The answer isn't to spend tax dollars to expand roads to keep jobs sprawling outward and extend transit to those jobs. How is the labor force supposed to reach these jobs?? 25 percent of Cleveland households have no car, and many more households must share one car among multiple wage earners. So how about investing tax dollars to clean up polluted properties and put jobs where the workers are??

 

The thing is, industrial sprawl and residential sprawl have very different causes.  The latter has, at most, a minor impact on the former, as does crime, traffic, etc. 

 

The overwhelming driving force for industrial sprawl is CERCLA.  Few are inclined to risk inheriting liability for a defunct company’s buried mess.  Is easier to build on a greenfield.

 

 

Of course, cheaper & easier to build on greenfield.  Faster too.  Going through the steps of a full blown EPA cleanup can take years.  Assuming Cleveland tackled this themselves and had clean ready-to-build sites, they still wouldn't have the highway access that suburban locations do

 

All the utilities are in place though.  Some of the fixed equipment (cranes, loading docks) is as well.  Obviously, better access for employees, particularly at the entry level.  There's plusses, and minuses.  Crime's not that big of a factor, just fence off the parking lot and as has been mentioned, other locations have other crime issues. 

 

CERCLA is the 800 pound gorilla.  Unfortunately, it's become a jobs program for bureaucrats and consultants.  Navigating it incorrectly put Taylor Chair, a 200 year old company trying to do the right thing, out of business.  I guarantee that's being used as a negative selling point.

2 to 5 miles from a highway is an eternity

 

I'll bet you'll find that's pretty common out in the exurbs too. Whatever the radius is out there, I'll bet you'll hit at least one highway at industrially zoned/available sites in the city.

 

So Proctor & Gamble built a huge warehouse outside of Dayton and couldn't get anyone to apply for jobs there. Then they paid the Greater Dayton RTA to extend bus service out to their site and then they started getting applicants. But that's a LONG trip for the workers, and apparently that's preferable to having a long trip for trucks to reach the highway. We treat cargo better than people....

 

So only 26% of available jobs in Greater Cleveland area are accessible within a 90-minute transit trip:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2012/7/transit-labor-tomer/pdf/Cleveland.pdf

CERCLA is the 800 pound gorilla.  Unfortunately, it's become a jobs program for bureaucrats and consultants.  Navigating it incorrectly put Taylor Chair, a 200 year old company trying to do the right thing, out of business.  I guarantee that's being used as a negative selling point.[/color]

This is true, and an important point. The brownfields programs of the Clean Ohio Fund were a much more efficient and effective alternative before being dismantled by Kasich.

2 to 5 miles from a highway is an eternity

 

I'll bet you'll find that's pretty common out in the exurbs too. Whatever the radius is out there, I'll bet you'll hit at least one highway at industrially zoned/available sites in the city.

 

So Proctor & Gamble built a huge warehouse outside of Dayton and couldn't get anyone to apply for jobs there. Then they paid the Greater Dayton RTA to extend bus service out to their site and then they started getting applicants. But that's a LONG trip for the workers, and apparently that's preferable to having a long trip for trucks to reach the highway. We treat cargo better than people....

 

So only 26% of available jobs in Greater Cleveland area are accessible within a 90-minute transit trip:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2012/7/transit-labor-tomer/pdf/Cleveland.pdf

 

Part of that’s industrial sprawl to be sure.  But a big part is the radial nature of GCRTA’s routes.

 

Not even radial, really.  There’s one major hub, and it’s on the very edge of the county.

 

 

Not even radial, really.  There’s one major hub, and it’s on the very edge of the county.[/color]

 

 

Which hub?

 

Not even radial, really.  There’s one major hub, and it’s on the very edge of the county.[/color]

 

 

Which hub?

 

Do any really compete with downtown?

So Proctor & Gamble built a huge warehouse outside of Dayton and couldn't get anyone to apply for jobs there. Then they paid the Greater Dayton RTA to extend bus service out to their site and then they started getting applicants. But that's a LONG trip for the workers, and apparently that's preferable to having a long trip for trucks to reach the highway. We treat cargo better than people....

 

The requirement to build outside of Dayton was probably driven by space requirements, plain & simple.  If it was huge, it's probably not even practical to be close to the city center.  Warehouses don't typically employ that many people anyhow.  More & more going to automated racking systems with a handful of forklift operators

So Proctor & Gamble built a huge warehouse outside of Dayton and couldn't get anyone to apply for jobs there. Then they paid the Greater Dayton RTA to extend bus service out to their site and then they started getting applicants. But that's a LONG trip for the workers, and apparently that's preferable to having a long trip for trucks to reach the highway. We treat cargo better than people....

 

The requirement to build outside of Dayton was probably driven by space requirements, plain & simple.  If it was huge, it's probably not even practical to be close to the city center.  Warehouses don't typically employ that many people anyhow.  More & more going to automated racking systems with a handful of forklift operators

 

And that's a problem too.  These facilities take up huge amounts of space, all of which need lots of access roads with wide pavement, deep bases, and generous sweeping curves to accommodate the trucks (railroad spurs are just too much trouble of course).  They must have public water, sewer, gas, and high-speed internet, fire protection, police, the works.  But if nobody works there, and the buildings themselves are just utilitarian shells, while most of the value is in the inventory and equipment, then there's really very to benefit from.  These industrial parks demand nearly downtown-level services and infrastructure (except for sidewalks and transit of course) but generate only pennies on the dollar in tax revenues to pay for it all.

