What’s equitable about spending six times as much per homeless person in the suburbs as in the city?

The “equity” standard that’s guiding the division of revenue for Metro’s housing initiative is based on politics, not need.

Portland’s regional government Metro is rapidly moving ahead with a proposed $250 million per year program to fight homelessness.

It’s plainly motivated by the fact that the growth of homelessness in Portland is a highly rated public concern-a third of Portland residents identified it as a #1 concern, up from just 1 percent nine years ago.   Public concern with homelessness is such that  Metro fears it will have trouble getting widespread support for its $4 billion transportation initiative if something isn’t done to address homelessness.

So after saying the homeless measure could wait until after the Transportation measure is put to the voters (in November), the Metro Council is moving on a hurried schedule to craft a homeless measure to appear on the region’s May 2020 primary election.

It’s plainly a rush job:  the proposed ordinance creating the program was first made public on February 4, had its first public hearings on February 14,  and would need to be adopted by the Council by February 27 in order to qualify for the May ballot.  The measure is very bare bones, it provides only the loosest of definitions about who is eligible to receive assistance and what money can be spent on.

The thing it is clear about, however, is how the money will be allocated,  Each of Portland’s three counties (Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington) will split 95 percent of the funds raised region-wide in proportion to their counties share of the Metro district’s population. And counties will be in the driver’s seat for deciding how funds are spent in their counties.  Aside from 5 percent reserved for regional use (including administration), Metro is acting solely as the banker for homeless services.

SECTION 7. Allocation of Revenue  Metro will annually allocate at least 95 percent of the allocable Supportive Housing Services Revenue within each county based on each county’s Metro boundary population percentage relative to the other counties.

DRAFT EXHIBIT A TO RESOLUTION NO. 20-5083
WS 2-18-2020

Concern about homelessness is, perforce, an equity issue.  Those who are living on the street or in shelters are plainly the among the worst off among us, and dedicating additional public resources to alleviate their suffering and provide them shelter seems like an intrinsically equitable endeavor.

Metro’s proposed adopting resolution is outspoken about clothing the entire effort as the alleviation of vast and historic wrongs:  It finds:

WHEREAS, communities of color have been directly impacted by a long list of systemic inequities and discriminatory policies that have caused higher rates of housing instability and homelessness among people of color and they are disproportionately represented in the housing affordability and homelessness crisis

(Draft Resolution No. 20-5083 WS 2/18/20)

That principle is followed up in Metro’s proposed enacting ordinance which would requireeach of the counties receiving funds adhere closely to Metro’s own statements about what constitutes equitable planning processes.  Specifically, Metro mandates that counties allocate funds in a way that redresses inequities.

A local implementation plan must include the following:

…..
2. A description of how the key objectives of Metro’s Strategic Plan to Advance Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion have been incorporated. This should include a thorough racial equity analysis and strategy that includes: (1) an analysis of the racial disparities among people experiencing homelessness and the priority service population; (2) disparities in access and outcomes in current services for people experiencing homelessness and the priority service population; (3) clearly defined service strategies and resource allocations intended to remedy existing disparities and ensure equitable access to funds; and (4) an articulation of how perspectives of communities of color and culturally specific groups were considered and incorporated.

DRAFT EXHIBIT A TO RESOLUTION NO. 20-5083 WS 2-18-2020

Counties have to “remedy existing disparities and ensure equitable access to funds,” within their counties. That policy doesn’t apply, however, with Metro’s allocation of funds within the metropolitan area.  That’s because  95 percent of the funds raised by Metro (after deducting its administrative costs) are to be allocated to counties based solely on population.  But by every imaginable definition of homelessness, the homeless are not evenly distributed proportional to the overall population.  Homelessness in all of its forms, and particularly in its most serious forms–the unsheltered living on the streets and the chronically homeless, who’ve been without a home for a year or more–are dramatically more concentrated in Multnomah County than in the two suburban counties (Clackamas and Washington).  In addition, three-fourths of African American homeless and seven of eight Latino homeless persons in the region live in Multnomah County. The county with the largest burden of dealing with homeless persons of color gets far less resources, per homeless person, than surrounding suburbs.

Where the homeless live in Metro Portland?

Here we explore the data gathered in the 2019 “Point-in-Time” surveys of the homeless population in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties.  The Point-in-Time data collection effort probably understates the magnitude of the homelessness problem, but provides the best data on its location within the region, and the clearest picture of the race and ethnicity of the homeless.

We focus on two data points from the Point-in-Time Survey :  the unsheltered population (people living in the streets) and the total homeless population, which includes sheltered homeless (in shelters, missions, or temporary accomodation).  The following table shows the latest data on the populations of the three counties, and the number of persons counted as homeless in the latest (2019) Point-in-Time survey.  The first panel of the table shows the actual counts; the second panel shows the percentage distribution by county.Multnomah County constitutes 44 percent of the region’s population, but is home to about 77 percent of the region’s unsheltered homeless and about 70 percent of the region’s total homeless population.  Unsurprisingly, homelessness in Portland, as in most of the United States is concentrated in urban centers.

Notice that the Metro ordinance provides that funds will be allocated not according to the homeless population in each county, but the total population in each county.  What this means in practice is that some counties will get much more than others relative to the size of their homeless population (and by implication, homeless problems). Multnomah County also has a higher proportion of homeless people who are “unsheltered” than Clackamas or Washington Counties. Multnomah County also accounts for three-quarters of those in the three counties who are classified as “chronically homeless.”

We’ve computed the estimated allocation of a $250 million per year program based on overall county population, as shown the the following table.  Each county gets the same share of the $250 million total as its share of total population:  Multnomah County gets 44 percent or about $110 million, and the other counties get proportionate amounts.  We’ve also computed the amount that each county gets per homeless person and per unsheltered person. We use the relative size of the unsheltered and homeless population in each county to index the  need, and show how much is available in each county relative to that need.

These data show that on a per homeless person basis, Washington County gets about five to six times as much as Multnomah County, and that Clackamas County gets about two to three times as much as Multnomah County.  Per unsheltered homeless person, Multnomah County gets $54,000; while Washington County gets more than six times as much:  $355,000.

To be clear:  This table is using a “per homeless person” measure not as an absolute indicator of spending per person.  The scope of the homeless problem overall is larger than captured by the point-in-time survey, and also the measure is intended to be broader, i.e. providing rent subsidies to keep households from becoming homeless. But we take this figure as a robust indicator of the relative need in each county, and the resources that each county has relative to the need, as identified by the most severe and acute aspect of the homelessness problem.

(Note that using county totals doesn’t correspond exactly to the provisions of the Metro ordinance.  Only the population within the Metro boundary (which excludes outlying cities in each county) constitutes the basis for the distribution.  Excluding these areas would affect both our estimates of the allocation of funds and our estimates of the homeless population in each county.  For this analysis, we have relied on published and available county totals.)

