Recession decimated construction workforce

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Here is another sign the construction industry has not fully recovered from the economic crisis: the number of construction workers is still low.

The new-construction housing market is slowly recovering from the turmoil of the recessionary years, but builders haven’t been able to pick up where they left off. More than 2 million skilled labor jobs were lost to the economy, and many of those workers are gone forever…

Nearly 30 percent of the construction workforce disappeared during the Great Recession, reports FMI Corp., a Raleigh, N.C., provider of management consulting, research and investment banking to the construction industry. Among its ranks are plumbers, electricians, roofers, bricklayers and carpenters.

The shortage seems to be worsening. According to FMI’s 2015 “Talent Development in the Construction Industry” survey, 86 percent of respondents reported shortages of skilled labor. That’s up from the 2013 survey, in which 53 percent of respondents reported such shortages.

It may take a long time before the housing industry approaches where it was in the early to mid-2000s. In the meantime, those workers have to do something and/or go elsewhere. Even with all the political talk about helping workers, I don’t remember anyone suggesting plans for helping construction workers in the same way that politicians have discussed manufacturing workers.

Additionally, I wonder what it takes to ramp up with a lot of new workers if the housing industry starts booming again. Businesses today tend to shed workers when times are bad, add when the economy picks up, and disregard training and upstart costs. However, it is not always simple to just hire large numbers of laborers.

No one wants your old, heavy, non flat screen TVs

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Thrift stores and recyclers in the Chicago area are not thrilled to get old TVs:

In 2012, an Illinois law took effect prohibiting residents from throwing televisions in the trash. But places that used to take them are either cutting back or no longer accepting them. Others are starting to charge to take old televisions…

The Salvation Army thrift stores have stopped taking them because used TVs don’t sell, said Ron McCormick, business manager for The Salvation Army’s greater Chicago area…

In Will County, e-recycling centers might stop taking televisions and other electronic waste entirely on Feb. 11 if a deal isn’t reached between the county and its recycling contractor, said Dean Olson, resource, recovery and energy director for Will County.

So, what is a consumer to do? THe solution proposed at the end of the article:

“We’re just being flooded, especially with those giant TVs,” Jarland said. “If they’re still working, keep using them.”

It would be interesting to see the overall numbers regarding how quickly Americans have replaced their old TVs. Given how much TV Americans watch and the technology (which dropped in price pretty quickly) of the last ten years that has led to a better TV viewing experience, this may not be a surprise. But, it makes recycling or being green tougher: people are simply buying a new television or two to replace the one that still works. They could still watch TV and save money with their old units but we refuse today to watch smaller, non-HD screens. (Though watching small screens isn’t necessarily on the way out – those who keep pushing TV on the smartphone, tablet, and computer are advocating for small TV but this is mostly about convenience, not preference.) Who should be responsible for disposing of these old televisions? Perhaps consumers should have to pay a fee to dispose of their old models.

For the record, I disposed of several older TVs at Best Buy in recent years. No resale shop wanted them. No relative wanted to use them. Would paying $5 each stopped me from properly disposing of the television? I’m sure there is some price point that would make sense.

Foreign investment in Chicago real estate reaches record high

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Chicago was an appealing city for international real estate investors in 2015:

Chicago’s continuing rise to prominence on the world stage was further boosted by the latest figures indicating that 2015 will not only be a banner year for new construction and hotel occupancy, but a record-breaking period for foreign real estate investment as well. 2015 saw $3.27 billion of new overseas capital flow into the Windy City, according to recently published report by Crain’s Chicago Business, a figure that shatters the previous record of $2.18 billion set in 2013. Citing data from New York-based Real Capital Analytics, Crain’s reports that foreign buyers accounted for roughly 16 percent of Chicago’s total $20.2 billion of real estate sales this year. Chicago now ranks as the fourth largest market in the nation for foreign investment — up from last year’s eighth place — and trails behind only New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.

These positive figures are attributed to several factors. Oversaturation of traditionally stronger coastal markets has driven up prices to the point where commercial investors are often finding more lucrative opportunities in Chicago. Chicago is seen as a somewhat riskier choice for firms taking on commercial properties due to the relative ease at which new buildings can be added and tenants relocated — similar to CNA’s announcement earlier this week — but foreign buyers willing to take on this risk have enjoyed greater returns. In 2015, investment in Chicago saw first-year rates of return (“capitalization rates” for you finance-minded folks) averaging 5.1 percent, outperforming the 4.1 and 4.7 percent yearly yields of Manhattan and San Francisco, respectively.

