Policy
First, Principles
Published May 16, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Of all the lessons from our economic downturn, the first, most basic one has not really changed: unless and until we do something to solve the home lending and foreclosure mess, we can’t really hope to climb out of the hole we’re in.
Everybody knows that… right?
Of course, there’s knowing and there’s doing… and unfortunately, while the knowing we have a problem part seems a given, the doing is not so clear.
Pre-abortion "counseling" costly and risky
Published May 15, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
24 states require women seeking abortions to receive "counseling" and then wait for 24 hours before they can undergo the procedure. A recent study by the phenomenal Guttmacher Institute demonstrates that this ideological action meant to undermine women's personal decisions about their own bodies and lives also adds unnecessary costs and health risks, by forcing many women to seek abortions elsewhere, often at a later stage in their pregnancy, when the procedure has a greater risk of complication.
Why is that, you wonder? And why is Leigh writing about this on the poverty blog?
Erasing the Decision-Makers
Published May 13, 2009 @ 12:59PM PT
Following up on Kate's terrific post from this morning, I'm reading this absolutely maddening article from The Times-Picayune about the impending mixed-income housing complexes that are replacing the projects, demolished last year. Absent entirely from this article are the decision-makers behind the demolition and redevelopment of the projects, whose proposal will reduce the # of deeply subsidized units from ~5k to fewer than 1,600. Check out the passive and/or anthropomorphic language journalist Katy Reckdahl uses:
New designs hope to avoid past problems in public housing complexes
Because we all know designs, when gathered around the board room table, are very focused on problem-solving. More inanity after the jump!
Policies that Make People Disappear
Published May 13, 2009 @ 05:47AM PT
I visited Chicago for the first time ever last week to participate in a panel about affordable housing in Chicago and New Orleans. The comparisons are striking and frightening.
In 1998, the Chicago Housing Authority embarked on its “Plan for Transformation,” a HOPE VI funded, ten-year plan designed to demolish traditional public housing and replace it with “mixed income” housing. According to the CHA website, the Plan “will improve the appearance, quality and culture of public housing in Chicago.” From a starting point of 38,000 units, the Plan calls for the demolition of 22,000 units and the replacement of 9,000 units, with an end count of 25,000 units.
Not surprisingly, there was resistance to the Plan. HOPE VI developments are notorious for permanently displacing residents. But I was particularly struck by one community organizer’s testimony from an older public housing resident who opposed the Plan. This gentleman had experienced urban renewal decades ago. He said that he opposed the demolition of public housing buildings because the buildings themselves remind others that people like him exist.
This observation was striking, and I thought of many examples of how post-Katrina policies have literally made people disappear.
In the Bronx, Green - and Beautiful! - Affordable Housing
Published May 12, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Disclosure: I profiled WHEDCO for a Ford Foundation-MIT environmental justice conference last year.
Yay! I love success stories, or promising stories:
Since March 10, Ms. Prince has been living in an apartment in the Intervale Green complex, on Intervale Avenue between Freeman Street and Louis Niñe Boulevard, an infamous strip of South Bronx urban blight (it served as backdrop for some of the most gruesome scenes in the movie “Fort Apache, the Bronx”)...The building, developed by the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, or Whedco, a Bronx nonprofit group, opened to qualified low-income residents in February, and has filled about a third of its 128 apartments...Designed with a large, glass-windowed lobby, two green roofs and a sculpture-filled courtyard, the development, tasteful, sparkling and eco-friendly, could give many cookie-cutter luxury buildings a run for their money.
The tone of this article from the NY Times is amusing: the author is like, what? Poor people can have luxury too? Wait a minute...Is this sensible social and economic policy?
At this scale, it certainly is. WHEDCO has an array of government, philanthropic and community-based partners, all of whom are looking to this construction as a potential model for future green affordable housing. It's when we decide if we want to take this effort to scale, will we put the necessary resources behind it - that's the question. Along with: what exactly do we mean by scale?
And not to mention: how do we balance form and function in affordable housing?
Tax Credits for Affordable Housing Dry Up
Published May 08, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
And another limit to market-driven affordable housing production is revealed:
"Mr. Brandt’s experience is being mirrored throughout the nation, demonstrating the shortcomings of a financing vehicle that was conceived more than two decades ago to inject market discipline into the development of income-restricted housing. The theory was that investors would support only those projects likely to be successful.
Many developers are finding themselves either unable to sell tax credits that they have been awarded or short millions of dollars because the price that investors are willing to pay for a tax credit has tumbled from $1 or more to less than 75 cents today.
Today, the total amount of tax credit equity available for low-income housing has shrunk to $4 billion to $4.5 billion, down from about $9 billion in 2007, Frederick H. Copeman, the national director of tax credit investment advisory services at Ernst & Young, said in an interview in his Boston office."
Despite our frequent hand-wrangling over that eyesore public housing, in reality the majority of subsidized housing today is tax-credit financed and produced by private sector developers, for- and non-profit. Yet, the limits to this approach fuel calls for state and federal affordable housing trust funds, to again prioritize the needs of the lowest-income Americans that public housing filled starting in the 1960s.
When Mamma Ain't Happy
Published May 08, 2009 @ 05:18AM PT
Driving on a remote northern AZ highway, I spotted sheds of scrap lumber nailed together that shape jewelry “stores” operated by Navajo women.
Curious, and wanting pictures, I stopped. The windy, sunny but chilly day had me grabbing my jacket on the way out of my RV. I approached the open side of this lean-to and was greeted by Leona, the un-grandmotherly grandmother proprietor.
The brisk breeze whipping through the porous sides of this electricity-free shed made it cold. She said her matches were wet so she couldn’t light her little heater. I gave her my 3-hands-needed fire-stick, laughing with her about its non-Native American nature. With that gesture to warm our relationship, we began talking.