This system of allocation works to the disadvantage of persons of color.  Multnomah County accounts for more than three-quarters of the homeless persons in the region who are Black or Latino.  According to the three county’s Point-in-Time surveys for 2019, Multnomah County accounted for 373 of the region’s 582 Black homeless (76 percent) and 648 of the region’s 743 Latino homeless (88 percent).  What Metro’s measure does is to replicate, if not amplify, the racial and ethnic inequity of the homeless in Multnomah County by providing them vastly smaller resources than it provides per homeless person in the suburban counties.

If this effort is all about political coalition building, and if each county is viewed as a separate fiefdom, then slicing the revenue pie proportional to population makes sense.  But if homelessness is really a shared regional concern, and if Metro is really a regional government–rather than just a revenue-raising and pie-slicing middleman for counties, then it really ought to embrace the logic of its own rhetoric about equity, and about impact.

If three-quarters of the homeless are in Multnomah County, then Metro ought to spend most of the region’s resources there.  There’s no plausible regional argument for spending five or six times as much on a homeless person in Washington County than on an otherwise similar homeless person in Multnomah County.  If Metro is serious about overcoming decades of discrimination against communities of color who’ve been disadvantaged in their access to resources then it should devote at least as much, per homeless person to those communities as to others.

Funding in search of policy and results

Everyone recognizes that homelessness is a complex, gnarly problem.  But aside from sketching the outer boundaries of what’s permissible, and asking counties to report what they spent the money on, there’s nothing in this measure that spells out a strategy, or expected results, or really established any real accountability.  The “outcome-based” portion of the ordinance actually says nothing about outcomes.  It basically just says “counties, do what you think best.”

SECTION 11. Outcome-Based Implementation Policy
Metro recognizes that each county may approach program implementation differently depending
on the unique needs of its residents and communities. Therefore, it is the policy of the Metro Council that there be sufficient flexibility in implementation to best serve the needs of residents, communities, and those receiving Supportive Housing Services from program funding.

What this tells us about equity

It’s become increasingly fashionable to talk about the equity implications of public policy. For many governments, and Metro in particular that takes the form of long lamentations about past injustices and ornately wordy but nebulous commitments to assure engagement and participation and to hear the voices of the those who’ve been disadvantaged by past policies.  But the clearest way to judge the equity of any proposal is to look past the rhetoric and look to see where the money is going.  And in the cases of this measure, which is pitched at dealing with a problem that disproportionately affects the region’s central county, it ends up devoting a disproportionate share of resources to suburban counties.

Equity has to be more about allocating resources to areas of need and insisting on measurable results, rather than just performative virtue signaling and ritual incantations of historic grievances.  When you look at the numbers associated with this measure, you see that real equity considerations take a back seat to the lofty rhetoric.

If you’re homeless in the Portland area, it shouldn’t matter what county you live in.  But Metro’s proposed allocation system would provide vastly fewer resources per homeless person in Multnomah County. That’s particularly ironic in light of the fact that most of the persons of color who are homeless in the region live in Multnomah County.  If you’re looking to redress the resource inequities that have worked to the disadvantage of these groups, this approach doesn’t do that.

Editor’s Note:  As of this writing, its unclear how much money the voters will be asked to provide.  As Oregon Public Broadcasting reported:

Metro was hoping to raise $250 million to $300 million per year, but it appears the tax it proposed might raise only about half that amount.  Latest estimates are it would provide $135,000,000 per year.

This post has been revised to correct formatting errors.

Walkable density mapped for the nation’s largest metropolitan areas

by DW Rowlands

Editor’s Note:  We’re pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands.  DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  Her current research focuses on characterizing neighborhoods based on their amenability to public transit and on the relationship between race and the distribution of grocery stores in the DC area. She also writes on DC transportation, history, and demographic issues for Greater Greater Washington and the DC Policy Center. Follow DW on twitter at @82_Streetcar or contact her by email at d.w.rowlands<at>gmail.com.

In a companion commentary, DW Rowlands describes a technique for adjusting density measurements to account for the connectedness of local street networks. This measurement shows the difference between the actual walkable density (how many people live nearby based on how far one can walk) rather than straight-line or “ideal” density (how many people are nearby based on a measure that considers only straight-line distances).  The difference between the two measures (walkable density vs. ideal density) is an indicator of how well connected a neighborhood is for people walking.  This page shows maps of each of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, with census tracts shaded based on how closely each neighborhood’s actual walkable density approaches its ideal (straight-line) density.  Areas shaded dark blue are those where realized walkable density comes closest to ideal density; areas shaded light blue are those where the disconnectedness of the street network means that actual walkable density is dramatically less than idea density.

Atlanta

Baltimore

Boston

Chicago

Cleveland

Denver

Detroit

Houston

Los Angeles

Memphis

New York

Philadelphia

Phoenix

Portland

San Francisco

Seattle

A new way of measuring urban density that explicitly considers walkability

by DW Rowlands

Editor’s Note:  We’re pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands.  DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  Her current research focuses on characterizing neighborhoods based on their amenability to public transit and on the relationship between race and the distribution of grocery stores in the DC area.  She also writes on DC transportation, history, and demographic issues for Greater Greater Washington and the DC Policy Center. Follow DW on twitter at @82_Streetcar or contact her by email at d.w.rowlands<at>gmail.com.

Conventional density measures versus walkable density measures

Density is one of the most fundamental properties of urban areas: what makes a city different from a suburb, and suburbs different from rural areas is chiefly how many people there are, and how close they are to each other.  The fact that people in cities live and work near each other is both economically important—it makes it easier for specialized jobs and workers and stores and customers to find each other—and culturally important—it exposes people to those different from them while also making it easier to find others who share their interests, needs, and cultural traditions.

Maps of Walkable Density vs. Ideal Density for US Metro Areas

Density is also very important for transportation.  Most people are unwilling to walk much more than half a mile on a regular basis, which means that destinations—jobs, stores, transit stops, and so on—are only within “walking distance” of people within a half mile of them.  However, while it’s common to calculate the density of a city, or a metro area, by dividing the total population by the total area, this method isn’t always informative. If 80% of the people in a city live in 20% of the city’s area, then the average person is experiencing much higher population density than this average value would suggest.

A more-useful way to measure the density that people actually experience is to calculate the “population-weighted average” of population density.  The population density of each Census tract or block group is calculated individually, and the densities are averaged together, weighted by their population.  A population-weighted average shows the level of density experienced by the typical resident in his or her census tract. This means that the densities of block groups with more residents have a bigger influence on the overall value.

This measure has limitations as well.  A particularly significant one is the fact that not everywhere within a certain straight-line distance of a location can be reached by walking that distance: in cities, pedestrians are generally limited to following the street network.  In a city with a traditional street grid, this doesn’t make that big a difference, though it means you have to walk further to get somewhere diagonal to the street grid than somewhere you can get to by following a single street.

