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A Multi-Story Underground: Squatters in the United States
by Hannah E. Dobbz‚ Feb. 23‚ 2011
Matt Bruce is a magician. By this, I mean that he literally works kids’ parties for money and entertains friends with sorcery in his spare time. His room is bursting with occult paraphernalia and he has countless tricks up his sleeve. But Matt Bruce is no one-trick pony; he knows more than how to manipulate a deck of cards and how to have a quarter crop up behind your ear: Matt Bruce knows how to make rent bills disappear.
Bruce and his friends haven’t paid to live in their bungalow home in Salt Lake City, Utah, in over three years. How do they do it? While most magicians don’t reveal their secrets, Bruce is notably open about his illegal living situation. Squatting is not a new form of rent evasion, but it is an increasingly practiced one – and in light of the so-called “housing crisis” of the late 2000s, squatters are increasingly comfortable discussing their lifestyles.
He summed up their ability to maintain the property with the words of a city worker who learned of the squatters a few months after they moved in: “If you don’t say anything, I won’t say anything. You took the eyesore out of the neighborhood.”
Indeed, the rundown property that had once attracted drug addicts and other unseemly types by its ramshackle appearance now glows with life. The mere presence of the new caretakers drove away the seedy elements, and the small gesture of taking the boards off the windows spoke volumes for the mood of the property.
It is for this reason that squatting has become a popular discussion topic in a post–housing-bubble era. With 14 percent of living units in the United States vacant at the end of 2010, many people are questioning the logic of the real estate market, and some are bucking the system by occupying vacant but usable properties. Families and individuals who can no longer afford the high cost of living, then, are able to find homes in houses that are sometimes in better condition than rental properties. And neighbors often turn a blind eye to the illegality of the squatters’ methods since the move-in can actually increase the value of formerly unoccupied properties.
In this way, squatting in the United States is taking on more European overtones. Europe is famous for its squatting history, with its grandiose stories of squatted night clubs in England and squatted castles in Spain. Some countries enjoy what are often called “open” squatting laws, which encourage squatters to openly occupy abandoned buildings. Amsterdam, for example, is known for its comically straight-forward requirement of a chair, a table, and a bed in a squatted building for 48 hours to constitute a legal property transfer. In these situations, neighbors are often supportive. After all, abandoned properties are a symptom of a broken property system. Why not address it?
More recently, some European countries have begun tightening their formerly lax squatting rules, which some read as a slipping away of what was once part of a powerful cultural history. But while a legislative shift is happening now overseas, a cultural shift is beginning here in the States.
Rich countries such as the United States are accustomed to surplus. Just as consumers enjoy a surplus of food, clothes, and plastic trinkets in the U.S., they similarly enjoy a surplus of real estate. Even beyond the housing-bubble burst, developers continue to build new living units despite a surfeit of old ones. This is where the term “housing crisis” is farcical at best and downright inaccurate at worst. The term “crisis” implies a shortage -- an idea that Americans are rarely familiar with; instead, the American poor are victimized by a maldistribution of resources.
While there has never been a shortage of space in the United States, Americans have historically deluded themselves into a state of spatial urgency, moving further West and always developing more for fear of a shortage.
The same can be said of the “housing crisis” that began in late 2007: The most famous example of a wide housing gap is that of Miami, Fl., which was supposedly hit hardest by the economic implosion. But Miami had a 10-percent vacancy rate in affordable and public housing even before the alleged crisis. Further, the city had demolished 482 units of public housing, and, despite $8.5 million of city money allocated to the rebuilding of affordable units, the lot remained vacant until it was later offered to developers at no charge.
Such shenanigans inspired the Miami Herald’s “House of Lies” series, which highlights the corruption and incompetency of city politicians with regard to housing, as well as the well-known organized-squatting movement Take Back the Land.
But squatting was not born of the housing bust: Squatting has a long history in the United States, beginning with colonization, extending through Western Expansion land grants and land boom legislation, homesteading, and into modern housing justice movements like that of ACORN and Homes Not Jails. If nothing else, squatters have historically catalyzed property legislation reform by attacking with two prongs: (1) garnering public support by calling attention to the basic right to personal space and shelter, and (2) becoming such a nuisance to property managers, speculators, and law enforcement that legislators are compelled to create other options.
Unfortunately, little information is broadly available about squatters and squatting. Here and there is mention of them in historical texts, and during the height of the foreclosure crisis articles about down-and-out families cascaded into the news and then quickly evaporated. Perhaps this information firewall is in the nature of American squatting, which remains clandestine; like the tunnel dwellers of New York City and Las Vegas, squatting movements live underground. And while this invisibility is not unintentional, as squatting is indeed an illicit lifestyle, it is squatters’ invisibility that siphons their power and cripples their political sway.
When squatters and other property outlaws can again unite, organize, and step into the limelight to publicly demand housing justice (as they historically have), we may see surprising changes in the legal framework of our predatory property system. Many revolutions begin underground. But none of them can stay there for long.
Hannah Dobbz is the director of the documentary film Shelter: A Squatumentary. She is currently researching and writing a book [AK Press] on the history of squatting, land struggles, and property law in the United States. To view her Kickstarter page or to support her work, please visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1578702306/the-history-and-future-of-squatting-in-the-us-the
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
To improve outcomes for poor kids, let them move to the suburbs
By Robert C. Embry Jr.
Baltimore Sun
3:06 PM EST, February 9, 2011
One of the most important recent pieces of education research was released last year — and promptly ignored. The Century Foundation's report "Housing Policy is School Policy" confirms the seminal 1966 finding of Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman: Namely, the school-based variable that most profoundly affects student performance is the socioeconomic composition of the school. In short, poor children do better if they attend schools with affluent children.
The "new" news in the report? It highlights the critical out-of-school influence of where the low-income children reside. Poor children attending an affluent school do even better, it turns out, if they also live in an affluent neighborhood.
In this study, researcher Heather Schwartz examines the impact of Montgomery County's economically integrated housing policies on the academic success of low-income families who live in federally subsidized public housing scattered throughout the county. Families were randomly assigned by the county's public housing authority to both affluent and relatively non-affluent neighborhoods.
The findings: Children who lived in neighborhoods where less than 20 percent of the neighborhood's elementary school's population was poor significantly outperformed similar low-income children who lived in neighborhoods with public schools that had more than 35 percent of students in poverty. In fact, poor children in the low-poverty schools were able to close the achievement gap with their wealthier suburban peers by 50 percent in math and one-third in reading. This was true even though the group of poorer schools received additional funding to implement the more traditional remedial programs to address the academic challenges of low-income students.
A wide body of research over the past three decades has documented the educational benefits of moving from high-poverty to low-poverty neighborhoods. Research on the remedy in the landmark 1976 Supreme Court housing decision in Hills v. Gautreaux demonstrated that children whose families moved from public housing and other inner-city Chicago neighborhoods to racially and economically integrated suburban neighborhoods were far more likely to succeed in school and go on to college or full-time employment than children whose families stayed in Chicago.
The key finding of this cumulative research is that the combination of living in a low-poverty neighborhood and attending a low-poverty school impacts educational performance of poor children more than traditional reforms and increased funding.
If the socioeconomic composition of the neighborhood and the school are so critical to the educational success of poor children, why have these factors been neglected in the federal Department of Education's reform agenda? Why is this remedy generally ignored in lawsuits attempting to obtain an adequate education for poor children? Why can one look in vain at state and local school board meetings to find any mention of the subject?
One reason is that, to date, there has been no legal compulsion to do so.
A second reason is the long-standing hostility of suburban jurisdictions that routinely oppose any efforts to economically integrate their low-poverty schools, even in small increments.
And finally, there is a shortage of affordable housing units in the affluent neighborhoods that would yield the biggest educational difference.
Given all that, if one agrees with the research on the positive impact of neighborhood and school economic integration, what might be done for Baltimore's poorest families?
One potential scenario: Maryland could enact legislation to permit state education aid to Baltimore City to be used as a rent certificate for families of poor children in failing schools to move to low-poverty neighborhoods in other school districts. It is of interest to note that the Maryland's state aid to Baltimore City schools is $12,191 per pupil, roughly the net cost of a rent subsidy needed to permit an urban family living in concentrated poverty to move to a low-poverty, suburban neighborhood.
Such a shift would give low-income children access to low-poverty schools on a voluntary basis, with the added benefits of living in the same community as their more affluent classmates. The good news is that there are at least 88 public schools in the counties surrounding Baltimore City that would qualify as potential sites, with less than 20 percent of children in poverty.
