Would cities consider tiny house villages to combat homelessness?

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One writer explores how villages of tiny houses can address problems of homelessness in American cities:

Tiny-home villages for the homeless have retained the idea of everyone having their own tiny structure to sleep and find privacy in, but have, for the most part, consolidated bathroom, kitchen, and recreational space into one or two communal buildings with some combination of plumbing, electricity, and heat. In many ways, they are a multi-roof version of the old-fashioned urban SRO (single-room occupancy) hotel or boarding house, with separate bedrooms but shared baths and kitchen, that provided the working and nonworking poor with affordable living options in so many cities before gentrification turned those properties into boutique hotels or market-rate apartments…

In this regard, they may be solutions that not only alleviate homelessness, but also prevent it by creating more affordable housing. They provide an option below the lowest rungs of market rent, which in cities such as Portland and Eugene can start around $700. In the gap between such rents and low-income units (such as those subsidized by the federal Section 8 program), for which there are often long waits, homeless people often have no options except for shelters — which afford no privacy and, more vexingly, usually kick people out between early morning and late afternoon — or the streets…

They may sound prefab, but tiny-home villages, governed and operated at least in part by the villagers themselves, offer a modicum of safety, stability, warmth, cleanliness, autonomy, and privacy. The feds “have very high standards for [traditional] affordable housing and it’s quite expensive,” said Kitty Piercy, Eugene’s mayor, “so Opportunity and Emerald are ways for us to be able to help some people at a much-reduced cost.”

Add to that reduced fear and stress on the part of residents. “I don’t wanna live here forever,” I was told on a visit to Opportunity Village by a wiry, sweet-natured, 42-year-old recovering alcoholic who goes by the name Johnny Awesome. He was building a small greenhouse onto the front of his cheerful blue cottage, festooned with colored flags and a small disco ball. “This isn’t the top rung of society,” he said. “And the weather dictates a typical day here too much.” Sunny days found residents outside, gardening and building; rainy and cold ones found them holed up in their cottages or congregating in the 30-foot-diameter communal yurt containing computers with Wi-Fi, a large-screen TV, and a pantry.

As the overview goes on to note, this may not just be an issue of being able to build some tiny houses and forming a community. Rather, such villages raise larger questions that cities need to address. Are they willing to let some profitable land be used for such purposes? Where might they allow zoning for such villages? Are cities truly committed to affordable housing? Are cities willing to address the complex issues of homelessness rather than simply trying to regulate or legislate homeless people away? These are not easy questions for cities to answer as they all feel the need for more revenue and exciting new developments. Tiny house villages might be effective ways to address homelessness but they come with an opportunity cost of the land not being used for something else.

I wonder if there is a major city outside of the particular area profiled here – “So far, they seem to be occurring in and around mid- and small-size Western cities whose cultures have some mix of permissive, progressive politics and a certain pioneer DIY spirit” – that would be willing to run an experiment with such a community.

Another post-apocalyptic McMansion dweller on a new TV show

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A new Fox show featuring the last man alive has him living in a McMansion:

The former Saturday Night Live performer, creator and star of the new Fox comedy (March 1, 9 p.m. ET/PT), plays a survivor of a virus that decimates the Earth’s population. His character drives across the U.S. looking for people before settling in a McMansion in Tucson.

During filming, he has had the freedom to explore what a lone planetary survivor could do, such as roll bowling balls at aquariums in a parking lot…

Forte (Nebraska), who grew a big, bushy beard for the role, said he thinks many people have wondered about being Earth’s last survivor.

“This idea seems to be, even though it’s very far-fetched, very relatable,” he said. Many people “have heard the question, ‘What would you do if you were the last person on Earth?’ “

And yet this man who could do anything chooses to live in a McMansion? Aren’t these shoddily-constructed and mass-produced homes not going to last very long? I suspect the critique here is that even as the world ends, some of the products of our society that aren’t that great – like McMansions – will live on. A Google image search suggests the character will wander into a sports stadium and an art museum. Here is the one hint I could find of the McMansion-strewn Tucson landscape.