Most neighborhoods in American metro areas don’t have ideal street grids, however: winding roads and cul-de-sacs force pedestrians to take indirect trips, and bodies of water, hills, freeways, industrial areas, and superblocks often pose barriers.  This reduces the number of destinations that can be reached by walking a given distance. To take this into account, I’ve developed a statistic called “Percent Ideal Walkshed” to measure the fraction of locations within a half mile of the center a block group that are actually within a half-mile walk of it.

Calculating percent ideal walkshed as measure of walkable density

To calculate percent ideal walkshed, I began by finding the center of every Census block group in a metropolitan area.  (Here, I’ve selected four block groups in downtown Denver, outlined in green, to use as examples.) If the street grid didn’t constrain where one could walk, everywhere in the beige half-mile-radius circles would be within a half-mile walk of the centers of the block groups.

However, since pedestrians can’t fly, they do have to walk along the street grid.  The streets within a half-mile walk of the centers of the block groups are highlighted in red.  In an area with a good street grid, like the left-most block group, this “walkshed” forms a diamond shape with its tips nearly at the edge of the half-mile circle.  If the street grid is broken up by freeways, railroad tracks, or other obstacles, though, the walkshed may cover much less of the circle.

I then created buffers around these streets to convert the one-dimensional walkshed of streets into a two-dimensional area—here shown in brown—that is a half-mile walk from the center of the block group.  The better-connected the street grid is in the region around a block group, the closer the area of this brown buffer will be to that of the beige half-mile circle.

Finally, I color-coded each block group by the ratio of the area of the brown walkshed buffer to the area of the beige half-mile circle.  I call this value “Percent Ideal Walkshed,” because it measures the fraction of area within a half mile of the center of the block group—the ideal walkshed—that is within the true walkshed of the center of the block group.

When this analysis is performed over the whole metropolitan area, it shows that the areas with the most-ideal walksheds are mostly concentrated in the core—which one would expect to be densest—but that clusters with high percent ideal walkshed values are found elsewhere, too, indicating suburban areas with good, well-connected local street grids.  We’ve mapped walkable density in 17 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas; you can see those maps here.

One very consistent pattern in these maps is that urban cores have much higher values of percent ideal walkshed than their suburbs do.  This means that core areas—which tend to be the densest parts of a metro area—have walkable densities closer to their conventionally-measured densities than suburbs do: conventional density measures understate the walkable density of urban areas relative to suburban areas.

Metro areas ranked by walkable density

Maps of percent ideal walkshed give a convenient way to tell how much the structure of the street network reduces effective “lived” density on a local scale.  However, they don’t give a very useful sense of how good or bad the street network in a metropolitan area overall is. In calculating an average value of percent ideal walkshed, we run into the same issue we saw with average population density: what really matters is the quality of the walkshed of where the average person lives.

To determine the quality of the walkshed experienced by the average resident, I calculated the population-weighted average population densities—the average population densities of block groups, weighted by the populations of the block group—and walkshed-adjusted population-weighted average population densities—the same calculation, but with each block group’s density multiplied by its percent ideal walkshed—for each of the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States.

In addition to the population weighted figures, I performed the same calculations with job-weighted job density, finding the connectedness of the street network where the average job in a metro area is located.  Unsurprisingly, since jobs tend to be more concentrated in downtowns with good street grids than population is, these values are generally higher than the population-weighted figures.The ratio of the walkshed-adjusted to non-walkshed-adjusted density for a metro area is equivalent to the population-weighted average of the percent ideal walkshed for the metro area.  Unsurprisingly, the metro areas with the highest ratios are New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco: all cities with dense urban cores with good grid networks. Next on the list are less-dense metro areas in the Midwest and West that have regular grid networks that extend even into their low-density suburbs, as well as Boston, which has a dense urban core that has a well-connect, but non-grid, street network.  The cities that do the worst by this measure—Charlotte, Orlando, and Atlanta—are all low-density cities in the Southeast that lack significant street grid networks.

The pattern here is fairly similar, but there are some differences.  Washington does significantly better in the job-weighted rankings, presumably because its urban core, where most jobs are, has a regular grid, while most of the MSA’s residents live in post-World War II suburbs with much less well-connected street grids.  (Unlike other major Northeastern and Midwestern cities, most of the Washington MSA’s population growth has happened in the automobile era, due to the expansion of the Federal government during the New Deal and World War II.)

Notably, only two metro areas have worse-connected street grids where the average job is located than where the average resident is located: Detroit and Riverside.  In Detroit, this is likely because the urban core, which has a regular street grid, has lost the vast majority of its jobs, while employment is decentralized to suburban locations.  While the urban core has also lost significant population, its job loss has been worse, and many of the residential suburban areas still have regular street grids.  

In Riverside, the effect is more likely related to the fact that the Riverside MSA is, to a significant degree, a suburb of the Los Angeles MSA. Jobs in the Riverside metro area has a disproportionately large, low density distribution industry and a large share of retail and other jobs that serve residents, which are more likely to be found in car-oriented suburban areas with disconnected street grids (for example, near freeway interchanges) than jobs in metro areas that have strong downtown commercial cores.

Both the population and the job density data tell roughly the same story, however.  Just as conventional density measures understate the walkable density of urban cores compared to suburbs, they understate the walkable density of older traditional metro areas compared to newer sunbelt ones.

Appendix: Technical Notes

Walksheds were calculated with the “service area” tool in QGIS 3; all other data processing was done in R, primarily using the sf package for data analysis and the tigris, tidycensus, and lehdr packages to download data.  All calculations were done using the local state plane that contained the metro area (or the CBD of the metro area, for metro areas that extend across state plane boundaries) as calculations in a US-wide planar projection caused too much distortion to get accurate and consistent area values.

Walksheds were calculated from the point on the street network nearest to the centroid of the land portion of each block group.  All walksheds were based on a travel distance of 800 m and a 10-m tolerance for geometry gaps. Although this is narrower than the width of many roadways, it was found that using a larger tolerance caused issues in certain areas—particularly in Portland—where block sizes were very small and a larger tolerance could cause the QGIS service area tool to randomly jump across blocks.  An 80-m buffer around the walkshed line features was used to calculate the area of the walkshed.

Data Sources

My walksheds were calculated using US Census 2018 Tiger-Line street networks with roads marked as freeways and freeway ramps removed.  Unfortunately, this data does not include information on the presence or absence of sidewalks.

Population and job data were also taken from US Census products: the 2018 5-year American Community Survey estimates for population and the 2015 Longitudinal Employment-Household Dynamics data for jobs.  This jobs data includes private, state government, and Federal employees, but excludes active-duty military personnel and some civilian Federal employees in defense and national security jobs.

Formulas

Population-weighted average population density was calculated with the formula

where pk and dk are the population and population density of the kth block group and Ptot is the total population of the metro area. 