Clearly, there are many obstacles to accessing the opportunities posed by integrative housing and schools for our poorest families. Yet the research is persuasive: The answer to how to close the achievement gap between poor and rich kids may not be in the debates about class size, math curricula, and other school-based reforms, but in the state's facilitating the enrollment of low-income children in low-poverty schools and housing their families in low-poverty neighborhoods.
Now we must decide whether we continue to ignore the implications of this evidence or choose to find solutions that facilitate greater socioeconomic integration of low-income children.
Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the Abell Foundation, is a former member of the Board of School Commissioners of Baltimore City and former president of the Maryland State Board of Education. His e-mail is embry@abell.org.
Baltimore Sun
3:06 PM EST, February 9, 2011
One of the most important recent pieces of education research was released last year — and promptly ignored. The Century Foundation's report "Housing Policy is School Policy" confirms the seminal 1966 finding of Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman: Namely, the school-based variable that most profoundly affects student performance is the socioeconomic composition of the school. In short, poor children do better if they attend schools with affluent children.
The "new" news in the report? It highlights the critical out-of-school influence of where the low-income children reside. Poor children attending an affluent school do even better, it turns out, if they also live in an affluent neighborhood.
In this study, researcher Heather Schwartz examines the impact of Montgomery County's economically integrated housing policies on the academic success of low-income families who live in federally subsidized public housing scattered throughout the county. Families were randomly assigned by the county's public housing authority to both affluent and relatively non-affluent neighborhoods.
The findings: Children who lived in neighborhoods where less than 20 percent of the neighborhood's elementary school's population was poor significantly outperformed similar low-income children who lived in neighborhoods with public schools that had more than 35 percent of students in poverty. In fact, poor children in the low-poverty schools were able to close the achievement gap with their wealthier suburban peers by 50 percent in math and one-third in reading. This was true even though the group of poorer schools received additional funding to implement the more traditional remedial programs to address the academic challenges of low-income students.
A wide body of research over the past three decades has documented the educational benefits of moving from high-poverty to low-poverty neighborhoods. Research on the remedy in the landmark 1976 Supreme Court housing decision in Hills v. Gautreaux demonstrated that children whose families moved from public housing and other inner-city Chicago neighborhoods to racially and economically integrated suburban neighborhoods were far more likely to succeed in school and go on to college or full-time employment than children whose families stayed in Chicago.
The key finding of this cumulative research is that the combination of living in a low-poverty neighborhood and attending a low-poverty school impacts educational performance of poor children more than traditional reforms and increased funding.
If the socioeconomic composition of the neighborhood and the school are so critical to the educational success of poor children, why have these factors been neglected in the federal Department of Education's reform agenda? Why is this remedy generally ignored in lawsuits attempting to obtain an adequate education for poor children? Why can one look in vain at state and local school board meetings to find any mention of the subject?
One reason is that, to date, there has been no legal compulsion to do so.
A second reason is the long-standing hostility of suburban jurisdictions that routinely oppose any efforts to economically integrate their low-poverty schools, even in small increments.
And finally, there is a shortage of affordable housing units in the affluent neighborhoods that would yield the biggest educational difference.
Given all that, if one agrees with the research on the positive impact of neighborhood and school economic integration, what might be done for Baltimore's poorest families?
One potential scenario: Maryland could enact legislation to permit state education aid to Baltimore City to be used as a rent certificate for families of poor children in failing schools to move to low-poverty neighborhoods in other school districts. It is of interest to note that the Maryland's state aid to Baltimore City schools is $12,191 per pupil, roughly the net cost of a rent subsidy needed to permit an urban family living in concentrated poverty to move to a low-poverty, suburban neighborhood.
Such a shift would give low-income children access to low-poverty schools on a voluntary basis, with the added benefits of living in the same community as their more affluent classmates. The good news is that there are at least 88 public schools in the counties surrounding Baltimore City that would qualify as potential sites, with less than 20 percent of children in poverty.
Clearly, there are many obstacles to accessing the opportunities posed by integrative housing and schools for our poorest families. Yet the research is persuasive: The answer to how to close the achievement gap between poor and rich kids may not be in the debates about class size, math curricula, and other school-based reforms, but in the state's facilitating the enrollment of low-income children in low-poverty schools and housing their families in low-poverty neighborhoods.
Now we must decide whether we continue to ignore the implications of this evidence or choose to find solutions that facilitate greater socioeconomic integration of low-income children.
Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the Abell Foundation, is a former member of the Board of School Commissioners of Baltimore City and former president of the Maryland State Board of Education. His e-mail is embry@abell.org.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
NYT: Happy Endig to Foreclosure Tale
BUSINESS DAY | December 04, 2010
Talking Business: A Happy Ending to a Raw, but Common, Tale
By JOE NOCERA
Lilla Roberts fell behind on her mortgage for a while over a paying history of around 20 years. But her modification was so sloppily handled, she could have lost her home.
Talking Business: A Happy Ending to a Raw, but Common, Tale
By JOE NOCERA
Lilla Roberts fell behind on her mortgage for a while over a paying history of around 20 years. But her modification was so sloppily handled, she could have lost her home.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
HAG Endorses Haenel, Jacobi and Gorin for Santa Rosa City Council
The Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group (“HAG”) seeks to promote affordable housing and housing for persons with special needs such as farmworkers, seniors, persons with disabilities and the homeleess. Occasionally we make endorsements in local elections when we candidates who are extremely well qualified and who support our affordable housing goals.
In this year’s election for the Santa Rosa City Council, we are pleased to endorse Larry Haenel, Veronica Jacobi and Mayor Susan Gorin.
As a member of the Santa Rosa School Board for the past six years, Larry Haenel has been a strong and effective voice for excellence and equity in the City’s schools. He taught at Montgomery High School for 32 years where he was chair of the English Department, and he continues to mentor student teachers for Dominican University. He is a regular volunteer peer counselor at the Family Service Agency. He’s a real estate agent and understands the complexities of affordable housing development.
Veronica Jacobi has been a consistent and strong voice for affordable housing on the Santa Rosa City Council for the past four years. Her passion is protecting the environment for the people of Santa Rosa and for future generations. She understands that an essential component of environmental protection is social equity - affordable housing, shelters, transitional housing and programs to ensure that Santa Rosa addresses the needs of all its residents, regardless of their economic status.
Susan Gorin has been the City’s Mayor for the past two years, and has been an effective leader of the City Council. She has generally supported affordable housing efforts. As Mayor, she has consistently sought to find common ground with other members of the City Council, and to build consensus among competing interest groups in the City. We believe she deserves a second term of office, and HAG heartily endorses her candidacy.
In this year’s election for the Santa Rosa City Council, we are pleased to endorse Larry Haenel, Veronica Jacobi and Mayor Susan Gorin.
As a member of the Santa Rosa School Board for the past six years, Larry Haenel has been a strong and effective voice for excellence and equity in the City’s schools. He taught at Montgomery High School for 32 years where he was chair of the English Department, and he continues to mentor student teachers for Dominican University. He is a regular volunteer peer counselor at the Family Service Agency. He’s a real estate agent and understands the complexities of affordable housing development.
Veronica Jacobi has been a consistent and strong voice for affordable housing on the Santa Rosa City Council for the past four years. Her passion is protecting the environment for the people of Santa Rosa and for future generations. She understands that an essential component of environmental protection is social equity - affordable housing, shelters, transitional housing and programs to ensure that Santa Rosa addresses the needs of all its residents, regardless of their economic status.
Susan Gorin has been the City’s Mayor for the past two years, and has been an effective leader of the City Council. She has generally supported affordable housing efforts. As Mayor, she has consistently sought to find common ground with other members of the City Council, and to build consensus among competing interest groups in the City. We believe she deserves a second term of office, and HAG heartily endorses her candidacy.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Santa Rosa Budget Cuts Threaten Homeless Services
To: Mayor Susan Gorin and Members of the Santa Rosa City Council
September 13, 2010
The City Council agenda for Tuesday (tomorrow) includes a proposal for reduced homeless shelter funding for 2010-2011. It's hard to figure out what's going on from the agenda materials, but the City appears to be reducing funding by about $40,000. We heard about this a couple months ago and learned that Catholic Charities, the shelter operator, was planning to close the Homeless Services Center on Morgan Street, supposedly in response to the City's funding cut. We learned later that the City will receive an an additional $15k in Federal CDGB funding for homeless services for the coming year, and Catholic Charities is getting about $1.3 million in "Homeless Prevention and Rehousing Program" funding - that's exactly what their Homeless Services Center does and does well. But the fate of the Homeless Services Center is still unclear.
