Archive for May, 2009

long a favorite whipping boy of mine for its water fountains where, hello, there isn’t any, and being the best example by far of malvina reynolds old saw, scottsdale is where i am this half of this week. confession: it sure is nice. 65 degrees and sunny. this morning, a treat – lots of rain yesterday so the creosote bushes and rosemary blossoms make the hillsides in north scottsdale by the country club estates especially fragrant. during my 5:30 am run this morning, no cars, no smog. just scented breezes and the mere hint of sunrise. of course scottsdale is where everyone truly is above average, which is just as well, since average is as average does, and outside of scottsdale that means nascar behavior. and then of course there aren’t any poor people to have to deal with. and none of that shabby housing they live in. and no blacks and mexicans, either. well there’s plenty of mexicans, but you get the point. and in any case no blacks like back east. scottsdale is such a good thing. we have some serious challenges in this country.

Originally posted on February 20, 2007

in the past year we’ve been in the most amazing places.

in rural arizona there was a man named lee price, who, slowing his rusty red pickup truck to a roll, and looking way too much like a caricature of a desert redneck, asked if i’d seen any wetbacks in the past hour. this as he was trying to find some lost cows of his that had escaped his attention on federal lands subsidizing that truck of his.

just last week in new orleans, where it still smells like sour milk along bayou st john, the mayor can’t elevate the work above the rancor of race. which is just as well, if you think about it. the whole of the region was predicated on black subservience. the beignets are cute and all but seriously was there ever a time when the dishes were washed by whites? ray is an easy target, and deserves much of what sticks, but in truth the people with the problem are white new orleaneans and metarians who refuse to live integrated lives. and the saddest part of all is that the billions in help is going to buckets full of consultants who want to impose technical fixes to the problem. the levies are not the problem. this is a tar baby in some very dirty bathwater and nola is a city without the adaptive capacity right now to hone in on that.

a month prior to the marigny we were in saginaw and flint. if there’s a situation in america worse that the flotsam of the lower 9th, my vote is for the soft middle of south michigan, where ugly cars continue to be the stock in trade of an economy weighted down by steel scaffolding and a pension albatross of unimaginable heft. if ever gertrude stein were right. east saginaw michigan is simply the lower ninth ward of new orleans in a cold climate. just as black. just as poor. just as surrounded.

shuttlecocking between these places, and woeful bridgeport, where you can’t buy market confidence unencumbered by working class resentment, i watched sofia coppola’s lovely confection about the royal court. this as prelude to driving through the apple streudel homes of fairfaix and loudoun county virginia culs de sac.

we have some issues. and candidates that have to find a goldman sachs financier to bankroll a nomination aren’t apt to have their fingers on the pulse of what needs to be done, much less likely to have the empathy to tie these challenges together into a cohesive whole.

Originally posted on February 18, 2007

what happens when you mix parochial working class values c 1955 (ie brown has just defeated BoE) and land, and let that mix brew itself just outside of an urban port with mulatto sentimentality? you get jefferson parish, louisiana, aka home of the metarie mooks, you know mccomb county reagan democrats….camille and betsy let everyone think it’s okay to live a foot beneath sea level, and so forty years goes by, the levies are never rebuilt, but hey “we got us a winn dixie and a dillards, who the hell needs a seawall, anyway?”

of course eventually your crazy aunt can’t be hidden away in the attic forever…sooner or later she’s gonna show, and voila there you have it, the lower ninth. of course there are thirty blocks along prytania that never looked so good. and you have to wonder how it feels to cross esplanade every night and traverse block after block of darkness.

how to disentangle the traffic from the fear of african americans from the absence of land use controls from the declining image from the deracination barreling towards gretna at the speed of light?

Originally posted on February 13, 2007

shelterforce has solicited input from the field on the state of affairs in community development.

the usual charlatans ef. and policylink technocrat legerdemain will consume narrative space. there will the utopian grab for workforce housing, livable wages, and the assertion of assets unearthed lurking beneath the decrepit rowhouses in camden.

listen carefully to the music though.

you won’t hear that affordable housing should go where there isn’t any (suburbs) and instead the renewed focus on the affordable housing shortage and, presto, that this is where poor people aleady are.

as we contemplate the vacuum in urban policy the current clowns will bequeath the next administration, it is crucial to also think about what is appropriate to go into this vacuum. anti-poverty work must be disconnected from neighborhood revitalization efforts. the EITC for example is the best way to address poverty, yet we will once more lurch awfully close to seeing reduced housing costs as purchase on reducing poverty. what will all this enterprise foundation silliness get us? technical absurdities like the new market tax credits, more subsidy for camden, less sense of market appropriate deployment of scarce resources, the sense that an inclusionary policy will solve all our problems, and the same concentrations of poverty we’ve always had.

the touchstone? ask why displaced lower ninth ward residents aren’t moving into garden and warehouse district mixed income infill. the katrina morass is all you need to know to realize that it’s been a long time since we had intelligence at HUD and the political environment – dominated as it is by gentrification nonsense – isn’t built to respond with the kind of adaptive leadership needed in this field.

Originally posted February 5, 2007