The Bigness Complex and upward mobility at the city scale

 (Bigness Complex: Industry, Labor, and Government in the American Economy, Second Edition is actually the title of a book about corporations, of the time when I was in college.)

Bloomberg reports, "Small Towns in the US Are Better for Upward Mobility, Study Finds"  ("Big cities fuel inequality within and across generations," Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences Nexus), that upward mobility is more present is smaller cities than large ones.  Abstract from the paper:

Urbanization has long fueled a dual narrative: cities are heralded as sources of economic dynamism and wealth creation yet criticized for fostering inequality and a range of social challenges. This paper addresses this tension using a multidisciplinary approach, combining social sciences methods with satellite imagery-based spatial pattern analysis to study the US urban expansion over the past century. We examine the impact of physical urban spatial characteristics (size, population density, and connectedness) on equality of opportunity, measured through intergenerational mobility, as well as its association with levels of income, wealth, and social capital. Our findings confirm that contemporary cities, particularly population-dense and expansive ones, are indeed divisive forces—acting as centers for income and wealth generation but failing to deliver equal opportunities for economic mobility. Perhaps surprisingly, this polarizing dynamic is a recent phenomenon. In the past, the most urbanized regions performed well in terms of income creation and equality of opportunity. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that the mid-20th century marked a pivotal shift toward more unequal and less inclusive patterns of urban growth.

Early research about size of high schools and in-school participation.  This reminds me of another important book I came across in college, Big School, Small School: High School Size and Student Behavior, a classic in the then nascent field of community psychology.  Basically, the point is that in small high schools, more students have more opportunities to pursue extracurricular activities (because there are fewer students to compete with), while in bigger high schools, not only were there fewer opportunities to participate, but there were what I call hogs, "premier" students who are involved in multiple organizations.  

You could say hogs are comparable to the students in small schools, but they usually come from highly resourced families, and the schools provide less opportunity because of the hogs.  

In the book chapter, “Big School, Small School” Revisited, the author suggests that the desired option of type of school depends on the preferred outcome--more students participating, or fewer students participating but at the benefit of quality performance.  While in "Big School? Small School? Does School Size Matter?: Can large schools foster a small school culture?" (Psychology Today), the author suggests creating smaller schools within the context of larger schools is the way to deal with the Big School, Small School phenomenon.

Conclusion.  In short, I'm not surprised.

The "solution," at least to me is to ensure that civic assets are widely distributed and treated as networks ("Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets,"- "Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape,") especially in under resourced places ("National Community Planning Month: Schools as neighborhood anchors"), along the social urbanism approach, complemented by the creation and maintenance of "social infrastructure" programming to get people involved.

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021 
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021

An insight from my brother on societal supports and social infrastructure

 I hadn't seen my brother, who lives in Florida, for many many years.  He came to see me, all too briefly, when I was in the hospital two weeks ago.

As men do, we didn't express dying love for each other, we just talked about stuff.

One of the points he made is that why are so many state governments focusing on legalizing drugs ("How America got high as a kite," Financial Times).  For the money, and sometimes, theoretically, to be able to focus on helping people instead of criminalizing them, although the Oregon initiative isn't really working ("Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs. It Isn't Working," ) and it seems that the Portugal policy too has diminishing returns ("Portugal's drug decriminalization faces opposition as addiction multiplies," Washington Post).

I had no idea until a couple years ago, that the death rate from overdoses is significantly higher than that from murders or car accidents.  

We talked about legalizing drugs as a form of anesthetization.  This is called by some economists, sociologists and health researchers, "Deaths of Despair."  It and covid are contributing to the US's decline in lifespan ("Life expectancy in U.S. is falling amid surges in chronic illness," Washington Post).

He said instead of legalizing drugs we should be investing in people.  We didn't talk about national health care.  He mentioned investing in arts programs for people, for expanded educational opportunities, for investments in civic assets.

What Eric Klinenberg calls Social Infrastructure.  And how I write about social urbanism.

Of course, he's right.

Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking

1.  Boston is promoting digital library access at 20 bus stops ("Borrowing books on the bus? It’s happening in Boston," Boston Globe).

It's not particularly pathbreaking.  Libraries in places like Orange County, California and Calgary have put in book lending stations at transit stations in their communities for more than a decade.

2.  But once again, it raises the issue of how to make bus stops more than perfunctory places within a neighborhood and community.  See past blog entries:

-- "Pathetic not revelatory: Quality of bus stop study in San Francisco," 2021
-- "Bus shelters as social spaces, as potential vectors for virus: Seoul's new anti-covid bus shelter," 2020

Project for Public Spaces has a report on the topic, Destination Station: Transforming Bus Stops through Community Outreach.

3.  Utah has invested in bus stops, but given the heat and sun in the summer months, the fact that a majority of stops have zero provision for shade is a problem.  And not providing a shelter doesn't work out so great in the winter either.

There are three bus stops--no shelters--alongside Sugar House Park for which I am on the board, and I hope that we can work with the Utah Transit Authority to put shelters in, and at at least two of the locations, to incorporate greenery.

Transit shelter next to a fence/golf course, E. Spring Street, Long Beach, California, 

with bougainvillea growing on top of the shelter

A few years ago, there was a public art project with one bus shelter in Everett, Massachusetts that did something similar ("Everett tried to make a bus stop pretty," Boston Globe).  But only for three days.

Rendering of “Felipe Baeza: Unruly Forms,” which will be presented by Public Art Fund next month on more than 400 JCDecaux bus shelters and street furniture throughout New York, Chicago, Boston in the United States, and Mexico City, León, Querétaro in Mexico.  Image: Public Art Fund, NY

4.  The New York Times has an article on a bus shelter public art project, "Watching for the Bus Stop Gallery."  From the article:

Starting Aug. 9, the artist, whose home base is Brooklyn, will be giving people something to think about during their own public transportation journey, or purgatory as the case may be. As part of a Public Art Fund program designed to reach people where they live or commute, Baeza will have eight of his mixed-media, collagelike paintings reproduced on some 400 JCDecaux bus shelters in New York, Boston and Chicago as well as Querétaro and Léon in Mexico. They will also appear on digital kiosks and newsstands in Mexico City.... 