The Homeless Services Center provides essential and even lifesaving services for homeless persons. These include showers, hearty breakfasts, job counseling and placement, mail boxes, guidance with social services, drug/alcohol counseling, occasional legal assistance, transitional housing, health care and respite beds for homeless who are seriously ill but not so ill that they have to be hospitalized.
We met recently with Larry Lakes, Director of Catholic Charities. He was cordial but vague about their plans, saying that they were considering moving the Center from Morgan Street to Samuel Jones Hall out on Fulton Avenue, but would probably keep Morgan Street as a "drop off and pick up" site, with actual "services" provided out at the Samuel Jones Hall on Fulton Avenue.
When asked why, he said 1) the "consolidation" would save money; and 2) some neighbors were opposed to the Homeless Services Center at its current location, although it’s been there for more than 20 years. But Fulton Avenue is a long way from downtown, where hundreds of homeless people spend their days (and nights). Mr. Lakes insisted that it would not be a problem for homeless persons to get out to Samuel Jones, and said Catholic Charities would provide shuttle bus service. He didn't explain how Catholic Charities could afford to buy/maintain a shuttle bus and pay a driver, but were having difficulty finding $25,000 to offset the amount of the city's proposed cut.
Funding is available to continue the services provided at the Homeless Services Center at its current location - from the business community that depends on the Center staff to help address problems in the downtown area when they arise; from other non-profits that have historically supported homeless services like the Community Foundation; and from various state/federal programs such as the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Resettlement Act ("HPRP") which is providing $1.3 million to Catholic Charities for 2010 and 2011. We're not aware of any efforts by Catholic Charities to seek additional funding to offset the $25,000 cut by the City. If funding is not the problem, why would the City Council be so callous and uncaring as to allow the Homeless Services Center to shut down on Morgan Street? The City closed the 40+ bed downtown shelter on Brookwood last year. Samuel Jones has been filled to capacity all summer. One homeless client of mine says he thinks the "progressive" City Council wants to curry favor with the NIMBY's who've been trying to force the Center to leave the Morgan Street location for years.
According to HUD, homelessness across the country has been increasing at an annual rate of over 10%. The annual homeless count showed an even greater increase in Sonoma County. Cutbacks in mental health services, high unemployment, foreclosures, and large numbers of veterans returning from the war(s) mean the numbers will continue to increase.
We hope the City will reconsider cutting the $25,000 from its homeless services budget so that Catholic Charities won’t have a convenient reason to shut down the Center, and we hope Catholic Charities will look a little harder for ways to offset any cuts the City has to make. Other cities, including Rohnert Park, have tapped their redevelopment funds to support homeless programs during the current budget crisis. Santa Rosa's spending millions on the AT&T building; millions on developing the Railroad Square area; millions on a cosmetic reconfiguration of Courthouse Sqare and more millions on "upgrading" the Coddingtown Mall. Surely they can find a measly $25,000 to provide essential services at the Homeless Services Center for another year. A few NIMBY votes shouldn’t be a factor in this. Surely the City and its largest charitable organization can find a way here.
September 13, 2010
The City Council agenda for Tuesday (tomorrow) includes a proposal for reduced homeless shelter funding for 2010-2011. It's hard to figure out what's going on from the agenda materials, but the City appears to be reducing funding by about $40,000. We heard about this a couple months ago and learned that Catholic Charities, the shelter operator, was planning to close the Homeless Services Center on Morgan Street, supposedly in response to the City's funding cut. We learned later that the City will receive an an additional $15k in Federal CDGB funding for homeless services for the coming year, and Catholic Charities is getting about $1.3 million in "Homeless Prevention and Rehousing Program" funding - that's exactly what their Homeless Services Center does and does well. But the fate of the Homeless Services Center is still unclear.
The Homeless Services Center provides essential and even lifesaving services for homeless persons. These include showers, hearty breakfasts, job counseling and placement, mail boxes, guidance with social services, drug/alcohol counseling, occasional legal assistance, transitional housing, health care and respite beds for homeless who are seriously ill but not so ill that they have to be hospitalized.
We met recently with Larry Lakes, Director of Catholic Charities. He was cordial but vague about their plans, saying that they were considering moving the Center from Morgan Street to Samuel Jones Hall out on Fulton Avenue, but would probably keep Morgan Street as a "drop off and pick up" site, with actual "services" provided out at the Samuel Jones Hall on Fulton Avenue.
When asked why, he said 1) the "consolidation" would save money; and 2) some neighbors were opposed to the Homeless Services Center at its current location, although it’s been there for more than 20 years. But Fulton Avenue is a long way from downtown, where hundreds of homeless people spend their days (and nights). Mr. Lakes insisted that it would not be a problem for homeless persons to get out to Samuel Jones, and said Catholic Charities would provide shuttle bus service. He didn't explain how Catholic Charities could afford to buy/maintain a shuttle bus and pay a driver, but were having difficulty finding $25,000 to offset the amount of the city's proposed cut.
Funding is available to continue the services provided at the Homeless Services Center at its current location - from the business community that depends on the Center staff to help address problems in the downtown area when they arise; from other non-profits that have historically supported homeless services like the Community Foundation; and from various state/federal programs such as the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Resettlement Act ("HPRP") which is providing $1.3 million to Catholic Charities for 2010 and 2011. We're not aware of any efforts by Catholic Charities to seek additional funding to offset the $25,000 cut by the City. If funding is not the problem, why would the City Council be so callous and uncaring as to allow the Homeless Services Center to shut down on Morgan Street? The City closed the 40+ bed downtown shelter on Brookwood last year. Samuel Jones has been filled to capacity all summer. One homeless client of mine says he thinks the "progressive" City Council wants to curry favor with the NIMBY's who've been trying to force the Center to leave the Morgan Street location for years.
According to HUD, homelessness across the country has been increasing at an annual rate of over 10%. The annual homeless count showed an even greater increase in Sonoma County. Cutbacks in mental health services, high unemployment, foreclosures, and large numbers of veterans returning from the war(s) mean the numbers will continue to increase.
We hope the City will reconsider cutting the $25,000 from its homeless services budget so that Catholic Charities won’t have a convenient reason to shut down the Center, and we hope Catholic Charities will look a little harder for ways to offset any cuts the City has to make. Other cities, including Rohnert Park, have tapped their redevelopment funds to support homeless programs during the current budget crisis. Santa Rosa's spending millions on the AT&T building; millions on developing the Railroad Square area; millions on a cosmetic reconfiguration of Courthouse Sqare and more millions on "upgrading" the Coddingtown Mall. Surely they can find a measly $25,000 to provide essential services at the Homeless Services Center for another year. A few NIMBY votes shouldn’t be a factor in this. Surely the City and its largest charitable organization can find a way here.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Letter to Santa Rosa re Density Bonus Ordinance
The City of Santa Rosa's updating its density bonus ordinance, supposedly to comply with state requirements set out in Government Code Sec. 65915. That section says, in a nutshell, that a developer who includes some affordable units in its residential development is entitled to a density bonus and various "concessions and incentives" to help recoup the cost of providing the affordable units. It's a great program to generate some affordable housing at no cost to taxpayers, while helping to integrate new developments with families of different incomes, etc. But the draft that the City's looking at adopting makes it really difficult or impossible for developers to get a density bonus or to qualify for concessions and incentives. Why? What are they thinking? Click here to see a letter that HAG recently sent to the City about the proposed ordinance.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Urbanist Thinking at Burning Man
From Planetizen
By Nate Berg, Staff writer 9/5/10
It's already disappearing. The temporary city that forms during the annual Burning Man event is fading away, as the tens of thousands of people who traveled out to live in the desert of northwestern Nevada for the past week have filed out of the void and returned back to the rest of the world. The event's organizers and volunteers are still erasing the traces of the event, from demolishing structures to removing fencing to picking up trash. Within another week or so, the entire city will have disappeared.
It's an interesting way for a city to exist -- just a few weeks at a time, once a year. But it's been working for Burning Man and Black Rock City, the name of that temporary city that forms and disbands almost as soon as it comes to full life. On top of what's already a unique experiment in citymaking, the theme of this year's event was Metropolis, which spurred the tens of thousands of people and artists who make up the city to think a little more about how their "party in the desert" is actually a little city and community (the fourth largest city in Nevada during its run), and how it relates to their world beyond the desert.
