OMG! NYT Loves Seattle!

You know that you’ve built yourself a good brand as “a blogger on regional economic development issues” when you start getting emails with the subject line “Good article for a blog post?” or with messages like “Hey, did you see this article? You should blog about it!” In fact, my brother in New York sent me an email last week entitled “Good Stuff (Blog-worthy even?)” with an link to this Tech Crunch article.

So, when the New York Times yesterday had an Economix article about how “Seattle adapted as the world changed and provides lessons for other cities,” you know that I got several notes about it. Of course, that means I should probably do my trademark brilliant and insightful commentary about the content of said article, and so here it is: “I agree.”

Except for one thing.

New Feature! PSRC Perspectives: Interpreting the 2010 Census Results

It’s been a few months since I’ve had this little video camera, and I’ve been promising y’all more video clips integrated into the Prosperity Blog rotation. Not just the clips from events happening at PSRC or people speaking in the community on Prosperity-related topics, but actual interviews with PSRC experts, board members and the sundry important/interesting people that walk through our halls.

Well, it’s never too late to start your new year’s resolution. And so here is the first installation of our new feature: PSRC Perspectives. Starting out? Insight into the latest census data release!

Weekly B-MOW: Next Week’s Legislative Session

I’ve bent a lot of rules with this feature. Some of the “Best Meeting of the Week” posts have been post titles made up entirely of acronyms. Some B-MOWs are ties between two meetings. There’s even been a B-MOW that’s a prep meeting for another B-MOW. But this is a new horizon: the Best Meeting of the Week that hasn’t even happened yet! How do I know it’s going to be so great? You’ll have to read below to find out…in the Weekly B-MOW: Next Week’s Legislative Session.

New Feature: Best Meeting of the Week

As we just mentioned, Prosperity Blog is all about regularity these days, giving you something to look forward to in your otherwise dreary days and weeks. Much like Random Economic Development Email of the Week, this new feature – Best Meeting of the Week – chronicles our adventures in the world of economic development, sharing the most interesting, exciting or unique things that the Prosperity crew is doing. This week’s B-MOW? Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Riffing on RIF

News flash:

Making the benefits of TOD available to residents at all income levels is a significant policy challenge. There is a long-term shortage of affordable housing in many cities, and existing affordable housing near transit may be lost as federal subsidies expire.

Or maybe it’s not really news. 

Green Housing, Not to Be Confused with Clean Housing

You know, cause even if you use clean energy for residential power, calling it a clean house makes people feel like they have to vacuum more often, which uses extra energy, making it less clean. The irony!

Anyway, I was making a presentation this morning on clean energy in the ARRA, and I made the point that a lot of the money for energy is not just in Department of Energy grant, but in places like Department of Housing. Ta-da! And some pretty high tech stuff, too.

Of course, again, the real wins come when all of those solar panels and biofuels are provided and installed by local companies. Another reason why we need to keep coordinated on who gets what stimulus money and what products and services our growing clean tech companies are commercializing.

“Not Everyone Can or Should Own a Home”

This is from August (I’m still catching up from vacation), but thought I’d put in my two cents using month-old pennies.

Obviously, given the housing crisis, the main argument for an “ownership society” as a way to create wealth and upward mobility has lost some steam, at least when that ownership society is created using zero down, zero interest, “ninja” loans.* Which begs the question on the second plank of that argument, which is essentially that homeowners are better citizens: more likely to vote, more likely to be involved in their communities, etc. Is it really homeownership, or a host of other socio-economic factors that make the difference?

Of course, the federal investment in affordable housing has decreased significantly over the past 30 years or so, and now it’s all things like Washington State’s Housing Trust Fund and the Seattle Housing Levy. It will be interesting to see how this change in federal policy affects these local funding decisions.

*”No Income, No Job, and (no) Assets” for those of you curious about the ninja loan acronym.

Salt in the Wound, which has been re-opened just so you could put salt into it

Leilani Lanes was the world’s best karaoke bar with a great bowling alley attached to it. Then it got sold to a developer and it closed. It was going to be made into condos. It was a shot to the heart…love progress of course, just so sad to see a great place go.

Leilani then

Now (a few weeks ago actually) word comes that the developer is bankrupt and the property has been taken back by the bank.

Why? Why do I have to die this death over and over? Is it not enough that this icon of all things cool is gone, surrounded by a chain link fence?

Can’t it just become condos and be done.   I mean, highest and best use is great. Progress is great. But closing the old girl down and replacing her with nothing? It’s a crying shame. Literally. I am crying. And it’s a shame.

Leilani now

Curse you, economy. When times are good you take away pleasure, when times are bad you take away lack of pain.  Have you no soul?  No compassion?