Addressing social change in Toronto’s inner-ring suburbs

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North America’s fourth-largest city has a number of changed suburbs that have more lower-class residents and immigrants:

David Hulchanski’s seminal 2006 study, The Three Cities within Toronto, documents the shift of poverty from the inner-city to the inner-suburbs of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. The University of Toronto sociologist also made it clear that the poor increasingly tend to be immigrants. The rich, meanwhile, have moved downtown. Only they can afford the cost of housing there.

The third of Hulchanski’s three cities, which encompasses Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke, has experienced the largest increase in immigrants, rising from 31 per cent of the population in 1970 to more than 60 per cent today. During the same time, incomes in those same areas declined almost 40 per cent, more than any other part of Toronto.

Though Toronto is the more tolerant and inclusive city of the two, the social mobility that historically took immigrants from the places they arrived to the places they finally settled has slowed or even disappeared. Low wages, high youth unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure don’t inspire confidence, let alone optimism.

That’s why Toronto’s future lies in its suburbs. That’s why their needs are the needs of all. It’s also why failure to deal with them will hurt the entire city.

So far, the response has been more focused on mollifying suburban discontent than transforming vast swaths of the postwar landscape into more urban configurations. Rather than squander billions on feel-good projects like the Scarborough subway, we need more programs like tower renewal. Transit is essential to move people and connect them; but in addition, many highrise suburban communities desperately need to be remade to 21st-century standards.

This mirrors the circumstances of a number of American inner-ring suburbs: as wealthier (and often whiter) residents have moved to more exclusive suburbs or gleaming high-rises downtown, more poor and non-white residents have moved to cheaper suburbs that often had more industrial and blue collar work. But, what works best to renew these communities? Continue to play up on their advantages in industry and manufacturing (cities and suburbs have been severely hurt in recent decades with the loss of manufacturing jobs)? Compete in new areas like suburban entertainment and culture (wealthier communities often an advantage here)? New housing is often needed in these inner-ring suburbs – their housing stock often dates to the decades before World War II – but it is hard to come up with money to undertake big changes.

One route is to play up their more urban aspects: they may offer a taste of suburban life but are still much closer to everything the city has to offer. Many suburban communities have pursued transit-oriented development built around subway, train, and bus lines that provide quick connections to amenities within that community as well as nearby.

Baseball games average 17 minutes 58 seconds of action

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Surpassing football games, one analysis suggests baseball games average 17 minutes and 58 seconds of action:

By WSJ calculations, a baseball fan will see 17 minutes and 58 seconds of action over the course of a three-hour game. This is roughly the equivalent of a TED Talk, a Broadway intermission or the missing section of the Watergate tapes. A similar WSJ study on NFL games in January 2010 found that the average action time for a football game was 11 minutes. So MLB does pack more punch in a battle of the two biggest stop-and-start sports. By seven minutes.

The WSJ reached this number by taking the stopwatch to three different games and timing everything that happened. We then categorized the parts of the game that could fairly be considered “action” and averaged the results. The almost 18-minute average included balls in play, runner advancement attempts on stolen bases, wild pitches, pitches (balls, strikes, fouls and balls hit into play), trotting batters (on home runs, walks and hit-by-pitches), pickoff throws and even one fake-pickoff throw. This may be generous. If we’d cut the action definition down to just the time when everyone on the field is running around looking for something to do (balls in play and runner advancement attempts), we’d be down to 5:47.

I’m sure some might quibble with the methodology. Yet, the findings suggest two things:

1. A significant amount of excitement about sporting events may have to do with the time between action rather than the action itself. Sure, we care a lot about the plays but the fun includes the anticipation between action as well as the conversation and analysis that takes place then. In other words, sports involves a lot of patience.

2. The “feel” of the action may matter more for perceptions than the actual measurement of action. Football and other sports include faster action and more players moving at a time, giving an image of more total action. This particularly shows up on television. Perhaps it is more of a question of do fans prefer group action or more solitary action?