Walkshed-adjusted population-weighted average population density was calculated with the formula

where wk, pk, and dk are the percent ideal walkshed, population, and population density of the kth block group and Ptot is the total population of the metro area.  The formulas for job-weighted average job density and walkshed-adjusted job-weighted average job density were the same except that job densities and numbers of jobs were used in place of population densities and populations.

ODOT’s lies about safety at the Rose Quarter are so blatant they can be seen 400 miles away.

Freeway widening isn’t about deaths or injuries, but “motorist inconvenience” according to this safety expert, making this $800 million project an egregious waste of funds

Traffic safety is a real issue, and by any objective measure, Oregon is failing badly. Between 2013 and 2016 traffic deaths in the state increased by more than 50 percent.  Car crashes kill hundreds of Oregonians each year.

Those grim statistics rightly make safety a primary concern in transportation planning. But they’ve also led the Oregon Department of Transportation to hijack that concern and to pervert concerns about safety to support spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a project that has ultimately, nothing to do with safety.

This case is so egregious that it’s visible a full state away, in Boise, Idaho.

Don Kostelec is one of the sharpest voices for transportation safety in the US.A traffic engineer, he consistently points out the flaws in our current system of designing road to optimize vehicle speeds and throughput.He researches, practices and writes tirelessly on the subject; his “Twelve Days of Safety Myths,” published by Strong Towns, is an insightful exposure of the biases of many current industry practices.

Last March, Kostelec was an expert presenter for Boise’s citizen planning academy, a training course that helps citizens become more knowledgable about a range of land use, transportation and housing issues. In his presentation, “Is Congestion Really the Problem?” Kostelec singled out Portland’s Rose Quarter Freeway project as a classic example of a state Department of Transportation using lies about safety to sell a project designed to make cars move faster.

As we’ve noted at City Observatory, one of the Oregon’s Department of Transportation has loudly (and dishonestly) claimed that I-5 at the Rose Quarter is the state’s “#1 crash location.”  As Kostelec notes, that sounds pretty scary to the public and most officials:

The Oregon DOT . . . says that part of the project need to spend $450 million to add some amplified on and off ramps  is due to safety issues on I-5, and it says that it has the highest crash rate in the state. And you’re a policy-maker, you’re a legislator, you’re a planning and zoning commissioner, and you hear the state DOT saying we have the highest crash rate on the state system–we have to do that, right? We’ve got to do something?

Well, you’ve got to go to the Appendix . . .

And Kostelec takes his audience to the Appendix, which looks like this:

As Kostelec points out, according to ODOT’s own data for the most recent five-year period, none of the crashes in the project area have been fatal, or even serious.  Nearly all of the crashes are non-injury fender benders.

Kostelec digs deeper:  Despite ODOT’s claims that peak hour traffic is slowed by these fender-benders, ODOT’s data shows that most crashes actually happen during non-peak hours.

“. . . when you look at when crashes are occurring, for the most part, they’re occurring mid-day,  not at the time of day that the traffic models and things are trying to address.”

Because most of the crashes happen when the freeway is not jammed, widening the freeway is unlikely to do anything to reduce the number of crashes. If anything, as Kostelec argues, faster traffic is likely to increase the severity of the crashes that do occur.

The key takeaway here is that we ought to care about lives lost and injuries sustained, not the number of crashes. As a result, the I-5 Rose Quarter project isn’t about safety, its rally about motorist convenience. Kostelec:

“What are we trying to do here?  We’re trying to prevent a bunch of no-injury crashes.  Now nobody wants to be in a fender bender.  I have a minor ding.  But that’s what I call a motorists inconvenience crash . . . and we’re proposing to put $500 million into this . . . good for you Oregon DOT.  You’ve done a hell of a job with safety, . . .

Designing our roads–and indeed, re-engineering our entire urban environment–for the speed and convenience of drivers are what has produced our current lethal transportation system. It’s shocking and perverse that highway engineers at the Oregon Department of Transportation can use the mantle of “safety” to peddle a an $800 million project that addresses no real safety need, at the same time it routinely pleads poverty when asked to fix the many multi-lane arterial streets in the Portland area that routinely kill and maim our citizens.

Editor’s note:  $450 million to $500 million was the range of ODOT estimates of project costs when Kostelec gave his talk in March 2019; to almost no one’s surprise that has gone up, and ODOT now estimates the project could cost between $700 and $800 million, and buildable freeway covers that some community leaders say are essential to the project could cost another $200 to $400 million.

Climate change? Not our job.  We’re just following orders.

The Oregon Transportation Commission is on the firing line for its plans to build a $800 million I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project in Northeast Portland. There’s been a tremendous outpouring of community opposition to the project:  more than 90 percent of the 2,000 comments on the project’s Environmental Assessment have been in opposition (a fact conveniently omitted from ODOT staff’s recitation of its outreach process).

The commission has lately had to endure an onslaught of commentary from young climate activists who–quite correctly–recognize that freeway widening is exactly the opposite of the kind of transportation investment we need to make if we’re to do anything to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Oregon’s global warming commission has pointed out that transportation emissions are increasing, and are now the largest single source of greenhouse gases in the state.  And its a demonstrated fact that wider freeways induce more traffic, longer trips and more emissions, increasing greenhouse gases.   (And, its worth noting, that in just the past four years, per capita greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in the Portland area have increased by 1,000 pounds per person–so whatever we’re doing now is taking us rapidly in the wrong direction).  The people testifying at the Commission’s December 2018 and January 2019 commission meetings have offered passionate, informed testimony on the folly of the freeway widening project.

The commission has sat, mostly silently, through these pointed critiques.

In the end, after listening to the testimony, they shrugged, and basically said:  “It’s not our decision–the Legislature told us to build this road, so we will.”  Here’s OTC Chairman Bob Van Brocklin

We have been mandated by the Legislature to design and build a project, so these are decisions the Legislature and we are not in a position to override the Legislature’s decision on that.  So we have a Legislative mandate to design and build this project. We now, today, are forwarding to the Legislature, at their request, in the bill, HB 2017,  a Cost to Complete estimate that is substantially higher than the amount of money they have dedicated to the project . . .

The claim that the decision is out of their hands rhetorically allows the OTC to absolve itself of responsibility for the climate implications of its actions.  The commission simply isn’t going to listen to climate concerns, or other objections, because (it says) the Legislature has already decided to build the project.  The commissioners are in a tough spot: they lack a plausible direct response to either the emotional or rational aspects of the climate critique of the freeway widening project. So instead of answering these questions, the plan is to dodge them, by claiming the decision is out of their hands.  In their view, climate change concerns, no matter how serious, simply aren’t an admissible argument.

Time and again, through history, this “helpless subordinate” act has been proffered by people looking to avoid taking responsibility for the moral implications of their actions.

If the transportation commission were a row of five junior clerks, they might have a plausible argument. But they’re not.  In Oregon’s citizen commission form of government, Transportation Commissioners are supposed to represent the public’s interest.