51,515 people had driven themselves into the far-off Black Rock Desert for the event by midnight last Friday, a new attendance record for the event, which has taken place every year in one form or another since 1986. The population has steadily increased over the years, a reality that has gradually turned the artist/anarchist/bohemian event into a temporary but perennial small-scale city. The Metropolis theme offered an interesting chance for attendees to think a little more about Burning Man's cityness, and the event's relation to real life in the "default world". Yeah, it's a party in the desert, but it's also an event that takes very seriously the community and civic experience it creates.
This year's theme was definitely an appropriate one for the event, and it inspired many city- and architecture-based art works and installations.
[See http://www.planetizen.com/node/45856 for some interesting photo's]
The art is a major part of the event, and its breadth and detail is almost overwhelming. It's visual saturation that makes grasping the entirety of the event almost impossible. That some of the art at this year's event was related to cities was interesting, but that recognition of the event as a city is not something unique to 2010. How Burning Man functions as a city, and how that function evolved, is what makes Burning Man so interesting to me. It's a topic I'll be exploring in much further detail in a future article, and something touched upon in various places, including this piece from the January 2009 issue of Architect Magazine, more recently by Greg Scruggs writing on this year's event for Next American City, the Burning Man organization's own Metropol blog series, and in this blog post from The Architect's Newspaper looking at some of the architecture-related artworks on display this year.
It was an especially interesting year to be at Burning Man because of the theme. Conversations with half-naked people about infill in the camping areas and pedestrian-scaled design were an unexpected departure from the typical desert camp conversation. Whether it's this year's theme that got those conversations going is hard to say. The event itself is becoming a metropolis, and it seems that people are increasingly drawing that conclusion and a connection to the cities they regularly experience. The good thing about this year's Metropolis theme is that the urbanist discourse on Burning Man -- and its impact on actual cities and communities beyond the event -- is likely to continue.
Nate Berg is a contributing editor for Planetizen and freelance journalist.
By Nate Berg, Staff writer 9/5/10
It's already disappearing. The temporary city that forms during the annual Burning Man event is fading away, as the tens of thousands of people who traveled out to live in the desert of northwestern Nevada for the past week have filed out of the void and returned back to the rest of the world. The event's organizers and volunteers are still erasing the traces of the event, from demolishing structures to removing fencing to picking up trash. Within another week or so, the entire city will have disappeared.
It's an interesting way for a city to exist -- just a few weeks at a time, once a year. But it's been working for Burning Man and Black Rock City, the name of that temporary city that forms and disbands almost as soon as it comes to full life. On top of what's already a unique experiment in citymaking, the theme of this year's event was Metropolis, which spurred the tens of thousands of people and artists who make up the city to think a little more about how their "party in the desert" is actually a little city and community (the fourth largest city in Nevada during its run), and how it relates to their world beyond the desert.
51,515 people had driven themselves into the far-off Black Rock Desert for the event by midnight last Friday, a new attendance record for the event, which has taken place every year in one form or another since 1986. The population has steadily increased over the years, a reality that has gradually turned the artist/anarchist/bohemian event into a temporary but perennial small-scale city. The Metropolis theme offered an interesting chance for attendees to think a little more about Burning Man's cityness, and the event's relation to real life in the "default world". Yeah, it's a party in the desert, but it's also an event that takes very seriously the community and civic experience it creates.
This year's theme was definitely an appropriate one for the event, and it inspired many city- and architecture-based art works and installations.
[See http://www.planetizen.com/node/45856 for some interesting photo's]
The art is a major part of the event, and its breadth and detail is almost overwhelming. It's visual saturation that makes grasping the entirety of the event almost impossible. That some of the art at this year's event was related to cities was interesting, but that recognition of the event as a city is not something unique to 2010. How Burning Man functions as a city, and how that function evolved, is what makes Burning Man so interesting to me. It's a topic I'll be exploring in much further detail in a future article, and something touched upon in various places, including this piece from the January 2009 issue of Architect Magazine, more recently by Greg Scruggs writing on this year's event for Next American City, the Burning Man organization's own Metropol blog series, and in this blog post from The Architect's Newspaper looking at some of the architecture-related artworks on display this year.
It was an especially interesting year to be at Burning Man because of the theme. Conversations with half-naked people about infill in the camping areas and pedestrian-scaled design were an unexpected departure from the typical desert camp conversation. Whether it's this year's theme that got those conversations going is hard to say. The event itself is becoming a metropolis, and it seems that people are increasingly drawing that conclusion and a connection to the cities they regularly experience. The good thing about this year's Metropolis theme is that the urbanist discourse on Burning Man -- and its impact on actual cities and communities beyond the event -- is likely to continue.
Nate Berg is a contributing editor for Planetizen and freelance journalist.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
5th Anniversary of Katrina - A Tale of 2 Recoveries
By Michael A. Fletcher Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2010; A13
IN NEW ORLEANS The massive government effort to repair the damage from
Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments
in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in
ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents.
The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites
and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people
to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific
storm.
"The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries," said James Perry,
executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action
Center. "For people who were well off before the storm, they are more
likely to be back in their homes, back in their jobs and to have
access to good health care. For those who were poor or struggling to
get by before the storm, the opposite is true."
Louisiana's program to distribute grants to property owners whose
homes were damaged or destroyed by Katrina was found by a federal
judge this month to discriminate against black homeowners.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, state officials refused to offer rebuilding
grants to property owners who suffered wind damage, explaining that
the property owners should have carried private insurance. That rule
hit low-income and black homeowners particularly hard, advocates say,
because many of them were uninsured, often because they owned property
that was passed down through the generations.
The $143 billion federally funded reconstruction effort, one of the
largest such projects in the country's history, fortified vulnerable
levees, rebuilt hundreds of public buildings, reconstructed miles of
roads and bridges, and provided tens of thousands of residents with
money to help piece together their shattered lives.
But there is a sharp disparity in how residents view the pace of
recovery. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that
while seven in 10 New Orleans residents say the rebuilding process is
"going in the right direction," a third say their lives are still
disrupted by the storm.
African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to say they
have not yet recovered after Katrina, the survey found. And blacks in
the city are 2 1/2 times as likely to be low-income than whites.
"I just knew we had a rotten deal," said Edward Randolph, a disabled
Vietnam veteran who with his wife, Angela, has been struggling to
rebuild their duplex in New Orleans East. "We know we have a lot to
do, but we just do not have the money to do it."
The storm propelled them on a years-long odyssey through Port Arthur,
Tex., Houston and Arkansas. They did not return to their still-damaged
home until 2008.
The federally funded rebuilding program established by Louisiana
officials - called Road Home - offered homeowners grants of up to
$150,000. But homeowners could not collect more than the pre-storm
value of their homes, regardless of the cost of repairs.
The Randolph home was valued at just $135,000, although repair costs
were estimated by the state to be $308,000. The Randolphs were awarded
a grant of $16,649, to supplement just over $100,000 they received in
insurance payments.
This month, a federal judge ruled that the program's formula for
calculating grants discriminates against black homeowners, who tend to
live in neighborhoods with lower home values.
"We obviously disagree with the judge's action, which has stopped us
from paying out some grants, and already have appealed it," said
Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Road Home program. "I think
it is worth noting that the state did not create this program in a
vacuum - the federal government signed off on the design of the
program and any major changes we made along the way."
She added that the state has modified the program to pay out an
additional $2 billion to more than 45,000 low-income homeowners.
Overall, Road Home paid $8.6 billion to more than 127,000 homeowners.
Many of these simmering issues will not be visible when President
Obama arrives here Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of the storm
that killed more than 1,800, uprooted more than 1 million Gulf Coast
residents, and left 80 percent of this city submerged.
The visit is expected to underscore the president's support for a
region still reeling not just from Katrina but from the largest oil
spill in the nation's history, which is threatening the region's
immediate economic future. A regional group of business and political
leaders formed a coalition this week aimed at holding Obama to his
promise to restore the Gulf Coast.
Obama's visit will also underscore the strides made since the breached
floodwalls and overtopped levees left people here camping on highway
overpasses, cowering in attics and retreating to the squalor of the
Superdome and the Convention Center to escape the deadly waters.
The surreal landscape of grounded boats, washed-up appliances and
mud-choked streets is long gone, and many of the most obvious scars
from the catastrophe are healing. The Army Corps of Engineers has
rebuilt 220 miles of levees and floodwalls.
The school system, widely viewed as one of the nation's worst before
the storm, has been reborn with many charter schools. Though activists
have filed a lawsuit alleging that special-needs students are being
underserved by the new education structure, 59 percent of city
students are in schools that meet state academic standards - more than
double the number who attended such schools before Katrina.