Growing real estate segment: commercial cannabis real estate

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A new startup wants to help buyers and sellers identify properties that are eligible to grow and/or sell marijuana:

Chicago’s real estate industry is in the midst of a few building booms, but if a new startup has its way, another one is about to bloom: commercial cannabis real estate. HerbFront, co-founded by CEO Alan O’Connell and Matt Chapdelaine, head of business development, want to create the Zillow of marijuana-based real estate. Their concept, which they’re developing at the ElmSpring accelerator at 1871 and plan to release in February, is a tool that lets investors see where they can legally locate dispensaries and grow operations, and helps property owners discover if buildings in their portfolio qualify for this potentially lucrative market. According to O’Connell, zoning rules and regulations can make locating a dispensary or grow operation complicated, but the huge upside means entrepreneurs are looking for someone to help point them in the right direction.

“There’s a lot of murky water in the industry, right now,” says Chapdelaine. “A lot of people are looking to access real estate, and real estate people are looking to access the industry.”

HerbFront will offer an array of services, from listing a property for $50 on its database to leasing the software to providing specialized business intelligence to investors and municipalities, in effect becoming a consultancy as well as a marketplace for these industry-specific property transactions. Chapdelaine, who has background as a broker, saw what happened during the last permit application process in Illinois, and believes his program can fill an important gap, as well as provide a form of insurance for those spending at least $250,000 to obtain a permit. With that kind of down payment to start a small business, obtaining a guarantee from HerbFront that potential sites are properly zoned becomes valuable (or so the founders hope).

I could see how this service might be valuable. But, it seems less difficult to map the available properties than it will be to predict and/or know what these properties might be worth. How profitable are such facilities? Are there other businesses or services that want to be or are needed near marijuana facilities? More broadly, could these be tools for economic development? From what I read about planning for such facilities in different Chicago suburbs, there is still hesitation based on what kind of people and activity such facilities could attract as well as how they might affect the reputation and image of the community. But, if they became a unique opportunity for economic development, perhaps communities would be falling over themselves to attract one.

Cities that build their own highspeed internet services

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Several American cities have put together their own highspeed Internet services:

Chattanooga isn’t alone. Cities like Wilson, North Carolina and Lafayette, Louisiana have likewise given up on waiting for private companies and started their own ultra-highspeed internet services. But some community efforts have been stymied by state laws prohibiting governments from competing with private internet providers…

The debate over the future of municipal broadband is central to both the economic development of communities across the US—and to the future of investment in broadband infrastructure. Improvements to the state of broadband can’t come soon enough. The US lags behind countries like South Korea and the Czech Republic in both speed and cost of internet access.

Sure, the rise of Google Fiber has spurred competition both in cities lke Austin, where Google has only recently begun rolling out service, and areas that some providers think could be next on Google’s list. But there’s no guarantee that Google Fiber will spread beyond a very limited number of cities, and some communities are being left further behind in the broadband revolution than others. While 94 percent of Americans living in urban areas can purchase broadband faster than 25mbps, only 51 percent of rural Americans can purchase access at those speeds, according to the report.

The report also says that 30 percent of homes have no broadband connection, and high prices for access is a big part of that. Plus, there’s not much competition in most cities: 40 percent of US citizens have only one company in their area that can provide fixed line connections faster than 10mbps—if they have any option at that speed at all. “Without strong competition, providers can (and do) raise prices, delay investments, and provide sub-par quality of service,” the report says.

While this article tends to emphasize the public vs. private provision of the Internet, I wonder how much these projects are intended to help raise the profile of these cities and give them an edge in attracting businesses and residents. Cities compete through a variety of variables including tax breaks, the existing collection of businesses, the human capital of residents, the cultural and entertainment amenities that each place has. I would guess highspeed Internet could provide an edge, particularly for firms that want to be part of an innovative and enterprising community.

