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.

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). 

Another example of the need for social housing organizations to construct social housing at scale

Yesterday's Washington Post has a disturbing story ("Homeless, living in a tent and employed") about the plight of a homeless couple who are living in a tent on 1st Street NE near Union Station.

They are employed, although in low wage jobs.

When you make little income, you take any housing you can get at a rent you can afford.

They'd been paying rent on an apartment in a substandard building in Prince George's County, but the building was condemned with residents forced to find other housing.

The problem is, a $900 per month apartment is hard to find, especially when 100+ households are thrown back onto the market for housing in a situation like this.

Operating and maintaining low income housing isn't easy. The problem with managing and operating low cost housing is that it isn't cheap either, and after awhile, the properties deteriorate and eventually close after the cost for upgrade or maintenance exceeds the financial capacity of the owner.

I wrote about this a few years ago, suggesting that cities and counties create anticipatory programs to help ward off housing closure:

-- "Tower renewal: The Watergate and Southwest DC, and Toronto," 2011
-- "Deeper thinking/programming on weak residential housing markets is required: DC example, Anacostia," 2012
-- "Receivership is an underutilized tool: Lynhill Condominiums in Prince George's County, Maryland," 2014
-- "The long term potentially negative aspects of condominium buildings as a dominant housing form in cities," 2016

The Toronto Globe and Mail has a related article about how to make "tower communities" more livable, by adding social infrastructure, retail, and other amenities, "Tower Ambitions: how advocates and planners are rethinking high rise tower neighborhoods."

And Vancouver, BC still has a lot of SRO housing, although much of it is substandard and run by property owners who are more interested in milking profits from it ("For low-income residents in Vancouver, a different kind of real estate," Toronto Globe & Mail).

In line with my recommendations for government intervention, the City of Vancouver has produced an SRO Revitalization Action Plan.

Lack of enough housing is a problem. But having enough housing and different types of housing, in particular small apartments, is another issue. The private sector housing production industry is focused on producing the most profitable types of housing. That excludes low income housing, which is why it is subsidized.

But rather than rely on the private sector, it would be better for the social housing sector to be the prime mover in this segment.

And rather than having people live on the street, why not produce more of this type of housing, at scale, in well located places?

At a conference in Portland Oregon in 2005, I was surprised to see existing lower rent SRO housing that was well located, pretty near to Downtown.

I've written a couple pieces about the need for larger scale production of "single room occupancy" apartments, although the Post article demonstrates the need for housing that can accommodate more than one person.

-- "One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing," 2017

There are related articles from places like Hong Kong ("Hong Kong rents leave some in coffin homes," AP) and London ("London housing crisis: £480 a month for a bed, in a shed" and "The great London property squeeze," Guardian) about lack of housing options leading people to rent spaces in "coffin hotels" etc.

Again, I think this coverage of affordable housing shortages in high cost markets illustrates the need for significantly more and a greater variety of SRO type housing.

Not just microhousing for higher income segments such as WeLiving ("What Life Is Like Inside WeWork's Communal Housing Project," Bloomberg), shared apartments for $2,000+/room ("Inside Common's Newest Co-Living Space In Chinatown, On A Fast Track To Opening," Bisnow), microapartments ("Historic DC mansion gets luxury apartment makeover," WTOP; "Life in a 375-square-foot apartment," Washington Post; "NYC micro-apartments: Success of Kips Bay's tiny studios could to more, developer says," AM New York), etc.

Note that the Kips Bay project referenced in the AM New York article includes affordable units.  From the article:

Billed as an experiment, the city relaxed its rules on minimum apartment-size at Carmel Place to see if micro-apartments could help house the growing singles population and drive down rents. Above nearly 5,000 square feet of donated city land, Monadnock Development constructed 55 micro-units, including eight set aside for homeless veterans and 14 affordable units renting for between $949 and $1,490 a month.

Still expensive for people living on the edge, but it adds more options.  (Although I argue for more SRO housing that is even cheaper to rent, because it's "cheaper" to have people housed than to deal with the social and economic costs of homelessness for the people stuck in that situation and for the cities and counties that have to deal with it.

Why aren't we integrating social housing into new large scale, grayfield developments?  Imagine if the future development over the Union Station railyard included a couple SRO buildings.-

Yes, there are requirements for a percentage of units to be allocated as affordable housing within the new construction of multiunit housing.  This is called "inclusionary zoning."  But usually this produces something like 15% of total units for lower income tranches, when far more than 15% of the population can't afford top priced housing.