And his paintings for the project — fantastic, ritualistic images of human bodies in different stages of transformation or regeneration — touch on the power of mobility. Speaking from a small office-like studio at the Getty, where he had a nine-month residency ending in June, Baeza called his subjects “unruly forms” or “fugitive bodies” who don’t conform to norms or abide by laws. Some seem to be morphing into sea creatures or mythic birds; others are on the cusp of flight.

I especially like the leveraging of digital ad networks across cities.  

I proposed something like that, although within communities, as point #10, "Create a digital community and transit information network for Silver Spring, employing kiosks and mobile applications" in "PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District" | Part 3: Program items 10-18" (2018).

DC's crime bill overturned by Congress

 -- "Senate votes to block controversial DC crime bill," CNN

I haven't written a blog entry on this, just comments, and comments on Washington Post article.  While the revision of DC's criminal code, in some quarters the changes were perceived to be more lenient, in the face of a significant rise in the city's murder rate, crime involving guns, car jackings, and continued escalation of youth-involved crime.

I write that for the most part, DC's legislators have it pretty good.  They are a city-state, with control over the tax revenues generated within the city, and for the most part, not having the kind of oversight that is typically performed by State Legislatures, which may be quick to preempt local control in favor of corporate and cultural warfare goals.

But the fact is that Congress does have the final authority on approving local legislation, even though the DC Home Rule Act of 1973 pretty much created local control of local governance.

The city's legislators, many of whom lack substantive experience of cities in the period of the 1970s through the 1990s when many were in serious decline, and had problematic public safety, didn't realize that at times they need to manage the narrative and "manage up.'  In this case, how the law would be perceived in the world of public opinion, and the competition between Republicans and Democrats.

This letter to the editor ("The D.C. Council’s crime bill put statehood further out of reach") expresses it pretty well:

I have supported home rule since moving to D.C. in 1974. I proudly wear my “51” hat. But after a 2020 election when perceptions of being soft on crime hurt many Democratic candidates, the D.C. Council’s tone-deaf response was to enact a law that forces its allies to make a choice between supporting home rule or increasing their own electoral vulnerability. Not surprisingly, they are opting for their own survival.

So, rather than attacking President Biden and Congress for likely blocking the D.C. criminal code reform, the D.C. Council should own this fiasco. It might well happen again with the bill allowing illegal immigrants and other noncitizens to vote in local elections. It’s doubtful the council could have come up with any other bill that is more likely to provoke GOP reaction.

Democrats, who lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 election because of crime demonization being particularly effective in Greater New York City, didn't want to be on the wrong side of this issue.  Although there is criticism in some quarters about doing the wrong thing because of politics ("Biden puts reelection over principles with D.C. decision," Washington Post).

When President Biden announced last week that he wouldn't veto a disapproval resolution, the new DC crime bill was toast.

====

FWIW, I find it hard to believe that anyone who lived in DC during the period of great disorder, would ever want a return to those times.  It was terrible, and for me, personally very costly.

My lesson is that the forces of disorder are always pushing, and you cannot yield.

Few people seem to fully grasp that urban revival in the 2000s was sparked by significant public safety improvements.

At the same time, I recognize the problems of police brutality, the carceral state and overpolicing of people of color, warrior policing, etc.

Sadly, the "defund the police" messaging was another lost opportunity to control and shape the narrative, which should have been redefining what public safety means, looks like, and how it is delivered, because criminalization of social problems and having police officers be first responders when they are often not the right choice is not serving American society very well.

-- "The fine line between urban/center city chaos and order," 2020
-- "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented," 2021
-- "Is it too late to change the messaging on "Defund the Police"? How about "Reconstruct Policing"?," 2020
-- "Towards a public safety model that is broader than policing," 2020

Note that my writings on equity and social urbanism come out of a desire to try to break the cycle of urban poverty. Sadly, DC has definitely failed on this dimension.

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

Which came out of my experience on grand jury duty in 2013:

In 2013 I was on grand jury duty.  Each jury had a specialization--ours was drugs and guns mostly, but we still dealt with murders, assaults, and other violent crimes.  

The lesson after three months was that DC spends billions of dollars each year--police, emergency services, health and social services, criminal justice, education, etc., in the communities where crime is persistent--just to keep the neighborhoods and people within them at equilibrium/the same--not to improve.

Follow up: Washington Post op-ed on affordable housing, the priming role of foundations and Washington's weak philanthropic community | Enterprise Community Partners could be a leader

Bradley Fennell of W.C. Smith talks with David Bowers of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. at a development on 21st Street in Northeast Washington. (Jeffrey MacMillan/The Washington Post)

After writing, "Op-Ed in Washington Post about preserving affordable housing in the Purple Line corridor," which discusses the need for a bi-county community development corporation where as part of its mission it would buy, hold, maintain, operate, fund and/or build affordable housing in the catchment area of the forthcoming Purple Line light rail line in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland, as well as how I've been making that point for 13 years, it occurred to me that I neglected to make a key point: what about Enterprise Community Partners?

Enterprise Community Partners, a CDC and foundation prominent in Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic (founded by James Rouse),  and the organization that David Bowers, author of the op-ed, works for, could have stepped up years ago to put forward the concept in the first place, that they are one of the only Maryland organizations with the kind of heft that is required to get such a concept off the table from vision to implementation ("With project near H Street, Enterprise Community Partners offers vision for affordable housing," Washington Post, 2012).  From the article:

Renovation of Fairway Park, the 33-building cluster of apartments named for views of Langston Golf Course, aims to preserve 396 apartments at rental rates affordable to families making well below the area’s average. But for David Bowers, head of the local office of the nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners, the project is also another chance to demonstrate an evolving vision of what the term “affordable housing” means.

Now in its 30th year, Columbia-based Enterprise operates in dozens of communities nationwide and has grown its focus from just creating and preserving low-income housing to addressing transportation and energy costs for poor and working class residents. ... 