Suburbs join together to find takers for vacant Dominick’s stores

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Filling a big retail space can be difficult once the original tenant leaves so six DuPage County suburbs are working together to fill spaces left behind by Dominick’s:

Bartlett, Bensenville, Glen Ellyn, Naperville, Wheaton and Woodridge are combining forces to recruit potential new grocers or other large retailers that don’t already have a presence in the suburbs. The thinking behind the marketing coalition, which formed in December, is that centralizing information about several vacant Dominick’s stores could help a new business make the decision to open here.

“Since communities have different regulations and processes for business openings, that can be a deterrent to a new retailer looking to enter the market,” said Jason Zawila, a planner who coordinates economic development efforts for the village of Woodridge. “By combining our resources, we can conveniently offer the information needed for their market assessment.”

Nine of the 31 former Dominick’s that are still vacant in Chicago or the suburbs are within DuPage County. Seven are within the communities that are working together to market the sites, while the remaining two in DuPage are in Carol Stream and Glendale Heights. The stores are large — between 61,000 square feet and 77,000 square feet. And they often anchor strip malls such as Baker Hill in Glen Ellyn, Riverbrook Center and Wheatland Marketplace in Naperville or Danada Square in Wheaton.

“The concentration of remaining stores in the DuPage County area presents a unique opportunity for a new grocer to enter the Chicago market,” Zawila said.

An interesting strategy as communities can spend years trying to fill such spots (see the recent case of the empty Dominick’s at the northeast corner of North Avenue and Route 59 in West Chicago). Do the suburbs offer similar enough demographics to make the same pitch to one company? Think of the possible comparisons between, say, Bensenville and Naperville. Also, are there enough firms, particularly grocers, to take on six or more new stores at once in the Chicago region?

What happens to this coalition if a firm wants four of the six locations? I assume those four communities would accept but it could lead to some interesting relationships between suburbs.

Is not taking a health care subsidy from the government an effective form of protesting?

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At least a few Americans are refusing to take government subsidies for healthcare when they are eligible:

Her sentiment is unusual, but brokers say they do hear from clients who are eligible for subsidies – which are based on household income and not assets – but want no part of them. Health officials have been boasting that 6.6 million people have enrolled in health coverage through state or federal marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act, but in sharp contrast stands a small group of Americans who say they want nothing to do with the plans, even if they would save money. Their reasons vary: Some are protesting Obamacare, while others simply feel it’s unethical to accept taxpayer dollars to pay for health insurance.

“It’s almost a philosophical or political statement,” says Gerry Wedig, a professor at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School.

For Brewer, buying a plan on her own would mean she would not have enough to pay for housing, she says, so she chose not to be insured this year and will have to pay a penalty in her 2016 tax filing that is likely to be 2 percent of her income. She has no dependents, is healthy, does not use prescriptions and says she has been careful about her health choices, not overusing medical care…

Complicating the ethical question is that some people who qualify for subsidies based on their income could afford to pay their own way. “There is no question that we are enrolling people through these programs who would otherwise be considered middle-class or even affluent,” says Ed Haislmaier, a senior research fellow for health policy studies at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation think tank. “We are seeing people with enrollment in these programs that have significant assets, but for whatever reason – usually a temporary reason – fall below the income line.”

This sounds like an interesting form of protest. How many people turn down free money? Would the same people not take other tax breaks? While I understand the interest in standing on principle, I would want to ask two further questions: (1) how would anyone know that you are taking this stand (would these people go around boasting about their principled stands or encourage media attention?) and (2) is this an effective method for bringing about desired social change. It seems like this sort of stand might not go very far…

Does “smart-sizing” sound a lot better than “down-sizing”?

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One writer suggests “down-sizing” is too negative and instead would prefer to use “smart-sizing” instead:

In the world of real estate, downsizing generally refers to reducing the size of the property you live in and the amount of stuff you have. Downsizing is something most homeowners will do at some point in their lives and it can be a very positive and necessary experience when property needs change. So why do many people have a negative reaction to the word?