The requirement to build outside of Dayton was probably driven by space requirements, plain & simple.  If it was huge, it's probably not even practical to be close to the city center.  Warehouses don't typically employ that many people anyhow.  More & more going to automated racking systems with a handful of forklift operators

 

You've make a number of unfortunate assumptions that aren't based on what's actually occurring or the situation on the ground.

 

The P&G warehouse in the City of Union will employ 1,300 people. More than $13.2 million in roadway improvements will be funded by taxpayers. Another $2 million in utility construction costs will be incurred. Sure, the city of Union will pay for this from taxes paid by P&G. But it's a zero-sum game for Greater Dayton. This will surely result in some persons moving to the area from already established parts of a metro area that is shrinking in population, so the increased costs to taxpayers from increased vacancies, abandonment and blight also have not been calculated.

 

The vacated GM Moraine site is more than large enough to support several of these P&G facilities. It is 3 miles from downtown Dayton and next to I-75 and two Class 1 railroads. The Union Airpark site has the P&G building measuring 2,800 feet long and 600 feet wide. The GM Moraine plant site is 6,600 feet long and 3,000 feet wide. The cost to make this site clean and green will be high and take a long time to make ready -- although two unused parking lots exists. One measures 3,700 feet by 500 feet and another measures 4,100 feet by 900 feet . As for the rest of the site, no one will incur the massive cleanup cost until someone wants to use it. Who will bother when the costs to build out on a greenfield are so low and a site can be ready so quickly??

 

How will the employees get out to these exurban greenfield sites? That's someone else's problem -- until employers can't get enough people to apply for jobs. When these costs become too burdensome, then they may start to pay more attention to developing the many large brownfield sites whose abandonment has turned too many Ohio neighborhoods into scenes from post-apocalyptic movies.

In pursuit of our fanatical belief that public infrastructure investment drives private investment, we have cities that have actually accumulated more public infrastructure liability than they have total private investment.

 

That is bizarre. There is no way all this public investment will ever be maintained. In the coming years and decades, our cities are going to contract in ways that are foreseeable, but not specifically predictable. Yet most are still obsessed with growth and, the “progressive” among us, with issues of density.

 

Instead of density, here’s the question that should keep you up at night: What combination of increase in private investment and downsizing of public investment will give my city a private to public investment ratio of 30:1?

 

If you can answer it theoretically before Detroit discovers it through trial and error, perhaps you can avoid the pain all of our cities seem destined to experience.

 

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/29/the-density-question

Why Homearama 2015 was cancelled:

 

"But a number of custom home builders told me they couldn’t find buyers for homes for this year’s show and the builders weren’t willing or able to construct speculative homes. According to the builders, not one home was pre-sold for this year’s Homearama, and the HBA could not get five home builders to put up spec houses, the number the organization likes to have for a Homearama."

 

These are $1 million+ homes, so this might say more about the current economy than anything else specifically. But this doesn't seem like great news for suburban homebuilders.

Actually, it may not be the price or the suburban locations. It may be the types of housing. The suburbs aren't going to go away, but they're going to change. They're going to have to offer smaller homes, smaller lots, mixed-use, condos, apartments -- all in addition to the big supply of existing large-lot single family homes.And these new options will need to have a variety of price points -- maybe some million-dollar units for downsizing wealthy empty nesters, along with cheaper apartments and condos for young singles and couples. The percentages of households with mom and dad and kids is shrinking -- below 20 percent. Fewer people will be looking for what has been the very-dominant offering for decades.

Taras Grescoe ‏@grescoe  19m19 minutes ago

Living in the suburbs could take 3 years off your life.

(Impact of #Australia's car culture.)

http://bit.ly/1IFG4XN 

I'm not sure whether this should be a new thread or not ... I'm actually surprised I didn't find a Fair Housing Act thread on UO when I looked.  In the interests of being cautious about thread bloat, I'll put this here.

 

This is about the third major Supreme Court case at the end of the 2014 term.  It's much more technical than the ObamaCare and gay marriage decisions, so it didn't get as much press, but it could be just as big over the long term.  Except ... well, that's what I'm actually posting about.

 

http://www.prospect.org/article/supreme-courts-challenge-housing-segregation

 

In June, the Supreme Court issued several decisions with big policy implications. Its rejection of a challenge to Obamacare and its endorsement of the right to same-sex marriage have received the attention they were due. A third decision, confirming that the Fair Housing Act prohibits not only policies that intend to perpetuate racial discrimination and segregation, but those that have the effect of doing so, was equally momentous. Yet because the ruling concerned an obscure (to the public) and technical phrase (“disparate impact”), it has been more difficult to understand.

 

...