With housing prices on the rise again in the region, Enterprise has been aggressively locking up similar deals. In 2011, it provided $51 million in financing for the preservation of 1,200 units, and Bowers said he expects to close on $95 million in financing this year toward 1,400 units. He is developing new housing in partnership with churches in some of the poorest parts of Southeast D.C., including Matthews Memorial Baptist Church and Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal. 

Bowers said the deals are a start, but that if the District wants to remain a place where low-income residents can remain, broader changes are needed. “When it comes to our city leaders, there really needs to be a sense of urgency for funding changes, policy changes and more coordination when it comes to preserving affordability,” he said.

DC area philanthropy is weak.  A problem in the DC area is that its philanthropic community is relatively weak.  That's what sets apart affordable housing initiatives in concert with transit in cities like Minneapolis, Denver, and Phoenix.

Philanthropy is weak here because in past generations, there wasn't a lot of wealth in the area--instead the major business was (and is) government.  So you don't have legacy foundations in DC the way that you do even in Baltimore, where they have the Abell and Weinberg Foundations, and later foundations like the Casey Foundation, investing a lot in the local community.

Or not oriented to serving low income communities.  And today's wealth (the Rales brothers, Bezos, Reynolds' and others) isn't into what we might call social justice initiatives, they are more self-interested and/or focused on high profile donations to national institutions: Jeff Bezos in robotics; Mitchell Rales has his semi-private museum ("Glenstone, a Private Art Xanadu, Invests $200 Million in a Public Vision," New York Times); the Reynolds' wanted to dictate their gifts in narrow ways ("Catherine Reynolds, The Giver Who Gave Up," Washington Post); David Rubinstein's incredible donation streak, but to national organizations ("Rubenstein Discusses Philanthropy, Failure at Business School," Harvard Crimson); etc.

For awhile you had the Fannie Mae Foundation, which did locally-serving projects but while it had some high profile projects ("Howard U. in Washington Looks to Its Neighbors," New York Times), in terms of substantive structural change, it didn't accomplish much.  Now the FMF no longer exists because of its takeover by the federal government after the 2008 crash.

ECP, with a national footprint but home in Maryland is in a unique position to shape the environment for affordable housing preservation in Maryland.  In short, in the Washington area, there likely is no better organization than Enterprise Community Partners to start a CDC to preserve affordable housing in the Purple Line corridor, to create an organization, provide start up funding, and lay the groundwork to create a large scale bi-county tax increment financing district to do just that.

From the Baltimore Sun article "Enterprise Community Development plans $5 million investment to form partnerships with minority developers":

Enterprise Community Development, the nation’s sixth-largest nonprofit affordable housing developer and among the largest African American-led affordable housing developers, seeks partners who are proposing affordable housing of 60 units or more as well as mixed-use developments, retail, multifamily communities or senior communities. Projects can be proposed anywhere in Enterprise’s footprint from Pennsylvania to Virginia.

In some respects, too much time has passed.  It's probably "too late" to have the kind of impact that such an initiative could have had 8 years ago, but at least with the Purple Line now being delayed until 2026 ("Purple Line will open 4½ years late and cost $1.4 billion more to complete, state says," Washington Post), and the lagging housing market in Prince George's County, there are still opportunities, if this course of action were to be pursued.

There are best practice affordable housing initiatives in the area, but not at the scale needed for the Purple Line corridor.  Note that there are a number of groups active in the area that could participate in such an initiative including Montgomery Housing Partnership ("A call to action on affordable housing," Post), Arlington Housing Partners ("Arlington nonprofit expands to Montgomery as region responds to affordable housing crunch," Post), the Community Preservation and Development Corporation, Manna CDC, Jubilee Housing of DC--they are focused on DC, were the model for Jubilee Housing of Baltimore ("Jubilee: A Partnership in Housing The Poor Can Afford," Washington Post, 1987), for profits like WC Smith Company ("At Villages at Parklands, A Community Reborn," Post) and Jonathan Rose Companies ("$43M DC Affordable Community to Open Next Spring," Multi Housing News), etc.

(The Prince George's County Housing Authority has about 400 units of housing!!!!!!)

But these groups need a leader.  To move forward, the affordable housing, community development, and revitalization community in Suburban Maryland need a convenor, seed funding, and strong advocacy for the creation of a "Transportation Renewal District" TIF program, which is a natural role for ECP.

======

Also see:

-- "Building stronger community support for public/social housing," 2012
-- "East County, Montgomery County, Maryland: Council redistricting spurs ideas for revitalization | Part 1 -- Overview," 2021
-- "Affordable housing: it's not just one element, it's many elements," 2013

From the 2013 blog entry, listing an agenda for preserving existing housing:

A balanced policy for producing and maintaining affordable housing involves at least seven policies: 

1. portfolio investment in existing multiunit buildings
2. support for community land trusts and cooperatives to extract land from the market to maintain affordability
3. putting easements on apartment buildings so that a certain proportion of the units remain affordable
4. providing density bonuses and other incentives for the production of affordable housing as part of new developments
5. allowing accessory dwelling units and accessory apartment units in single family houses and lots
6. monitoring privately owned multiunit buildings and stepping in when necessary to ensure that properties are maintained and that housing doesn't become decrepit or vacant
7. stepping in and taking properties over through receivership, when they are mismanaged.

Applied to the Purple Line, you'd need additional policies:

-- funding the construction of new affordable housing projects and related social infrastructure  

-- adding affordable housing to existing properties

-- land use intensification

-- adding an SRO housing element as part of the mix ("One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing")

With regard to the checkered track record of CDCs in Washington, see:

--"Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations," 2005
-- "(Some) Community Development Corporations still screwing up," 2011
-- "The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?<" 2013

which is why it's important to have strong accountability measures:

--"Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017

BTMFBA: arts uses in Greater Boston/Somerville, Massachusetts

There is an article in the Boston Globe, "‘Tension is everywhere’: In Somerville, a tech cluster emerges with hope and worry: Around Boston, tech grows at the expense of artists and small businesses," about the displacement of arts uses in Somerville, a suburb of Boston, as tech uses especially biotechnology continue to expand.  Somerville is also complicated by a rise in demand due to improvements in transit service.  From the article:

When it came time to renew the Asylum’s lease on 42,000 square feet of warehouse space it rented in an envelope plant off Somerville Avenue, Hasselblad Torres wanted a long-term deal. He said he offered to pay roughly $900,000 a year — a roughly 50 percent hike — but the building’s new owner, Boston-based developer Rafi Properties, didn’t show “much enthusiasm” for the offer. Later, a Rafi spokeperson said, the landlord offered a two-year extension at the Asylum’s existing, lower, rent, but said the Asylum was “not able to provide a guarantor” and could not move forward in negotiations.

