Water parks or affordable housing?

After Tuesday's candidate session at the New Albany Housing Authority, I asked NAHA director Bob Lane a question:

In the context of New Albany future decision-making, would it be fair to compare the immensity of the EPA's past "fix your sewers or else" decree to what is coming down the road with respect to the federal government's evolving position on affordable housing in general, and public housing in particular?

He said yes, quite fair. The NAHA does a fine job, and it is aware that times likely will be changing. These three articles at City Lab amplify a few points largely being missed or ignored locally, beginning with an overview of the American public housing experiment.

Here's a fine topic sentence:

“The story of American public housing is one of quiet successes drowned out by loud failures,” writes the historian Ed Goetz.

The point is expanded in The Real Power of Public Housing, by Alana Semuels.

...In some small cities ... public housing has worked and continues to work. That includes Austin, the site of one of the first public-housing complexes in the nation, which still stands today. The Housing Authority of the City of Austin has been recognized as a “High Performer” by HUD for 15 years in a row, and, rather than depending on the federal government for help, it has embarked on a few entrepreneurial programs to raise money.

Jersey City is seeking "to steer mixed-income development to all its neighborhoods with clever tax incentives." Note that this refers to affordable housing, not bocce ball settings.

Jersey City's Innovative New Affordable Housing Plan Might Actually Work, by Tanvi Misra

... In the coming years, Jersey City’s overall population rise is expected to accelerate, and the housing stock is expected to increase by 20 percent by 2020. To ensure this growth is equitable, the city has unveiled a clever new housing policy that employs a seemingly simple strategy: tax incentives. Local officials believe the plan can preserve community while promoting development—a harmony that’s proved so elusive elsewhere.

Since moving to downtown New Albany, what I've heard most often is the importance of home ownership, but we may be missing something, in that it isn't so much whether we have a choice in being a rental market, but rather what sort of rental market do we want to be?

If it's true that "America’s housing crisis will likely worsen during the next decade, with millions more struggling to make monthly payments," then heavy subsidies to Flaherty and Collins to build "luxury" apartments seems designed to exacerbate a situation we already lack resolve in addressing.

For Renters, a Bleak Future, by Gillian B. White

 ... The researchers estimate that the current rental crunch—the one where vacancies are around 7 percent, about half of renters spend more than 30 percent of their salaries on housing, and one quarter spend 50 percent or more—is only going to get worse over the next decade. Even if housing prices and income rise as quickly as inflation (about 2 percent annually) the number of severely rent-burdened Americans (those paying 50 percent or more) would increase by 11 percent over the decade, to over 13 million people in 2025.

This isn't to imply there are easy answers, only that it might be helpful to start asking the correct questions.

The farmers market, opportunity cost, and decision-making prior to fact-gathering.

At last Thursday's city council meeting, I mentioned the opportunity cost of tying up the southeast corner of Market and Bank with a farmers market expansion.

Opportunity cost: The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.

Councilman Gonder explains this opportunity cost in much greater detail:

If, on the other hand, the market were successful at the new garage site, (and it likely would be, because the local food movement is real and has been embraced by so many) then the current market site at Bank and Market Streets could be returned to service as a fully functional component of downtown commercial revitalization. It makes little sense to have one of the most economically valuable, as well as spatially valuable, pieces of property in the entire downtown, off the tax rolls, and dedicated to only intermittent use for eight or ten days a month six or seven months out of the year.

If set on a different course, that corner could be thrown open to a design challenge which could yield exciting possibilities not now visualized.

If, on the other hand, the City commits hundreds of thousands of dollars to that corner, the very expenditure itself is likely to shackle us to that piece of property, while other more profitable, enhancing, and defining, uses of the property are turned away from the downtown and, rather, sent to the outer reaches of town where development, while necessary and welcome, contributes less to what is the true heart of our City.

Yesterday, another friend put it this way:

Opportunity cost is when you have the fleeting opportunity of just a mere 48 months to spend an entire generation's tax dollars. You tend to focus on spending rather than planning.

What I find noteworthy is a very clear pattern over the past two years. A decision is made and fully funded, then reasons found to support the pre-determined conclusion. From swimming pools to the farmers market, this pattern has been repeated. Only once has there been an exception: There must be a study to determine the future of the one-way street grid before a decision is reached.