 

Civil rights advocates have had to argue, over and over again, often without success, that policies confining minority housing to segregated neighborhoods, no matter how well the housing may be constructed, cannot be “fair." (5) These cases, beginning in the early 1970s, have asserted that housing policies perpetuating racial segregation, even if not openly discriminatory, have a “disparate impact” on minorities, and therefore violate the Fair Housing Act. For example, a government program that restricts the building of housing for low- or moderate-income families to already segregated neighborhoods, instead of in middle class suburbs, violates the Fair Housing Act—even if the government agency sponsoring the housing does not openly state that its purpose is to keep African Americans out of the suburbs. It was such a case that the Supreme Court decided last month.

 

...

 

Whatever his motivation, Justice Kennedy’s remarkable opinion made clear that the Fair Housing Act was designed to desegregate communities, not just to eliminate open acts of continued discrimination. He acknowledged that the segregation characterizing metropolitan areas across the nation even today has resulted, at least in part, from official government policies in the 20th century that were designed, explicitly, to segregate neighborhoods by race. In support of this historical argument, he cited a “friend of the court” brief that was submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of 61 housing scholars (including the author of this article) who described the myriad public policies that purposefully segregated metropolitan areas by race. (The brief had been organized by the Economic Policy Institute and the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley). Justice Kennedy quoted the Kerner Commission report, and concluded his breathtaking opinion—breathtaking because the Supreme Court had never before dared to say this so openly—with this passage:

 

The Fair Housing Act must play an important part in avoiding the Kerner Commis­sion’s grim prophecy that “Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and un-equal.” The Court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act’s continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society.

 

**********

 

It's an interesting expression of both the Texas authorities' and the Texas nonprofits' position that they took the positions they did and litigated it all the way to the Supreme Court.  Or maybe I've drifted too deep into the urbanist bubble at this point and am losing sight of the continued draw of suburban living.  But my first thought on reading both the opinion and the Prospect summary from one of the amici was this: Why are you fighting so hard to redirect affordable housing tax credits and more aggressively racially integrative policies to the suburbs now of all times?

 

I suppose I ought to trust that the people actually fighting the battle all the way to the Supreme Court know more about the issue than I do.  But I seriously wonder whether they'll come to regret this decision.  Of course, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the tax credit structure themselves.  I was under the impression that these tax credits are actually on a budget, unlike most credits and deductions--i.e., there's only a fixed amount of them available in any given year, so granting more of them to the suburbs necessarily means denying them to the cities.  If it's just more tax credits available across the board, then I obviously stand corrected and there's much less of a shift in resources implicated here (and in fact, I'd wholeheartedly approve the decision because it would mean a more level playing field for developers of low-income housing).  But if this really is a Court-mandated reallocation of urban development to suburban development, with the express aim of getting more low-income blacks to move to the suburbs, I can't help but feel a certain "be careful what you wish for" line of thought in my mind.  As we've discussed on these boards (and I think even in this thread), the higher-mileage, autocentric, transit-unfriendly development pattern of the suburbs means that even if you procure subsidized housing out there, the demands on your wallet are still going to increase and the practical access to public services is going to decrease.  There's basically no way around it; it's the nature of the suburban development pattern itself.

As for why housing advocates are still pushing the burbs, that may just be ideological inertia.  They've been fighting that battle since long before urbanist thinking took hold, and any change in course will likely be measured in decades.  I think it's the same reason we see inner city politicians pushing for suburban development near downtown... the burbs have been seen as an unfairly withheld prize for so long that the desire to "win this fight" trumps any deeper analysis.  Be careful what you wish for indeed.

Pretty sure the advocacy community in this case is indifferent between "the city" and "the burbs," and more focused on creating affordable housing in communities with good schools and proximity to jobs, regardless of built form.

 

And Gramarye, note that this is definitely not a "Court-mandated reallocation of urban development to suburban development." The question before the court was about "disparate impact" as a permissible theory of liability. There was no judgment on the merits in this case. The net effect may be more lower court decisions directing more LIHTC allocation toward suburban development, but that's a function of where the good schools and job opportunities are in many metro areas.  If the spatial distribution of opportunity shifts, so will the attention of the housing advocates.

Pretty sure the advocacy community in this case is indifferent between "the city" and "the burbs," and more focused on creating affordable housing in communities with good schools and proximity to jobs, regardless of built form.

 

 

good point--I don't know why this always has to be such a zero sum game for "urbanists"  :roll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9bpRFFpDoc

I think economic and racial desegregation will be a net positive to reurbanizing our cities.  Rebuilding thousands of public housing units in Central, for example, is unlikely to change the problems that neighborhood and it's residents experience as much as making developments there and in more affluent areas more mixed income. 

 

The biggest danger I see in this is that certain relatively middle income communities could for various reasons like lower resident opposition or property values end up becoming "low-hanging fruit" for too many low income units while others see no effects from this ruling.  Desegregation can't all rest on the shoulders of the Lakewoods or Euclids of America.  The Avons and Kirtlands will have to step up, too.

Pretty sure the advocacy community in this case is indifferent between "the city" and "the burbs," and more focused on creating affordable housing in communities with good schools and proximity to jobs, regardless of built form.

