This puts into pictures what the phrase “high foreclosure neighborhood” means:
I know that it is human nature to look at what has not been done, as in what the Democrats in Congress have not accomplished, but the Housing bill just passed was significant and will provide relief to cities like New Bedford. As Senator Kerry said earlier in the day in Falls River, there were important elements in that and a few other bills that were passed:
Kerry ticked off a list that included a $4 billion revolving fund for low- and moderate-income housing, legislation to help veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan avoid foreclosures, $280 million in funding to prevent foreclosures and aid first-time homebuyers and pushing to increase Community Block Development Grants to aid communities.
Still, so much more needs to be done. For those of us who have made that step into home ownership there is nothing more terrifying than the prospect of your neighborhood going downhill, and therein your equity and much of your life savings as well. The above video may not be Baghdad or Afghanistan, where our troops are in constant danger. But it does illustrate a decay in our own country that can fill us with as much dread as the possibility of another terrorist attack. And, this, in Massachusetts, one of the wealthiest states in the union.
This is what is happening to our country in every state and nearly every city. It is the quiet tragedy that is happening every day. Something to remember the next time the pundits talk about celebrity, the latest presidential poll, or Paris Hilton. People are hurting.
Suburbs and subdivisions are starting to have real problems due to the high foreclosure & home abandonment rates. Some streets have whole rows of empty and in some cases never-completed homes on them. Untended yards fill up with weeds and trash. Thieves come in a gut the empty houses for the copper wire and plumbing to sell for scrap. Ta-da — instant suburban slum neighborhood!
Kerry has to actually campaign now.
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p>Don’t forget to point out he’s also evading debates. I read that post on here about a newspaper’s scathing article on him ’cause he’s not agreeing to any.
Source
but what about the debates here? That’s cool to help out Obama on the national level, but his job is to represent us and he’s putting us on the back burner!
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p>source
to Kerry’s people? I mean, it is not up to the candidates to set this up — the campaigns do so. What has Ed O’Reilly’s campaign manager said? Ball’s in O’Reilly’s court.
Do I stutter? Ball is in his court.
…that O’Reilly has a campaign manager. I asked him about this the other night and he said that he had various people coordinating different aspects and regions, but no one manager. I get the sense that he is managing his own campaign more than any candidate should be. This, plus his complaints that Roger Lau, Kerry’s manager, is the one responding to his debate requests rather than Kerry himself, makes me wonder if he has something against campaign managers. As someone with a degree in political management this attitude betrays a lack of understanding of how campaigns work.
(excluding the convention week) and John Kerry has still not agreed to any debates or forums. You can read that post here.
industry really did a number on us. Will Deval give back the $700,000+ he made while serving on the board of these predatory lenders to help, or is he still counting on us taxpayers to get us out of the mess he created?
why keep telling the same lies over and over again. That’s the problem with the republican party. They are full of it and provide no solutions. What’s the state GOP’s plan? What’s your counter proposal that you want to debate with the public? We get this instead. No wonder the GOP in the state is a wreck.
every time one of you prattles on about Cheney and Halliburton.
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p>Hey! Hey you! Stay away from my glass house!
And I suspect you know that, too.
The point is he was asked to join the board of Ameriquest’s parent company specifically because of his background in fighting predatory lending practices. He was on the board from 2004 to 2006. And yes, actually, the settlement helped. Look it up.
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p>Cheney, by contrast was CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000, still owns stock, and receives deferred compensation.
did Halliburton lend again?
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p>Oh, oh, but wait, they did cause the war in Iraq. Don’t ask how I know or some facts to back it up, though…you might burst my bubble.
But the discussion was of this:
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p>Now you know how we feel every time one of you prattles on about Cheney and Halliburton.
…this is the MA GOP’s modus operandi? Lately it seems hardly a week goes by when I don’t read in the paper about the latest complaint the party files. One week it’s against Marzilli for still being in office, the next week it’s Eldridge for allegedly asking for money in a public building. All they do is snipe and complain, but never seem to offer alternatives or promote their own candidates. Maybe it just shows how desperate they are in this state.
That video could have been made last week or 20 years ago. New Bedford lost its Mills and its manufacturing for the same reasons that all Massachusetts lost much of its old mills: high labor costs; high property costs; high regulatory costs; high tax costs.