Nothing in the statute creating the commission or the law authorizing funding for this particular project prevents the Commission from reporting back to the Legislature that the project is no longer in the public’s interest, for any one of many reasons: it’s going to cost vastly more than the Legislature was told, its going to further damage the neighborhood severed by the freeway decades ago, its going to unacceptably worsen pollution, its going to undercut the state’s adopted legal mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Hell, if they were being honest, they’d also tell the Legislature that the freeway widening project isn’t going to work to reduce congestion either.

That’s what commissions are for:  To dig deeper into the details than legislators have time to do in the press of a legislative session. The commission can bring additional information and advice back to the Legislature. Arguably this is exactly what was anticipated in in the passage of House Bill 2017.  It specifically mandated a legislative check-in on complicated, controversial and expensive mega-projects like the Rose Quarter Freeway widening.  In addition, there’s another legislative mandate, one that predates the authorization for this project, which calls for the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050; that counts as legislative direction as well.  And when legislative mandates are in conflict, and when new information becomes available, its incumbent on commissioners to advise the Legislature accordingly, and not blindly follow out-dated, un-wise and contradictory orders.

Rather than plugging their ears and ignoring the outpouring of citizen opposition, and pretending to be helpless minions of the Legislature, the citizen commissioners of the Oregon Transportation Commission should do their jobs, and reflect back to the Legislature the serious problems that have been identified with this project.

Oregon’s new mandatory bag fee harnesses market forces to promote environmental objectives

Now do it for greenhouse gases

On January 1, a new law went into effect in Oregon, which mostly bans single use plastic grocery bags, and requires grocery stores to charge a 5 cent fee for every paper bag they provide to customers. The law harnesses economic incentives to encourage consumers to remember to bring their own re-usable shopping bags to the store.

Oregon actually has long experience with this kind of smart economic nudge. The bag fee comes on the heels–well, half a century, after Portland enacted its first in the nation bottle bill, in 1971. Requiring a mandatory deposit on beer and soda bottles and cans produced a dramatic reduction in litter, and led to widespread recycling. The state has a smart performance based system for setting deposits:  when recycling rates failed to meet established goals, the bottle deposit was raised from a nickel to a dime.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike single-use grocery bags; it is a form of waste that is obvious to almost everyone, and bags, especially the plastic ones, are a highly annoying and visible source of litter. Plastic bags also jam up the sorting machines in recycling plants; Portland’s Metro asked consumers to put bags in the trash, rather than recycle them.  If the experience of other places that have implemented bag fees (like Chicago and London) are any indication, Oregon can expect a pretty dramatic reduction in the number of single use bags shoppers take. England’s 5 pence fee on plastic bags reduced the number of bags by almost 90 percent in a few years.   It’s a small, but potent example of how getting the prices right can quickly, and mostly painlessly, help us achieve an environmental objective.  It’s a parable to embrace.

Tokenism and Cognitive Bias

But while the bag fee is a homely, teachable moment for environmental economics, it also has a deeper and darker message about the challenges we face in tackling our larger environmental challenges.  The key question is:  if we’re easily able to adopt economic incentives for paper bags, why can’t we apply this same tool to the really big problems, same of climate change.

The answer has a lot to do with our distinct cognitive biases:  We are aware of, and pay attention to somethings, and are oblivious to others.  Almost everyone shops for groceries regularly.  Everyone encounters litter (it is visible and annoying).  Everyone throws away (or recycles) single-use bags, cans and bottles.

Small scale recycling efforts are a kind of environmental ablution:  we go through a ritual to demonstrate to ourselves (and others) our moral commitment to saving the planet. These strategies have real, but small environmental benefits.  Trash is ugly and annoying, and often a hazard to wildlife, but it is not the reason the polar ice caps are melting.

Our cognitive bias stems from the fact that carbon emissions, particularly from cars are invisible, odorless and tasteless; they do no cumulate locally, but rather disperse globally.  If cars deposited a charcoal briquet every hundred meters or so (which is roughly the amount of carbon they emit), the vast piles of carbon the clogged our streets would immediately prompt us to clean them up, and ban internal combustion engines (just as we no longer tolerate horse manure and how people are expected to clean up after their dogs). But because carbon is invisible and dispersed globally, we don’t care.

So, ironically, we’re very good at small scale tokenism, like the ban on plastic straws in San Francisco.  It gives a simulacrum of sacrifice, but makes almost no difference to the larger environmental catastrophe we face. Yet it gives us as individuals and our leaders who enact such policies, the impression that we’re doing something. Too often, we engage in Nieman Marcus environmentalism:  engaging in conspicuous displays of “green” consumerism. That may be great for assuaging personal guilt, but does little or nothing to resolve the larger social problem of climate change.

The bag fee is 10 to 20 times higher than a carbon tax

Oregon’s 5 cent bag fee works about to a little less than 1 cent per 10 grams.  A kraft paper bag weights about 55 grams. That means that consumers are paying a fee of about 40 cents per pound for their paper bag (454 grams * .09 cents per gram).  On a metric ton basis, that means consumers are paying a fee of about $900 per ton.

To put that in context, most of the commonly forwarded ideas for a carbon tax suggest that a carbon fee of $50 to $100 per ton would lead to a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Oregon’s bag fee asks consumers to pay a fee that is by any reckoning about ten to twenty times higher than the fee we ought to be charging for carbon pollution.

If we can charge a bag fee, we can implement some form of carbon pricing. If we do, we’ll discover that consumers, producers and the overall economy can adapt quickly.

A new report shows how cities are central to any strategy to fight climate change

Cities have the “3 C’s: Clean, compact, connected

National government policies need to support cities

Let’s describe a low carbon future in positive, aspirational terms

Will the future be brighter or darker than today? That’s a central question in the climate debates. In an effort to focus attention on the severity of the challenge, much of the discussion is inherently pessimistic.  Advocates on one side talk about the dire consequences of inaction; those on the other side emphasize (and in our view exaggerate the difficulties of adjusting to lower carbon living. We’re pleased to see a new report–Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity–from the Coalition for an Urban Transition, which paints the climate challenge in a fundamentally more optimistic way, with better cities at its center.

For all of the apocalyptic and “eat your peas” rhetoric that surrounds discussions of how to tackle the climate crisis, this report takes the important step of framing the role cities can play in positive, concrete terms. Great green cities are (and will be) wonderful, enjoyable places to live. We’ll be closer to the things we want; we’ll spent less time and money traveling and stuck in traffic, we’ll have more options on how to get around.  (Just as with the Sightline Institute’s guide to the rhetoric of housing affordability, how we talk about things matters)

A report released late last year is a guidepost to making this kind of positive case.  Entitled: Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity, the report spells out how cities that are clean, compact and connected will not only have lower carbon emissions, but will be better, more enjoyable places to live, work and play. The core of the report is its “3 Cs” framework, and the narrative explains how each of the elements is mutually reinforcing, and that how together, they form a coherent vision of the role that cities can play making our world more just, sustainable and equitable.