If you want to know why I'm pessimistic about the future of two-way streets and walkability in New Albany, this is the reason. If you wish to know more, ask John Rosenbarger -- who already has made up his mind.

Nash on making good decisions: Can he locate any to analyze?

I'm sure Matt appreciates that since my newspaper column was Lucy van Pelted by management following an abortive council run in 2011, he gets double the slagging from New Albany's nattering nabobs of troglodytery.

In this week's installment, Matt ponders decision-making. Excerpted (italics mine) is the part of the column addressing bridge tolls, a topic that New Albany's city council desperately wished we'd stop bringing up, especially since the body once standing in the forefront of opposition to tolling has decided it's more important to fluff local oligarchs than consider the interests of New Albanians.

As ever hoodwinked by his desperate need to be seen frolicking at the respectable adults' cafeteria table, Bob Caesar claims to grasp tolling's toll, but nonetheless suckles at Kerry Stemler's teat to advocate finishing something, anything, however monstrous, and in spite of how adverse or costly it is. Caesar is able and eager to "lead" by calculating future property taxes to the last digit in order to defeat a bid to redevelop a rotting building a block away from his shop, and cares not at all to do the math on the Ohio River Bridges Project's fifty-year drain.

Perhaps one reason for our legislative body's newfound timidity on bridge tolls is an unwillingness to reference the Horseshoe Foundation, which provides critical social service funding via potentially mutable grants, money that local politicians must obtain to avoid vexing themselves with leadership and thoughtfulness on taboo topics like revenue enhancement, and furthermore, is headed by Jerry Finn, who also sits on the Tolling (Bridges) Authority's board, and exerts even more non-elected influence on the life of the city by co-chairing Keep New Albany Clean & Green with failed Republican-turned-Democrat mayoral candidate Irv Stumler, who now uses the Board of Public Works as a convenient steno corps for taking flowerpot dictation, and noting finally that the Tolling Authority has vowed to keep the Sherman Minton Bridge, i.e., the direct route to Horseshoe, toll-free.

Whew! Someone get me Donald Sutherland, a park bench and a DC backdrop. At any rate, throw all these factors into the Random Connectivity Generator, give that wheel a mighty heave, and then head straight to the News and Tribune to read all about it. But don't stay there long, because the newspaper hasn't bothered.

Verily, those gleaming new trash bins in Jeffersonville are perfect for certain types of disposal.

NASH: Making good decisions

NEW ALBANY — This time of year there are parts of my life that seem to slow down to a snails pace while other things are moving as fast as ever. When the holidays are in full swing, sometimes it is hard to concentrate on one topic when writing a column. This week I discuss a few topics that have been in the news over the last few weeks ...

 ... Another big topic that I have followed for the last few years that seems to be taking off is the building of the two new bridges across the Ohio River. A few weeks ago a contractor was chosen to build each span. Also over the last few weeks the Clark-Floyd Counties Convention and Tourism Bureau along with the town of Clarksville and the city of Jeffersonville have each pledged $10,000 to fight the use of tolls to pay for the bridges on the Interstate-65 corridor. Their argument is that while an East End Bridge will lead to more economic development, the new downtown bridge does exactly the opposite.

One of the questions I have is why is there still no answer on the cost of the tolls? They know how much the bridges are going to cost. They have been studying the traffic for over a decade so they know how many cars are crossing the bridge. It seems to me that someone that has gone to college to study statistics should be able to give some estimate of what the cost of tolls would be by now. Why are the cost of tolls not being made public?

I seem to think that they are waiting until they get too far into the project to turn back and then will announce their final cost. I predict it will be closer to the original projection of $3 than 25 cents — a prediction that was announced before a New Albany City Council meeting a few years ago.

A year ago I wrote about tolls or the Ohio River Bridges Project. On the day that that column was published one of the members of the board that is overseeing the project sent me an email claiming there were seven inaccuracies in my column and he was willing to sit down and set the record straight. I agreed to meet him but he later withdrew when he realized that I would write about our conversation. I am still waiting for him to let me know what exactly those inaccuracies were.