Either way, talks fizzled. Artisan’s Asylum found a new home in Allston. And in December, The Engine, an MIT-backed venture capital fund with far deeper pockets, moved in to its old space. ... 

It’s a question that has played out in neighborhood after neighborhood across Greater Boston in recent years as historic levels of investment have flooded the city’s tech scene, promising good jobs and more customers to small businesses but often pricing out some of the institutions that make a place thrive. 

From Fort Point to Jamaica Plain to once-forlorn pockets of Cambridge, enclaves of artists and low-cost creative endeavors have been transformed by soaring rents for both housing and commercial space. Now Somerville is in the throes of it. “Tension is everywhere,” said Jessica Eshleman, executive director of Somerville’s Union Square Main Streets, in an interview. “The excitement and the optimism and the concerns and the worry — it’s all at the same time. It exists in the same moment, and in the same breath.”

A letter to the editor ("Artists can’t expect perpetually cheap real estate") in response says, well if you want to maintain uses, buy the properties, don't expect it to be given to you.  He's right, stating:

Now is the time for artists to go to Holyoke, North Adams, Lawrence, and other places where real estate is more reasonable than hot Somerville. They could form co-ops, condo associations, or partnerships, and buy old mill spaces, old shopping centers, or even an old mall in Lanesborough, and divvy it up and use it for their needs.

If you want to control your future, you buy your space. Most other tenants understand this. Artists create things that inspire or challenge us or bring beauty into our lives. But to demand that private property owners be legally obligated to rent to them at a loss is not part of the deal.

but misses the point some, in that an average groups of artists and creatives usually lack the means to be able to raise such funds.  They need help to do so.

That's why I argue for the creation of arts-use focused community development corporations operating at the scale of a city or a county, to take on such projects, to buy, hold and operate arts facilities including housing, to maintain their uses in the face of property price appreciation and displacement.

In a more cryptic way, I refer to this as "Buy The M***** F****** Building Already."

-- "BTMFBA: the best way to ward off artist or retail displacement is to buy the building," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: Baltimore and the Area 405 Studio," 2021
-- "When BTMFBA isn't enough: keeping civic assets public through cy pres review," 2016
-- "BMFBTA revisited: nonprofits and facilities planning and acquisition," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: artists and Los Angeles," 2017
-- "BTMFBA Chronicles: Seattle coffee shop raises money to buy its building," 2018
-- "Dateline Los Angeles: BTMFBA & Transformational Projects Action Planning & arts-related community development corporation as an implementation mechanism to own property," 2018
-- "Seattle preservation: Pike Place Market, Neptune Theater, and the Cinerama," 2021
-- "A wrinkle on BTMFBA: let the city/county own the cultural facility, while you operate it (San Francisco and the Fillmore Heritage Center)," 2021

The BTMFBA argument extends writings about how artists, arts disciplines, and organizations need to "make their own plans" to represent their own interests.  

The initial piece in 2009 didn't mention in a direct way the need to have community development corporations, although I'd written about such groups in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

-- "Arts, culture districts and revitalization," 2009

-- "The Howard and Lincoln Theatres: run them like the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust/Playhouse Square Cleveland model," 2012

I updated the piece in 2018 to include that point.

-- "Revisiting stories: cultural planning and the need for arts-based community development corporations as real estate operators"

A wrinkle on BTMFBA: let the city/county own the cultural facility, while you operate it (San Francisco and the Fillmore Heritage Center)

There's an interesting article in The Grio, "Black residents demand San Francisco give center as reparations after destroying Fillmore neighborhood," about how residents and community organizations in the Fillmore district of San Francisco are advocating for the city to give residents the Fillmore Heritage Center, to own and operate. 

The FHC is a ground floor space, 50,000 s.f., with an adjacent 112 space parking lot, that is connected to a separate 12-story condominium building.

FHC has languished for many years, after its main and opening tenant, Yoshi's jazz club, went through bankruptcy in 2012 and shut down for good in 2014, which in turn led to the closure of the adjacent restaurant, 1300 on Fillmore, a couple years later.   

Two nonprofits were given control of the space, which is the ground floor of a building with housing above, and programmed it aggressively, but a shooting and the pandemic have combined to leave the facility empty.

Fillmore Heritage Center is seen on the corner of Fillmore and Eddy Streets on Thursday, November 2, 2017 in San Francisco. Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle 2017.

The nonprofits estimate it will cost about $420,000 per year to operate ("Will new plan for S.F.’s Fillmore Heritage Center revive long-shuttered jazz club and community hub?," San Francisco Chronicle).

Reparations argument.  The advocates are calling on the city to give them the facility as a form of reparations for planning and policy decisions over the decades that have harmed the predominately black neighborhood.

Reparations is a misguided argument: they need plans and implementation mechanisms.  I think the reparations argument is misguided, or at least, aren't well-focused.  

Graphic/map of the Chicago Loop from a Wall Street Journal travel article illustrates the concept of "cultural mapping" at the neighborhood scale.  Illustration by John S. Dykes.

The issues are two-fold: (1) creating viable revitalization/equity ("Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty")  and cultural plans for the neighborhood; and (2) creating a viable operating plan and implementation mechanism for the Fillmore Heritage Center. 

Why did Yoshi's and the restaurant fail/Arts as consumption.  Another question that doesn't seem to be asked is what happened? ("1300 on Fillmore Closed," Eater SF, "The Addition, Formerly Yoshi's in San Francisco, to Abruptly Close," KQED/PBS, "How the Yoshi's Deal Went Down," New Fillmore).

