The Shelterforce blog

June 2008

• Defining the Creative Economy People

  I was pleased to hear at a recent planning workshop that the definition of the creative economy has been expanded. As popularized by Richard Florida in his first book on the subject, the term seems to refer largely to professionals…

• Obama Could Take a Cue From This LA Dust-Up

  Now it’s on! — woohoo! — between Barack Obama and John McCain, who has already morphed into McNasty. A CBS poll on June 6 showed Obama six points ahead of McCain among registered voters. The accompanying story wondered how many Clinton voters would go over to the Republican side. But what about not-yet-registered voters? Seems to me Obama’s got a lot of the voters who are not even voters yet. I’m looking at you, Obama Girl! more

• 

  Making Fair Housing a Reality

  The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) is having its National Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., from June 8 to 11. This conference will shed light on salient issues on housing and lending discrimination, fair housing enforcement, and new strategies towards…

• Sleaze Gramm for Sen. McCain

  Now that the Democratic primary race is over, will the mainstream media start to scrutinize John McCain? Let’s hope they begin looking beyond the “maverick” mythos he has woven around himself and that much of the press has been all…

• Will Obama Fever Heal Black-Latino Relations?

  The day before Obama’s thrilling clinching of the Democratic nomination, I met with a group of high school students at the Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy, an alternative, activism-oriented high school in Chicago’s mostly immigrant Pilsen neighborhood. The students were planning…

• Californians Defend Rent Control

  On Tuesday, California voters provided a tremendous victory for tenants’ rights. They defeated Proposition 98, which would have phased out rent control, by a landslide margin of 61 percent to 39 percent. The ballot measure, which would have amended California’s…

• Tune into NHI & PDI Web cast—How To Get Out of the Mortgage Mess

  For those of you unable to tune into our June 3 Learning Lab Web cast held in collaboration with The Professional Development Institute, here’s a link to the archived version. John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment…

• New York’s Property-Tax Cap: Pitting Homeowners against Children

  A New York State commission established by Governor Eliot Spitzer recently recommended ways to lower property taxes, which are putting a world of hurt on homeowners. Fair enough. Some of the commission’s recommendations, like a proposed “circuit breaker” that would limit property-tax burdens for lower-income homeowners, are well-considered approaches. Unfortunately, there are some recommendations that are not as progressive minded, particularly the proposal to cap property taxes for schools. This proposal, if made law, would weigh heavily on the backs of public schools. According to The New York Times: “Under the commission’s preliminary proposal, counties, towns and school districts would be allowed to raise property taxes by 120 percent of the consumer price index or 4 percent each year, whichever is lower. Breaking the cap would require approval by at least 55 percent of the voters in a given district. And those districts that increased spending by less than the cap would be allowed to use a portion of the difference in future years.” This is a bad idea. It handicaps school systems that are already struggling to introduce quality education and life opportunities into the average classroom. The cap could lead to dramatic and harmful suspensions of school services in the future and desperate attempts by communities and the state to make up budget gaps. As a New York Times editorial recently noted, “the proposal would not give any relief to property owners or even renters in urban areas of the state. Instead, if the state decides to pour more money into suddenly cash-starved nonurban school districts, the cap could well result in added burdens in the cities.” more

• Free Transit?

  New York City’s attempt to pass a congestion pricing plan like those that have been so successful in London and elsewhere was killed a while back by the New York State Legislature. But some advocates haven’t given up hope. In…

• Nathan, Obama’s Got What It Takes

  Nathan— You’re talking about attachment to a particular candidate, the kind of personalization of the process that’s led Hillary Clinton supporters to vow they’ll vote for McCain now that their candidate has lost. That kind of love sickness leads to…

• Kinda Not There Yet

  Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy that Senator Obama will be the Democratic nominee. It says a hell of a lot about how far the country has come. And I was starting to realize just how much of a typical…

• Obama’s the One: Are You Really Surprised?