But it would have even more effect if entire buildings were planned around a social housing agenda within these kinds of developments, rather than a few units, begrudgingly provided ("'Poor doors' are still creating wealth divide in new housing," Guardian).

Including social housing producers and operators as part of master planning for such large scale redevelopments would be a major change to the paradigm.

Revisiting stories: the homelessness crisis in Orange County, California and middle class protest

I am always amazed to see stories ("Estimating the Number of Homeless in America: Statistics Show that America’s Homeless Problem Is Getting Worse," The DataFace) stating that DC has the worst homelessness problem in the US because I have seen the homeless problem with my own eyes in places like San Diego, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, and it doesn't seem to compare--it's staggering, with a lot of violence, drugs, etc.

A different aspect of the argument that the suburbs aren't strictly the American Dream anymore, which I mostly write about from the standpoint of land use and transit, such as:

-- "Sub/urban land use and political development: Bethesda and Montgomery County, Maryland," 2017
-- "Millennials and suburban hipness and Montgomery County, Maryland," 2013
-- "The principles of intensification are pretty much the same for suburban and urban contexts," 2018

are the general discussions about now that the suburbs house a majority of the people in a metropolitan area, they have all the same problems the center cities have/had, including poverty.

I wrote a piece about homelessness in DC and Orange County last summer:

-- "One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing

making the point that "the real problem" is the lack of Single Room Residential housing, subsidized, as a way to accommodate people in otherwise very marginal situations. It turns out there is some, but not very much relative to the demand. For example, in DC there are fewer than 1,000 units of such housing. In Orange County, one of the organizations involved is Illumination Foundation (the director said my piece was one of the best written on the situation there).

In January and February, the County removed the homeless encampments along the Santa Ana River, and they are dealing with various federal lawsuits about accommodations.

The Orange County Register has a series of before and after photos ("See before-and-after photos of the Santa Ana River Trail with homeless people gone and trash cleaned up") and they are really disturbing, the way that public spaces had been abused. 

Yes, I don't believe that people have the inalienable right to live/camp in public spaces not intended for such use.  Yes, I don't have a problem in creating managed sites for such accommodations, but not by taking over parks and open spaces.)

Residents of Irvine, Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel protest as Orange County Board of Supervisors discuss options for homeless people in their community. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)


Having to deal with that in a community that is otherwise wealthy--the average housing price in Orange County now is around $1 million--is mind-blowing and people aren't able to shift their paradigms, at least according to the LA Times story, "O.C. pushes homeless off the street but can't find anywhere to shelter them," reporting on over 1,000 people protesting a County Supervisors meeting where the County Council had been planning to approve plans to house people in temporary shelters in Irvine, Laguna Niguel, and Newport Beach. 

The protest is an interesting contrast compared to last weekend's March for Our Lives events across the country and in DC ("March For Our Lives was a powerful, galvanizing moment: We can't let its momentum slip away," LA Times)..

With the protest, the County Supervisors backed down and didn't approve the agreement. From the article:

But as the county and some of its cities take steps to push out homeless people, the problem of where they should go remains unsolved. And it became abundantly clear Tuesday that finding places willing to host new homeless shelters is going to be a huge political challenge.

More than 1,000 people converged on the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting to protest a plan to relocate those removed from along the river to temporary shelters in Irvine, Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel. ...

Some protesters at Tuesday's meeting said they shouldn't have to worry about where to put the homeless. "Who cares? This is not our responsibility," said Abby Moore, a retiree from Laguna Niguel. "We are not elected to handle this crisis. I just don't want to be near the homeless."

Angela Liu of Irvine said she did not know where the homeless should go. But it should not be in her city, she said. "They need to put them somewhere, maybe somewhere else in California," said Liu, who owns a legal services company. "I really don't know where they can go. But Irvine is beautiful and we don't want it to get destroyed."

Others suggested the government should simply do nothing. U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) criticized "the spectacle of county-financed homeless compounds setting up shop in our local communities."

OCR photo.

Orange County is the poster child for automobility. 

At the same time, it has a number of large cities and an "Edge City" in the area of Costa Mesa. These cities/conurbations are significantly more spread out compared to conurbations like Silver Spring and Bethesda in Montgomery County, Maryland, which are more like towns, even though they are unincorporated.