The storm ravaged the city's hospital system, leaving many residents
in the largely black eastern part of the city a long ambulance ride
from emergency health care. At the same time, more than 90
neighborhood health clinics opened and are showing promise at
delivering preventive care and helping people manage chronic diseases
such as diabetes and hypertension.
But there is concern that many of the health centers, funded with
federal grant money that is winding down, are struggling to draw
enough insured patients to become self-sufficient.
"Everyone now has to transition to a more sustainable model of health
care," said Sarat Raman, associate medical director of Daughters of
Charity Services of New Orleans, which operates three clinics that
serve 15,000 patients in the area. "You have to have a balance of
patients."
Along Mississippi's Gulf Coast, where the violent winds and an
unprecedented storm surge overwhelmed homeowners, sheared off roofs
and splintered houses, the scene has also improved.
The waterfront casinos that provide a large chunk of this state's
revenue are humming. The vast majority of residents are back in their
rebuilt homes, although thousands are still struggling to find
affordable housing because their recovery checks did not cover the
cost of the damage.
Despite the improvements, many gaps remain.
The New Orleans area has regained more than 90 percent of its
pre-Katrina population, according to the Greater New Orleans Community
Data Center.
But in the city itself, just 78 percent of the population has
returned, and a growing share of the region's poor now reside in the
suburbs. The city's population drop has been most severe in black
neighborhoods, many of which absorbed Katrina's most brutal blows.
Despite well-publicized recovery efforts, including a plan led by
actor Brad Pitt to build 150 solar-powered homes, just 24 percent of
the Lower Ninth Ward's pre-storm population has returned. There, newly
rebuilt homes stand next to vacant lots or crumbling houses. Entire
blocks remain desolate five years after the storm.
In middle-class Pontchartrain Park, not far from historically black
Dillard University, just 55 percent of households have rebuilt,
according to the data center.
Beyond the problems with Road Home, New Orleans has experienced a
dramatic spike in rental costs since the storm.
"Many low-cost apartments are gone with the wind and the water," said
Laura Tuggle, the outgoing managing attorney of Southeast Louisiana
Legal Services. "Now, we're left with New York rents on New Orleans
wages."
In Mississippi, where Katrina severely damaged more than 101,000
housing units, many residents face what advocates call a similar
inequity. Praised in the aftermath of Katrina for his can-do attitude,
Gov. Haley Barbour (R) received a series of waivers from the Bush
administration that largely freed Mississippi from the requirement to
spend at least half of his state's $5.5 billion in federal block grant
money on low- and moderate-income residents. Barbour successfully
argued that the waivers were necessary to give the state flexibility
to deal effectively with the widespread devastation.
That allowed the state to divert close to $1 billion to help
devastated utilities rebuild, to subsidize residents' insurance
premiums and to help fund the port and other economic development
projects. Meanwhile, advocates say that more than 5,000 low-income
Mississippi families have yet to settle in permanent housing since the
storm.
State officials say they are expanding the number of public housing
units beyond pre-Katrina levels and establishing programs to encourage
development of affordable rental housing.
Still, advocates say the more than $3 billion distributed by the
state's housing recovery program went disproportionately to
more-affluent residents. The plan paid up to $150,000 to homeowners
whose properties were damaged by the unprecedented storm surge spawned
by Katrina, but nothing to those whose homes suffered wind damage.
To be eligible for the initial grants, families had to have homeowners
insurance, although the state later devised a program that paid grants
of up to $100,000 to low-income, uninsured homeowners whose properties
were damaged by the storm surge.
The rationale, state officials said, was that responsible homeowners
had no way to know that they should have flood insurance in areas that
federal experts deemed to be outside the flood plain.
"The storm surge was the priority," said Lee Youngblood,
communications director of the Mississippi Development Authority.
"Mississippi had no intention of compensating people who chose, for
whatever reason, not to have wind insurance."
That formula struck some advocates as discriminatory. "The criteria
discriminated against black storm victims, who more likely than not
were renters, or, if homeowners, more likely than not lacked
insurance," said Reilly Morse, co-director of housing policy for the
Mississippi Center for Justice.
The state's formula had the effect of freezing out people whose homes
were destroyed by the wind, which along much of the Mississippi coast
meant black residents who often lived in paid-off homes that had been
handed down through the generations. The expensive waterfront property
was mostly owned by whites, while inland property, which suffered more
wind damage, was owned largely by blacks.
In Gulfport, a railroad embankment that has long served as an informal
racial demarcation line became a levee when Katrina hit.
As the surging waters crashed through their patio door and rose five
feet in their home, a white couple, Ernest and Doreen Chamberlain,
gathered their family and sought refuge on the black side of the
tracks.
Coming upon an old, wood-frame house he thought was abandoned, Ernest
Chamberlain began trying to break the door down, only to be surprised
when it was opened by Irene Walker, an elderly black woman.
"She was like, 'Mister, what are you doing?' " he recalled. "Then she
invited us in."
That's where the Chamberlains rode out the storm, even as raw sewage
backed up into the Walker home.
Five years later, the Chamberlains are back in their sunny home.
Although they had to fight with insurers and contractors, they secured
a $150,000 grant from the state to help repair the flood damage, which
totaled nearly $200,000.
Meanwhile, the Walker home sits abandoned. A church group installed a
new roof, but the interior remains untouched. The 82-year-old Walker,
meanwhile, is living with family members a few miles away.
"She hasn't gotten any help from the government for the house," said
Occelletta Norwood, Walker's niece. "She got a little money from FEMA
at the start, but that was it."
fletcherm@washpost.com Research editor Alice R. Crites contributed to
this report.
Friday, August 27, 2010; A13
IN NEW ORLEANS The massive government effort to repair the damage from
Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments
in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in
ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents.
The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites
and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people
to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific
storm.
"The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries," said James Perry,
executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action
Center. "For people who were well off before the storm, they are more
likely to be back in their homes, back in their jobs and to have
access to good health care. For those who were poor or struggling to
get by before the storm, the opposite is true."
Louisiana's program to distribute grants to property owners whose
homes were damaged or destroyed by Katrina was found by a federal
judge this month to discriminate against black homeowners.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, state officials refused to offer rebuilding
grants to property owners who suffered wind damage, explaining that
the property owners should have carried private insurance. That rule
hit low-income and black homeowners particularly hard, advocates say,
because many of them were uninsured, often because they owned property
that was passed down through the generations.
The $143 billion federally funded reconstruction effort, one of the
largest such projects in the country's history, fortified vulnerable
levees, rebuilt hundreds of public buildings, reconstructed miles of
roads and bridges, and provided tens of thousands of residents with
money to help piece together their shattered lives.
But there is a sharp disparity in how residents view the pace of
recovery. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that
while seven in 10 New Orleans residents say the rebuilding process is
"going in the right direction," a third say their lives are still
disrupted by the storm.
African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to say they
have not yet recovered after Katrina, the survey found. And blacks in
the city are 2 1/2 times as likely to be low-income than whites.
"I just knew we had a rotten deal," said Edward Randolph, a disabled
Vietnam veteran who with his wife, Angela, has been struggling to
rebuild their duplex in New Orleans East. "We know we have a lot to
do, but we just do not have the money to do it."
The storm propelled them on a years-long odyssey through Port Arthur,
Tex., Houston and Arkansas. They did not return to their still-damaged
home until 2008.
The federally funded rebuilding program established by Louisiana
officials - called Road Home - offered homeowners grants of up to
$150,000. But homeowners could not collect more than the pre-storm
value of their homes, regardless of the cost of repairs.
The Randolph home was valued at just $135,000, although repair costs
were estimated by the state to be $308,000. The Randolphs were awarded
a grant of $16,649, to supplement just over $100,000 they received in
insurance payments.
This month, a federal judge ruled that the program's formula for
calculating grants discriminates against black homeowners, who tend to
live in neighborhoods with lower home values.
"We obviously disagree with the judge's action, which has stopped us
from paying out some grants, and already have appealed it," said
Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Road Home program. "I think
it is worth noting that the state did not create this program in a
vacuum - the federal government signed off on the design of the
program and any major changes we made along the way."
She added that the state has modified the program to pay out an
additional $2 billion to more than 45,000 low-income homeowners.
Overall, Road Home paid $8.6 billion to more than 127,000 homeowners.
Many of these simmering issues will not be visible when President
Obama arrives here Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of the storm
that killed more than 1,800, uprooted more than 1 million Gulf Coast
residents, and left 80 percent of this city submerged.