As we’ve long noted at City Observatory, the market is already moving in this direction.  People, especially young adults, are increasingly moving to cities — and if that’s producing affordability problems its a sign that we aren’t building great urban spaces fast enough to meet the growing demand.  We’ve also noted the rising premium that housing in walkable neighborhoods commands; more evidence that there’s a market demand, and a shortage of places that are compact and connected.

It’s important to paint a picture of how low-carbon urban living can enrich our daily lives, and “Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity” does just that.  Instead of sprawling, low density car-dependent development, we could have cities that offer more.

Reversing this trend by pursuing more compact urban development could deliver better living standards and more vibrant cities. People could enjoy easier access to jobs, services and amenities. Public services could be cheaper, as they could be delivered more efficiently. More time in shared spaces could help to connect people across class and cultural lines. Higher densities could support a greater variety of shops, restaurants and public spaces within neighbourhoods.

The report does a nice job of using graphics and examples to illustrate the livability benefits of low carbon cities. Around the world, cities like Stockholm, Windhoek and Seoul are building the kind of urban neighborhoods that exemplify this inclusive, interesting and low carbon ideal.

Building great cities requires national government support

It’s become fashionable to tout “the New Localism“–the idea that in the face of national government intransigence (or outright denial) of the need to tackle climate change, that Mayors and cities can tackle this big global problem.  While some cities are making strides, ultimately, achieving this vision of compact, clean, connected cities will require the full support of national government.  National policies on transportation, housing, and energy all set the context for local efforts to promote urban development, and for too long have penalized urbanism and subsidized decentralization and sprawl.  For example, the report specifically endorses carbon pricing (something only national governments can accomplish) and the reallocation of national transportation budgets from road building to transit and active transportation. National governments also need to empower cities and local governments to implement road pricing. This report is valuable because it makes a strong case that strengthening cities is essential to achieving important national objectives, starting with climate, but including economic and social progress.

Too often, climate change is framed in apocalyptic terms, with .  But its better to view it as an opportunity to fix many of the things we got wrong when we built human habitation around an expensive, unsustainable and in many ways anti-social car-dependent system. Our best days are ahead of us, if we can only have the imagination to build the world we want to live in.

Coalition for an Urban Transition, Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity: How national governments can secure economic prosperity and avert climate catastrophe by transforming cities,  September 19, 2019.

What City Observatory this week

1. The inequity built into Metro’s proposed homeless strategy. Portland’s Metro is rushing forward with a plan asking voters to approve $250 million per year in income taxes to fight homelessness and promote affordability in Metro Portland. It’s pitched as redressing the inequities of the past: homelessness disproportionately affects communities of color.  But the political deal that’s been crafted allocates the money to counties not based on need, but on population. The result is one suburban county gets five to six times as much funding per homeless person as does Multnomah County (which includes the central city, Portland).

2. Gentrification:  The case of the missing counterfactual. How do we know whether gentrification makes a neighborhood’s residents worse off or better off? The answer that comes from sociologists tends to be based on ethnography:  interviewing long-time neighborhood residents to get their opinions about change. That’s a good starting point, but as a rule, these ethnographic studies don’t look at a control group of otherwise similar neighborhoods that don’t gentrify. So, while residents of gentrifying neighborhoods may remember that things were better in the past, and resent change, that doesn’t necessarily mean that residents of otherwise similar low income neighborhoods that didn’t gentrify would feel better about their situation. What’s missing from these studies is the “counter-factual”–i.e. a look at the opinions of people in low income neighborhoods that didn’t gentrify.  The assumption is, that in the absence of gentrification, everything stays the same. But we know that’s not true: low income neighborhoods that didn’t gentrify tended to lose about 40 percent of their population over four decades. This “displacement by decline” is far more common, and likely even more devastating to long-time residents than gentrification. But you’d be hard pressed to know this by reading the typical sociological study of neighborhood change.

3. Why Atlanta’s building moratorium won’t stop gentrification, but will definitely accelerate “flipping.” Atlanta is investing $25 million to turn an abandoned quarry into the city’s largest park, and even before its done, the new park is generating huge interest in surrounding neighborhoods. So much so, that, fearing gentrification, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has announced a six-month moratorium on new building permits in the area. While the Mayor is hoping to forestall gentrification, in our view, the moratorium is likely to backfire. Demand for housing in the area won’t go away, instead, it will simply be focused on the existing housing stock. If anything, the moratorium makes the attraction for house flippers even more irresistable, because when they put their revamped houses on the market, prospective buyers and renters won’t have as many choices.

Must read

1. What do to about gentrification?  Writing in Governing, guest commentator Jabari Simama reflects on his experiences with neighborhood change in Atlanta. Change creates friction and discomfort, but if we’re starting from a place that’s highly segregated by race and income, we’ve got to figure out how to make change productive, rather than simply blocking it. As Simama points out:

Gentrification is neither good nor bad, but we must manage it better. Clearly we want to encourage residents to live wherever they please. Mixed-income and multiracial neighborhoods are good for our cities. The question is what needs to be done to make them inclusive — racially and economically — and balanced with legacy and new residents.

It’s a useful message: too often in the face of rapid change and palpable pressure to do something, political leaders find themselves confronted with limited and fruitless choices.

2. Jenny Schuetz:  Corporations make a convenient scapegoat for housing, but that’s not the problem. Brookings Institution scholar Jenny Schuetz takes on one of the most popular myths in housing debates:  that the increasing–but still very small–corporate ownership of houses and apartments is responsible for housing unaffordability. At best, they’re a symptom, and it turns out that corporations are actually finely tuned to taking advantage of supply constraints to make shrewd investments.  If local regulations block the construction of new homes and apartments, then demand shifts to the existing housing stock. Instead of older homes and apartments filtering “down” as they age and depreciate, they get rehabbed and “filter up” rising in price.  As Schuetz explains:

Local regulations also play a role in the buy-and-rehab strategy employed by private-equity firms. In places where regulation limits new apartment construction, acquiring existing buildings is less risky than trying to build new rental housing. There are stronger financial incentives to maintain and upgrade old apartments in tightly regulated markets, because they face less competition from new, high-amenity buildings. This process of upward “filtering” among existing apartments is particularly harmful to housing affordability because it results in higher rents without expanding the number of homes available.

3. More road-widening madness, Los Angeles edition.  Magnolia Boulevard is a major thoroughfare in North Hollywood, and with recent investments in improved transit and new apartment construction, its become an increasingly walkable area. It’s baffling then that the LA Department of Transportation is proposing to widen the roadway, in apparent contravention of the city’s adopted 2015 Mobility Plan, and also contrary to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s recent proclamation that the city will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by lowering the number of vehicle miles traveled.  LA Streetsblog explains that when it comes to the manifest destiny of road-widening, highway engineers aren’t going to let newly adopted policies or contributing to planetary destruction get in their way.  Widening the roadway threatens to undo much of the improved livability and walkability of the area:

Since 1999, there’s been a subway, Bus Rapid Transit, dense housing, great walkability, thriving sidewalk cafes, bike lanes, bike paths, bike-share, theaters, galleries, and much more. In two decades NoHo has emerged as the most walkable, most transit-oriented place in the San Fernando Valley, and indeed one of the more walkable neighborhoods in the entire city. Ignoring the current neighborhood opposition and holding steadfastly to outdated plans threatens to cram more cars into the area disrupting what makes it work for the people that live there.