  I’m not. Call me smug, but I’ve been saying since Barack Obama’s 2007 announcement of his candidacy in Springfield, Ill., that he would take the Democratic nomination. At the risk of sounding like the pre-shock-and-awe Bush/Cheney chorus, it was a…

• It’s Your Moment Sen. Obama (It’s Ours, Too)

  Let’s not kid ourselves: we have reason to be skeptical, tentative, wary, and yes, waiting to be inspired and swept away by someone America can line up behind. Am I talking about Barack Obama? Am I talking about John McCain?…

• Transit-Oriented, But Affordable?

  Planning and community development blogs are aglow with talk of transit-oriented development (TOD), which is just that: development clustered around bus and train stations. It’s the favorite buzzword of smart growth advocates looking to curb sprawl, protect open space and provide more affordable housing. The housing piece should be of particular interest to low-income advocates, but it’s controversial. Critics say they’ve seen plenty of cases where TOD caused a rapid increase in housing prices, offsetting whatever residents might save by storing their cars and riding the train. Cities with an established network of transit lines are in an excellent position to gain revenue and revitalize struggling districts by concentrating new apartment buildings, retail and office space within walking distance of stations. Neighborhoods Now, a CDC network in Philadelphia, is seeking to create a zoning classification specifically for TOD locations. They are teaming with four CDCs to show the benefits of this kind of development. It wouldn’t be all bad if TODs caused property values to rise, particularly in some of the long-depressed communities in Philadelphia that Neighborhoods Now is looking at. More income diversity in these areas would be a good thing. Reconnecting America, a TOD think tank, says its studies show more of the people living and working within TOD boundaries are low-income than in surrounding areas. But some of the folks at Heritage Foundation and other conservative writers say TOD, like smart growth and land use planning in general, is exclusionary. Of course, Heritage recently went so far as to blame land use planning for the current subprime mortgage crisis, so maybe we shouldn’t take them too seriously. Nevertheless, it could be that TOD is attractive to planners because it appeals to many middle and upper-income people who hate traffic and love living in densely populated city neighborhoods. Will it also serve people who are already living in transit-oriented places, or will it slowly drive them out? This seems like a good issue for CDCs everywhere to pay close attention to, as part of a larger focus on smart growth and sustainability in metropolitan areas. more

• Just What Does “Brass in Pocket” Mean, Anyway?

  I’m an impostor. No, that’s not right. A pretender? Okay, that’ll work for now. And I’m not talking Chrissie Hynde. I make my living in two ways. The first is as a website designer. The second is as a writer…

• Time for Righteous Indignation

  Have you heard of Stan Brock? If not, watch the video below — it will help you to work up a good ration of righteous indignation as we head toward the presidential election. STAN BROCK BRINGS HEALTH CARE TO AMERICANS…

• Follow your counter-intuition?

  Builders have not responded as aggressively as they have in the past. There hasn’t been the oversupply [of housing] that is typical in this kind of [business] cycle. We’ve come a long way from Dennis Capozza’s observation, quoted in Robert…

• Asking the Big, Fat Question

  The huge news this past week, of course, was Scott McClellan, who, a few years too late, called his former White House boss a big, fat liar. But “big fat” was key in another story that got a few day’s notice. A New York Times article reported that childhood obesity rates in the U.S., while still high, have stopped climbing after two decades of steady upward creep. The May 28 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association released survey data from the Centers For Disease Control that detail the numbers, still damn grim–some 32% of kids falling into the overweight and obese percentiles, 17% obese. But, for the moment, the rates have stopped growing. Why the plateau? Experts were circumspect in their comments. The sunnier assessment: concerted educational campaigns and coordinated local efforts have schools trading Fritos for fruit and have sent kids huffing out to the playground at recess. more

• Housing Instability and Children’s Schooling

  The crisis of affordable housing, both rental and ownership, is causing families to move frequently as they find it difficult to make monthly housing payments. This can occur when rents are raised, when mortgages are re-set, when property taxes are…

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