 

good point--I don't know why this always has to be such a zero sum game for "urbanists"  :roll:

 

If I'm right about those tax credits being subject to fixed annual allotments, then those really are zero-sum.  Of course it's not like that's the only money out there--heck, it's not even like it's all that much of the money that's out there, at least not on the scale of the US as a whole.  But as far as the actual program that was the subject of this litigation goes, I think this really is a zero-sum competition in any given fiscal year.  Overall, I agree with you, and I didn't mean to fuel any larger city-suburb wars there.  But while the suburbs are still in a dominant position now, the momentum appears to be increasingly on the side of urban centers and that trend looks to be gaining steam rather than losing it.  Moreover, specifically with respect to low-income housing, it's hard to dispute that being out in the burbs makes access to social services and transit more problematic.  Now maybe the availability of better schools and less concentrated social ills more than makes up for that--at the least, I'd respect that argument.  But I still think that this is a fight that the advocates of pushing LIHTCs into more suburban areas may later regret winning.  (And Strap, I know this was not a merits judgment and will be sent back for remand, but it's pretty clear how the Court's ruling stacks the deck.)

The biggest danger I see in this is that certain relatively middle income communities could for various reasons like lower resident opposition or property values end up becoming "low-hanging fruit" for too many low income units while others see no effects from this ruling.  Desegregation can't all rest on the shoulders of the Lakewoods or Euclids of America.  The Avons and Kirtlands will have to step up, too.

 

Suppose you actually get that to happen, though, and a court order forces 100 new $25k-income black families into the middle of Avon.  What do you think would happen then?

Desegregation can't all rest on the shoulders of the Lakewoods or Euclids of America.  The Avons and Kirtlands will have to step up, too.

 

IMO, this has been a huge pet issue of mine, as from what I can tell just about every eastside inner-ring suburb of Greater Cleveland has already shouldered far too much of the burden for low-income housing, to the extent that it has damaged or even decimated local institutions in many of these cities.

 

I have to be careful how I word this, but a big part of the reason why many of these inner-ring suburbs have "struggling" or "failing" schools is because the ratings systems are biased against schools and districts with large concentrations of low-income students (and the challenges they bring with them). A big part of the reason why the services in these areas are lacking is because there exists only limited local industry and low-income residents can only afford to pay so little in taxes.

 

Government housing projects and Section 8 housing has long been far too concentrated in certain Cleveland neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs. I don't know if this ruling is the solution, but something must be done about spreading it out a bit so the middle-income residents of only a few areas (not just Cleveland proper, but also suburbs like Cleveland Heights, Euclid, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights, Richmond Heights, Shaker Heights, South Euclid, Warrensville Heights) aren't dealing with the entire burden.

The biggest danger I see in this is that certain relatively middle income communities could for various reasons like lower resident opposition or property values end up becoming "low-hanging fruit" for too many low income units while others see no effects from this ruling.  Desegregation can't all rest on the shoulders of the Lakewoods or Euclids of America.  The Avons and Kirtlands will have to step up, too.

 

Suppose you actually get that to happen, though, and a court order forces 100 new $25k-income black families into the middle of Avon.  What do you think would happen then?

 

I don't think that any court order is going to "force" anyone anywhere.  It seems like the effect of this ruling will be to require LIHTC developers to seek and pursue project opportunities in middle income areas; it will be up to the $25k-income families (of any race) to decide if they want to live there or not.  It gives them that option.  Some will find it works for them, so will find that it doesn't.  Was there anything else you are trying to get at with the question?

The layout of places like Avon and Kirtland results in a much higher cost of living, regardless of housing subsidies.  Anyone who qualifies for subsidized housing is going to have difficulty functioning in those areas due to the transportation costs.  The more affluent the area, the less likely it will even have sidewalks, let alone bus stops.  And there's rarely any intra-suburb bus service at all.  Sprawl does not serve everyone equally, which I daresay is the point of it.

Somebody works at those Walmart's and McDonalds, or the light industrial parks, or sweeps the floors in the offices and could make a go of it if there was relatively close affordable housing.  Just because someplace isn't pedestrian or bike friendly doesn't mean you can't walk or bike at all, it means that they aren't easy or fun.  But it will work for someone.  Also, auto ownership is far less expensive for someone capable of maintaining and repairing their own vehicle.  That's a portion of the low-moderate population as well. 

 

Open up opportunities, and let people find ways to fill them.

Or open up illusory opportunities and let people who think they're filling them waste years and money on a path to disillusionment.

The layout of places like Avon and Kirtland results in a much higher cost of living, regardless of housing subsidies.  Anyone who qualifies for subsidized housing is going to have difficulty functioning in those areas due to the transportation costs.  The more affluent the area, the less likely it will even have sidewalks, let alone bus stops.  And there's rarely any intra-suburb bus service at all.  Sprawl does not serve everyone equally, which I daresay is the point of it.

 

Maybe not Avon or Kirtland, but how about Solon, Mentor, Rocky River, Beachwood, etc.? Reasonable access to sidewalks and public transport in those areas.

