Jeffery

Heres a bit on how the demolition program got stalled: ...only 250 houses torn down... @@@ I think they are tearing down the worst properties, and I suspect the condition of housing in Dayton is pretty bad. Back in January I was briefly at a party hosted by a guy who restored a house in one of the historic districts. It took him seven years to fix the place up (and he did a nice job, too). That's the level of effort it takes to do this work, by someone who was doing it as a labor of love vs economic reality. The economic reality is that the reno cost is too much given that there is a very limited marekt for city living in this area and the condition of housing is, apparently, pretty bad to start with due to the slobs who live here and greedheads who own and rent the properties. Sometimes one and the same.

The DDN reports that the fed $$$ isn't enough to address the abandonment problem: City Needs Millions More to Raize Nuisance Housing DAYTON — City leaders say the $28 million Dayton has received in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds to aggressively target neighborhoods hit hardest by foreclosure will only make a small dent in the growing list of vacant and deteriorating properties... ...Housing officials estimate they will need an additional $20 million to $30 million in funds — money the city does not have — to deal with the remaining vacant housing stock Man, I'm glad I took all those neighborhood pix during the late 2000s. Some of the stuff I posted here over the years has been or will be torn down. Maybe I should start a blog called The Dayton Documentation Project (subtitled: "Documenting the city before they tear it down"). Anyway, the Jerry Springer "postive homily at the end of the show" article about how Daytonians doing this self-help effort to "keep an eye" on derelict houses... Dayton Encourages Neighbors to Be Vigilant We’re encouraging grass-roots efforts,” said city manager of housing inspection Max Fuller, who tells residents they can help by picking up trash, shoveling walks, mowing vacant lots and generally keeping an eye on the vacant structures in their neighborhood. “If you see suspicious activity of any kind at a vacant property, boarded or unboarded, call the police; call housing inspection,” Fuller said. There was also an earlier article on how the city mismanaged the first round of Neighborhood Stablization Program funding, not tearing down as much as they wanted to due to difficulties contracting out the demolition work.

^ Ive noticed this denial about lack of value or drop in value re downtown real estate here in Dayton, but I can very well see this psychology operating for the housing market, too. Thx for you explanation and discussion on the QA issue. I should have also said a push-back on wage growth is that the relatively high true unemployment (ie fewer jobs than people, vs the "official" unemployment rate) will provide a damping effect on demand for higher wages. People look around and note there is still a lot of unemployment around or the economy isnt doing so good on the jobs front, so they wont be asking for raises. Or management can always move a department "offshore" (so globalization also acts to push back on wages/payroll, depending on the buisness). There would be more inflationary pressures under a tighter labor market, I think. Which might be the longer term risk...but that is always the tendancy (sort what people talk about when they talk about an economy "overheating", maybe?)

I might try this Walnut place out when Im in town for Bockfest. Is in the Gateway Quarter or closer to downtown?

...and there's always Paducah, which is the mostly unlikely spot for an arts colony. Yet but that was actually a sucessful public policy move for that rotting river city. I think an issue might be, getting the artists' art to market. The art market is still in LA, Chicago, NYC, Bay Region (maybe), so getting the art back to the metropoles so it can actually be sold could be a show stopper, no? (assuming a lack of sufficient local patronage to support a visual arts community) Anway, I think this is a neat concept, and its been addressed by some U Penn researchers as a way of community development and revitalization (they dont use the term gentrification). Need to surf around to find their stuff..its avalable via .pdf or used to be.

Buffalo is already on the radar, as is Pittsburgh (cf Levi's "Braddock" campaign and Braddocks 'connected' (to hipsterland) mayor). Jim Russell's "rust belt chic" meme plays into this a bit, too.

^ Yawn. This is what Dayton is doing too. Except for biotech. Subsitute tech transfer from military R&D for biotech, and you have the same strategy. Everyone is using 'health care' in one form or another.