While this sounds like good news (more capital flowing into the city and the potential for these investments to lead to other deals), I could imagine two downsides:

  1. This recently happened in Chicago, but it wasn’t the first city of choice for international investors. It is suggested here that investors are now turning to Chicago because the more desirable markets – NYC, LA – are oversaturated. So, this may confirm that Chicago is still the third city – or maybe even the fourth city if you include Washington, D.C. This may just feed the anxiety some in Chicago have of their place on the world stage.
  2. Even as investment from outsiders is viewed as good, would investment from foreigners be viewed as positive by all in Chicago? Americans occasionally have periods of fear that people from other countries are taking over and Chicago is a more parochial/less cosmopolitan market than some on the coasts. Foreign investment may be good but do Chicagoans like the idea that others are benefiting greatly off the Midwest?

Countering the negative responses to micro-apartments

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As some city residents fight micro-apartments, here is a set of arguments countering the complaints:

Families often complain that there isn’t enough housing to suit their needs, especially for large families. They’re right. In Seattle, for example, just two percent of market-rate apartment units have three or more bedrooms, according to a 2014 report by the Seattle Planning Commission. The last thing that these families need—especially low-income families and larger families of color—is to compete with single, young professionals for that limited housing stock.

Yet zoning for approximately 65 percent of Seattle’s land area is designated single-family, meaning that the options across much of the city are restricted to what’s already been built. That’s good news for incumbent homeowners, but bad news for people who want to move to Seattle. The city’s not an outlier in this regard, of course: Low-density zoning spurs young renters to rent group houses (or “stealth dorms” as the case may be) all over the nation. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but when single renters can’t find good options in a growing job market, chances are that renting families won’t find them, either…

Incidentally, making sure that housing is legal, affordable, regulated, and, well, available is one way to guarantee against any truly adverse health effects from shared living. The alleged increased health costs specifically associated with micro-housing … well, I don’t want to say that they’re not bad. But they can’t be any worse than the health costs of unaffordable housing. It’s arguable that the stress of unsafe, uncertain, or unsustainable living situations—housing insecurity, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts it—outweighs the potential crowding-related stress of micro-apartment living…

It’s certainly the case that micro-housing looks trendy, in part because it is presented in savvy renderings by smart architectural firms such as nArchitects. But micro-apartments are also not a type of new housing we’ve never seen before. They’re apartments. Advances in technology and interior design make micro-housing possible without requiring that micro-apartments be tenements, boarding houses, or single-room-occupancy hotels. But the concept of multifamily living is preserved (even if the division of amenities changes).

A more charitable interpretation of the complaints of residents is that lots of affordable housing is needed across sectors: for poor residents, for families, for the elderly, for recent college graduates, and so on. Certain residents may just want the kind of housing that helps them and people like them more than they want to help others groups. A less charitable take might emphasize property values: who wants to live near these cheaper units (people may complain about health or traffic or density but they are more worried about what will happen to the value of their own unit) and the people who might live there (which underlies concerns Americans have about apartments)?

One solution to all of this would be to pay less attention to the exciting new idea of micro-apartments and for cities to comprehensively address housing issues with a range of solutions. Many major cities are short tends of thousands of affordable housing units and a few trendy micro-apartments aren’t going to do much. But, a more comprehensive plan could threaten even more people with a range of locations and housing options…

“Why Parents Can’t Resist Buying…the Hottest Gifts”

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A sociologist discusses the compulsion parents across social classes feel to purchase the season’s hottest gifts:

After observing and interviewing children and parents from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, Pugh published “Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture” in 2009, which explored commercial culture and how it relates to economic inequality and community. Since then, the spending trend hasn’t let up – even through the recession – and she typically fields media calls around this time of year on the topic.