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p>There’s subprime foreclosures and alt-a foreclosures because, other than in North End New Bedford, there’s very little prime lending.
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p>The neighborhoods of New Bedford aren’t ‘going’ downhill. They’ve GONE downhill. It’s easy to lament poor towns; drive through urban Springfield sometime.
-Establish economic zones within the city. Target the blight.
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p>-Suspend the minimum wage laws in the economic zones.
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p>-Allow dollar for dollar income tax credits for any property tax paid for home owners, active landlords and commercial businesses, within the zones for a period of years.
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p>-Allow tax credits for unemployment insurance paid to employees working within the zones.
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p>-Suspend prevailing wage laws within the zones.
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p>Then, step aside.
and I think it is disingenuous at best for Kerry to attempt to blame the “foreclosure crisis” for the demise. Want to blame someone, blame the residents who live there.
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p>I like your suggestions too. Although I would add strict enforcement of immigration laws and employment laws. Strict enforcement of anti-gang and drug laws. Economic incentives for manufacturing businesses. A revitalization plan for the water front to encourage tourists (after the ugly reputation of NB is removed/softened).
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p>The blight you mentioned seems to infiltrate many of the coastal cities along MA (NB, Fall River…) and CT (New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford…) shores. Why?
you are correct that this is the lazy explanation to simply blame it on the housing crisis.
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p>Why is that? It’s easier to come up with a solution to the housing and credit crunch than a comprehensive “we need to change the way we behave from the ground up” solution. People are afraid to address this because the solution is more of an unknown, and I’m quite sure the unknown is among mankind’s greatest fears.
You must be out of your freaking mind. Nothing says “economic rebuilding” like not paying people enough to live.
like not employing people at all
Because the minimum wage and all the regulation so far has done so much to benefit New Bedford, let’s do more of that!
Gary, has that been done in other blighted areas before and shown to be successful? Would your other suggestions not be enough? Why or why not?
It’s not implausible that it would help. It’s also plausible it would exert more downward pressure on wages elsewhere and only employ a uselessly small fraction of the workforce. Could be a great idea, could be blisteringly mistaken. This is speculative.
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p>I’m surprised that there isn’t a case study on this. I’m reminded here of Krugman’s essay In Praise of Cheap Labor: Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all that begins on a garbage dump on which several thousand Filipinos lived.
I could advocate flogging poor people to set an example. Actually, using wingnut logic, it’s a more plausible then suspending the minimum wage. Poor people were flogged routinely during some of our most prosperous times. Therefore…
The Lakofian take is that mainstream conservatism views the market as a cleansing moral force: it rewards the disciplined, punishes the undisciplined. By that view, the rich are simply better people. Run far enough with that view and you get flogging — or a prison-industrial complex.
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p>Here I’m just thinking of the general economic principle. Added to a pure, competitive market, controls introduce inefficiencies. Potentially, in New Bedford, that inefficiency is a shortage of jobs that would otherwise be there. Some income is simply better than none, even if below minimum wage. For some people, that income makes a big difference.
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p>That said, few things fit simplified economic models. Though it is plausible it might work, it’s also quite possible that it might be really, really bad. It would be nice to have some insight one way or the other. For reasons given in the my first paragraph, I’d prefer that such an experiment not be run by conservatives.
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p>Probably, it would be better to find a way to get socially productive economic activity going. How that’s done is a bit mysterious to me.
But Gary’s list strikes me as more right wing religious views than economic remedies. They’d be a lot more compelling with evidence showing places they’ve been tried and work or analysis that they affect any of the root causes of the problems in New Bedford. Otherwise you’re just using the poor of NB as guinea pigs for your pet economic theories.
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p>Does anyone else remember the BU takeover of the Chelsea schools? Shockingly, even Silber’s big brain (and ego) couldn’t magically make the problems go away.
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p>I think this excerpt captures my skepticism pretty well:
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p>Though test scores there have improved over the past decade, Chelsea remains classified a “low performing” school district by the state. The city has the second-lowest four-year graduation rate in the state, with 53 percent of students.
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p>”I think there’s been a lot of underestimating of the complexity of Chelsea’s challenges,” Superintendent Thomas Kingston said.
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p>Had you cared to read the thread, you’d see that suspension of the prevailing wage and income tax credits were sucessfully applied in the North End of Pittsburgh and McKeesrocks.