Even if Orange County were to build a fair amount of SRO housing--and if DC "needs" at least a few thousand such units, Orange County needs at least 10,000 units--the next problem would be mobility, because transit doesn't work that well there, given the long distances between activity centers. But that's another story for another day.

-- "The Mobility of Homeless People and Their Use of Public Transit in Long Beach, California, CSU Long Beach

=====
Interesting article from the Toronto Star, "As spring begins, it's time to think about serving Toronto's homeless next winter."

And "Seattle Times article on the need for changes to 911 services and emergency response," 2018.

Associated Press story on homelessness in Western U.S. cities

I noticed that on the family homeless housing building being constructed in Ward 4 in DC, that the property is being promoted as "short term family housing."  This is part of the program to close the large homeless shelter in the long since closed DC General Hospital building, and shift people to smaller facilities spread out across the city.

Because I scan a lot of newspapers online, I am able to see trends that mostly aren't discernible within "local" newspapers because they are only covering matters within their geography. 

But from newspaper coverage and some observation, it's been clear to me for many years that homelessness in western cities like San Diego, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and San Francisco is much worse that what I seem to see in the east. 

Partly it's an issue of "the weather" allowing for more people to sleep outside for more months of the year.  But it's also because some of those cities are hyperstrong real estate markets, and the inventory of extremely low cost housing has disappeared.

Yes, it's an issue in DC too, but by comparison the problem pales.

I wrote about this a few months ago in response to an article in the Orange County Register, making the point that (1) there needs to be a lot more SRO housing and (2) a way to create social enterprise businesses that can provide "supported settings" for work opportunities.

-- "One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing"
-- "One potential solution to the problem of "finding work" for homeless adults

This has been an issue in DC because of the program to decentralize family homeless shelter to smaller facilities across the city, as well as to bundle support programs more purposively within the program. See "Decentralizing homeless shelters in DC," 2016.

A worker clears out a homeless encampment near Seattle’s Ravenna Park neighborhood. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)


Reading the Associated Press article that was distributed last week, "Amid booming economy, homelessness soars on the US West Coast," I think that those two recommendations are on point.

The article doesn't really address substance abuse (in London, research finds that 44% of "rough sleepers" are alcoholics) or mental health issues among the homeless, instead it mostly focuses on the cost and availability of housing.

In this Sept. 25, 2017 photo, a worker sprays a bleach solution on a sidewalk in downtown San Diego as part of an effort to control a deadly hepatitis A outbreak. The increased number of hepatitis cases in the homeless population, and the geographic spread of the disease led California to declare a state of emergency in October. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

It makes sense that as extremely low cost housing options disappear in strongest real estate market cities, people living precarious lives already are pushed over the edge.

Ironically, around the same time this article was published, the Bisnow real estate news information service ran a story about a new "power nap store" called Recharj, where people can pay to sleep for 25 minutes ("Power nap retail concept expanding to second location"). From the article:

The studio offers single 25-minute power naps for $9 and unlimited monthly memberships for $79. Customers nap on a six-foot Yogibo, which it describes as "new age bean bag furniture," in private spaces with sound-absorbing drapes. The napping areas also include a full-body support pillow, a throw pillow, a blanket, an eye mask and ear plugs. For those seeking guided meditation, Recharj offers a series of classes for $18 each. The classes, with names such as "Sound Bath Immersion," "Gong Bath" and "De-stress," are also included in the monthly membership.

And there are related articles from places like Hong Kong ("Hong Kong rents leave some in coffin homes," AP) and London ("London housing crisis: £480 a month for a bed, in a shed" and "The great London property squeeze," Guardian) about lack of housing options leading people to rent spaces in "coffin hotels" etc.

Again, I think this coverage of affordable housing shortages in high cost markets illustrates the need for significantly more SRO type housing.

Not just microhousing for higher income segments such as WeLiving ("What Life Is Like Inside WeWork's Communal Housing Project," Bloomberg), shared apartments for $2,000+/room ("Inside Common's Newest Co-Living Space In Chinatown, On A Fast Track To Opening," Bisnow), microapartments ("Historic DC mansion gets luxury apartment makeover," WTOP; "Life in a 375-square-foot apartment," Washington Post; "NYC micro-apartments: Success of Kips Bay's tiny studios could to more, developer says," AM New York), etc.