 

The point I'm making, and maybe I'm having a conversation with myself, is that if the government is in the business of providing housing for people that they shouldn't be concentrating this housing in just a relatively few areas. It's overburdening these communities and acting as a driver for economic and racial segregation. And in an area as provincial as ours with so many fiefdoms that are fighting with each other for funding and refusing to share (even revenues that aren't really theirs), this is a big problem.

The layout of places like Avon and Kirtland results in a much higher cost of living, regardless of housing subsidies.  Anyone who qualifies for subsidized housing is going to have difficulty functioning in those areas due to the transportation costs.  The more affluent the area, the less likely it will even have sidewalks, let alone bus stops.  And there's rarely any intra-suburb bus service at all.  Sprawl does not serve everyone equally, which I daresay is the point of it.

 

Maybe not Avon or Kirtland, but how about Solon, Mentor, Rocky River, Beachwood, etc.? Reasonable access to sidewalks and public transport in those areas.

 

The point I'm making, and maybe I'm having a conversation with myself, is that if the government is in the business of providing housing for people that they shouldn't be concentrating this housing in just a relatively few areas. It's overburdening these communities and acting as a driver for economic and racial segregation. And in an area as provincial as ours with so many fiefdoms that are fighting with each other for funding and refusing to share (even revenues that aren't really theirs), this is a big problem.

 

You can't really ignore that the issue isn't race or even income, but behavior.  Indeed, many of the people who live in these areas moved there to escape this behavior.  It's easy for the agencies involved to work in areas that already have these issues that to attempt to address them, with the inevitable pushback.

 

A free society that de facto allows this behavior is also going to provide the means to escape from same.....one way or another.

A free society that de facto allows this behavior is also going to provide the means to escape from same.....one way or another.[/color]

 

Or give them the freedom to improve their condition. And in my experience most want to. A few that don't are the ones who get the headlines and ruin it for the others.

A free society that de facto allows this behavior is also going to provide the means to escape from same.....one way or another.[/color]

 

Or give them the freedom to improve their condition. And in my experience most want to. A few that don't are the ones who get the headlines and ruin it for the others.

 

Many do.  The welfare and housing rules prohibit ANYONE in the household from earning too much money.  So the children in the projects are dissuaded from getting a normal teenage position at McDonalds.    Those fast food restaurants on 30th Carnegie have a huge supply of employable people, but they have to bus in teenagers from other areas because none of the kids around there can work.  That is wrong.

A free society that de facto allows this behavior is also going to provide the means to escape from same.....one way or another.[/color]

 

Or give them the freedom to improve their condition. And in my experience most want to. A few that don't are the ones who get the headlines and ruin it for the others.

 

Many do.  The welfare and housing rules prohibit ANYONE in the household from earning too much money.  So the children in the projects are dissuaded from getting a normal teenage position at McDonalds.    Those fast food restaurants on 30th Carnegie have a huge supply of employable people, but they have to bus in teenagers from other areas because none of the kids around there can work.  That is wrong.

 

This is the kind of perverse welfare economics that makes me (and some other squishy libertarians) toy with the concept of a universal basic income (UBI).  (The hardcore ones would of course eliminate taxpayer-financed welfare spending entirely.)  When the system creates the outcome that it is an economically irrational move for a childless, unmarried, working-age, employable individual to actual go out and take employment, the system is wrong, not the individual.

 

But in the earlier quotes between E Rocc and KJP, note that the "them" is different: E Rocc's point is that if you force undesirable demographics (racial, economic, or otherwise) into areas where people moved to escape those undesirable demographics, they will find some other means of fight or flight if it is within their means to do so.  And legislation aimed at denying them the means to do so (either by confiscating the wealth needed to escape or imposing direct restrictions on development out past where you've currently forced your integrated housing) will necessarily become increasingly draconian for as long as the planners and those whose lives they're trying to plan are not on the same page.

^"Undesirable demographics ... racial" ... as in somebody from a different race living in the neighborhood is undesirable?  Really?  Are we still at this point in 2015 and you're openly admitting it? ... Both very disturbing and sad, at the same time.

You can't really ignore that the issue isn't race or even income, but behavior.

 

I think you're somewhat right, but I believe you're missing a piece of the puzzle when you say this.

 

In theory, most people are worried about behavior, but I think their judgement of what constitutes bad behavior or how severe the bad behavior is is often partially tainted by the race of the person.  We all know that, due to many factors beyond the scope of this discussion, there are correlations between race and socioeconomic status, but even beyond this, I believe that often times similar behavior between different races is interpreted differently.  A group of middle school black kids playing basketball and occasionally arguing about a call and swearing here and there is looked at as being a serious problem of "thugs" and a "changing neighborhood" by many suburban people (I have heard people say these things about relatively minor problems).  But get together a bunch of white middle school age kids who may swear and argue just as much, and people will just laugh it off as "stupid middle schoolers being annoying" or "teenage boys doing what they do" and not think of them as a threat like they do with the black teenagers.

I think Gramayre was just being factual. It's still a factor in how and why people making housing decisions.