I think the problem is the "heritage center" was really a concert facility and restaurant, focused on "arts as consumption" (""Arts district planning" in Arlington County | Many communities don't know the difference between arts as production and arts as consumption").

The large facility--28,000 s.f.--needed a lot of people to fill it up, multiple days a week, and the market for jazz is small compared to other genres.  

Plus, the firm took out many millions of dollars of loans to pay for outfitting the facility and revenues weren't strong enough to both operate the business and pay down debt.   

The adjoining but separately owned restaurant was dependent on concert attendees for a significant amount of its business, and when the facility shut down, they lost almost 40% of their business.

This project, while laudatory, was probably inadequately considered in terms of overall demand and the cultural offer within the Fillmore neighborhood, and when costs to develop it ballooned, it was set up to fail.

Buying/Controlling buildings.  My BTMFBA--Buy the M.F. Building Already-- writings focus on how cultural organizations and disciplines to have more control over their future and economic sustainability, need to own (or at least control for the long term) their own buildings.  

The primary recommendation is to do this through culture/arts-based community development corporations, acting at the scale of a city or county, to buy, hold, build, and operate such facilities.

-- "BTMFBA: the best way to ward off artist or retail displacement is to buy the building," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: Baltimore and the Area 405 Studio," 2021
-- "Revisiting stories: cultural planning and the need for arts-based community development corporations as real estate operators," 2018
-- "When BTMFBA isn't enough: keeping civic assets public through cy pres review," 2016
-- "BMFBTA revisited: nonprofits and facilities planning and acquisition," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: artists and Los Angeles," 2017
-- "BTMFBA Chronicles: Seattle coffee shop raises money to buy its building," 2018
-- "Dateline Los Angeles: BTMFBA & Transformational Projects Action Planning & arts-related community development corporation as an implementation mechanism to own property," 2018

Now, it doesn't have to be a CDC specifically, sometimes smaller scale efforts work just fine.

Colleges might do this, for example Emerson College in Boston owns and operates significant theater buildings, as do other colleges, Seattle has a couple of different nonprofits running multiple performing arts/theater facilities, ("Seattle preservation: Pike Place Market, Neptune Theater, and the Cinerama"), while in Greater Philadelphia, there is a theater management company, Renew Theaters, that operates community theaters which are each owned individually. 

My writing on cultural planning has been sparked in part by the financial failure of cultural facilities and institutions "going it alone" ("Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," 2007; "Cultural organizations in financial exigency," 2020).

And even though I recommend CDCs with more heft as the primary actors, like the Playhouse Square CDC in Cleveland, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Brooklyn Academy of Music CDC, and Takoma Arts in Washington State, there are plenty of one-off nonprofits successfully running cultural facilities.

I wonder if the Fillmore Heritage Center "idea" is a bit misguided in that the community likely lacks the financial capacity to own, maintain, operate and program the facility. 

If they had that capacity, they would have picked up the management contract for the facility by now, and would be operating the FHC already. 

Although it's possible that the FHC Equity Partners initiative has the capacity, as it includes a couple of community development organizations with the experience and track record of developing, owning and operating a significant property portfolio.

But the group of people and organizations agitating for ownership of the Fillmore Heritage Center ought to think long and hard about what they want and how best to accomplish it.

1.  Why not let the city continue to own and maintain the facility?, thereby off-loading the expense, which will only get bigger as the building ages.

2.  How about focusing on creating a robust nonprofit with the mission and capacity to operate it?

3.  And the demonstration of the ability to deliver a great and successful program of events and activities.

Miami's Liberty City and Overtown districts as models.  There are many models, including some interesting organizations in Miami, in the Liberty City district ("Social infrastructure in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami") and Overtown.  From the blog entry:

• African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, is part of the county culture agency, has programs in visual and performing arts for children and youth, presents various arts events including black theater, and has residency and apprenticeship programs for artists ("African Heritage Cultural Arts Center Shapes the Next Generation of Miami's Black Creatives," Miami New Times).

The original theater has been expanded into a cultural complex with the addition of a new building immediately adjacent.  

In Overtown, another historically black Miami neighborhood, one remarkable civic asset is the Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida.  

In addition to its ever expanding archives on the Black experience in South Florida, the organization also operates the Historic Lyric Theater, the city's first theater building dedicated specifically to the Black community when it opened in 1915.

Leimert Park, Los Angeles.  Another example is the Leimert Park Village district in Los Angeles, which is seen as the cultural heart of the city's black community ("Los Angeles's Black Pride Taking In the Retro Vibe of Leimert Park," Washington Post, Slideshow, Los Angeles Times).  

The Vision Theatre building is a fabulous example of art deco architecture ("Leimert Theater: Envisioning a Neighborhood Landmark," KCET/PBS).  Photo: Luis Simco, Los Angeles Times.

Historically it has been a great scene for music, from blues to hip-hop.

The city is restoring the Vision Theatre and repositioning it as a community arts and performance facility, which will reopen next year (Vision Theatre / Manchester Junior Arts Center, LA Department of Cultural Affairs).  

Note that the Vision Theatre will be operated the way I suggest for the Fillmore Heritage Center.  The city will own the building, and a third party community-focused organization will operate it ("LA seeks proposals to operate Vision Theatre in Leimert Park," Hey SoCal).

-- RFP webpage and document 

Other cultural elements include the annual

Leimert Park Village Book Fair, featuring more than 200 authors, the open air Destination Crenshaw cultural interpretation walk ("Destination Crenshaw art project aims to reclaim the neighborhood for black L.A.," Los Angeles Times, Destination Crenshaw webpage, Perkins+Will), and the annual Juneteenth street festival.

Concept for Destination Crenshaw, Perkins+Will

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week -- November 13th - 21st

-- Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week

The Orange County Register is running articles throughout the week on the topic as it relates to their county.

Past blog entries:

-- "President Biden's Infrastructure Program: Part 1: Homelessness," 2021
-- Associated Press story on homelessness in Western U.S. cities," 2017
-- "One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing," 2017
-- "One potential solution to the problem of "finding work" for homeless adults," 2017
-- "Another example of the need for social housing organizations to construct social housing at scale," 2019
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)," 2020

One of the things that bothers me about people's remonstrations about new residential development is that "it isn't affordable."