New Knowledge

How density and distance from downtown shape political affiliations. We’ve long known that the red/blue divide cleaves along the urban/rural axis.  Almost everywhere big cities and dense urban neighborhoods are more reliably blue, and non-metropolitan areas and small towns are predictably red. At least some of this has to do with the sorting that’s going on along demographic lines, with younger, better educated (and more generally blue) people moving to metro areas and city centers, while the population of rural areas remains older and less educated.

A new study from University of Maryland political scientists James Gimpel and co-authors published at the Daily Yonder looks to dis-entangle the relative effects of neighborhood urbanity and local demographics in explaining this red/blue divide.  It finds that even after controlling for the partisan differences imparted by different levels of age, income, education and the like, that denser urban areas, and neighborhoods closer to the urban center tend to have a higher fraction of Democrats.  The following chart shows their findings for distance from a large city and partisan affiliation.

The median Democrat lives within about 12 miles of the center of a city of 100,000, while the median Republican lives about 20 miles away.  Democratic affiliation peaks at about 5 miles from the center and declines the further one goes outward; Republican affiliation peaks at about 60 miles from the city.

Demography, still matters, of course, but geography plays a significant part even after controlling for the effects of income, age, education and so on. As the authors explain:

The effects of place are significant. For example, two voters with otherwise similar backgrounds, one living in a city, the other living 165 miles outside the city, will differ in the probability of expressing Republican loyalty by about 9 points. Density, similarly will alter the propensity to identify with the major parties, with those in the densest settlements 15 points more likely to be Democrats than those living in the least dense settlements.

In the News

The Milwaukee Business Times quoted our ranking of the share of independent restaurants in the the nation’s largest metro areas in its story: “Milwaukee among U.S. metros with most independent restaurants.”

The Portland Tribune highlighted our analysis of the mismatch between the allocation of funds and the incidence of homelessness in Metro’s proposed $250 million per year housing measure.

What City Observatory this week

1. Local flavor:  Which cities have the most independent restaurants.  Local eateries are one of the most visibly distinctive elements of any city. As Jane Jacobs said, the most important asset a city can have is something that is different from every other place.  Independent restaurants are a great indicator of local distinctiveness. We use data from Yelp to rank the market share of independent and chain restaurants in the nation’s largest metro areas, and find which cities have the most and fewest independent restaurants. The cities with the smallest chain restaurant market shares included New York, San Francisco, and Providence.

We also note that there’s a strong relationship between the market share of independent restaurants and the number of restaurants per capita (a good indicator of consumer choice).  Cities with a higher independent market share have more restaurants per capita than cities with a higher fraction of chains.  Independent restaurants equate to more different choices and more total choices, adding to local flavor in a measurable way.

2. Why cars are bad for independent restaurants. We followed up on our analysis of Yelp’s data on chain vs. independent restaurant market shares by comparing it to US Department of Transportation data on the number of vehicle miles traveled in different metropolitan areas.  It turns out that there’s a pretty strong relationship by how much people drive in a metro area and the fraction of chain restaurants:  more driving is correlated with a higher market share for chain restaurants.

We’re not sure of the reason for this correlation, but we have some hunches. Selecting restaurants by looking through the windshield of a fast moving car is going to bias ones choices in favor of familiar, well-advertised chains. Also, cities where people drive less enjoy a green dividend:  they spend less on cars and fuel and therefore have more money to spend on food, including independent restaurants.

3. Understanding Walkable Density.  We’re pleased to publish a guest commentary from DW Rowlands, a graduate student at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.  Her research looks into the lived density of particular neighborhoods, adjusting conventional measures of density (which ignore the connectedness and walkability of local streets) to produce a new measure of walkable density that effectively captures how easily people can interact in real world environments. Her work shows that some cities and some neighborhoods come much closer to achieving an “ideal” level of walkability:  chiefly older cities and core urban neighborhoods who have traditional street grid systems. Newer metros and outlying areas, with serpentine roadways and cul-de-sacs tend to have even lower “walkable” densities than ordinary density measures would suggest.

4. Mapping Walkable Density.  DW Rowlands has mapped walkable density in 17 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.  Her maps compare the actual walkable density of census tracts with their theoretical ideal density (i.e. how many people one would live near, ignoring the nature of the street network. These maps show which neighborhoods come closest to realizing their “ideal” density, with dark colors indicating places with relatively high levels of walkable density (relative to their ideal) and lighter colors showing places where actual density falls shortest of the ideal.  Here’s a map for Boston:

5. Climate Failure and Denial at the Oregon Department of Transportation.  As is now true nationally, transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon.  On paper, the state has a response, in the form of a “State Transportation Strategy.” In reality, it amounts to an excuse for inaction, mostly hoping that other actors (federal regulators, car manufacturers, and car owners replace current cars with clean vehicles and fuel. The trouble is its not working: Oregon’s plan called for a 10 percent reduction in 1990 emissions by this year; the state’s transportation emissions are now up 20 percent above 1990 levels–and are going in the wrong direction.

And despite its failure to make any progress, ODOT isn’t proposing any additional actions to reduce greenhouse gases–instead its planning to spend billions widening freeways. It shouldn’t be any surprise that the strategy isn’t working. The department of transportation’s “stakeholder” group included climate skeptics and deniers, who didn’t think the state mandate to reduce greenhouse gases made sense (or was worth incurring costs).

Must read

1. Rent control works best when rent control works least.  The District of Columbia has had a rent stabilization law since the mid 1980s, and more than a third of the District’s apartments are covered by the law. The usual economic concern about rent control is that it tends to stifle upkeep and maintenance, encourages condominium conversions and discourages new construction. If DC’s ordinance hasn’t had all those effects, its probably because it imposes relatively modest limits on landlords: the stabilization provisions limit rent increases to the cost of living plus two percent per year. According to the DC Policy Center’s Yesim Sayin Taylor, the reason the program works so well, and why there’s been relatively less shrinkage in the rental housing stock in DC, than in San Francisco (which has tougher rent control), is because it only aims to stabilize, not restrict, rents:

D.C.’s stock of rent-stabilized units has remained so steady in part because the law prioritizes rent stabilization over strict price controls. The Rental Housing Act’s goal is not to create or preserve affordable housing, but to protect tenants from rapid, unreasonable increases in their rents.

More stringent rent controls, Taylor argues, would likely prompt landlords to convert units to condominiums, and would discourage new construction, leading to a reduction in the total number of rent controlled units.