 

Having lived with a particular racial sector as the majority where I live for more than 11 years now, I really don't enjoy it. It's been a truly eye-opening experience for me to live as a minority and to witness and be subject to tensions that exist solely because of racial and cultural differences. If I could live somewhere else, I would. But I only have to deal with it at home. I'm a majority every where else. I like to think that it's opened my eyes a little to what it's like to live as a minority and enabled me to try to be more tolerant and bridge gaps elsewhere in my life, but as a living experience at home, it's a continued source of frustration and tension and it's very hard not to lump "all" people of the race together when it's probably not all, just the hundreds and hundreds who live in the particular place where you live. There are more than 900 units in the complex where I live and more than 80%, probably closer to 85 or 90, are of one particular ethnic group. I talked to someone from yet another ethnic group (not mine and not the majority's) last week when she was out walking her dog and she too said how weird it was to feel like an unwanted minority in your own apartment complex. I think these struggles are still real and relevant in 2015, for sure, even if they are uncomfortable to talk about.

I'm not admitting it myself (for Pete's sake, I live in a neighborhood that's probably 50% black).  And I'm not even describing all suburbanites, not by a long shot.  But the history of the suburbs as refuges from urban-utopian central planning (including, but not limited to, forced integration) is not exactly a state secret.  And policies should be judged by their effects, not their intentions.

^Describing suburbs as a refuge from central planning is hilariously ironic, considering the central planning it takes to stomp on the property rights of would-be multifamily housing developers in sprawly burbs.

 

The income eligibility limits for family households are far higher than any teen would earn in part time work at a fast food place, so the housing rules aren't the problem per se.  And EITC income typically doesn't count towards eligibility limits, so there probably isn't much of an effective marginal tax from earning wage income. Also, only a fairly small share of CMHA tenants or voucher recipients participate in TANF (the main "welfare" program for families with able-bodied adults), largely because of the Clinton-era reforms.

 

Pretty sure the notion that "welfare and housing rules" are a significant disincentive to work is widely overblown at this point, except in the abstract sense that it's possible not to starve to death without earning wages. But hey, why let a good 1992 talking point die, eh?

 

EDIT: oh, and income from household members under 18 is explicitly excluded from HUD eligibility tests (http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/promotingfh/11-Fact-Sheet-S-8-English.pdf) so 'welfare and housing rules prohibit ANYONE in the household from earning too much money' Is just flat incorrect, at least as it applies to housing benefits.

 

That said, the administrative burden of our patchwork of welfare programs (writ large) make UBI a very interesting policy idea to people across the ideaological spectrum.

^Describing suburbs as a refuge from central planning is hilariously ironic, considering the central planning it takes to stomp on the property rights of would-be multifamily housing developers in sprawly burbs.

 

Whether you consider it ironic or not, it's true.  It was why they were built, why they were built how they were built, why they often strongly resisted annexation, and more.  As for central planning, that planning didn't come from Washington or by way of court order the way many forced-integration measures did.  It was awful urban planning, but it had the support of the local population--though of course with a generous subsidy of tax dollars, ironically often also from Washington in the form of highway funds.

 

EDIT: oh, and income from household members under 18 is explicitly excluded from HUD eligibility tests (http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/promotingfh/11-Fact-Sheet-S-8-English.pdf) so the welfare and housing rules prohibit ANYONE in the household from earning too much money. Is just flat incorrect, at least as it applies to housing benefits.

 

This is good to know for as far as it goes.  Does that apply to other housing-subsidy programs in the area (EDEN, etc.)?  It's all but impossible to keep straight.

^Describing suburbs as a refuge from central planning is hilariously ironic, considering the central planning it takes to stomp on the property rights of would-be multifamily housing developers in sprawly burbs.

 

Indeed.  The idea that the suburbs are bastions of freedom from government interference (how about rural-utopian planning?) is farcical to a level that would be funny if it wasn't so depressing.  The amount of central planning (whether Federal, state, county, municipal, or even private) involved in creating the suburbs puts anything that happened in cities to shame. 

^It's a weird libertarian blind spot: the local government's police power may be closer to the electorate, but it's no less coercive.

 

^^I don't know what EDEN is, but the vast majority of capital "A" affordable housing is either run by housing authorities (subject to HUD rules) or produced under the LIHTC. And voucher eligibility is also ultimately governed by HUD.  Really, the marginal tax on employment wages posed by benefit phase-outs has been something policymakers have been addressing for decades.  It's not perfect eve now, but I'm pretty sure the 1990s welfare reform very squarely addressed the structural disincentives to work.

 

Also, what is all this "forced integration" coming from Washington you refer to?  I noticed in another thread that you bizarrely referred to Brown v Board as "forced integration," but you can't possibly equate the dismantling of de jure segregation with "forced integration."

^It's a weird libertarian blind spot: the local government's police power may be closer to the electorate, but it's no less coercive.

 

We're hardly blind to that.  But the fact that's local means that a smaller number of voters can affect the outcome, and the smaller jurisdictional boundaries make voting with one's feet more feasible.

 

Also, what is all this "forced integration" coming from Washington you refer to?  I noticed in another thread that you bizarrely referred to Brown v Board as "forced integration," but you can't possibly equate the dismantling of de jure segregation with "forced integration."