By definition new housing delivered today is built at today's costs for land, materials, and labor.  How would it not be the most expensive housing available on the market today?

The US developed a system where the private sector is the primary actor building housing.  

As early as the 1930s, the federal government's policy makers recognized that "the market" couldn't build housing for low income segments of the market without subsidy.  But for the most part, elected and appointed officials weren't interested in supporting alternatives to the private sector in general.  And for the most part, subsidies weren't provided, therefore low income/social/affordable housing wasn't constructed.

Planning hindrances to affordability.  Another reason why social housing isn't produced "all that much" is that our planning systems aren't designed to produce it ("Community planning, capitalism, and housing/real estate development," 2020). 

1.  The biggest restriction is on height of buildings.  This causes great opportunity costs as units not built today cost more to build tomorrow.  A lot of conservatives criticize "government" and zoning regulations for causing the problem.  But really such limits are a response to resident fears about density -- nimbyism.  

2.  Sure, there might be "inclusionary zoning" requirements on new construction, where a small set of units of new developments are set aside for lower income segments of the market.

3. The real need is to produce social housing at scale.  Vienna ("Learning from Vienna and from Vienna's Social Housing Model," 2013), Stockholm ("Why Stockholm's 1930s Housing Projects Are Now in High Demand," Bloomberg), Singapore ("Why Singapore Has One of the Highest Home Ownership Rates," Bloomberg), and the UK, among others did this.  Vienna and Singapore still do.  The others not so much.

4.  One way to do this and to have it mixed in within existing communities would be to allocate some lots for multiunit housing to 100% affordable/social housing developments.  Cities like Helsinki do this.

5.  Another restriction usually is the banning of "single room occupancy" buildings, smaller units, often rented by the week or month, with shared bathrooms and limited kitchen facilities.

Yesterday, I came across this postcard, postmarked 1925, featuring the 1800 unit YMCA Hotel in Chicago "for transient men."  The existence of such housing today would go a long way towards addressing homelessness.

I doubt that DC has as many as 1,800 units of SRO housing, while Chicago had that much in a single building!

6.  A simple way to add housing is to encourage accessory dwelling units -- carriage houses, basement apartments, etc. -- as part of existing houses/lots.  For example, DC has the capacity to add 10,000 to 30,000 housing units from such measures.

But too many communities either prevent such housing altogether or impose artificial limits that severely limit supply.  DC is one of the places with arbitrary limits.

Transit systems, broken windows, and the burden of homelessness

Homeless people sleeping in the Powell Street Station, 2017.  Photo: Laura Oda, San Jose Mercury News.

A few weeks ago, I started writing a blog entry about how BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, has created a "senior manager of social service partnerships" to deal with homelessness on the system ("Meet BART’s first-ever homelessness czar," San Jose Mercury News).  From the article:

As the entire state grapples with a homelessness crisis made worse by the COVID pandemic, BART is trying a new strategy to address the hundreds of unhoused people seeking refuge on its trains and in and around its stations. The transit agency is on the front lines, grappling with everything from people suffering mental health crises on BART platforms to encampment fires encroaching on tracks and disrupting train service. 

Now, BART is drafting a “Strategic Homeless Action Plan” to take a more proactive approach to the issue. The new initiative includes hiring 20 crisis intervention specialists, partnering with social service agencies to deliver resources to people in need, and improving the data BART collects on how the homelessness crisis impacts its system. ...

[From the interview]  "BART is reflective of the Bay Area, so homelessness is huge and we’re seeing hundreds and hundreds of unsheltered individuals every day. I think especially in light of the pandemic, with so many shelters closing and capacity being limited, BART has been the one constant that’s been open." 

Q: BART obviously is a transportation agency, not a human services or housing organization. So why is it BART’s responsibility to tackle the homelessness crisis?

A: I think it was just too much to ignore at a certain point. The status quo wasn’t working. There are still so many pressing issues that we’re experiencing, our staff is experiencing, and our riders are experiencing. And so as more people are getting on BART every day as we sort of hopefully put COVID in the back view, it’s really important for us to have a strategic plan and actions behind that to address some of these issues. We’re not going to be the social service entity ever. But we need to know how to move to be able to guide the resources to BART and our riders.

Similarly SEPTA has announced an increase in funding for services to deal with homelessness on their transit system, including the hiring of up to 57 outreach workers focusing on connecting homeless people to services and reducing their negative impacts ("SEPTA will spend $3.6 million to bulk up social services for homeless people and drug users," Philadelphia Inquirer).

These are attempts to make the transit system safer and more congenial for riders.

At first, I thought this was pretty amazing, but the reality is that it is a necessary response to the failure of other parts of society and government to take care of this, and it puts extra burden and costs, reflected in higher fares, on transit systems.

Relatedly, this week, Bay Area media report that in the last week there have been three overdose deaths on the BART system, two on trains, one in a station ("Troubling trend of suspected overdose deaths on the BART system," KTVU-TV/Fox).  

But rampant and visible drug use at BART stations is nothing new ("BART Officials Appalled by Video of Rampant Drug Use at Civic Center," KPIX-TV/CBS)

I have been reading Police Chief William Bratton's latest book, The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America, and I am just up to the point where he is taking the job of Chief of the New York City Transit Police, in early 1990.  This was when the system was still in crisis, but with the people and finances capable of achieving a turnaround.

Transit wunderkind David Gunn was the chief of the Subway system, and during the interview process he took Bratton on a tour of trains, stations, and other infrastructure.  It was a mess of graffiti, litter and other trash, homeless, urine, crime, etc.

The point Gunn made was that they could fix the trains and get them operating on time and safely.  But if the stations and system remained disorderly and chaotic, it wouldn't matter.

Broken Windows theory of policing.  That really set the stage for Bratton and the adoption of the "Broken Windows" approach to addressing and reducing crime.  It gave me a lot of insight into his thinking.

I am a strong proponent of Broken Windows theory, which I argue hasn't really truly been adopted by police departments.  