Note that the Kips Bay project referenced in the AM New York article includes affordable units. From the article:

Billed as an experiment, the city relaxed its rules on minimum apartment-size at Carmel Place to see if micro-apartments could help house the growing singles population and drive down rents. Above nearly 5,000 square feet of donated city land, Monadnock Development constructed 55 micro-units, including eight set aside for homeless veterans and 14 affordable units renting for between $949 and $1,490 a month.

Still expensive for people living on the edge, but it adds more options. (Although I argue for more SRO housing that is even cheaper to rent, because it's "cheaper" to have people housed than to deal with the social and economic costs of homelessness for the people stuck in that situation and for the cities and counties that have to deal with it.

One of the "solutions" to the crisis of homelessness is a lot more SRO housing

Recently, the Washington Post has run stories on the city's clearing out of homeless encampments and the impact of the closure of a well-located "self-storage" facility on people living marginally, and using the facility to store their belongings and as a sort of place to live.

-- "'It made America possible for me': The final hours in a lost refuge for the homeless," also see this 2015 story identifying the pending closure of this facility, "For D.C.'s desperate, a refuge from homelessness is about to disappear"
-- "Homeless tent city in the heart of gentrifying Washington gets moved out" (note that the Post has run many similar articles since 2015)

These are tough issues. 

Homelessness as a choice?  Partly, people live in tents because they don't want to live in shelters for various reasons, some legitimate, some likely spurious.  For single adults, the cost of housing is an issue, as can be mental and health issues, including substance abuse.

Public space management.  But the fact of the matter is that people don't have an inalienable right to camp in the public space, and this isn't necessarily an issue of gentrification, but it is an issue of an increasingly desirable housing market shifting towards the provision of housing only to the most expensive segments of the market.

I don't necessarily have a problem providing space for encampments, although given the spatial organization of the city, likely such space would not be as well located as at 2nd and K Streets NE.  But such space needs to be managed.  And such facilities have been semi-disastrous in Seattle ("Shooting At Homeless Camp In Seattle Kills 2, Wounds 3," NPR)  which gives me pause, although DC hasn't had similar problems.

Is homelessness generated in part by the lack of affordable housing for single adults?  I was talking about this with a journalist and I burst out that the problem is that we don't have SRO -- single room occupancy -- housing,.

SRO housing (also a variant, "rooming houses" or "boarding houses") for singles and the working class was a typical feature of communities especially pre-1950s,  SRO buildings were made up of single rooms with limited kitchen facilities in the room (sink, hotplate), and shared bathrooms.  Usually the buildings didn't have much in the way of common facilities or larger, shared kitchen facilities.

By contrast, boarding/rooming houses provided meals for an additional charge.

The decline of SRO housing availability.  In the booming economy of postwar America, this kind of housing was crowded out in favor of apartment buildings, usually in the suburbs, although some remained in the center cities, especially as the real estate markets there declined.  After WWII, some cities, including New York City, made creating new SRO facilities illegal.

-- "The $80-a-Week, 60-Square-Foot Housing Solution That’s Also Totally Illegal: It’s Time to Bring Back the SRO," NextCity
-- "Bring Back Flophouses, Rooming Houses, and Microapartments: Dumb urban policies wiped out the best kinds of housing for the poor, young, and single. But they’re finally making a comeback in smart cities," Slate Magazine

But more recently, as center city real estate markets improved, this kind of housing was crowded out. 

Microapartments as single adult housing for the comparatively well off.  Although interestingly, these days, but as a "product" targeting upscale demographics, the type has been revived, marketed as "microapartments." 

New York City especially has encouraged the creation of upscale microapartments, creating a national design contest ("Efficiencies wanted, emphasis on efficient," New York Times; "Tiny Apartment, Big Winner: The Design That Won NYC's Micro Contest," Wired Magazine) while not paying much attention to the demand for SRO housing on the part of lower income segments.

Today, microapartments are being built in New York City, Seattle, Washington, and other locales.

-- "Manhattan-style micro units have arrived in DC," Post
-- "Life in a 375-square-foot apartment," Post

While microapartments are cheaper than larger units or houses, they are comparatively expensive.  Traditionally, Single Room Occupancy housing was cheap, and paid for by the week. From the second article:

Their $2,250-a-month “junior one-bedroom,” overlooking the bustling bar and restaurant scene along 14th Street NW, is “massive” at 500 square feet, says manager Jason Tremblay, grinning. That’s because the smallest of the Harper’s 144 units are practically shoe boxes at 350 square feet.

