Category: US

Las Vegas — For nearly a year now, 32-year-old renter Mason Cunha and his realtor have been struggling to find the right home in Las Vegas at the right price.

What’s keeping Cunha from purchasing a home?

“It just doesn’t really make sense right now to buy a home with the interest rates where they are, and with the inventory what it is,” Cunha said.

Vice President Kamala Harris has said that if she wins the general election in November, she plans to work with the private sector to build three million new homes and rental units.

Cunha, a Harris supporter, is in favor of the proposal.

“I think it’s going to definitely help, if you were to double or triple or quadruple the inventory,” Cunha said.

Harris is also proposing outlawing price fixing by corporate landlords and giving first-time homebuyers who have paid their rent on time for two years with up to $25,000 in down payment assistance.

“I would want to review what the qualifications are for that,” said 32-year-old Andrew Lum of Las Vegas, a wedding DJ and married father. “Where is that $25,000 coming from?”

Lum sold his home when his family expanded. He now rents a bigger house but he can’t afford to buy. Lum says his life was better when former President Donald Trump was in office.

“In 2020 we were able to buy a home,” Lum said. “We were able to buy it at an interest rate that was possible. We were able to buy it with, you know, minimal down payments.”

Trump’s plan involves reducing mortgage rates by slashing inflation. Trump has also said he would open limited portions of federal lands to allow for new home construction, a plan the Biden administration is already enacting. As an example, one such 20-acre plot in Las Vegas was recently transferred from the federal government to Clark County, and now it has been designated for affordable housing.

According to the Congressional Research Service, 80.1% of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government.

Trump has also said that that his promised mass deportations will make more housing available. It is an argument that both Lum and Cunha don’t seem to agree with.

“It just seems a little farfetched to me that all the houses are being purchased by immigrants,” Lum said.
 
“I think everything that Trump says has to be taken with a really aggressive grain of salt because he is known to inflate the truth,” Cunha said.  

Clemson, South Carolina — At Clemson University in South Carolina, the ClemsonLIFE program gives students with intellectual disabilities a chance to learn life skills for independent living.

But as much as the program offers, junior Charlie McGee wanted the whole college experience, from alpha to omega. McGee told CBS News he wanted to join a fraternity in order “to have a great time and experience the brotherhood and more joy.”

Unfortunately, rushing a fraternity is a process. There are interviews and mixers, and even then, there’s no guarantee of acceptance. In fact, no Clemson fraternity had ever taken a student from the ClemsonLIFE program. This marked the first year that members of the program could rush fraternities.

Last month, when McGee found out he had received a bid from Phi Kappa Alpha, he was so excited he ran out of his left shoe and into the loving arms of his new fraternity brothers.

“That was one of the coolest moments at Clemson that we had, was seeing that right there,” one of the members of Phi Kappa Alpha told CBS News.

Several fraternity brothers told CBS News that, at first, some members doubted a person with Down Syndrome could fit in with the group. But they were willing to help McGee, only to learn later that McGee was the one actually helping them.

“The joy and light that we were missing in our chapter, that we didn’t know we were missing from the beginning, is unreal,” said one fraternity member.

“He kind of broke all the preconceived notions that I thought of that a fraternity man should be like,” said another. 

Other Greek life groups have come to the same conclusion. This year, a total of six fraternities and five sororities at Clemson welcomed students from ClemsonLIFE.

According to McGee, this will be a game-changer. He believes something magical happens whenever you’re accepted this fully by others. And then he adds that when he’s with his fraternity brothers, “My disability, it doesn’t really exist.”