When I hear someone say they are ‘downsizing,’ my writer’s imagination goes into high gear and I immediately picture this elderly couple, giving away most of their worldly possessions, leaving the home they have lived in for 50 years to move into an anonymous condo somewhere — maybe in Florida — far away from the familiar faces of friends and loved ones and the city they call home. And even though the move to a more manageable property may be a good thing for a variety of positive reasons — “downsizing” to me still feels like something is being lost…

Buying and selling property comes with some hefty emotional baggage, so why add to it by using words that can have negative associations when new, more positive selections are available?

After a quick Google search, I found precisely the right word to replace downsizing in my vocabulary: Smart-sizing. Don’t you feel a rush of positivity right now?

I’m guessing many people would prefer to affix “smart” to their own activities. But, what exactly does the term mean?

Smart-sizing means finding the right-sized property for your individual needs. It makes sense to purchase a home best suited for your lifestyle, needs and budget, at any stage in life. This applies equally to first-time home buyers who want ultra-energy efficient houses with a smaller building footprint, to property ladder climbers with expanding families, to baby boomers with shrinking families, and to seniors who would rather spend time with loved ones, or travelling, or any other form of recreation without the burden of maintaining (or paying for!) a large property.

Here is what might be happening. “Down-sizing” implies that people are getting out of the status seeking game, possibly because they can’t keep up or no longer want to. Americans tend to like bigger homes and more stuff – it is built into our individualistic, consumeristic DNA. If people are moving to a smaller home and getting rid of stuff, they are moving back down that status ladder. “Smart-sizing” gets at something else. It covers up the bigger is better consumption motives behind homes and stuff and replaces it with customization and what individual homeowners need. Some people might need a pool and hot tub, others might still want a McMansions, others might need a cheaper home that suits their income. All these people win with a “smart-sized” home that fits their needs. Others have made this pitch before; architect Sarah Susanka argues for the Not-So-Big House. However, given the lifestyles of the individual owners, such homes may not really be cheaper or all that less luxurious.

In the end, do people with “smart-sized” homes have smaller, greener homes with less stuff? Maybe…

Collecting data to see if cyclists break traffic laws more than drivers

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Cyclists and drivers often do not get along but which group breaks the law more? Some researchers are hoping to find out:

These questions about sociology and infrastructure point to a more nuanced picture of what’s happening on city streets than most heated rhetoric — darn law-breaking bikers! — allows. Marshall, who co-directs the Active Communities Transportation Research Group with Kevin Krizek, wants to research this scofflaw behavior, why people say they do it (drivers and cyclists alike), and when they don’t.

As part of this research project, they and Ph.D. student Aaron Johnson and Savannah State’s Dan Piatkowski are running a survey that they hope will gather broad data on all of our behavior (go ahead and help science out here, even if you’re not a cyclist yourself).

Most of us, whatever mode we travel, break the law at some point, Marshall points out, whether we’re driving five miles over the speed limit, or crossing the street against the crosswalk. And yet, we tend not to treat lead-footed drivers with the same disapproval as cyclists who ride through stop signs, even though the former behavior is potentially more publicly harmful than the latter. Which raises another question: Are cyclists really more prolific scofflaws than drivers anyway?

More data on the scofflaws inside all of us could potentially help create safer streets, even, Marshall imagines, more productive public debate about how cars and cyclists coexist. There is some evidence, for instance, that cyclists may be less likely to ride the wrong way down one-way streets and more likely to wait at red lights when they’re given dedicated bike paths. This would make sense for a number of reasons.

I would like to think that having more data would solve the issues and help both sides look at the situation more rationally. However, I suspect both cyclists and drivers might prefer more anecdotal stories that privilege their own perspectives. People on the roads tend to get angry with the people right in front of them rather than with abstract groups. However, the data could be used to change the infrastructure – more bike lanes? more regulations for cyclists? Roads with no markings or separation from the sidewalks? – which then might have more direct effects.