Randall K. Rowe, chairman of Green Courte Partners LLC, a Chicago-based private equity real estate investment firm, has been named the new global chairman of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). As chairman, Rowe will focus on three areas: strengthening the Institute’s capacity for knowledge sharing throughout all its member-to-member networks; ensuring that ULI’s core programs have a steady source of funding; and growing the organization globally.

ULI San Francisco has released a report titled Tackling Sea-Level Rise: Best Practices in the San Francisco Bay Areabased on a yearlong research effort. The report aims to help Bay Area governments, developers, landowners, and others to plan appropriately for sea-level rise, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission estimates could inundate potentially 280 square miles (725 sq km) of property by 2050.

The newly founded J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families launched in June with the release of an investigative housing report, focused on the post–Great Recession housing market in the United States.

Suburban office parks, which developed and spread far and wide as businesses left American cities, are now losing ground to those same cities, according to a new report by Smart Growth America.

Residential rents are at the crisis level, according to real estate economists who addressed a gathering of the National Association of Real Estate Editors in Miami last week. In addition to crowding out renters’ other budget items, including necessities such as dental care, the ongoing lack of affordability is hindering the market for home purchases.

This year, real estate investment trusts (REITs) have raised $17.1 billion of capital through the sale of unsecured notes, bringing the total raised over the past two and a half years to just more than $75 billion. That is more than they raised during the previous five years. The low rates have allowed REITs to issue ten-year bonds with coupons as low as 2.75 percent. Plus, interest rate survey results from Trepp.

U.S. homeownership rates continue to slide, single-family construction remains near historic lows, and existing-home sales have slowed, according to Harvard’s State of the Nation’s Housing 2015report.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced the finalists of this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award competition, a program that honors developments that ensure housing affordability for people with a range of incomes. The winners will be announced later this year during a general session at the 2015 ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Railtown chronicles the latest chapter in the Los Angeles saga—the city’s transition from a smoggy, car-loving, freeway-dominated megacity to an emerging cluster of walkable urban centers linked by public transit, including light and heavy rail as well as buses.

Is increased construction good or bad for apartment real estate investment trusts (REITs)? This question took center stage last week with the release of May data on multifamily completions and permit activity by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Plus, interest rate survey results from Trepp.