DC does have SRO housing, but clearly not enough.  I was prepared to write an article about how DC doesn't have any of this kind of housing, but the reality is that it has some. 

In fact, the organization So Others Might Eat has 500 units of SRO housing, which they call "Single Adult Housing," spread out in buildings across the city, and a few other organizations provide similar housing too, such as a 10-unit building run by the Coalition for the Homeless and the 60-unit Willis P. Greene Manor Supportive Housing Program run by the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization in Ward 7.

I think we probably need a couple thousand more units of this type of housing to satisfy "the market" and simultaneously address homelessness for a significant segment of the market.

Orange County, California: the problem is both supply and cost.  Then I read a great story in the Orange County Register, "Who are the homeless living in the shadow of the Big A? Here are 11 stories," recounting the stories of 11 people living on the banks of the Santa Ana River in the shadow of Anaheim's baseball stadium, so I started looking up SRO housing in Orange County where they have even less than is available in DC, but at much higher prices.

Clearly, not only do they need a lot more SRO housing in Orange County, but it needs to be well located, and cheaper. From the article:

We spent a week talking to people who live along the Santa Ana River trail. Like any neighborhood, the people are diverse, but most share a common goal: They’d rather be paying rent than living in a tent.

Location is an issue because the transit system in Orange County is much less robust than DC (or Los Angeles County) and the cost of a car is a deal breaker for many people living on the economic edge of society.

Failure to plan for a robust housing market for all segments creates big problems.  Likely the lack of affordable single adult housing is is a much bigger issue than we think about, and it's an illustration of my point that without a "market segment analysis" of the etiology of homelessness, it's hard to address the issue properly ("A brief follow up on homelessness policy," 2016).

Community Determinants of Homelessness, slide from a Seattle Human Services presentation

Not to mention the need for comprehensive housing policies rather than piecemeal approaches ("Look ma, no comprehensive housing policy: so affordable housing suffers," 2012).

Problems include the cost of serving homeless adults "on the street."  Plus it's very expensive as the cost of "servicing" homeless adults is much greater than if they were housed ("Million Dollar Murray," New Yorker Magazine).

See "Seattle may extend alcohol-sale limits to much larger area" from the Seattle Times, the series "Health Care 911" and "A Costly Cycle of Care" from the San Diego Union Tribune.

These stories discuss what emergency services personnel call "frequent flyers," the people who are the most frequent consumers of emergency medical services. These clients go in and out of the system, and consume a disproportionate share of the resources. In San Diego, 1,136 frequent users, less than 1% of the city's population, generate 17% of the emergency calls, which cost about $20 million annually. According to the 2004 Seattle Times article:

An estimated 2,000 chronic street alcoholics live in King County, nearly all in the three downtown Seattle zip codes. The 20 worst offenders among them cost an estimated $2 million a year for police, medical, ambulance and transportation, according to the King County Department of Community and Human Services.

Housing segregation abets the problem.  The tendency to keep housing types segregated, rather than mixing housing types within neighborhoods, limits the ability to satisfy the needs of various segments, especially low income housing.  This is complicated further by the fact that traditional residents tend to oppose the addition of different housing types to their otherwise type segregated neighborhoods.

E.g., my neighborhood has a handful of apartment buildings, one nearby building might have 50 units, otherwise apartment buildings have 4-6 units and there aren't very many, plus many of the buildings that are particularly well located and nice have been converted to condominiums. 

Otherwise, all of the houses in my neighborhood are single family, a mix of both detached and attached (rowhouses, triplexes, and duplexes), which doesn't leave much room for serving other segments of the housing market, especially lower income segments.

Recommendations concerning Single Room Occupancy Housing for lower income segments of the housing market

-- build more "single adult housing"
-- provide subsidies recognizing that it's cost-effective because it is cheaper to provide services to people who are housed rather than through emergency services provided "on the street"
-- make sure it is well-located, proximate to high quality transit access
-- and includes "supportive programs" as necessary to assist the residents

Social impact bonds

I had a hard time wrapping my head around these financial instruments, but they are merely a way for financially-pressed governments to get loans.

They work like "tax increment financing," where bonds are sold against a presume rise in property tax revenues beyond a base line number, in response to various infrastructure investments, such as in transit.

