House raising
House raising (house lifting, house jacking, barn jacking, building jacking) is the process of separating a building from its foundation and temporarily raising it with hydraulic screw jacks. The process is the first step in structure relocation in which the building is moved to a different location. House raising may also be a part of a renovation to build a foundation under an existing house or make a house larger by building a new floor level creating a two story house. Often employed in areas that are prone to flooding and storm damage, this process can be achieved through the use of either timber piles or helical piles. Once a house is raised and supported on cribbing, a new foundation can be constructed beneath it. After Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy large numbers of houses in parts of Louisiana, New York and New Jersey were raised to avoid future flooding.
PACE financing
For consumers, PACE type programs have several problems. Because the financing is designed to stay with the property, eligibility is based primarily on property information rather than income and FICO scores. A homeowner’s ability to pay is currently based primarily on their mortgage and property tax payment history as well as the requirement that there are no recent bankruptcies. Most significantly, homeowners are financed for the home improvements without any assessment of whether the financing is affordable for the homeowner, though Senate Bill 242, currently being considered in California, would require PACE providers to conduct an income review. Because the PACE financing is structured as a tax assessment instead of a loan, the PACE programs historically have not had to provide to homeowners the same disclosures about the financing costs that traditional lenders must provide. In September 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB2693 into law, which required PACE programs to provide mortgage-level disclosures and some providers to conduct live recorded calls with the homeowner to confirm financing terms and obligation. In some cases, without either an assessment of affordability or these disclosures about the costs of the financing, homeowners depend on what the PACE program providers tell them when trying to figure out whether the financing is affordable. Homeowners have complained that PACE contractors are lying about the costs of financing as part of selling the program. These problems create a situation in which homeowners can suddenly owe far more in property taxes than they can afford to repay; this is especially true for retired and disabled homeowners on fixed incomes. PACE architects Cisco DeVries and Matthew Brown deny these claims as "isolated incidents."