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p>Suspension of minimum wage would probably create some, but not much stimulus, much the same that applying an $8.00 minimum raises the wage of some, but not many.
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p>And, the point that no one has rebutted or addressed: a credit against income tax for property tax paid in the economic zones.
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p>Isn’t this Gov. Patrick’s promise? Reduce property tax burden. It’s an elequent solution, requiring not one dime of additional government oversight to achieve the articulated goal of reduced property tax.
Pittsburgh’s North End did that in the 1980s, I think to a successful end, and maybe the ‘rocks (as in McKeesrocks, PA) after the Homestead Steelworks closed.
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p>Riiight. I stand by my comment.
I guess we’ll have to leave it for moderates then.
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p>Lakoff’s view of conservatives is to imagine them, as ideological opponents, as he most fervently wishes they were. Not unlike, say, Bush and Islamic terrorists.
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p>”Cleansing moral force” sounds like warmed over Max Weber, who made some interesting insights into the transition from the feudal and agricultural economy into modern Western Capitalism, and makes the mistake of elevating that theory to explain all.
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p>They dragged this out 12 years ago during the debate over reforming AFDC, and it was nonsense then as well. Perhaps conservatives were opposed to the pre-reform welfare system because it was, manifestly, a failure.
For all your talk of hating politically polarization, you’re the king of it.
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p>If there was one whit of evidence that the minimum wage is the issue, you might have some basis for discussion. Even gary points out that it’s moot given the economic realities there.
Lakoff does back this view up.
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p>It’s also explicit or implicit in the views of many conservatives, both local and notable.
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p>I’d be happy to defend it, but an off-topic battle in the right margin seems like a headache in the making.
No, I have never heard of a State’s Minimum wage law being suspended. I think that’s all my idea. But while the State and Fed have apparently failed by pouring money into the city via HUD, perhaps a different solution might help.
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p>As KBUSH say, it could be a blistering mistake. I say, the actions for the past decade have been misguided. A libertarian approach couldn’t possibly do more harm.
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p>Visit the city sometime. Park downtown. Lock your car. Not to worry, there’s plenty of free parking and an equal number of empty commercial stores. Walk south (south, I think), through the blighted HUD project, a failed do-good solution of the 60s or 70s. Hit Purchase or County Street, and be alert for the ocassional thug, hookers and their pimps and the random drug dealer. Ever been to Roxbury (not W. Roxbury)? New Bedford is worse.
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p>Arguably, the minimum wage has already been suspended: unskilled labor is available for less than minimum wage as long as you pay cash. The underground economy is alive and well in New Bedford, both for legal and illegal workers.
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p>Those boarded up buildings that were Kerry’s backdrop? They’ve been boarded up for at least 10 years. What’s new now is that they’re a good prop for an election. Where’s he been for the past 8 years?
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p>I have seen prevailing wage laws suspended, and tax credits for employment in economic zones. Pittsburgh’s North End did that in the 1980s, I think to a successful end, and maybe the ‘rocks (as in McKeesrocks, PA) after the Homestead Steelworks closed.
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p>And as to an income tax credit for property tax paid, isn’t that what Gov. Patrick promised, property tax relief: buy a teniment in New Bedford and pay the back property taxes and receive a state income tax reduction. What an elequent solution!
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p>As painful as it is, these Mills just have to be leveled or enormously renovated. It’s not economic for owners to level them. There are too many of them for Government to do it. It only makes sense to minimize the cost. Provide no government barriers, or at least as few as possible.
Not sure I would support lifting the minimum wage since I think that could lead to a slippery slope. We want to go forward, not backwards. Action definitely needs to be taken though.
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p>Funny that you should mention that. I was thinking the same thing when I read this article. The post very much seemed to be a highlight for Kerry as a re-election tool. I say that since I’ve been posting on Kerry ignoring calls for debates lately and all those same people that were arguing in his favor just so happened to all recommend this post.
I’m reluctant to support suspension of minimum wage laws, but Gary is no doubt correct here that they de facto have been suspended. Moreover, it doesn’t sound as if there is much in the way of progress going on: New Bedford is not exactly on the road to becoming the biotechnology capital of Buzzard’s Bay.
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p>Our country has numerous industrial parks that municipalities have built with a lot of hope and not very many tenants.
but here you say it’s already suspended, from an underground economy. Which is it? and how did it help. Did you just blow away your entire argument?
