The Plan to Gentrify DC
March 7, 2008 | Filed Under Development, Poverty | Leave a Comment
Last week, This American Life featured a segment on gentrification in Washington, DC. Gentrification in DC, residents say, is not led by market forces, but is rather an orchestrated plan to displace blacks from neighborhoods to make way for rich whites.
“The Plan” is incredibly moving and persuasive. It highlights gentrification signs like local government closing public schools, libraries, and hospitals to replace them with condos and, among other things, sushi restaurants. Others, from around the country, discuss how their cities purposely allowed neighborhoods to deteriorate so developers can buy land for cheaper prices.
Is “the plan” a conspiracy theory? Maybe. But the results are striking.
Full Episode: 350: Human Resources
Review: The Camden 28
March 4, 2008 | Filed Under Review | Leave a Comment
A film by Anthony Giacchino
First Run Features
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the “war as an enemy of the poor” when asked why he opposed the Vietnam War. Today, President Bush’s latest budget proposal makes that abundantly clear. Social spending would be cut by $2.4 billion while Pentagon spending would rise by $35 billion—not including Iraq war funding.
Sadly, the connection between war and domestic spending has been nearly lost. Luckily, we can learn from those who risked their freedom to show us that poverty here is directly related to war overseas. Read more
Book Review: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded – Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
February 21, 2008 | Filed Under Review | Leave a Comment
Edited by: Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
South End Press
Bill Gates recently stepped down from Microsoft to pursue philanthropic work through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But is he really going to help people with his riches? Or is he just using his money to push his own capitalist, pro-business ideology on the world? After reading Incite!’s latest book, you’ll recognize the later is true, not only of Bill, but of the vast majority of “philanthropic” foundations.
The Revolution Will Not be Funded is a collection of seventeen persuasive essays by activists, academics, and practitioners working in the non-profit sector. Its authors set out to explain the rise of the non-profit industrial complex (“NPIC” as they call it), its effects on social change efforts, and how to rethink non-profit institutions with at times weak, but altogether convincing, arguments and personal experiences. Read more
Car to run on air
February 14, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Indian car company Tata is backing an air powered car called the OneCAT. This five-seater holds compressed air in carbon-fiber tanks that can be filled in just three minutes.
According to the BBC, “For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel.” The OneCAT will use about 120 mpg on longer trips.
The builders assure us not to worry about the air tanks exploding during an accident. “There’s no issue with safety–if the air-car crashes the air tanks won’t shatter–they will split with a very loud bang. ‘The biggest risk is to the ears.’”
Source: India’s Tata backs air-power car
Bush’s proposed budget cuts $2.4 billion from domestic spending
February 8, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
President Bush unveiled his proposed $3 trillion budget for 2009 on February 4th in Washington. The budget, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “proposes increased funding for the Department of Defense [by $35 billion to $515 billion for core programs--NOT including war costs], cuts to health care programs, and about $2.4 billion less for domestic discretionary programs other than Homeland Security.”
Specific program cuts include:
$1.3 billion less than is needed to fund existing Section 8 Housing Vouchers
$315 million from Public Housing funding
$659 million from Community Development Block Grants
$77 million from Housing for People with Disabilities
Elimination of the Community Services Block Grant–$654 million
The budget also proposes to cut Medicaid by $18 billion over 5 years.
The budget is likely to reach a record deficit of over $413 billion after including all the war funding–$70 billion requested, but will likely be much higher since he requested $200 billion this year.
Sources:
Bush cuts health and community services
Budget Would Cut Programs for Housing and Homelessness
The President’s FY 2009 Budget Proposal: Analysis and Policy Implications
Bush Budget Sees Bigger Deficits as Economy Slows
France gets super-fast train
February 5, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
France’s Alstom (an engineering company) unveiled the AGV (Automotrice Grande Vitesse or high-speed railcar) train on Tuesday. The AVG, which reaches 223.7 miles per hour, can travel 1,000 miles in three hours. Alstom’s Executive Chairman, Patrick Kron, says this begins “a new stage in the competition with the airlines.”
The AVG upgrades train efficiency as well. According to Reuters, “Rather than having a powerful locomotive at the front or back, the AGV uses motors located beneath the train” increasing both passenger sizes and space from older models. The AVG is also uses about 15 percent less fuel than its competitors.
Sources: France unveils super-fast train and France’s Alstom launches faster high-speed train
The Most Miserable Cities
February 4, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Detroit is ranked #1 in the Forbes Misery Measure according to the article “America’s Most Miserable Cities.”
