Urban segregation leads to bad outcomes – and what if the city is okay with this?

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Following recent events in Milwaukee, NYMag summarizes some of the sociological research on urban segregation. As noted, the results of persistent segregation are not good.

However, what if this segregation is desired by the city or by large percentages of residents, whites in particular? The outcomes of segregation may be bad but the alternative might be considered worse: whites would have to live near blacks and share more resources and social spaces. With segregation, the problems are largely confined to certain areas (though there can be widespread fear if bad things happen in whiter and safer areas) and can be explained away by being attributed to particular groups. The segregation can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: there are neighborhoods for different groups because these sorts of things keep happening.

At some point, the negative consequences of segregation may be too much to ignore and stronger action might be taken. One good example is the destruction of public housing high-rises in many cities in order to deconcentrate poverty. City and national leaders perceived that something needed to be done. Yet, less provision was made for helping residents move elsewhere and find better opportunities. A less helpful example might be the uptick in shootings in Chicago: this is widely decried by leaders and the public but will much action be taken to (1) counter segregation and (2) provide more economic opportunities? At the moment, it appears not.

tl;dr: the outcomes of segregation are bad but how much will is there to consider alternatives?

The first publicly available “pre-crime” map

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A think tank in Rio will soon maintain an online map predicting future crime:

With data from 42 police precincts on crimes committed between January 2010 to March 2016, CrimeRadar tracks some 14 million different crime events. But the app goes beyond mapping historical crimes: Through machine learning and predictive analysis, CrimeRadar will also map out future crime trends—like an open-gov pre-crime heat map…

Muggah says that Igarapé struck a deal with the Institute for Public Security, a state government agency, to build a public-facing mobile app that would show the distribution, intensity, and typologies of crimes across metro Rio. The researchers analyzed data centralized with the ISP along with data from Rio’s 190 system (like 911 in the U.S.) and created 812 categories for crimes. Those break down into capital crimes and violent crimes (like armed assault or intentional homicide), less-intense crimes (thefts, burglaries), and “victimless” crimes (loitering, prostitution).

“We built out a model that uses three data points—the time, the location, and the event—by discriminating in geospatial polygons using these three tiers,” Muggah says. “This algorithm creates a score, a risk score, based on those three data points, for every 250-meter-by-250-meter square unit in the state. You group some of the hundreds of thousands of scores for each sector into deciles to create a simplified, color-coded risk rating, on a scale of 1 to 10.”…

“We have over an 85 percent accuracy of mirroring risk against actual events. The beauty of machine learning is that this improves over time,” Muggah says. “The more data, the more information you feed into it, the higher-resolution your risk projections are going to be.”

Two things strike me as interesting:

  1. The claim that this is for the good of individuals who will be able to then make decisions. What about promoting the public good? This reminds me of apps in the United States that identified tougher neighborhoods but then received backlash.
  2. I’m not sure that 85% accuracy is good or bad. Obviously, such models strive to be much better than that. At the same time, making predictions (and with increasing levels of accuracy regarding times, locations, and actors) in a large city with many variable factors (particularly humans) is difficult. It will be interesting to see how accurate these models can be.

Bringing tiny houses to Chicago’s young homeless

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A new plan involves housing homeless teenagers in Chicago in small units:

11,447 – Homeless unaccompanied youth, ages 14 to 21, according to an estimate by CCH

374 – Youth shelter beds across Chicago, according to CCH

The tiny homes, the way they are being planned by the working group, would cost $55,000 to $65,000, excluding the cost of the land or any site work like landscaping. Tenants would have yearlong leases, and the group is hoping that a local nonprofit would play the role of the landlord. Tenants would pay the utilities.

Next to funding, the biggest obstacle tiny homes advocates face is zoning. Chicago zoning attorney and Chicago Tiny Home Summit panelist Danielle Cassel said she ran out of sticky notes when logging inconsistencies between tiny home models and zoning code requirements.