The original theory, comparable to social urbanism, calls for a co-equal focus on improvements in policing -- how police time is used, more officers if possible, and the use of data on crime and types of crime to direct resources towards reducing crime not just responding to it, as well as investments to address disorderly conditions that contribute to community degradation, in urban design interventions focused on "crime prevention through community design," etc.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice"
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do"
-- "Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013
-- "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"," 2014
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- "Crime time re-revisited: a set of programs focused on reducing crime," 2015
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Police response to mental health matters," 2016
-- "Who identifies problems and addresses them at the metropolitan scale? No one, at least when it comes to mental health-related police shootings," 2016
-- "Revisiting intimate partner violence/murder," 2017
-- "Seattle Times article on the need for changes to 911 services and emergency response," 2018
-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Social urbanism and Baltimore," 2019

Zero Tolerance Policing is not the same as the Broken Windows approach.  Instead most police departments interpreted it as "zero tolerance policing," arresting people for the smallest of infractions.

And as crime rates dropped, ZTP not only had diminishing marginal returns, but led to reduced community support in the face of practices like "stop and frisk"  ("Crime dropped under stop-and-frisk, which is worth remembering in the rush to criticize it," NBC, Stop and Frisk: The Human Impact, Center for Constitutional Rights, "Here’s what you need to know about stop and frisk — and why the courts shut it down," Washington Post).

It also made "Broken Windows" a target for community activists and academics, since the theory was associated so closely with policing in New York City.

But having lived in a pretty bad area of DC for about 15 years, from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, I became a pretty strong proponent of the concept, having the "lived experience" of serious disorder and the many negative impacts from being victim of crime as a person and as a resident of a neighborhood ("The fine line between urban/center city chaos and order," 2020).

Social infrastructure in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami

There is an article in the Miami Herald about "climate gentrification" ("Another study finds climate gentrification in Miami, this time in the rental market") but it's behind a paywall so that you have to access it through a library articles database.  

Doing the search on that site, there were links to other articles on the topic within the paper, including "Liberty City is rapidly transforming. Residents are split on who will benefit." 

Artist Kyle Holbrook of Moving Lives of Kids created the nine-story ‘Liberty City Mural’ for the Liberty City Pinnacle Art in Public Places program. Photo: EILEEN ESCARDA.  "Mural depicts leaders, positive changes in Liberty City," Miami Herald.

Liberty City is a historically black neighborhood of about 28,000 residents.  Its black population is dropping, its Hispanic population is increasing, and in part because of its location, but also its relatively high elevation in the face of climate change and the expected rise in sea levels that will devastate most South Florida neighborhoods, it's experiencing new development and an influx of higher income residents.

I've discussed "social infrastructure" in the context of equity planning ("An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017) and even within managing  and programming public spaces as a network ("The layering effect: how the building blocks of an integrated public realm set the stage for community building and Silver Spring, Maryland as an example," 2012) although I didn't refer to the concept of anchor programming as a kind of "social infrastructure."  I should have.

Community, social, and civic organizations are part of the civic asset network in communities, which is discussed in Eric Klinenberg's book about social infrastructure, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.  His study of death and the Chicago heat wave, found thatwhen comparing equally impoverished neighborhoods, those neighborhoods with a greater array of community organizations and civic and retail amenities had fewer deaths.

The organizations listed in the Herald article that I found particularly interesting are:

• Roots Collective Black House, which has a print shop, event space, offers creative services and an internship program for youths, including access to seminars on topics such as gentrification ("Roots Collective Black House Aims to Enrich Black and Brown Communities," Miami New Times)
• Collective 62, an artists cooperative, gallery and work space
• MEYGA, the Multi-Ethnic Youth Group Association, started as an after school program for children, expanded to offer some family programming, and has since opened a private school serving K-8 grades
• African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, is part of the county culture agency, has programs in visual and performing arts for children and youth, presents various arts events including black theater, and has residency and apprenticeship programs for artists ("African Heritage Cultural Arts Center Shapes the Next Generation of Miami's Black Creatives," Miami New Times).

The original theater has been expanded into a cultural complex with the addition of a new building immediately adjacent.  

In Overtown, another historically black Miami neighborhood, one remarkable civic asset is the Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida.  

In addition to its ever expanding archives on the Black experience in South Florida, the organization also operates the Historic Lyric Theater, the city's first theater building dedicated specifically to the Black community when it opened in 1915.

National Library Week should probably be National Library Month

I discussed this year's National Library Month last week ("National Library Week, April 4th-10th, 2021").

Vartan Gregorian, the scholar who moved from academic administration to the Presidency of the New York City Public Library (technical it runs the system in Manhattan, Bronx, and Staten Island, while the Queens and Brooklyn library systems are independent), and revitalized it after a long period of decline, died last week ("Vartan Gregorian, Savior of the New York Public Library, Dies at 87," New York Times).  From the article:

... The library faced a $50 million deficit and had no political clout. Its constituencies were scholars, children and citizens who liked to read. The city had cut back so hard that the main branch was closed on Thursdays, and some branches were open only eight hours a week. 

To Dr. Gregorian, the challenge was irresistible. The library was, like him, a victim of insult and humiliation. The problem, as he saw it, was that the institution, headquartered in the magnificent Carrère and Hastings Beaux-Arts pile dedicated by President William Howard Taft in 1911, had come to be seen by New York City’s leaders, and even its citizens, as a dispensable frivolity.

He seemed a dubious savior: a short, pudgy scholar who had spent his entire professional life in academic circles. On the day he met the board, he was a half-hour late, and the trustees were talking about selling prized collections, cutting hours of service and closing some branches. He asked only for time, and offered in return a new vision. 

“The New York Public Library is a New York and national treasure,” he said. “The branch libraries have made lives and saved lives. The New York Public Library is not a luxury. It is an integral part of New York’s social fabric, its culture, its institutions, its media and its scholarly, artistic and ethnic communities. It deserves the city’s respect, appreciation and support. No, the library is not a cost center! It is an investment in the city’s past and future!”

He left that position to become president of Brown University, and later the president of the philanthropic organization, the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Bryant Park as spillover revitalization from the library.  The revitalization of the library system and the central library on Bryant Park also set the stage for the resuscitation of Bryant Park.  