Forbes, which created a Misery Measure for the study, included factors like unemployment, taxes, weather, pollution sites, commute times, and crime to rank America’s most miserable places. New York City was surprisingly fourth on the list, thanks to amazingly high taxes and housing costs, and Philadelphia ranked fifth.
According to the article:
The biggest surprise on our list is Charlotte, N.C., which is ranked ninth. Charlotte has undergone tremendous economic growth the past decade, while the population has soared 32%. But the current picture isn’t as bright. Employment growth has not kept up with population growth, meaning unemployment rates are up more than 50% compared with 10 years ago. Charlotte scored in the bottom half of all six categories we examined. It scored the worst on violent crime, ranking 140th.
Source: America’s Most Miserable Cities
First “green” homeless shelter built from ground up
January 28, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
The New York Times has reported on the near completion of Crossroads, a 125 resident homeless shelter in East Oakland, California that, “may be the only ‘green’ homeless shelter built from the ground up.”
According to the article “A Shelter Is Built Green, to Heal Inside and Out” it has, “a solar-paneled roof, hydronic heating, artful but practical ceiling fans, nontoxic paint, windows that can be opened to let in fresh air, and desks and bureaus made from pressed wheat.”
This $11 million building shows it’s possible to construct low-income housing that surpasses the private market in innovation and design.
Source: A Shelter Is Built Green, to Heal Inside and Out
Cities making life even harder for the poor
January 25, 2008 | Filed Under Poverty | Leave a Comment
Cities across the country are passing ordinances that could put panhandlers in jail. According to a USA Today article, “Cities crack down on panhandling”:
Cities have enacted laws targeting the homeless for two decades, including bans on sleeping outdoors or loitering. In the past few years, the focus has turned to panhandling restrictions, said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
Cities are criminalizing the poor in an effort to revitalize their downtowns. Since manufacturing jobs have mostly left America, cities must rely on the service sector and tourism to boost their economies, therefore elevating their interest in hiding the poor and homeless. This puts the poor in a doubly bad situation–first you lose your manufacturing job, then your considered criminal.
So rather than criminalizing the poor–aren’t their lives hard enough?–we should give them housing. Yes, GIVE. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll say it again. It’s cheaper to house the homeless than it is to put them in shelters or send them to jail.
So as the coldest month of the year creeps closer, I’m going to start cataloging all the stories I can find on KnowledgePlex, and other sources, about cities trying to stop low-income housing, or panhandling, or giving out food in public. In the end, I’ll list my findings of shitty things cities are doing to criminalize the poor during the coldest month of the year.
In my view, this is a national war on the poor that’s going under-reported. Let’s see what we can do to put urban issues into the national focus.
New Low-Income Housing Units Increase Nearby Property Values
January 15, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Homeowners in the US regularly protest plans for building housing for the homeless in their neighborhoods, fearing the decline of nearby property values. Headlines such as “Despite Opposition, Housing Project Advances,” and “Housing for Homeless Draws Resistance” regularly appear on the KnowledgePlex (a group that compiles urban news from around the US) website showing this as a common belief.
Tim Bruer, member of Madison’s Community Development Authority, says that “housing for the homeless would further concentrate poverty on [Madison's] South Side and obstruct efforts to bring economic development to the area.”
But, from what we see happening in Philadelphia, Bruer’s wrong.
Sister Mary Scullion, of Philadelphia’s Project HOME, says, “I think real estate values actually increase when we put a facility for the homeless in a neighborhood,” in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
And according to a recent study, she’s right. “Where homes in Philadelphia have risen in value an average of 5 percent since 1993, they have risen 6.8 percent within a quarter mile of Project HOME sites.”
The property values surrounding Project HOME’s developments increased value faster than the rest of Philadelphia because they chose to locate in economically distressed neighborhoods and improved the buildings that would have normally sat vacant.
According to Dennis Culhane, a social policy professor at Penn who studies the effect of public housing on Philadelphia real estate prices, “Even if these sites alone are not driving the better-than-average property-value increases, they certainly are not dragging these property values down.” So housing for the homeless doesn’t “obstruct efforts to bring economic development,” it actually facilitates economic development.
Another reason might be better design. New developments blow away the cinder block, utilitarian buildings of the past. Design and environmental efficiency are now a priority, and might be even out pacing the private market in green design innovation. According to the Chicago Tribune, “A growing number of architects, from established stars to ambitious up-and-comers, are looking to such projects as an opportunity to do innovative work.”
Don’t believe me. Check out what’s going on in Seattle, or Santa Monica, or read what even right-wing Forbes has to say in “Low-Income-Housing Builders See Green.”