Parents often have trouble deciding what to do in response to their children’s “I want’s,” Pugh found when she studied a range of families in Oakland, California. She found that both affluent and low-income parents disliked the pressure they felt to buy the most popular gifts for their kids; affluent parents were worried about giving in to materialism, while low-income parents knew that popular items cost money they would prefer to spend on household essentials…

Affluent parents often said they were uncomfortable about buying the latest popular items and they didn’t want their children to be so materialistic. Nevertheless, even if they decided to forego a certain product – which Pugh calls “symbolic deprivation” – they bought a lot of other things for their children that they thought added to what’s perceived as a good childhood.At the other end of the spectrum, lower-income parents were willing to forego some basic needs at times to buy products for their children, to show that they were capable of fully caring for their children – which Pugh called “symbolic indulgence.”

Wanting to belong – or on the flip side, not to be left out – is a powerful human motivator. And what American parent wants to be held responsible for their kid not fitting in? Arguably, this sort of logic drives much consumerism: as a number of scholars have shown, companies decades ago shifted advertising from emphasizing what products could do to what lifestyles were associated with having the product. Do you need the latest smartphone because it has such revolutionary technology or you do you want to be seen as part of a certain group? Do you need the clothing with the brand label to signal your status or to cover yourself?

It would be interesting to follow some of these same families to see how these choices about buying the hottest gifts influences children. Does it lead to more materialistic attitudes and behaviors? Do families who do not purchase such items encourage different kinds of behaviors?

Proposed: self-driving cars need to have drivers at the wheel

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California is proposing that self-driving cars take their time in becoming self-driving:

The approach California’s Department of Motor Vehicles offered Wednesday in precedent-setting draft regulations is cautious, though it does allow that Californians could be behind the wheel of a self-driving car by 2017.

Among other safety-related requirements, the cars must have a steering wheel, and a licensed driver must be ready to take over if the machine fails…

Before the DMV grants that three-year permit, an independent certifier would need to verify a manufacturer’s safety assurances. Google and traditional automakers advocated for manufacturer self-certification of safety, the standard for other cars.Drivers would need special, manufacturer-provided training, then get a special certification on their licenses. If a car breaks the law, the driver would be responsible.

This is not too surprising given the newness of the technology as well as the potential safety hazards for others on the road. I don’t think any body of government wants to be responsible if the self-driving technology fails and someone is hurt or dies.

At the same time, this article introduces a new wrinkle to the development of this technology: if companies think these regulations are too onerous, why not develop the cars elsewhere? The suggestion here is that Texas might emerge as another option. Could it be better for consumers and innovation if two states work with different regulations and different companies?

A gallery of “spite houses”

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Curbed provides a look at the rare residences intended to spite someone else:

What’s not to love about a building called a “spite house?” In an essay in the New York Times, writer Kate Bolick discusses her dream of owning the Plum Island Pink House, a forlorn, decaying structure in Newbury, Massachusetts set in the middle of a salt marsh. The romantic, reclusive home stands alone for a reason; built by a recently divorced husband for his ex-wife as a condition of their separation, it’s an exact duplicate of their shared home, just uncomfortably moored in the middle of remote wetlands and constructed without any running fresh water. The square loner is part of a small but ignoble tradition of spite houses, buildings created for malice instead of comfort meant to irritate or enrage neighbors, or occasionally piss off anyone unfortunate enough to be dwelling inside. Normally built to block a neighbor’s light or access, they can be found as early at the 18th century. Here are some examples of homes or apartment that were built, or painted, out of anger.

Given the amount of work it can take to construct a home, these people must have had some serious spite. But, how exactly the spite translated into the form of a home took on some different patterns (based on the examples offered by Curbed): using particular pieces of land in unique ways (particularly small lots), exterior decorating that transforms what might be a normal home into what the neighbors would consider an eyesore, and then homes with specific architectural features (such as being overly large or emphasizing particular elements).

Two quick things I would want to know in these cases:

  1. Did building the spite house pay off? In other words, did constructing the home as a symbol help the aggrieved person feel better?
  2. How does the quality or longevity of these homes compare to typical residences? If constructed in haste or if more concerned about spite than construction, perhaps they wouldn’t stand the test of time.

Cruz campaign using psychological data to reach potential voters

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Campaigns not working with big data are behind: Ted Cruz’s campaign is working with unique psychological data as they try to secure the Republican nomination.

To build its data-gathering operation widely, the Cruz campaign hired Cambridge Analytica, a Massachusetts company reportedly owned in part by hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, who has given $11 million to a super PAC supporting Cruz. Cambridge, the U.S. affiliate of London-based behavioral research company SCL Group, has been paid more than $750,000 by the Cruz campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.