But instead of being sold against a property tax revenue stream, social impact bonds are sold against future spending on particular government programs.  Here, the new investment enabled by the bonds is supposed to improve outcomes and reduce costs.  The "reduced costs" are monetized as a way to pay off the bonds.

Another comparable financing instrument are "green infrastructure bonds," which do the same kind of thing, focused on reductions in energy or other utility costs.

One example of a social impact bond is Salt Lake County's use of this form of financing to support the creation of Pre-K schooling programs for lower income children, in the belief that earlier investments in education will reduce other social and economic costs--paid out by various program services of the County---down the road.

Go west complaining citizens, go west (to Portland) or east to the east (to Europe), if you want to see streetcars)

I didn't get to last night's hearing in Arlington County on streetcars.  Too bad.  According to the Washington Post, "Arlington streetcar forum gets noisy," the meeting was quite raucous.

The funny thing is that in 2009, after a presentation, I commented to Chris Zimmerman, a long-time member of the Arlington County Board and the most knowledgeable elected official in the region when it comes to transit and transportation, that what was interesting to me about Arlington County is that (I thought...) you didn't see the kind of reflexive a-knowledgeable opposition to transit that you get in DC with regard to streetcars or in Montgomery County to the light rail, e.g. as reflected in the 2011 Post article, "Arlington, Fairfax bringing streetcars back to life."

Little did I know how wrong I was.


What gets me about the opposition is that I don't understand how anyone who has seen streetcars work in Portland, Oregon (pictured right, photo from the Portland Oregon Daily Photo blog), or San Francisco, or in cities in Europe would come up with the arguments that they do about why streetcars (or light rail) won't work here, for whatever reason, in a metropolitan area that has--when it isn't down for maintenance--a highly (more or less, with qualifications) successful subway system.

Instead, opponents bring up spurious arguments such as:

- streetcars are 19th century technology.  Note so is the automobile, although granted, like streetcars and light rail, the technology has improved over the intervening decades.

The real argument they are making is that streetcars are mass transit and cars are personal transit.  In any case, modern streetcars reflect up-to-date technology and engineering.

- people won't ride streetcars/transit.  This is a pro-automobility argument sure, but in the DC metropolitan area in particular, certain cities and subdistricts within areas such as the Wilson Boulevard corridor in Arlington County and along the red line subway in Montgomery County and of course, DC proper, have some of the highest transit ridership percentages in the U.S. (outside of New York City and San Francisco). I just don't understand how anyone can make that argument with a straight face.

- transit investment isn't an investment to improve throughput (and comfort), it's strictly a giveaway to developers--"Development oriented transit" vs. "transit oriented development."  This is a variant of the fallacious "argument to the person."

All infrastructure investments in mobility improvement, be they for transit, roads for automobiles, ports for ships, airport expansion, etc., benefit nearby landowners and property developers.  That's been the case for hundreds of years.  So what.

Also see the study co-published by the American Public Transportation Association and the National Association of Realtors, The New Real Estate Mantra: Location Near Public Transportation.

- buses are better than streetcars because they are more flexible in the case of road breakdowns.  I will agree that there is a wee bit of truth, but only a little, to this point.  However, uptime in modern streetcar and light rail systems is extremely high, making this argument based on pre-1960 systems irrelevant.  Plus, a bus ride isn't more comfortable than a streetcar ride, and more people will ride streetcars than buses.

Although I will say that I read a quote recently by new anti-streetcar Arlington Board member Mary Garvey, and she made a good point, that the electric wire infrastructure is subject to storm damage, but the other benefits that come from fixed rail service are worth the occasional inconvenience that arises from storm damage.

Furthermore, it's not like the regular road network isn't subject to catastrophic breakdown on a trip basis, which was the subject of yesterday's Dr. Gridlock column.  With dedicated transitways and signal priority, fixed rail transit including streetcars is less subject to such breakdowns.

- streetcars upgrade transit service at the expense of the poor.  I don't understand this argument at all.  It's typically made by "progressives," which must mean that I am becoming conservative, even though I consider myself a progressive/leftist.

The root of the argument is that people need more service, and rail transit costs more than bus service, and since transit service budgets are more subject to decrease than increase, service to the poor will be reduced.

On the other hand, rail service is more reliable and more comfortable, which I think are key equity issues as well.  And by appealing to more choice riders, there is a larger political base of support for transit service anyway, compared to when transit is considered a social service only for the poor.