 

Check it again.  What I probably said was that measures such as forced busing were forced integration, and that such measures were part of the implementation of the "all deliberate speed" mandate in Brown.  Brown didn't command it directly, but lower courts seized on it and got harsher with it the more they faced popular resistance.  Some of the federal edicts were insanely expensive, and yes, I consider it fair to say that some federal judges got drunk with power and enjoyed what they thought of as well-deserved sticking it to segregationist publics.  In Missouri, one federal court simply ordered the Kansas City school district to build a majority-minority high school an indoor track and Olympic swimming pool as part of a brand new high school at a cost of something like $30-40 million.

 

As for me, yes, I live in a neighborhood that's probably split pretty evenly (a rarity these days), but if this district or geographic area were under a federal court order that would deny me the right to choose where my son goes to school, you'd better believe I'd never have moved here.  I can't believe how callously some people, particularly of the central-planner mindset (which is unfortunately a lot of the urbanist community), treat such issues--and how much they blame others for the inevitable and perfectly understandable backlash against such schemes.  I would never allow my son to be used as a raw material in someone else's social experiment, particularly if it meant sending him to Buchtel or something.  Therefore, I'm not about to judge those who similarly refused to be part of such schemes, even when I know that they were segregationists.  The fact that they're wrong about a lot doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything.

these conversations are really depressing and foreign to me. I'm not saying Painesville was some racist-free place. It still isn't. But there was never a time I remember--and going back even farther than the seventy years that this picture was taken (not that I'm that old!--lol)--that the schools were not integrated. There was defacto segregation in housing, and there still is, and if you ask blacks who grew up there generations ago if they were treated the same as whites they would probably say no. But integration developed naturally, organically. I don't believe you can force it to happen, anywhere--

 

Jackson Street School, 6th grade, 1945

As for me, yes, I live in a neighborhood that's probably split pretty evenly (a rarity these days), but if this district or geographic area were under a federal court order that would deny me the right to choose where my son goes to school, you'd better believe I'd never have moved here.  I can't believe how callously some people, particularly of the central-planner mindset (which is unfortunately a lot of the urbanist community), treat such issues--and how much they blame others for the inevitable and perfectly understandable backlash against such schemes.  I would never allow my son to be used as a raw material in someone else's social experiment, particularly if it meant sending him to Buchtel or something.  Therefore, I'm not about to judge those who similarly refused to be part of such schemes, even when I know that they were segregationists.  The fact that they're wrong about a lot doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything.

 

This is getting off track.  I'm certainly not here to defend busing, which in cities like Cleveland has failed by any standard. But I think you're looking at Brown very myopically.  Busing wasn't dropped by Washington into school districts that merely experienced de facto segregation as a result of free sorting.  Its was a remedy in districts where officials purposefully, and race-consciously designed and enforced policies to further segregation (usually constant and tortured boundary re-drawing).  So you can say that you are sympathetic to people not wanting to be part of some else's social experiment, but many of those same people were happily imposing their own social experiment on others for decades before, right up to the point those busing decisions came down. Ending that sort of active segregation is also a legacy of Brown, even in the north. It strikes me as disingenuous to point to government desegregation as radical government intervention without acknowledging the lengths to which local governments were going to actively promote it beforehand.

 

There's also a major temporal disconnect when blaming "forced integration" for suburbanization, which is what kicked off this strand of discussion.  Busing wasn't really a thing till the 1970s, 20 years after Brown, and long after mass postwar suburbanization and inner-city decline were steaming along. I'm sure it pushed things along, but I also suspect it wouldn't have mattered much in the end. Plenty of inner-ring suburbs integrated and then completely turned over, despite having their own school districts.  I think there's even some empirical work discounting the roll of deseg orders in population shifts.

You can't really ignore that the issue isn't race or even income, but behavior.  Indeed, many of the people who live in these areas moved there to escape this behavior.  It's easy for the agencies involved to work in areas that already have these issues that to attempt to address them, with the inevitable pushback.

 

A free society that de facto allows this behavior is also going to provide the means to escape from same.....one way or another.

 

Right, I get that there are reasons why middle and upper-income people usually don't choose to live near large concentrations of low-income people.  However we have government policies that are placing the burden of the issues that come with concentrating poor people in only a few areas, and this needs to be addressed. The damage is already done to some communities.

Who is talking about forced integration?  The conversation was about building LIHTC housing in suburbs.  The question isn't forced integration, as nobody is being forced to live anywhere.  The question is if we should allow LIHTC and other affordable housing programs be used to promote de facto segregation.  Let's not let straw men get us off track here.

People need to get over the importance of neighborhoods, integrated or otherwise.  People don't need neighbors anymore to borrow tools or any of that because everything's so cheap now.  And you don't need people on your block to be friends with since you can find people with your precise interests online.  People have this idea that there are these "perfect" neighborhoods out there, when really there is usually a bunch of anger simmering under the surface.  It's crazy how people want to live around people "like them" but then all they do is get competitive with these people.  I lived in one of the first streets in a new subdivision when I was about 10 and the optimistic mood of the new neighborhood faded pretty quickly as hundreds of new homeowners settled into a steady pattern of bickering over items of no real importance. 