The visit is expected to underscore the president's support for a
region still reeling not just from Katrina but from the largest oil
spill in the nation's history, which is threatening the region's
immediate economic future. A regional group of business and political
leaders formed a coalition this week aimed at holding Obama to his
promise to restore the Gulf Coast.
Obama's visit will also underscore the strides made since the breached
floodwalls and overtopped levees left people here camping on highway
overpasses, cowering in attics and retreating to the squalor of the
Superdome and the Convention Center to escape the deadly waters.
The surreal landscape of grounded boats, washed-up appliances and
mud-choked streets is long gone, and many of the most obvious scars
from the catastrophe are healing. The Army Corps of Engineers has
rebuilt 220 miles of levees and floodwalls.
The school system, widely viewed as one of the nation's worst before
the storm, has been reborn with many charter schools. Though activists
have filed a lawsuit alleging that special-needs students are being
underserved by the new education structure, 59 percent of city
students are in schools that meet state academic standards - more than
double the number who attended such schools before Katrina.
The storm ravaged the city's hospital system, leaving many residents
in the largely black eastern part of the city a long ambulance ride
from emergency health care. At the same time, more than 90
neighborhood health clinics opened and are showing promise at
delivering preventive care and helping people manage chronic diseases
such as diabetes and hypertension.
But there is concern that many of the health centers, funded with
federal grant money that is winding down, are struggling to draw
enough insured patients to become self-sufficient.
"Everyone now has to transition to a more sustainable model of health
care," said Sarat Raman, associate medical director of Daughters of
Charity Services of New Orleans, which operates three clinics that
serve 15,000 patients in the area. "You have to have a balance of
patients."
Along Mississippi's Gulf Coast, where the violent winds and an
unprecedented storm surge overwhelmed homeowners, sheared off roofs
and splintered houses, the scene has also improved.
The waterfront casinos that provide a large chunk of this state's
revenue are humming. The vast majority of residents are back in their
rebuilt homes, although thousands are still struggling to find
affordable housing because their recovery checks did not cover the
cost of the damage.
Despite the improvements, many gaps remain.
The New Orleans area has regained more than 90 percent of its
pre-Katrina population, according to the Greater New Orleans Community
Data Center.
But in the city itself, just 78 percent of the population has
returned, and a growing share of the region's poor now reside in the
suburbs. The city's population drop has been most severe in black
neighborhoods, many of which absorbed Katrina's most brutal blows.
Despite well-publicized recovery efforts, including a plan led by
actor Brad Pitt to build 150 solar-powered homes, just 24 percent of
the Lower Ninth Ward's pre-storm population has returned. There, newly
rebuilt homes stand next to vacant lots or crumbling houses. Entire
blocks remain desolate five years after the storm.
In middle-class Pontchartrain Park, not far from historically black
Dillard University, just 55 percent of households have rebuilt,
according to the data center.
Beyond the problems with Road Home, New Orleans has experienced a
dramatic spike in rental costs since the storm.
"Many low-cost apartments are gone with the wind and the water," said
Laura Tuggle, the outgoing managing attorney of Southeast Louisiana
Legal Services. "Now, we're left with New York rents on New Orleans
wages."
In Mississippi, where Katrina severely damaged more than 101,000
housing units, many residents face what advocates call a similar
inequity. Praised in the aftermath of Katrina for his can-do attitude,
Gov. Haley Barbour (R) received a series of waivers from the Bush
administration that largely freed Mississippi from the requirement to
spend at least half of his state's $5.5 billion in federal block grant
money on low- and moderate-income residents. Barbour successfully
argued that the waivers were necessary to give the state flexibility
to deal effectively with the widespread devastation.
That allowed the state to divert close to $1 billion to help
devastated utilities rebuild, to subsidize residents' insurance
premiums and to help fund the port and other economic development
projects. Meanwhile, advocates say that more than 5,000 low-income
Mississippi families have yet to settle in permanent housing since the
storm.
State officials say they are expanding the number of public housing
units beyond pre-Katrina levels and establishing programs to encourage
development of affordable rental housing.
Still, advocates say the more than $3 billion distributed by the
state's housing recovery program went disproportionately to
more-affluent residents. The plan paid up to $150,000 to homeowners
whose properties were damaged by the unprecedented storm surge spawned
by Katrina, but nothing to those whose homes suffered wind damage.
To be eligible for the initial grants, families had to have homeowners
insurance, although the state later devised a program that paid grants
of up to $100,000 to low-income, uninsured homeowners whose properties
were damaged by the storm surge.
The rationale, state officials said, was that responsible homeowners
had no way to know that they should have flood insurance in areas that
federal experts deemed to be outside the flood plain.
"The storm surge was the priority," said Lee Youngblood,
communications director of the Mississippi Development Authority.
"Mississippi had no intention of compensating people who chose, for
whatever reason, not to have wind insurance."
That formula struck some advocates as discriminatory. "The criteria
discriminated against black storm victims, who more likely than not
were renters, or, if homeowners, more likely than not lacked
insurance," said Reilly Morse, co-director of housing policy for the
Mississippi Center for Justice.
The state's formula had the effect of freezing out people whose homes
were destroyed by the wind, which along much of the Mississippi coast
meant black residents who often lived in paid-off homes that had been
handed down through the generations. The expensive waterfront property
was mostly owned by whites, while inland property, which suffered more
wind damage, was owned largely by blacks.
In Gulfport, a railroad embankment that has long served as an informal
racial demarcation line became a levee when Katrina hit.
As the surging waters crashed through their patio door and rose five
feet in their home, a white couple, Ernest and Doreen Chamberlain,
gathered their family and sought refuge on the black side of the
tracks.
Coming upon an old, wood-frame house he thought was abandoned, Ernest
Chamberlain began trying to break the door down, only to be surprised
when it was opened by Irene Walker, an elderly black woman.
"She was like, 'Mister, what are you doing?' " he recalled. "Then she
invited us in."
That's where the Chamberlains rode out the storm, even as raw sewage
backed up into the Walker home.
Five years later, the Chamberlains are back in their sunny home.
Although they had to fight with insurers and contractors, they secured
a $150,000 grant from the state to help repair the flood damage, which
totaled nearly $200,000.
Meanwhile, the Walker home sits abandoned. A church group installed a
new roof, but the interior remains untouched. The 82-year-old Walker,
meanwhile, is living with family members a few miles away.
"She hasn't gotten any help from the government for the house," said
Occelletta Norwood, Walker's niece. "She got a little money from FEMA
at the start, but that was it."
fletcherm@washpost.com Research editor Alice R. Crites contributed to
this report.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Op Ed: Local prosperity is ADC's agenda
HAG is a founding member of the Accountable Development Coalirion. This Op Ed is from the 7/24/10 Press Democrat.
_______________________________
GUEST OPINION: Local prosperity is ADC's agenda
By DENNIS ROSATTI
and JACK BUCKHORN
The Accountable Development Coalition has been in the news lately, and we recognized the need to clarify who we are, and what we stand for.
The ADC was formed in 2006 as a coalition of environmental, land use, labor, housing and social justice organizations to represent community interests in the important land use and development decisions that shape the economic life and environmental quality of our community.
Three key concerns dominated the formation of the coalition:
We want the community to be involved in setting good public policy and to participate in the earliest stages of planning in order to develop great neighborhoods and communities.
For example, we received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to engage the local community in creating Santa Rosa's Railroad Square Station Area Plan. The community spoke out and persuaded the city to approve a plan that will create a friendlier environment for pedestrians and bicyclists, support public transit users and provide more affordable housing near shops and incentives for better-paying jobs.
We've also advocated for green building standards, which is the wave of the future as we cope with climate change.
As a growing coalition of 14 diverse local organizations and committed professional members, we are big enough to attract the interest of developers. We offer to work in collaboration with developers to make better plans that meet more of the community's needs.
For example, we collaborated with Sonoma Mountain Village to improve a re-use project to create good local jobs and strengthen green building standards, while providing a better sense of community with a mix of housing types close to shops and work. Three years of working together is documented in a community benefits agreement that acknowledges our support.
The current Wall Street business model, favoring out-of-state, corporate-owned retail stores harms our local small business retailers.
We believe in community prosperity. We go to bat for locally owned businesses that are active in our community, support local charities and are the drivers of local economic development. We cannot support big-box stores that do not embrace smart growth principles, which pay low wages and minimal benefits to their workers and siphon money out of the local economy to pay their corporate executives millions.