Multiple communities have had discussions regarding plans to house the homeless in tiny houses – see earlier posts here and here. But, it seems that their smaller size and lower cost are not automatically enough to overcome the issues that affordable housing generally faces. Namely, there are three concerns: (1) who will finance these units? (2) who is willing to live next to them? and (3) will enough units be constructed to make a sizable dent in the populations that need such housing? Take Chicago: while it isn’t as expensive as New York City or San Francisco, the cheaper land is in less desirable areas, zoning guidelines will have to be altered, and there is a tremendous need for cheap, durable housing.

A cynical take is that several units or colonies will be constructed in a few Chicago neighborhoods and then touted as solutions. However, much would have to change for tiny houses to be a sizable solution for homelessness and affordable housing.

Indianapolis’ Univgov only worked because schools were not included

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The Univgov created in Indianapolis in 1970 may have only gone forward because it didn’t unite all local governments; it intentionally left out school districts.

The celebrated unified government, or “Unigov,” law brought together about a dozen communities in Marion County into a single large city in 1970. The idea was to put a bigger, more powerful Indianapolis onto the national map, simplify city services, and grow the city’s tax base. Indianapolis was not the only city in the country to merge with its surrounding county at that time—but it was the only one to explicitly leave schools out of the deal…

The judge who ordered the busing, Samuel Dillin, stated bluntly that a merged city that left 11 separate school districts was racially motivated. At the time, a majority of the region’s African American and minority students lived in the city center while the surrounding school districts primarily enrolled white students.

“Unigov was not a perfect consolidation,” then-Mayor Richard Lugar said. He went on to be one of Indiana’s most legendary political leaders as a six-term U.S. Senator. “A good number of people really wanted to keep at least their particular school segregated.” Lugar said he knew the 162-page Unigov bill would die in the Indiana General Assembly if schools were included. But he still thinks the merger was worth it, despite the effects it has had on schools…

Unigov’s legacy for Indiana education is mixed at best, but neither Lugar nor Cierzniak think a future Marion County school district merger—one way some scholars say segregation can be reduced—is likely. Township districts have grown considerably, and the state legislature has heard district consolidation plans over the years that have repeatedly failed.

Uniting metropolitan governments is a difficult task, primarily for reasons like this: wealthier, whiter, often suburban residents do not often want to share their resources – particularly schools – with those who are not as wealthy and white. When the middle-class and above look for places to live, they often prioritize the school district and if it has a record of higher performance, will fight to keep others out. These wealthier residents want their tax dollars, especially those based on their better housing values, to go to their children and community. And the white-black divide is often the most difficult line to cross in such situations.

As another recent example, see the case of when Ferguson, Missouri students were given the chance to leave their unaccredited school district. Some parents in the new school district do not react well.

Adding to the design lesson: “What makes a McMansion bad architecture?”

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Mcmansionhell on Tumblr begins with a well-illustrated post: “McMansions 101: What makes a McMansion bad architecture?”

We could add several additional dimensions to the negative design of McMansions:

  1. A lack of consistency around the entire home. (This post address the front.) Critics suggest McMansions are intended to impress others with their facades but the rest of the home gets little attention.
  2. Poor quality or a mish-mash of architectural materials. (Think fake stone siding.)
  3. Mixing a variety of architectural styles such as putting together English Tudor and Mediterranean.
  4. An oversized emphasis on the garage. (Hence the nicknames “Snout Houses” or “Garage Mahals.”) Critics suggest this emphasizes the private nature of large homes rather than having architectural elements that interact with the streetscape.
  5. A lack of proportions to the size of the lot, whether it is a large lot or a teardown McMansion sitting on a small lot and near smaller homes.

I look forward to the coming Tumblr posts on McMansions and it some of these design issues listed above will be covered.

Neither presidential candidate says much about helping the poor

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This has become common in recent election cycles: candidates focus on the middle class and ignore the poor.

The United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth, also abides the deepest poverty of any developed nation, but you would not know it by listening to Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump, the major parties’ presidential nominees.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking about her economic plans on Thursday near Detroit, underscored her credentials as an advocate for middle-class families whose fortunes have flagged. She said much less about helping the 47 millions Americans who yearn to reach the middle class.

Her Republican rival, Mr. Trump, spoke in Detroit on his economic proposals four days ago, and while their platforms are markedly different in details and emphasis, the candidates have this in common: Both promise to help Americans find jobs; neither has said much about helping people while they are not working.