I am very much delayed on reviewing the book by Andrew Manshel, Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces, on that separate but related process.  Andrew Heiskell, a top official at Time Life, was involved in both.

All hasn't been smooth sailing since he left.  The Library's plans for changes at the central library caused advocates to push back ("Overdue Decision: The New York Public Library shelves a controversial renovation plan," City Journal), and the original plan was changed ("The New York Public Library Unveils Master Plan for Its Iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building," press release).

And the city needs to be pushed to maintain and increase funding ("In Win for Advocates, New York City Libraries Secure $33 Million Funding for FY20," Library Journal).

Library Street street sign, Braddock, Pennsylvania.  And a story about the former Mayor of Braddock, John Futterman in Politico ("The Democrats’ Giant Dilemma"), there was a photo of this hand painted sign for Library Street in that community.  

The sign was designed and painted by Anthony Purcell.

Institute for Humanities moving to New York Public Library.  In keeping with my point that libraries need to be repositioned in part as community cultural centers, New York City's Institute for the Humanities is moving to the main library, the 42nd Street branch, and will offer programming in association with the library's extant Center for Research in the Humanities ("A New York Intellectual Bastion Finds a New Home," New York Times).

President Biden's Infrastructure Program: Part 1: Homelessness

A few months back, I wrote "What should a domestic Marshall Plan/21st Century New Deal look like?," suggesting a bunch of sectors where focused federal government investment could make a big difference.  

Charlie commented that a key element of the New Deal was moving capital from Wall Street to the nation's interior, which was starved of investment capital in general.  This is a huge point.

So I have started reading some books on the New Deal, right now I'm reading The New Deal: A Modern History by LA Times journalist Michael Hiltzik, and The New Deal and the American West.  

There are plenty of journal and other articles as well, both old and new ("Learning From the New Deal—For the Next Recovery," Atlantic Monthly).

There is a lot of criticism of President Biden's proposed program ("Biden Details $2 Trillion Plan to Rebuild Infrastructure and Reshape the Economy," New York Times, "White House Issues State Infrastructure Grades," US News & World Report), and the planner in me would say that there needs to be more serious planning before moving forward, and innovation.

For example, I wrote a bunch of pieces after Obama was elected, suggesting reorganizing federal agencies to better address urban and rural development issues.

-- "How will Obama relate to the District?"

But reading about the New Deal and taking into account the reality of the Republican response to government generally and Democratic proposals specifically: in effect -- "Can't do.  Won't do.  F*** you" -- it's not possible to do this kind of planning because all it does is provide more time for the opposition to organize.

In such cases, planning makes it easier to stymie.  See various writings on the concept of "vetocracy", e.g., "A few steps to overcome American 'vetocracy"," San Francisco Chronicle.

(Which is tragic because it makes it difficult to develop the necessary support base to help ensure ultimate success for the program.)

And sadly, the way that government works now, it's so hard to create a program to begin with, that there isn't the concept that programs can be improved over time, with experience, because it's almost impossible to get enough votes for a "technical modifications" bill.

The process is very bad.

The Interstate Highway System as a counter example.  By contrast, the process by which the federal government "created" the Interstate Highway system took more than 20 years, and it wasn't because of President Eisenhower's experience as a young military officer.

First, there was the development of technical ideas and a campaign for the idea of highways, in part spurred on by the example of Germany.  For example I have a copy of an issue of Fortune Magazine from 1936, with graphics showing how freeways can be designed.

Second, building on such efforts, and Congressional mandates, in 1939, the Bureau of Public Roads released a plan, Toll Roads and Free Roads, for the Interstate Highway System.

Third, in 1944, Congress authorized but did not appropriate funding for the proposed system subsequently refined (Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944).

Fourth, in 1956, Congress appropriated money to build the system ("Congress Approves the Federal Highway Act," US Senate), recognizing that in those 12 years between authorization and appropriation of funds there was plenty of organizing and lobbying ("Origins of the Interstate System," FHWA).

And this doesn't even count the 25 or so years it took to build the bulk of that system, and funding its maintenance, which is an issue now, both with the failure to increase gasoline excise taxes very much, the effect of inflation on maintenance, funding new projects, and the transition from fossil fuel powered motor vehicles to electric vehicles that don't pay excise taxes on motor fuels.

Biden doesn't have 20+ years to pass an infrastructure bill.  At most he might only have two years.

=====================

Homelessness and affordable housing as infrastructure.  So, WRT "homelessness," last week a HUD press release stated that "HUD ANNOUNCES $5 BILLION TO INCREASE AFFORDABLE HOUSING TO ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS."

But for me, speaking of planning, it sounds more like "same old, same old."  This is the downside of not being able to plan, and having to develop consensus on what to do, when so many different interests have such vastly different opinions and approaches to dealing with the problem.

One key element that is needed is a massive program to build single room occupancy housing in major metropolitan areas, ideally in places with high quality transportation.  At the very least, most major cities need thousands of units of this type of housing, not a few dozen or even hundreds of units,  but thousands.

-- "One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing," 2017
-- "Another example of the need for social housing organizations to construct social housing at scale," 2019

Granted, I often criticize people for believing the solution to complicated problems is "this one thing."  

I don't believe that building SRO housing is "the one solution that will end homelessness," but lack of such housing, at scale, is a significant reason we have the problem we have.

For the most part, post-war housing and zoning policies made such housing illegal.  Without the right type of housing for a significant segment of the homeless population, obviously it becomes a serious problem.

It will only get worse, because housing will only get more expensive, making it that much more difficult for people on society's margins to be able to get and pay for housing without extranormal public support.

But note, it's not cheap.  

For example, the 148 unit Mark Twain Hotel in Chicago cost $23 million to buy and $20 million to renovate, and ongoing operating subsidies because most of the tenants are extremely low income ("Iconic Mark Twain Hotel Converting to Affordable Housing in Chicago's Gold Coast Historic District," Multifamilybiz, "After nearly $20 million facelift, Near North Side SRO unveiled as affordable housing ‘done right’" Chicago Sun-Times).