We helped fight off an effort to rezone land designated for affordable housing for yet another unnecessary big-box store near Santa Rosa Avenue. This victory will help retain Friedman's Home Improvement, a family-owned local business that pays living wages, built a prominent community center and continues to be a leader supporting local charities.
The ADC established the following seven founding principles for accountable development to describe a sustainable and equitable development path that will serve the common good and create shared prosperity.
• Create and enforce community standards through development that meets local and regional needs.
• Build mixed-income neighborhoods through the inclusion of affordable housing for all incomes in all residential developments.
• Promote good jobs through family-supporting wages and benefits, job security, the right to organize, job training and local hire.
• Ensure community health and safety through accessible health care, safe working and housing conditions and a healthy neighborhood environment.
• Be environmentally sustainable through good community design, particularly through pedestrian and transit-oriented development, by using green building and environmentally conscious design.
• Build participation and encourage meaningful community involvement and representation in decisions about development.
• Be smart growth and transit-oriented by directing development toward existing communities, creating bike-able, walk-able neighborhoods and providing a range of transportation options.
This is the agenda of the ADC. We are part of a national movement of accountable development advocates that represents an evolutionary advance in public policy we hope to see implemented across the region.
Our goal is to create a policy platform that informs the next generation of public officials and planning staff and helps broaden civic discourse on public policy issues.
Dennis Rosatti, executive director of Sonoma County Conservation Action, and Jack Buckhorn, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 551, are co-chairmen of the Accountable Development Coalition.
_______________________________
GUEST OPINION: Local prosperity is ADC's agenda
By DENNIS ROSATTI
and JACK BUCKHORN
The Accountable Development Coalition has been in the news lately, and we recognized the need to clarify who we are, and what we stand for.
The ADC was formed in 2006 as a coalition of environmental, land use, labor, housing and social justice organizations to represent community interests in the important land use and development decisions that shape the economic life and environmental quality of our community.
Three key concerns dominated the formation of the coalition:
We want the community to be involved in setting good public policy and to participate in the earliest stages of planning in order to develop great neighborhoods and communities.
For example, we received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to engage the local community in creating Santa Rosa's Railroad Square Station Area Plan. The community spoke out and persuaded the city to approve a plan that will create a friendlier environment for pedestrians and bicyclists, support public transit users and provide more affordable housing near shops and incentives for better-paying jobs.
We've also advocated for green building standards, which is the wave of the future as we cope with climate change.
As a growing coalition of 14 diverse local organizations and committed professional members, we are big enough to attract the interest of developers. We offer to work in collaboration with developers to make better plans that meet more of the community's needs.
For example, we collaborated with Sonoma Mountain Village to improve a re-use project to create good local jobs and strengthen green building standards, while providing a better sense of community with a mix of housing types close to shops and work. Three years of working together is documented in a community benefits agreement that acknowledges our support.
The current Wall Street business model, favoring out-of-state, corporate-owned retail stores harms our local small business retailers.
We believe in community prosperity. We go to bat for locally owned businesses that are active in our community, support local charities and are the drivers of local economic development. We cannot support big-box stores that do not embrace smart growth principles, which pay low wages and minimal benefits to their workers and siphon money out of the local economy to pay their corporate executives millions.
We helped fight off an effort to rezone land designated for affordable housing for yet another unnecessary big-box store near Santa Rosa Avenue. This victory will help retain Friedman's Home Improvement, a family-owned local business that pays living wages, built a prominent community center and continues to be a leader supporting local charities.
The ADC established the following seven founding principles for accountable development to describe a sustainable and equitable development path that will serve the common good and create shared prosperity.
• Create and enforce community standards through development that meets local and regional needs.
• Build mixed-income neighborhoods through the inclusion of affordable housing for all incomes in all residential developments.
• Promote good jobs through family-supporting wages and benefits, job security, the right to organize, job training and local hire.
• Ensure community health and safety through accessible health care, safe working and housing conditions and a healthy neighborhood environment.
• Be environmentally sustainable through good community design, particularly through pedestrian and transit-oriented development, by using green building and environmentally conscious design.
• Build participation and encourage meaningful community involvement and representation in decisions about development.
• Be smart growth and transit-oriented by directing development toward existing communities, creating bike-able, walk-able neighborhoods and providing a range of transportation options.
This is the agenda of the ADC. We are part of a national movement of accountable development advocates that represents an evolutionary advance in public policy we hope to see implemented across the region.
Our goal is to create a policy platform that informs the next generation of public officials and planning staff and helps broaden civic discourse on public policy issues.
Dennis Rosatti, executive director of Sonoma County Conservation Action, and Jack Buckhorn, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 551, are co-chairmen of the Accountable Development Coalition.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Mayor Squashes Affordable Housing Agreement
Remember this when Newsom claims he supports affordable housing. He quashed an agreement between developers and affordable housing advocates that would have provided $50 million per year for From the 7/9/10 New York Times (Bay Area edition)...
THE BAY CITIZEN
Despite a Rare Pedigree, Plan for Affordable Housing Collapses
By ZUSHA ELINSON
Published: July 8, 2010
The deal was brokered recently in private by an unusual team of rivals, including one of San Francisco’s most prominent developers and a vociferous housing activist. The result, by all accounts, was unprecedented: an estimated $50 million for affordable housing in the city each year.
Enlarge This Image
Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
Calvin Welch says politics was Mr. Newsom’s prime consideration.
A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times.
Enlarge This Image
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Mayor Gavin Newsom scuttled a plan to provide money for affordable housing, saying it lacked broad support.
One developer who participated in the negotiations, which took place over the last six weeks in a City Hall annex, described the agreement as a “once-every-50-years alignment of the planets.”
Last week, however, the ambitious deal — which would have provided financing for affordable-housing projects, and would also have helped developers by subsidizing an affordable-housing requirement — came apart after running into opposition from an unlikely source: Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.
The scuttled initiative, which has not been publicized, left a trail of bitterness and recrimination, much of it directed at Mr. Newsom, whose own aides had helped broker the deal. Three participants who were involved in the discussions said they understood that Mr. Newsom was reluctant to support what amounted to a new tax as he makes a run for statewide office.
“We came up with a plan that addressed a critical need,” said Calvin Welch, the housing advocate who helped broker the deal. “But the only thing that’s critical to Gavin Newsom is becoming lieutenant governor.”
Mr. Newsom, in an interview earlier this week, denied that politics played a role in his decision. The mayor said that he had tentatively supported the initiative, which would have been put before voters in November, as a “serious shift in the way we deal with affordable housing” but that proponents had failed to generate the kind of broad support necessary to gain approval.
“I’m just a convenient excuse right now,” Mr. Newsom said.
The crumbling of the innovative housing initiative underscores a tumultuous relationship between Mr. Newsom and the Board of Supervisors over several new tax measures its members have proposed — as Mr. Newsom campaigns for a statewide office, according to people who participated in meetings about the deal.
The talks, which were spurred by the recession’s crippling effect on new housing, began in May, several months after Mr. Newsom proposed a stimulus package to get development projects restarted.
Mr. Welch, the housing advocate known for his caustic criticism of gentrification, came to the negotiations seeking a fixed stream of financing for affordable housing, which has largely dried up during the recession.
One of city’s largest nonprofit developers, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, has suspended four big projects for low-income families because of a lack of financing.
Oz Erickson, the chief executive of the Emerald Fund, one of the largest developers in San Francisco, came to the negotiations seeking a break from the city’s requirement that developers designate at least 15 percent of all new units to below-market-rate housing.
Mr. Erickson argued that the cost of “inclusionary zoning” — a policy he and Mr. Welch had hammered out in the 1990s, the last time they worked together on legislation — was too burdensome for builders in a recession.
“Right now, it’s terribly difficult to get any financing, and the affordable-housing component is a significant charge,” said Mr. Erickson, whose condominium projects include One Rincon Hill and the Bridgeview Tower.
During the meetings, according to several participants, Mr. Welch thundered about the urgent need for affordable housing, according to participants. As he held forth, Mr. Erickson continually worked his fingers over his ubiquitous HP 12c calculator, crunching the numbers.
Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Urban Planning and Research Association, a moderate public policy institute, said negotiators reached “an agreement that would’ve solved both problems.”
The complicated deal would have substantially raised the transfer tax — the tax paid when property is bought or sold — for any building over $875,000. For example, the transfer tax on a home sold for $1.1 million is currently $8,250. With the proposed increase, it would have been $12,650.
That money would have gone into a permanent fund dedicated to affordable housing: Half would have been used for affordable-housing projects, and the other half would have gone to ease the burden on developers by subsidizing the affordable-housing requirement.
