartments have been contacted. The answers, therefore, allow an insightful assessment of a residential property market of high interest for the public.

In the following, the key results of the survey will be presented after an introduction of the methodology and some descriptive statistics of the tenants.

Methodology

The questionnaire was sent to 6,351 households, 3,250 renters and 3,101 owners. The overall response rate was 17.5 percent. Given the detailed questions on rents, mortgage costs and purchase prices this result is appropriate, particularly since the scope for employing conventional techniques to reduce the non-response rate was limited (Goyder, 1987). The real estate companies refused to hand out address data for fear of discontent among their customers. Therefore, in addition to the questionnaire only a reminder two weeks later was sent to the households by the real estate companies. It was not possible to address non-responding households individually.

Altogether 405 owners and 704 renters completed the questionnaire. The renters are concentrated in the Rhine-Main Region (Frankfurt) and in Berlin while the surveyed owners are predominantly located in the west and south of Germany. The age structure of the owners and renters is similar. Over 50 percent of both groups are older than 60 years. This seems to be typical for the included condominiums which were built mainly in the sixties and seventies. As a consequence families are underrepresented. Only 27 percent of the owner households and 15 percent of renter households consist of more than 2 persons. Striking differences can be found in regard to disposable income. Whereas 5.8 percent of the renters have a net household income of more than 3,250 Euro per month, the corresponding share of owners is 10.5 percent. Even more striking is the gap in the share of low-income households. 5.9 percent of the owners dispose of less than 1,250 Euro per month compared to 35.1 percent of the renters. A detailed description of the income distribution of both groups can be found in table 1.

OAKLAND -- Janet Adams, a mother of two, has gone from welfare and being a Section 8 renter to becoming an East Oakland home owner.

Adams, 28, is the first person to take advantage of the Oakland Housing Authority's Section 8 Home Ownership Program, which allowed her to use a government subsidy toward the purchase of a newly- constructed home on Seminary Avenue, a three-bedroom place with two bathrooms and a wooden deck.

Adams also is the first person to buy a house under the Oakland Community Housing Inc. Infill Home Ownership Initiative, which uses manufactured housing technology to fill vacant lots and replace neighborhood eyesores with high-quality housing.

Oakland Community Housing Inc., which has built1,000 units during three decades, constructed Adams' home, which is valued at $270,000. It could be worth as much as $340,000 in a few years, officials said.

Section 8 is a government-sponsored subsidy that pays a portion of a tenant's rent on a scale based on income and the market value of the housing. The program is run by the Oakland Housing Authority, which runs public housing in the city.

Adams also received loans and grants from the city of Oakland's Mortgage Assistance Program and the California Housing Finance Agency.

City officials have been working to provide loans, down payment assistance and credit counseling workshops that target low-income minority renters in an effort to increase home ownership opportunities.

They have been stymied by the fact that low-income families are unable to buy homes because the median home price in the Bay Area is $400,000. Many low-income residents might be intimidated by the conventional mortgage process or are targeted by so-called predatory lenders, who charge higher rates to those with poor credit records because they are deemed a higher risk by banks.

East Oakland flatland community leaders have said neighborhood pride will grow and blight will decrease if more renters can buy homes.

"I didn't want to be another statistic, a renter," said Adams, who was only 13 when she gave birth to the first of two children. "I was just determined to get a home."

It almost didn't happen. Just before Adams was ready to close on the transaction earlier this month, a banker erred on a document and said there was a credit history problem. It took a week to fix the problem, Adams said.

Sharon Harrison Brown, OHA deputy director, said the process took about 18 months. "We had to find a place that was affordable and she could use her Section 8 subsidy. She stayed with the process and got help with the down payment.

"One of our goals and a goal for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is to encourage home ownership. We are hoping to get another 10 people in this program this year."

Adams went through OHA's Family Self-Sufficiency Program. The voluntary program helps low-income renters with skills to find better- paying jobs, establish a good credit rating and save for a down payment.

StreetAdvisor.com is asking homeowners and renters, "Does your street pass or fail?" People want to know what the best streets to live on are and also what streets they should avoid. Now they have a resource.

What TripAdvisor.com is to travel, epinions.com is to products, and Yelp.com is to restaurant reviews, StreetAdvisor is to streets. It's a free, entirely new kind of online real estate community where people provide a real-life "insider" view, making StreetAdvisor the essential residential guidebook through user-generated summaries, stories, pictures, videos, and invaluable insight.

StreetAdvisor is an online community where homeowners, renters, and home buyers can share and learn about quality of life on specific streets, along with the neighborhood, local services and related details known only by those who have lived there.

Each person can rank the streets where they live, lived or visited, contributing to the overall StreetScore ranking displayed for each street. If a review doesn't yet exist for their street, they can be the first to add it in less than 30 seconds.

Consumers can share and discover vital details including noise levels, traffic, neighbors, entertainment, and public services, etc. in a way that wasn't previously available on the Web. It also allows for firsthand recommendations and negative experiences about local businesses, entertainment, services, lifestyle, and back road gems unbeknownst to outsiders.

In addition to street reviews, people can contribute and read content for cities, states, and countries. This extends the community for people to communicate with each other and encourages conversations specific at every level.

The community provides information for residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Just within the first day of the site being public, StreetAdvisor.com received over 60,000 streets visited. As the word spreads, the site continues to grow.