So why don’t they address lower-class Americans? A few tentative guesses:

  1. More undecided voters are in the middle class.
  2. Candidates want a singular message and so they go with the largest group of Americans – a vast majority of Americans, even ones who are legitimately rich or poor, consider themselves middle class – as to not have to complicate their rhetoric.
  3. The efforts in the 1990s to limit welfare – changes to programs and public housing – were very effective in halting conversation about poverty on a national level.
  4. Candidates want to be associated with people who think they have made it on their own.
  5. Lower-class Americans don’t have as much money to give to campaigns.
  6. Even with growing inequality, Americans have settled on the idea that we are a middle-class country. Candidates want to go with what the country thinks.

Regardless of the reason, it does say a lot about the ability of Americans to even converse about being poor.

Sociology prof behind San Jose measure to raise business taxes

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Sociologist Scott Myers-Lipton has worked to raise business taxes in San Jose:

With little discussion, the council unanimously approved putting a November ballot measure before city residents that would double annual business tax revenue from $12.7 million to $25.4 million. But the business tax voters will decide differs significantly from what Scott Myers-Lipton, the San Jose State University sociology professor who had led a successful 2012 campaign to raise the minimum wage in the city, had proposed last year.

Myers-Lipton was close to gathering enough signatures to qualify his measure for the ballot, but withdrew it to allow for the city compromise measure.

The measure the council approved for the ballot would increase the annual “base rate” businesses pay by $45 and then charge companies with three or more employees $30 to $60 for each worker, depending on the company’s size, capping at $150,000 a year. It would include inflation adjustments. The city’s current tax is $18 per employee for companies with eight or more workers without inflation increases and caps at $25,000.

Myers-Lipton’s proposed measure would have charged large companies based on their gross receipts, either 60 cents, 90 cents or $1.20 for every $1,000 in revenue. The model, he argued, has been successful in other large cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles. A city study estimated the change would put an extra $39 million annually into the city’s pocket for services like public safety, roads and libraries.

It sounds like a typical political conversation about taxes. On one side, proponents argue that businesses should pay more, particularly when needed local services are on the line. On the other hand, proponents suggest businesses will leave and/or not locate in San Jose and instead locate in places with cheaper taxes.

Yet, does it make any difference that this tax proposal was brought forward by a sociologist? Conversations about public sociology sometimes suggest that sociologists have limited ability to bring about policy change. This would seem to be a positive example: sociologist who helped bring about a raise in the minimum wage now has a chance to help pass an increased tax on businesses. Both measures could be viewed as moves toward lessening inequality; this is a cause that many sociologists would support. At the same time, do Myers-Lipton’s moves differ much from typical liberal proposals?

Perhaps many businesses in San Jose can afford such an increase with the wealth in the area. Such a tax may not hurt very much in a thriving area compared to a struggling Rust Belt city.

“We’re at peak multigenerational” housing?

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Pew recently reported on the increase of Americans living in multigenerational households:

In 2014, more young people were living with their parents than with a romantic partner. And a lot of these millennials’ parents were cohabiting with their own parents.

A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that a record-high number of Americans—60.6 million, to be exact—were living with with grandma and grandpa that year. In terms of share of the U.S. population, these people made up 19 percent in 2014. That’s almost as high as back in 1950, when 21 percent of the population, or 32 million people, lived in such an arrangement.

Money—or lack thereof—helps explain why this housing arrangement is back in style. The economic woes of the late-2000s brought millions of young adults boomeranging back to their childhood homes. But the trend also has to do with immigration and diversification of the U.S. population.

Two quick thoughts:

  1. If indeed money is a motivating factor, we might expect these numbers to drop when the economy improves or when younger adults do better in the job market and move out of such arrangements. Or, does this uptick herald a long-term interest in living in multigenerational settings regardless of financial imperatives?
  2. As noted later in the article, whites are the least likely (15%) to live in such settings. Will such differences persist in the future or will such arrangements decline in non-white groups as (1) their financial prospects increase and (2) more recent immigrants spend more time in the United States?