 

 

People need to get over the importance of neighborhoods, integrated or otherwise.  People don't need neighbors anymore to borrow tools or any of that because everything's so cheap now.  And you don't need people on your block to be friends with since you can find people with your precise interests online.  People have this idea that there are these "perfect" neighborhoods out there, when really there is usually a bunch of anger simmering under the surface.  It's crazy how people want to live around people "like them" but then all they do is get competitive with these people.  I lived in one of the first streets in a new subdivision when I was about 10 and the optimistic mood of the new neighborhood faded pretty quickly as hundreds of new homeowners settled into a steady pattern of bickering over items of no real importance.

 

Online communities supplement physical neighborhoods but don't supplant them.

 

One of my board gaming group's pipes froze this winter and they needed somewhere to shower, and I was able to offer them ours.  I wouldn't have known about them if I hadn't met them through a group I learned about online (though of course we also meet in real life), so the online community mattered, but it also matters that they're in our neighborhood; my offer would have been basically useless if they'd been in Cleveland.

 

Proximity still matters and a less sprawling community offers more opportunities for happy coincidences like that--someone you know online also being in your same general neighborhood.

 

Neighborhoods also still matter even when you don't know everyone on your block.  After all, houses don't commit crimes, people do.  I may not know everyone in my neighborhood, but I was certainly looking for certain general income and social statistics (crime first and foremost) when I bought here in addition to the physical proximity to downtown Akron.  It's true that there are only five houses on my street where I know the residents by sight.  But that's not everything that a neighborhood matters for.

People need to get over the importance of neighborhoods, integrated or otherwise.  People don't need neighbors anymore to borrow tools or any of that because everything's so cheap now.  And you don't need people on your block to be friends with since you can find people with your precise interests online.  People have this idea that there are these "perfect" neighborhoods out there, when really there is usually a bunch of anger simmering under the surface.  It's crazy how people want to live around people "like them" but then all they do is get competitive with these people.  I lived in one of the first streets in a new subdivision when I was about 10 and the optimistic mood of the new neighborhood faded pretty quickly as hundreds of new homeowners settled into a steady pattern of bickering over items of no real importance. 

 

I guess that's true to a large degree, but the issue remains that, at least in Greater Cleveland with our insular municipalities, where you live (specifically who you live near or is in your neighborhood) will often dictate how much you pay in taxes, who you're children are going to school with, how your city's services are being utilized, and a whole host of other quality of life issues that people do care about, even if they don't necessarily get along with their immediate neighbors. This is why people go to such great lengths to surround themselves with other like-minded or high-achieving people, even if they don't necessarily like them on a personal level. It's also, I believe part of the motivation behind the failed Section 8 program, which sounded good in theory, but hasn't come close to working out in practice and ended up fueling sprawl even further.

^I'm skeptical Section 8 is a very significant driver of sprawl. It's true the the number of voucher recipients in the inner ring Cleveland burbs has been increasing, but the raw total is still pretty underwhelming: about 6,800 households as of Jan 2015. Between 2005 and 2015, number of voucher holders actually dropped in Shaker Hts, Cleveland Hts, and University Hts (I think you are a Hts resident). And despite the hysteria, it increased by only about 50 households in Lakewood over that 10 year period.  The big increases were in Euclid and the SE corridor burbs: Garfield Hts, Maple Hts, and Bedford Hts. I suspect those increases reflect sprawl (i.e., dropping relative real estate costs as new homebuyers choose larger lots further out) as much as they're causing it.

 

[source of voucher counts: Appendix I of this CSU report: http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2282&context=urban_facpub]

 

My hunch is that people aren't nearly as good at identifying voucher holders as they think they are, so they attribute far too much neighborhood change to them.

I would agree with the skepticism about Section 8.  It's too small and too dispersed to blame for much.  I obviously wrinkle my nose at in in libertarian principle, but numbers matter in practice.

I would agree with the skepticism about Section 8.  It's too small and too dispersed to blame for much.  I obviously wrinkle my nose at in in libertarian principle, but numbers matter in practice.

 

I don't know if I agree. In looking at the map that is on page 6 of the report that StrapHanger linked, it appears as if there are suburbs where every neighborhood has at least 10% Section 8 housing, and several neighborhoods of 20-45% Section 8 housing. IMO, those are very high concentrations, levels at which can be devastating (for a wide variety of reasons) to the fabric of those neighborhoods. I get why these concentrations happened in those particular suburbs, but I think an argument could be made that all of these suburbs would have been better off if Section 8 never existed and these homes were abandoned long-term until the marker recovered or even torn down if that became necessary.

 

Maybe I'm not being fair to Section 8 residents and making assumptions; but if nothing else (behavior aside), by definition, these are low-income residents and they're not contributing as much to the local tax base, though still using services. This of course would mean that more of the burden for funding these services fall onto other residents, particularly if there is not a solid base of commerce or industry in these suburbs. And yes, bringing this all back around to the topic at hand, this does lead to sprawl for middle and upper-income people that look at the situation like this.