To develop its psychographic models, Cambridge surveyed more than 150,000 households across the country and scored individuals using five basic traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. A top Cambridge official didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Cruz campaign officials said the company developed its correlations in part by using data from Facebook that included subscribers’ likes. That data helped make the Cambridge data particularly powerful, campaign officials said…

The Cruz campaign modified the Cambridge template, renaming some psychological categories and adding subcategories to the list, such as “stoic traditionalist” and “true believer.” The campaign then did its own field surveys in battleground states to develop a more precise predictive model based on issues preferences.

The Cruz algorithm was then applied to what the campaign calls an “enhanced voter file,” which can contain as many as 50,000 data points gathered from voting records, popular websites and consumer information such as magazine subscriptions, car ownership and preferences for food and clothing.

Building a big data operation behind a major political candidate seems pretty par for the course these days. The success of the Obama campaigns was often attributed to tech whizzes behind the scenes. Since this is fairly normal these days, perhaps we need to move on to other questions: what do voters think about such micro targeting and how do they experience it? Does this contribute to political fragmentation? What is the role of the mass media amid more specific approaches? How valid are the predictions for voters and their behavior (since they are based on certain social science data and theories)? How does this all significantly change political campaigns?

How far are we from just getting ridding of the candidates all together and putting together AI apps/machines/data programs that garner support…

 

A McMansion has been part of the American Dream for a while

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Teen Vogue suggests the historic American Dream involves a McMansion:

The mythic American Dream, defined by the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster, is an “American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity.” We all know what that social ideal has looked like historically: a 9-5 job, two cars, two kids, and one McMansion complete with a white picket fence. It’s what your parents, grandparents, and probably even great-great-grandparents aspired to (though they probably didn’t use the term McMansion in the’50s — McDonalds was still at novelty back then).

But according a new poll conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, 48% of millennials believe the American idyll is dead. More than 2,000 young Americans between 18 and 29 years old were interviewed about the government, the military, the future of the country, and the collective outlook on the future is…not great!

The caveat in the first paragraph may be important: people in the 1950s didn’t use the term McMansion as it didn’t really become widely used until the late 1990s (and yes, the Mc- prefix also wouldn’t have made much sense). But, did those post-war suburbanites really aspire to a McMansion, often defined as an overly large, poorly built home sitting on a small lot within the sprawling suburbs? Not really. Many of those early suburban single-family homes were quite modest in size. The Levittown homes were around 1,000 square feet and could even be purchased with unfinished second levels. In comparison, today’s new homes are roughly 2.5 times the size of the average new homes of the early 1950s. Many post-war suburban homes were mass produced but they weren’t considered garish or ostentatious. Were these new suburban homes better than many of the other housing options after World War II? Yes and there was indeed a real housing shortage. But, it is a real stretch to claim the American Dream always included a Mediterranean inspired 3,000 square foot home tightly packed into a small lot in a gated neighborhood.

A crowdfunded way to study other researchers in Antarctica

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A sociologist is utilizing crowdfunding to go to Antarctica for research:

So far Haeffner has reached about 12 percent of her overall goal. She has raised enough through GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website, to pay the initial deposit of the expedition…

Most of the researchers on the trip will be polar scientists who study ice cores, penguins and climate change. But because Heaffner is a sociologist, she will be studying the other researchers and how they work together.

“I want to collect more data from researchers in different disciplines of what they see are the barriers,” Heaffner said. “Where do they see that social science can play a role in their science and how we can think of other different research questions together to tackle climate change?”

Two quick thoughts:

  1. This sort of research is common within sociology: how do small groups and/or academic disciplines understand their own activities? As we all know from participating in all sorts of social groups, it is easy to simply be within groups and not think much about how they operate. However, bringing in an outsider who can observe and ask good questions could lead to insights that would help the group (particularly task-oriented ones like a team of researchers) move forward.
  2. The main purpose of this article is to point out the use of crowdfunding for research funding. Haeffner is asking for $4,500 and you can read about her goals and donate here. She isn’t asking for a lot of money but she also isn’t promising Kickstarter type returns to those who donate though contributions could be viewed as leading to important research on a current topic. In the long run, I wonder if receiving funding through such sources would be viewed by scientists as more or less freeing.