In other words, how exactly do we know that this is a peak? There is certainly a trend upward of more households with multiple generations and a higher percentage of such households overall. If the discussed causal factors remain fairly static – sluggish economy, high levels of immigration – then the rise may continue. However, circumstances could change and the trend line in the next few years could rise, plateau, or fall. And, these factors don’t account for changing cultural values where multigenerational or communal living may just become more popular regardless of those two factors. (In other words, perhaps we could see a reaction to the long-term trend from the 1950s to the early 2000s of wanting to get away and own one’s own single-family home.)

Stay tuned for another peak that may not be one.

The difficulty in returning to public housing

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Once people left public housing high-rises in Chicago so that they could be demolished, it was difficult for them to return to new (and limited) public housing units:

Despite the promises that everyone could come back, the numbers don’t add up. The decrepit, infamous Cabrini-Green had 3,600 public housing units. When the rebuilding is complete in 2019, there will be around 2,830 units. Only 30 percent are for families in public housing. Got that? Fewer than 900 units.

The screening process is the next barrier. People are kept out of the new neighborhood if a family member has a single arrest record—even if no charges were pressed. Public housing residents have to submit to mandatory drug testing every year. They can have no record of rent and utility delinquency. They cannot take in friends and relatives. New rules in the neighborhood include no smoking, no barbecuing, no loud music, no washing cars on the street…

But coming back to Cabrini was a huge disruption to her family. Her 17-year-old daughter had a misdemeanor for fighting at school. Brewster had to send her daughter to live with relatives in order to keep her lease…

Another reason most people from Cabrini haven’t come back: finances. Moving is expensive and disruptive, and poor families can’t easily absorb these hits twice when they move away from bulldozers.

And is there any surprise that some residents at Cabrini-Green fought the demolition? The alternatives to even bad public housing high-rises are often not much better. As is also noted in this article and backed up by research, vouchers only go so far as well as many former public housing residents end up in other poor neighborhoods.

It does seem that once the HOPE VI program started in the 1990s, public housing has become less and less of a public issue. Public housing has never been popular in the United States – it took quite an effort to even start a federal program – and efforts in recent decades have moved to decentralize public housing units, limit who can access benefits, and reduce funding for programs. Yet, there is still significant need in the United States for reasonably-priced housing in decent neighborhoods (for example, see the waiting list in Chicago). I would suggest the free market hasn’t done too well in this area; many builders and developers will go for more money rather than supplying needed housing, many residents don’t want cheaper housing or certain kinds of residents nearby, and local regulations including zoning laws often make it difficult to pursue affordable housing or innovative solutions.

“McMansion Boy” in McMansion satire

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McMansions are often treated with derision but how about a satirical approach? Here is one example from the Outer Banks:

The Cooper family of Piscataway, NJ was holding a reunion in the home over the weekend of July 4. Fifteen children from eight different families led to some confusion over which child belonged to which set of parents. As Dallas Cooper, Jr. explained, “There were so many kids running around that eventually we stopped worrying about it and just kind of communally watched over them all: feeding, supervising swimming and games, and bedtimes.”

Evidently, nobody claimed the twelve-year-old boy who wore a tattered T-shirt from the rental company and a pair of dirty blue board shorts every day, nobody remarked where he went at bedtime, and nobody except the other kids noticed that he hoarded extra food at every meal…

Nobody probably would ever have found out, either, had family patriarch Austin Cooper not realized that he had left his glasses on his night stand. The rest of the family had already left the house, but when Austin drove back to retrieve the glasses he found the boy later dubbed “McMansion Boy” cleaning the leftover food from the refrigerator. Mr. Cooper at first thought that one of the other Coopers had left him behind, but upon questioning the boy panicked and disappeared up the stairs.

Authorities later found the boy in an unfinished section of the attic: “He had built quite a den up there,” reported Officer Sleem. “He had a small bed that he had dragged up there from one of the bedrooms, a mini-fridge that he apparently found somewhere beside the road, and a large larder of junk food pilfered from vacationers. He had run an extension cord up there for electricity and a hose for water.”

While the story is about “McMansion Boy” finding plenty of space to blend in within a giant house, there is also some commentary here about those who rent such homes.