The mayor said it was a political rarity for these two rival factions to work together.
“These are strange bedfellows, and they don’t always agree,” Mr. Newsom said. “What was intriguing was that there was a willingness to work this through.”
The negotiations took place in the Mayor’s Office of Housing, two blocks from City Hall, and were mediated by Doug Shoemaker, the office’s director.
Mr. Newsom acknowledged that some of his top aides supported the deal. In the end, he said, he did not believe the measure had enough broad support to succeed. Notably, efforts to placate groups representing landlords and Realtors failed.
“Folks were so consumed with getting something on the ballot for November,” Mr. Newsom said. “But in order to do this we have to build a broad coalition, and, with respect to my friends in the room, they’re not the whole city.”
But Mr. Welch and others familiar with the negotiations said the politics of the moment also weighed heavily. Since announcing earlier this year his entry into the race for lieutenant governor, Mr. Newsom has continued to oppose raising taxes, most recently a series of measures put forward by progressive members of the Board of Supervisors.
Mr. Newsom’s electoral success in November — and perhaps beyond — will depend in part on his ability to broaden his appeal to voters outside San Francisco.
“The mayor’s office sponsored the whole thing, and ultimately the mayor could have stepped up to make it happen,” said Lou Vasquez, a developer with Build, Incorporated, who was in the talks.
“The mechanics seemed to be working out,” Mr. Vasquez said, “but the politics seemed to get in the way.”
Last week, with Mr. Newsom still withholding his support, the deadline to place the affordable-housing measure on the November ballot passed quietly — with the public unaware of the potential deal.
There is now one other proposal from the Board of Supervisors intended to raise money for affordable housing, but it does not have the support of the mayor, the developers or their friends. Sponsored by Supervisor Chris Daly, who has been trying for years to get a permanent source of affordable-housing money, the measure is headed for the ballot in November.
Mr. Newsom said he hoped this idea for a permanent source of financing came back — whether or not he was in office.
“We were up against a deadline, and it wasn’t ready,” Mr. Newsom said. “This idea is not dead.”
His hopes were echoed by Mr. Metcalf, Mr. Welch and others who had tried to make the deal. But they said it had been a rare moment when everything seemed aligned: a recession hurting housing activists and developers enough to bring them both to the bargaining table.
“I personally will work to try to put this deal together again,” Mr. Metcalf said, “but you never know when your window of opportunity for social change will open, and you never know when it will close.”
THE BAY CITIZEN
Despite a Rare Pedigree, Plan for Affordable Housing Collapses
By ZUSHA ELINSON
Published: July 8, 2010
The deal was brokered recently in private by an unusual team of rivals, including one of San Francisco’s most prominent developers and a vociferous housing activist. The result, by all accounts, was unprecedented: an estimated $50 million for affordable housing in the city each year.
Enlarge This Image
Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
Calvin Welch says politics was Mr. Newsom’s prime consideration.
A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times.
Enlarge This Image
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Mayor Gavin Newsom scuttled a plan to provide money for affordable housing, saying it lacked broad support.
One developer who participated in the negotiations, which took place over the last six weeks in a City Hall annex, described the agreement as a “once-every-50-years alignment of the planets.”
Last week, however, the ambitious deal — which would have provided financing for affordable-housing projects, and would also have helped developers by subsidizing an affordable-housing requirement — came apart after running into opposition from an unlikely source: Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.
The scuttled initiative, which has not been publicized, left a trail of bitterness and recrimination, much of it directed at Mr. Newsom, whose own aides had helped broker the deal. Three participants who were involved in the discussions said they understood that Mr. Newsom was reluctant to support what amounted to a new tax as he makes a run for statewide office.
“We came up with a plan that addressed a critical need,” said Calvin Welch, the housing advocate who helped broker the deal. “But the only thing that’s critical to Gavin Newsom is becoming lieutenant governor.”
Mr. Newsom, in an interview earlier this week, denied that politics played a role in his decision. The mayor said that he had tentatively supported the initiative, which would have been put before voters in November, as a “serious shift in the way we deal with affordable housing” but that proponents had failed to generate the kind of broad support necessary to gain approval.
“I’m just a convenient excuse right now,” Mr. Newsom said.
The crumbling of the innovative housing initiative underscores a tumultuous relationship between Mr. Newsom and the Board of Supervisors over several new tax measures its members have proposed — as Mr. Newsom campaigns for a statewide office, according to people who participated in meetings about the deal.
The talks, which were spurred by the recession’s crippling effect on new housing, began in May, several months after Mr. Newsom proposed a stimulus package to get development projects restarted.
Mr. Welch, the housing advocate known for his caustic criticism of gentrification, came to the negotiations seeking a fixed stream of financing for affordable housing, which has largely dried up during the recession.
One of city’s largest nonprofit developers, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, has suspended four big projects for low-income families because of a lack of financing.
Oz Erickson, the chief executive of the Emerald Fund, one of the largest developers in San Francisco, came to the negotiations seeking a break from the city’s requirement that developers designate at least 15 percent of all new units to below-market-rate housing.
Mr. Erickson argued that the cost of “inclusionary zoning” — a policy he and Mr. Welch had hammered out in the 1990s, the last time they worked together on legislation — was too burdensome for builders in a recession.
“Right now, it’s terribly difficult to get any financing, and the affordable-housing component is a significant charge,” said Mr. Erickson, whose condominium projects include One Rincon Hill and the Bridgeview Tower.
During the meetings, according to several participants, Mr. Welch thundered about the urgent need for affordable housing, according to participants. As he held forth, Mr. Erickson continually worked his fingers over his ubiquitous HP 12c calculator, crunching the numbers.
Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Urban Planning and Research Association, a moderate public policy institute, said negotiators reached “an agreement that would’ve solved both problems.”
The complicated deal would have substantially raised the transfer tax — the tax paid when property is bought or sold — for any building over $875,000. For example, the transfer tax on a home sold for $1.1 million is currently $8,250. With the proposed increase, it would have been $12,650.
That money would have gone into a permanent fund dedicated to affordable housing: Half would have been used for affordable-housing projects, and the other half would have gone to ease the burden on developers by subsidizing the affordable-housing requirement.
The mayor said it was a political rarity for these two rival factions to work together.
“These are strange bedfellows, and they don’t always agree,” Mr. Newsom said. “What was intriguing was that there was a willingness to work this through.”
The negotiations took place in the Mayor’s Office of Housing, two blocks from City Hall, and were mediated by Doug Shoemaker, the office’s director.
Mr. Newsom acknowledged that some of his top aides supported the deal. In the end, he said, he did not believe the measure had enough broad support to succeed. Notably, efforts to placate groups representing landlords and Realtors failed.
“Folks were so consumed with getting something on the ballot for November,” Mr. Newsom said. “But in order to do this we have to build a broad coalition, and, with respect to my friends in the room, they’re not the whole city.”
But Mr. Welch and others familiar with the negotiations said the politics of the moment also weighed heavily. Since announcing earlier this year his entry into the race for lieutenant governor, Mr. Newsom has continued to oppose raising taxes, most recently a series of measures put forward by progressive members of the Board of Supervisors.
Mr. Newsom’s electoral success in November — and perhaps beyond — will depend in part on his ability to broaden his appeal to voters outside San Francisco.
“The mayor’s office sponsored the whole thing, and ultimately the mayor could have stepped up to make it happen,” said Lou Vasquez, a developer with Build, Incorporated, who was in the talks.
“The mechanics seemed to be working out,” Mr. Vasquez said, “but the politics seemed to get in the way.”
Last week, with Mr. Newsom still withholding his support, the deadline to place the affordable-housing measure on the November ballot passed quietly — with the public unaware of the potential deal.
There is now one other proposal from the Board of Supervisors intended to raise money for affordable housing, but it does not have the support of the mayor, the developers or their friends. Sponsored by Supervisor Chris Daly, who has been trying for years to get a permanent source of affordable-housing money, the measure is headed for the ballot in November.
Mr. Newsom said he hoped this idea for a permanent source of financing came back — whether or not he was in office.
“We were up against a deadline, and it wasn’t ready,” Mr. Newsom said. “This idea is not dead.”
His hopes were echoed by Mr. Metcalf, Mr. Welch and others who had tried to make the deal. But they said it had been a rare moment when everything seemed aligned: a recession hurting housing activists and developers enough to bring them both to the bargaining table.
“I personally will work to try to put this deal together again,” Mr. Metcalf said, “but you never know when your window of opportunity for social change will open, and you never know when it will close.”
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