Still, we need to ensure that this argument doesn't become truth, so that expansion of fixed rail transit service doesn't come at the expense of cutbacks to bus service in areas not served by fixed rail transit.

- improving transit service -- streetcars vs. buses -- is more about gentrification and will displace the poor.  This is an argument that is being made in the context of transit improvements in Columbia Pike in Arlington and Langley Crossroads in Maryland.  It came up in last night's meeting too.  It's a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed simultaneously with transit improvement.

Especially because the examples that streetcar proponents like me tout--service in Portland Oregon, which started in large part as a redevelopment initiative for an old railyard, now called the Pearl District, Nob Hill, and Downtown, or in the South Lake Union district in Seattle--is absolutely about what Dan Tangherlini once called "Development Oriented Transit" rather than the more common term, "Transit Oriented Development."

But it isn't the fault of the transit system, but the result of a market economy that values real estate on the basis of its accessibility, which derives from its level of mobility connectivity.

Better transit means that property is worth more and rents rise.  People of lesser means can't compete.

That means ensure the provision of affordable housing, through portfolio investment and by building more units of affordable housing in new developments.

But like all of these kinds of arguments, the point isn't to use equity-regressive taxation arguments etc. to stop transit or gas taxes, it's to put in place programs and protections so that some people aren't made worse off by the change.

Arguably, over time too, the impoverished have more economic advantages because of their access to more robust transit infrastructure, access to more jobs in more places, and less need to spend money on an automobile (which costs $7,000 to $9,000 per year), etc.

There has been some interesting work in the Seattle area on transit equity issues.  See Puget Sound Regional Equity Network: Principles of Equitable Development.

And I definitely need to read this report from the Dukakis Institute at Northeastern University, Maintaining Diversity In America’s Transit-Rich Neighborhoods: Tools for Equitable Neighborhood Change.  From the report:

• For 64% of the neighborhoods around the new rail stations in the study (that's 27 of 42 total), population grew more quickly than the rest of the metro area.

• 55% of those neighborhoods showed a "dramatic" increase in housing production.

• 62% of those neighborhoods showed a faster increase in owner-occupied units than the rest of the metro area.

• 50% of those neighborhoods showed an increase in the proportion of non-Hispanic white households relative to the rest of the metro area. (The other half showed no change or a decrease.)

• 62% of those neighborhoods showed an increase in median household income; 60 percent showed a boost in the proportion of households with incomes of more than $100,000.

• 74% of the neighborhoods showed rents that increased faster than the rest of the metro area. A full 88 percent had a relative boost in median housing values, too.

One of the problems with streetcars, as opposed to light rail or subway projects, is that they are being done by local jurisdictions as opposed to regional or state transportation authorities, and therefore have fewer access to funds to develop mitigation programming. However, Arlington has been very much focused on equity issues as it relates to Columbia Pike.

But this issue, in a market economy, isn't fully addressable.  Some people, those with the least ability to deal with change, will be worse off.

Does that mean not improve transit?

Without addressing structural poverty and systemic familial dysfunction why would anyone expect the problem of homelessness to end?

I don't know if I need to provide much more in terms of "analysis" beyond the headline of this entry, in response to the report earlier this week ("DC, advocates at odds over homeless families; 900 people still in shelter" from the Post) and the Post editorial ("Why does DC still have so many homeless?") and op-ed by Colbert King ("D.C. children in shelter must get real homes").

Getting "real homes" sounds simple but capabilities and behaviors required for being able to function individually and as a family makes "keeping real homes" a much more complicated proposition.

The long term solution is to deal more deeply with breaking the poverty cycle and the cycle of family dysfunction (part of this, at least in DC has to do with young parents, not organized in families, with multiple children with different partners).

Of course, escalation of the number of people currently homeless has been exacerbated by the recession that the US has been in since 2008.

During recessions more people become impoverished and it becomes even worse for those already extremely impoverished because problems escalate more rapidly when you have fewer resources at your disposal.

It's only possible with the equivalent of an internal kind of "Marshall Plan" focused on this (something I intend to write about sometime within the next few months).

Although given that jobs are settling out to be either high income high skilled or low income low skilled without much in the middle (although a big reason that there are job shortages in some sectors appear to be because the wages provided are subpar compared to the amount of skills required for the job), "fixing" this problem will take a long time because there are no simple solutions.