...except for Dayton: Area Foreclosure Rate Ranks High in Nation DAYTON — One in every 43 homes in the Dayton area faced some sort of foreclosure action last year, placing the area in the top third of 206 U.S. metro areas for that activity, a California firm that tracks foreclosures said in a report released today. RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine, Calif., said 8,917 properties in Greene, Miami, Montgomery and Preble counties received default notices, auction notices or were taken back by lenders last year, up 12.7 percent from 2009. The area ranked 62nd in the nation among 206 metro areas with populations of 200,000 or more, RealtyTrac said ....the article goes on to quote a RealtyTrac guy saying that the current high rates are more due to the economy, due to the effects of long-term unemployment, vs the "housing crisis" foreclosure thing in overheated markets. But, as you all know, Dayton got hit hard by the economic crisis, actually the ongoing decline in manufacturing since 2000, as well as being a big victim of subprime mortgages going bad, yet we didn't have an overheated "housing bubble market" here.

There was an op-ed piece in the latest issue of Time saying the real estate/housing market decline is indeed acting as a brake on the economy, dampening economic growth in this recovery. There could be a bit of chicken-egg thing (or a negative feedback loop, if you want to put it another way), where weak job growth leads to reduced housing demand, which also slows recovery which leads to weak job growth. The inflation thing would be maybe more of a concern if we had the wage-price spiral kicking in. That's not going to happen since there will be zero pressure on wages, due to minimal (7% and dropping) unionization of the private sector workforce. In ths case for inflation I think we are seeing two things fighting each other; the anemic recovery pushing back against price increases caused by rising energy & maybe food prices, due to shortages combined with global demand (as has been reported on-&-off for awhile now) Since we are so vehicle, and oil-dependent, energy prices will find their way into prices in general (distribution costs) and food costs, but reduced domestic demand due to weak jobs growth and lower incomes will push back, acting as a damper maybe? So I think there would be a moderating influence given the current situation? I dont really understand the Feds quantitative easing policy, maybe its to increase credit or money in the economy? The big issue during the crisis period in late 2008 was credit markets shutting down, so maybe this has something to do with it? I have to say I am looking at this economy thing more from an employment perspective, not so much a monetary one, so havn't paid much attention to that.

Lavomatic is a neat space, but the female waitsaff and maitre d there have..or had... this "too cool for school" attitude. Senate seemed more personable (but it was always crowded when I was down there...this was during my multiple visits during Fringe last year) Hoping Grammers somehow survives as a bar or restaurant because the interior (as I remember it) was excellent "Alte Deutsch Heimat" style.

...seems the approach is to move south to north, expand up Vine, then move west and (now) east? But keeping below Liberty. Is Grammers still in business? Seems its up around there somewhere? On Walnut?

I can NOT believe y'all are going to have a second referendum on this. I mean, seriously... >rolls eyes<

^ The DDN should talk, since they support the Dayton Development Coalition, which is a similar quango, similar to what Kaisch is proposing... If Kaisich was truley radical he would get rid of ED altogether, and let a package of low taxes and deregulation act as an incentive, without a quango specifically set up to do ED.

I'm willing to let Kaisich do his thing, since with the situation here as dire as it is, it's time to experiment with some different policy initiatives. Kaisich's are neoliberal/libertarian, fine, lets try that for a change...

I mentioned on the "What are you listening to today" that I am listening to WNKU more now... They have a wierd playlilst, though, from what I was expecting. Since I used to listen to the station on weekends either during trips to Cincy or passing through I was getting maybe a skewed opinion of the sound. Now, more regular weekday listening, they sound almost like a possible commercial format. Suprised at the "rock" sound they have. Different. They are a good alternative to WYSO when WYSO does their canned NPR/PRI programming, but I find myself turning back to classical sometimes.

Ive been listening to WNKU a bit, now they are in the area, and am picking up on artists that I hadnt heard before....also a good cover by Tony Rice of Norman' Blakes' "Church Street Blues". ...since there is a Church Street in Dayton (hardscrabble Twin Towers area) I could do a youtube video set to this song, huh?

Now with this gaurded good news I exepct y'all to shift the discussion to inflation worries, since the ethos of this particular thread is the find the dark cloud around that silver lining.