2. More right of way for transit in Portland. As Smart Growth America notes, Portland’s City Council has unanimously adopted a plan for expanded “Rose Lanes” a network of dedicated lanes and transit signal priority on 29 streets around the city. Building on the success of some existing exclusive bus lanes, the project is avowedly experimental, with the idea of trying and as needed adjusting different treatments to speed bus operation.

Most of the projects are designed to be relatively inexpensive and quick-to-implement. Projects are expected to roll-out city-wide this year and next. Unlike huge capital projects (light rail), these measures can provide widespread benefits, quickly, to many transit users and at low cost.  As SmartGrowthAmerica concludes: “political will, more than money, can become the limiting factor in whether or not transit is truly prioritized on the street.”

3. Public opinion is shifting toward the environment and climate change. The Pew Research Center has a new survey out showing that after the waning of the Great Recession, concern about environmental issues and climate change has increased substantially.  According to Pew a majority of Americans now say that both the environment generally and climate change in particular should be a top priority for the President and Congress.

For the first time in Pew Research Center surveys dating back nearly two decades, nearly as many Americans say protecting the environment should be a top policy priority (64%) as say this about strengthening the economy (67%).

The downside:  there’s a stark partisan divide on both issues:  No where are Democrats and Republican’s more divided than on the importance of dealing with climate change.  Some 78 percent of Democrats think its an important issue; only 21 percent of Republicans do.

In the news

The Stranger quoted City Observatory’s analysis of induced demand on Houston’s Katy Freeway in an article entitled: “Washington Democrats are damn right to remove congestion relief from state transportation goals.”

What City Observatory this week

1. Talent drives economic development. We know the single most important factor determining metropolitan economic success:  It’s determined by the education level of your population. The latest data on educational attainment and per capita incomes show that two-thirds of the variation in income levels among large metro areas is explained by the fraction of the adult population with a four-year degree.

Each one percentage point increase in the adult college attainment rate is associated with a $1,500 increase in metro average per capita income.

2. Jealous billionaires and cash prizes for bad corporate citizenship. The big economic development prize of the past several years was Amazon’s HQ2, which the e-commerce giant purposely structured as an competitive extravaganza, baldly asking for subsidies from cities across North America.  Bloomberg Business reports that Amazon’s quest was fueled by CEO Jeff Bezos’s jealousy over the generous subsidy package Nevada provided Elon Musk for a Tesla battery factory.

3. It works for bags, bottles and cans, why not try it for carbon?  A newly enacted law in Portland requires grocery stores to charge customers a nickel for each grocery bag they take. Echoing Oregon’s half-century old bottle bill, and similar bag fees in other places, this provides a gentle economic nudge to more ecologically sustainable behavior. And the evidence is that it works–it London, single use bags are down 90 percent. We ought to be applying the same straightforward logic to carbon pollution, and ironically, the bag fee, on a weight basis is 20 times higher than the charge most experts recommend for carbon pricing.

4. Dodging responsibility for climate change. Oregon’s Transportation Commission, a five-member citizen body, is on the firing line in the battle on climate change because of its plans to spend $800 million to widen a Portland freeway. It has largely turned a deaf ear to testimony about the freeway’s negative effects, essentially asserting that the decision to build the freeway has already been made by the Legislature. They’re just following orders, apparently.

In our view, that’s far too narrow a view of the Commission’s role and responsibility:  they have an obligation to hear citizen concerns, and if the project is unsustainable, uneconomic, and won’t work, they have a duty to tell the Legislature.

Must read

1. Fighting housing segregation in Baltimore. CityLab has a great retrospective on the struggles in Baltimore to break down the segregation of public housing. As in many US cities, for decades, public housing (which disproportionately serves people of color) has gotten built in low income neighborhoods, which has only served to perpetuate and intensify racial and income segregation. CityLab chronicles the role of Barbara Samuels, and ACLU lawyer who challenged this practice, and who won a court victory 25 years ago.  This court case–Thomspon v. HUD, gave some real teeth to the Fair Housing Act’s provisions requiring governments to affirmatively further fair housing. Ultimately this case got housing officials to instead implement a system of housing vouchers that give public housing recipients the opportunity to live in middle income and higher opportunity neighborhoods.

2. Little Women’s lessons for housing policy. It takes a real wonk to find deep housing policy lessons woven through an Academy Award nominated film, and Brookings Institution scholar Jennie Schuetz is up to the task. Little Women features a combination of mixed income neighborhoods, relaxed building codes, and co-housing (boarding houses) all of which facilitate greater housing affordability–and thanks to social mixing–romance. As Schuetz explains:

Less zoning equals more social equity and more romance. While some details of the world depicted in “Little Women” would not appeal to modern audiences—corsets and the lack of modern health care come to mind—a more laissez-faire approach to housing regulation seems worth revisiting. Can we imagine a return to communities where mansions, middle-class homes, boarding houses, and low-income housing can co-exist without legal restrictions or social prejudice? Where households with diverse incomes and family structures can interact with casual, everyday intimacy?

In spite of 21st Century injunctions about lesser income housing lowering home values and the apparent desirability of ubiquitous homeownership, the lifestyles (and policies) of 19th Century America promoted housing affordability and social mobility, things we could use more of today.

3. Boston’s under-occupied large homes. We often talk about a shortage of housing, but in an important sense, the problem is less a shortage than a maldistribution. A new study from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Boston’s regional planning agency looks at the occupancy of large dwellings (those with three or more bedrooms). It finds that most are under-occupied–that is, these housing units have fewer occupants than they do bedrooms. This phenomenon is driven by history, homeownership, and demographics. A quarter of all three bedroom units are occupied by just one or two persons aged 55 or older.  Inertia, the transaction costs associated with selling a home, and a probable lack of smaller ownership opportunities for those who want to age in place (or very nearby) likely contribute to older homeowners staying in these larger houses, rather than selling them to younger and larger households.  The mismatch between household sizes and housing units suggests that part of the solution to our perceived housing shortage would be to develop incentives for older homeowners to downsize more quickly.

New Knowledge

Integration and civic engagement. A growing body of evidence points to the importance of mixed income neighborhoods to the lifetime economic prospects of kids from low income families. A new study from xxxx shows that growing up in mixed income neighborhoods also seems to encourage greater civic participation. Eric Chyn, who looked at the economic outcomes from kids from families given vouchers to enable them to move out of low income neighborhoods in Chicago, has a new study looking at effects on voter participation. His key finding:  kids who grew up in these more mixed income neighborhoods tended to have higher voting rates as adults that otherwise similar peers who grew up in lower income neighborhoods. On average, kids growing up in mixed income neighborhoods were about 12 percent more likely to vote as adults than their peers.

Eric Chyn & Kareem Haggag, Moved to Vote:  The Long Run Effects of Neighborhoods on Civic Participation, University of Chicago, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group, Working Paper #2019-079, 2019.