Where to Go When Katrina Wipes Out Your Office
Appropriately enough, I read this story in Kinko's (a.k.a. my L.A. office).
Dynamist Blog
Kelo Backlash, Cont'd
As an unintended consequences of Proposition 13, California city governments depend heavily on sales taxes, rather than property taxes. That gives them a strong incentive to favor retailers over other businesses and over housing (especially new homes) in zoning. It also creates a serious temptation to use eminent domain to help lure retailers. So California is an interesting place to watch the Kelo backlash building.
This Modesto Bee article reports on the left-right congressional alliance against the property-taking establishment:
Conservative Tracy Rep. Richard Pombo has joined some of the House of Representatives' most liberal firebrands in an effort to curb state and local eminent domain powers.
The strange-bedfellows alliance pits valley ranchers and property owners against cities and counties....
Pombo and at least 40 other House members are backing legislation meant to deter state and local governments from using the eminent domain powers extended by the court. The bill would not overturn the Kelo decision. Instead, the bill would cut off federal funds to any state or local agency that uses eminent domain for private commercial development.
Meanwhile in the San Diego area, local shenanigans are feeding the backlash, as the Union Tribune editorializes:
First came a report on the San Diego Model School Development Agency's push to seize and demolish 188 homes in the thriving City Heights neighborhood to build up to 509 town houses, condos and apartments more to its liking. The 30-acre site is far from the decaying neighborhood normally targeted in redevelopment, but blithe agency bureaucrats from the Soviet school of central planning--knowing they could call the area "blighted" if they chose--didn't care.
Then came yesterday's jaw-dropping story about National City's plan to use its powers of eminent domain to force the Daily family to sell a parcel the family leases to the Mossy family for one of its thriving car dealerships. After the two sides couldn't agree on a sales price, Mossy representatives made plain they would move their Nissan dealership--and the $1 million in annual sales and property taxes it generates for National City--unless the city helped close the deal. The City Council promptly caved in to Mossy's unsavory hardball tactics and, in its role as the city redevelopment board, began looking into seizing the land--after a mysterious epiphany in which members suddenly realized the site suffered from a heretofore undetected case of "visual blight."
What these stories have in common is a challenge to the argument made by eminent domain advocates: that California already protects property from Kelo-type seizures by requiring cities to find an area "blighted" first. Blight is a bit too easy to declare and, besides, one person's blight is another person's neighborhood. If an area is truly blighted, one might think property would be cheap enough to acquire profitably without local government's help. But then, of course, a developer might do something like build apartment buildings that don't generate big local taxes.
Essay Contest with Super-Fantastic Shoe-Related Prizes
The Manolo announces an essay contest: Write a short essay, no more than 300 words, related to shoes. The prize list is impressive. I predict they'll be swamped.
Housing Search Site
A new website The Open House Project lets people with housing for Katrina refugees find people who need it, and vice versa. It was created by the Incubator Group, a private-equity firm in Nashville. The homepage reports, "We currently have 4459 beds available to those affected by the Hurricane." From the FAQ:
Q: What's the difference between you and the other housing projects ?
A: Our site is keeps your information private. We think that letting someone come and live in your home is a very, very big deal, and at the same time we don't think that everyone should be plastering their names, phone numbers, and addresses all over the internet and gulf coast. It's a somewhat difficult issue, because on one hand everyone really wants to open their homes, yet on the other hand, they want to be a little selective of who they are letting live with them. At this point, we are asking people who don't mind sharing all of their personal information to sign up at the larger housing sites as they have a little more open distribution of lists. However, the open house project seems to be the only one that introduces a one-way privacy approach and you should use this site if you want to initiate contact instead of people initiating contact with you.
Religion as Insurance
My latest NYT column looks at research on whether religious affiliation serves as a kind of insurance, smoothing consumption or maintaining happiness in the face of financial shocks. The research finds a puzzling racial anomaly: Whites seem not to get "happiness insurance" from their religious ties, although they do get financial help.
"The Worst Thing They Have Ever Seen"
Dr. Hemant Vankawala, an emergency physician from Plano and a member of the FEMA-associated Disaster Medical Assistance Team, reports from the frontlines at New Orleans airport, in a post on D Magazine's FrontBurner blog. I won't quote it, because you need to read the whole thing.
Kelo Backlash, Cont'd
T.R. Reid reports in today's WaPost.
Competence and Charity
Even under ordinary circumstances, it's hard to top Dallas for well-organized, enthusiastic charitable efforts. Given a crisis, the city's extraordinary networks of volunteers, churches, and charitable organizations--not to mention spontaneous outpourings--have proven even more remarkable.
City officials feared Katrina evacuees would overflow the space available in Reunion Arena and the convention center. Instead, there's room to spare. Refugees have indeed shown up by the thousands, but fewer than expected have had to stay in the city's massive shelters, because small shelters, churches, hotels, and local residents have taken them in. "Downtown volunteers served Sunday dinner to about 10,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but at bedtime at Reunion Arena and the Dallas Convention Center fewer than 1,800 of the approximately 8,200 prepared beds were occupied," reports the DMN.
The response has been so hospitable that one displaced couple even named their newborn baby Dallas.
"I'm OK" Registry
Two Fort Lauderdale-based companies have put together a simple but powerful site that lets Katrina survivors register so loved ones can find out their fate. Katrina.im-ok.org works with phone numbers, avoiding spelling problems and name duplications.
Tom Foster of CompuNex Corp., which did the programming, sent me an email asking blog readers in Dallas (and presumably other cities with a lot of refugees) "to take their portable laptops and wireless air cards and put them to work." I'm not exactly sure of the best way to connect readers' wi-fi cards with displaced hurricane victims, but consider this a solicitation. Check out I'm OK's site for more background.
Dallas Relief Efforts
I took a break from the two articles I'm juggling for Tuesday deadlines to drop off some clothes, lamps, and drinks for hurricane refugees. According to a posting on the DMN's website, a local Residence Inn was collecting donations for a "free garage sale" for its Louisiana guests and other displaced persons. A clever idea, I thought, plus I might be able to learn more about ways readers could donate for hotel costs. No dice. The parking lot was completely full of stuff, with volunteers and a police officer turning away new donations. There certainly wasn't anybody with time to talk to a blogger.
So I went to Reunion Arena, where I joined a long line of cars and trucks of every make, model, and condition--from beater to high-end Mercedes--you can imagine. A flushed and sweating police officer (it's a relatively cool 95 degrees today) directed me to Parking Lot E, where the Salvation Army--and an army of volunteer sorters--was accepting donations: huge stacks of bottled water cases, a wall of disposable diapers, and untold numbers of clothing piles. Somewhere in the distance they were sorting housewares. Around the arena, there were TV trucks from as far away as Las Vegas.
The Red Cross is asking people not to bring donations to Reunion Arena, because it has an "equal treatment" policy for the people it serves and donations are necessarily heterogeneous. I guess the Salvation Army's role is to sort and distribute to people who aren't under Red Cross auspices. But that's just speculation.
According to this DMN report the Arena and adjacent convention center will soon overflow their 10,000-refugee capacity, and the city is expecting at least 25,000. Dallas officials are looking for help from surrounding communities. Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth, has taken 500. So far, according to this DMN report the arena is proving surprisingly comfortable--at least in contrast to refugees' expectations, and their experiences of the past few days. (Locals looking for an alternative dropoff site, go here.)