This is good news for Ohio, since the state is still pretty heavy into manufacturing: Factory Activity Fastest in Seven Years ...heres' the leading indicator: >snip< ...Factories healthy pace of expansion is likely to continue in the coming months. Manufacturing firms surveyed by ISM said their backlog of orders jumped in January, pushing an index measuring that activity to 58 from 47... >snip<

Service Sector Expands The Institute for Supply Management, a private trade group, says its index of service sector activity rose to 59.4 last month, up from December’s reading of 57.1. That’s the 14th straight month of growth. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion. The report follows a strong reading on Monday from the institute’s manufacturing index for January, which rose to its highest level in nearly seven years. This is really not news, becuase if you look at the BLS monthlies for Ohio for the 2000s it was the private sector services that added jobs and counteracted the ongoing declines in manufacturing employment (which was declining througout the decade). So one would expect this pattern to reassert itself once the economy enters recovery. However, for Ohio, what should be pointed out, and pointed out repeatedly, that the "Great Recession" was so devasting in job loss that the economy will require a better jobs-production performance than past recoveries, not a "typical" performance, to make up the losses. So far that's not happening, even with economic growth.

Yes, I think it is.

Hiring forecasts on the upswing WASHINGTON — Industry economists say the U.S. economic recovery is gaining strength, with more firms expressing positive hiring plans than in over a decade. A survey from the National Association for Business Economics finds that economists are more hopeful about overall economic growth, the job market and demand for companies' products and services by many measures than they have been since the start of the Great Recession. Economists forecast U.S. growth on upswing in 2011 "They expect the economy to grow at an annual rate of 3.2% to 3.4% each quarter this year. That's up from quarterly median forecasts of 2.5% to 3.3% in an October survey. "This growth is now becoming self-reinforcing," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "Businesses are going to take their stronger sales and begin to hire more aggressively, generate more income, and we're off and running." Looks like the recovery...such as it is...is locking-in. Based on the runs I've been doing on BLS monthly employment numbers for Ohio (which are a lagging indicator) I don't see any evidence of an economic deterioration for the past year. The final two quarters parallel 2009, and are somewhat not as good as typical second-half numbers for Ohio in the mid 2000s, prior to the employment weakening that set in in 2007. So this, for me, confirms we have reached bottom, when it comes to employment numbers.

Tear that down and Sedamsville loses its landmark. The church makes the place there.

WNKU has that somewhat "Americana"/ folky/indie/blues public radio format that has become popular (with public radio listerns) lately. They are expanding into the area between Cincy & Dayton, buy buying a station & frequency in Middletown. Which means there listening area now covers most of the Dayton metro area. WNKY is Growing! (they also aquired a station near Portmouth, which gives them coverage of the Huntington/Ashland area) So, this means Dayton now has at least three public radio stations available: WYSO (sort of like WNKU, but with a lot more NPR/PRI "talky" stuff like All Things Considered, Car Talk, etc etc) WDPR (24 classical) WDPS (public schools, mostly jazz and jazz-related) ....theres is a also a Cincy classical station that is reaching the south suburbs here. Dont recall the call letters. Being the old 1970s-era crunchy granola type I am really pumped to have WNKU...and the music they play..... come to Dayton since I usually listen to that station passing thru Cincy (that and WOBO and sometimes WAIF). Our local equivilant, WYSO, has too much talk/news/features stuff for me, so I dont listen that much to it (I listen to classical during my drive time since there some talky thing on WYSO those hours). WNKU will be a welcome alternative.

^ eggs-ackly! It is usually public safety budget lines, which are mostly payroll/benefits, that are the highest operational cost in local government. @@@ Indeed, it will be Cincy Subway Redux if they do start construction and a referendum kills the streetcar. This might get negative national attention. However, it seems the local power structure is behind this, no? (ie the players behind things like 3CDC).

This was an issue in the mid-late 1970s. Back then there was a policy of open admissions, where if you could afford the tuition and had a high school diploma you could attend college (this was for public universities in Kentucky, I don't know about other states). But there was a concern that you couldnt properly teach or absorb a) that many students and b)the quality of student was low, that they were not prepared. So there was a push to move away from open admisssions to some standard of demonstrated performance before you could get admitted. This was the case already in the pre-professional and professional programs, but became more of a university-wide policy. So you can see how there could be a policy conflict between limiting access to the qualified (which is a bit, in terms of policy, like the German one) and maximizing access, ie.: 'gettting kids in the door'. Of course in the 1970s the cost inflation issue wasn't what it is now (based on the charts), so college was, in theory, more affordable then, too. So the access issue was seen more in terms of academic qualifications vs financial ability.