Can you at least put a karaoke mic in the parking lot, just for old time’s sake?

What Housing Crisis?

Congrats to Bremerton and Silverdale, the region with the best potential in the nation for growth in home value. Talk about bucking national trends!

This quote is particularly interesting: “In 2000, per capital income in Bremerton/Silverdale was 1 percent below the national average. In 2008, it was 8 percent higher than the national average, he said.”

I guess in the ongoing debate over the legacy of departing Mayor Bozeman, this may be one in his favor….

Something Important Was Said on Friday!

At the most recent Prosperity Partnership Regional ARRA Coordination meeting, we had a speaker from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to talk about their Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. This is the $4.7 billion that the stimulus package laid out to help beef up broadband adoption in our country, and likely the first down payment in a larger national broadband strategy.

Anyway, the speaker used one of my favorite grad school words – leveraging – when talking about how they’re going to judge applications for broadband stimulus dollars. As in, they’re actually going to see what other ARRA dollars are being used in the vicinity and how this project connects to those. He mentioned a couple of examples: some obvious, like relationship to Health IT investments, but some really interesting, like relationship to HUD investments in low income housing projects. This is sort of a no-brainer, since low-income people fit into that “unserved/underserved” criteria that they’re talking about for BTOP, but it’s something I’d never heard before and potentially a huge driver of the collaborative coordination process that we and other regions are leading.

Obvious caveat: the regs aren’t out yet for these dollars so we’ll see how much that actually makes it into the Notice of Funds Availability. But let’s see what we can do now on the chance that it is indeed true!

Seattle P-I Discovers Snarkiness

What is it about becoming online only that turns you sarcastic?  Seriously, all the professional bloggers are cynical wiseacres.  That having been said, very funny title.

I can’t blame Generation Y , though. It’s the American Dream of their parents that has been idealized by the media and popular culture for years, so it’s hard to get the goal of white picket fences out of your system. They’ll learn though. Especially once gas prices go back up in a few years, and living on the farm with your horses and driving into downtown doesn’t seem so fun anymore. Plus you have to shovel horse poop!

You Can’t Even Do It In Harvard Yard Anymore

Pahk Ya Cah, that is, if you know what I mean. And now you may not be able to do it in Tacoma. (BTW, I realize this article is, like, three weeks old, but hey, it’s the legislative session.)

The discussion of minimum parking requirements – essentially how many stalls developers need to build in their buildings – is one of costs vs. amenities. On one hand, it can cost the developer up to $25,000 per parking spot because it’s essentially unsell-able or unlease-able space that would otherwise be a commercial or residential unit. But, if you are looking to live or set up an office somewhere, you may want to be able to park (or pahk) your car off-street, unless there is good enough public transportation from home to work.

It’s always seemed to me like this should be a pure market calculation, right? If developers know that they need to have parking in the building to attract tenants, they will. If they don’t (because of that transit or walkability), they won’t. So, why does government need to be involved and setting arbitrary minimums?

Certainly, there are some “tragedy of the commons” issues, potentially. If everyone just relies on street parking, then you may have overcrowding outside the building. But even then, in a perfect market, a commercial garage would spring up. Instead, if government invests in walkability and transit in urban cores, you may not need the parking, and you may reduce both traffic congestion and emissions. I’ve even heard tell of cities with “maximum parking limits” for buildings, which takes it the other way.

Anyway, the point is, this is a good tool for increasing affordability of market rate housing (that $25,000 per space gets divided up among the units), and it’s something our more dense, urban cities should be looking into. Good job, Tacoma!

The Mortgage Professor

Jack Guttentag (a.k.a. the Mortgage Professor) has a piece today entitled, Saving the Banks Without Breaking the Bank. It basically argues that we should be focused on consumer rescue rather than institutional rescue because the only way to stop the slide in real estate prices is to help those underwater not be forced into bankruptcy thus limiting the erosion in value of the institution’s assets.

What do you think?

The Government Will Pay You To Own a House

Anyone remember good old Matthew Lesko? Guy in a strange “The Riddler” jacket shouting on late night TV about how the government wants to give you lots of money, if only you buy his book and find out how.

Sort of seems like we’re on the path into Lesko land with interest rates.

If No One Wants It, Is It Really an Incentive?

It’s like if your parents said, “Come on, honey, eat your vegetables. If you do, you’ll get to stay up and do an extra hour of math homework!” Or maybe it’s not. Time will tell whether incentive zoning is truly going to influence Seattle’s developers to include affordable units in their buildings or if they’re going to just pass on the opportunity to increase the height of their developments.