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p>Plus on those houses. That wood is looking pretty good for being 10 years old, looks fairly new to me. Maybe I can get the same wood for my fence, what do you think, do they power wash them every so often? I does seem that those houses have been boarded up in the past year.
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p>The Mayor did say that they started some inroads but that the mortgage crisis took them backwards. He’s right, it did bring them backwards, I don’t see how you could argue that it has helped? So Kerry’s plan for mortgage relief is great, it’s needed.
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p>But I agree that it’s not the cure for the issues in the area, just a symptom. Bottom line is jobs and the secondary job market including small businesses are non-existent.
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p>UMass Dartmouth did a great job with their work with the Kerr Mill in Fall River and developed that area into a high tech industrial park. The building initially constructed is full with start up tech companies. Other companies are developing additional construction there now. It’s accessible from Route 6, good highway access. What the area needs is more of this smart development. The location is great and the idea is working. What this also does is start some supporting small businesses in that area. Stores that support the additional people (workers) in the area during the day time.
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p>Deval Patrick’s push for commuter rail service in the south coast is another great idea. While having the commuter rail means that residents are working elsewhere in the state, but it does mean that they own homes in New Bedford and the area. Working population in the area will add service and retail opportunities as well.
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p>Guess what, textile jobs are not coming back, you need smart development and access.
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p>For no-skill labor, the underground economy lives: daycare, ditch digging, garbage removal. Probably, if I wanted, I could find no-skill, sub minimum wage to remove asbestos!
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p>That doesn’t mean much for commercial investment. No company is going to based its model on the notion that it can illegally pay below minimum wage if it pays in cash.
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p>Legitimize it, and perhaps.
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p>I know this. When one can pay i) a licensed, professional landscaper with a payroll and insurance $25 an hour to do manual labor ii) the kid home for the summer minimum wage or iii) the guy who’ll take cash for less than minimum wage, how many thriving landscape businesses you reckon will start up in your random slum.
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p>In a tight labor market ii) and iii) aren’t much of an option, but in New Bedford or Roxbury or some areas of Springfield or Holyoke, they are.
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p>Alternatively, suspend it, and lower the cost to fix up some of those homes.
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No thanks. How did that work for the people they hired? I know the companies made out like bandits. Explain to me how home would be rebuilt with people in the area making slave wages? Who will be able to afford it when they live check? to check? Please. I don’t see how that would work.
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p>What you need is real jobs so people are able to invest in the area. There are long term residents all over the southcoast who want to stay there. Second generation of families who want to stay in the region and grow in the area. We need I ideas to promote that not going backwards. It’s an absolutely horrible idea.
Bush didn’t suspend the Minimum Wage laws. He suspended Davis-Bacon for 2 months, which had little or no effect because the prevailing wage in New Orleans was already below the Federal average. Similarly the Federal Government suspended Davis-Bacon for the Hurricane Andrew cleanup in SC.
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p>That’s not the case in New Bedford, where I can hire a large equipment operator on private jobs for around $15 per hour, but prevailing wage on public jobs requires I pay him $30.
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p>Now think about it. With a higher manadated construction wage for public wage than the market demands, does that mean I spend more or less on public jobs, and does that mean there’ll be more, or fewer public jobs.
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p>Rather nasty of the Government to make it illegal for a worker to earn $15 per hour when he wants to.
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p>I’ve already stated my opinion on the effect of minimum wage in new bedford. Raising it to $8 did little. Lowering it to
0would mean little. Maybe in my original post, I shouldn’t have iisted it first.<
p>I will add that I have an annual chore: wood stacking. 6 or 7 cord. I’ve typically hired a kid from high school who works for 2 or 3 days at minimum wage. This year I’ve hired an adult because they’re typically better workers. Anecdotally and all, but I think raising the minimum wage has caused the loss of some high school summer jobs.
The prevailing wage in New Orleans is $9 hour for construction. That’s what Bush thought was too much and the no-bid profiteering frenzy began. Don’t fool yourself. It’s did nothing for the people of the region but the politically connected made out pretty well.
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p>There will be a similar impact in New Bedford, no matter what you use for your made up numbers. We’re not talking about $30 and hour jobs. We are talking about already low wage jobs that you want to reduce even further and this somehow will magically transform the area. Again, lowering already low paying jobs will not allow people to invest in the area, all it will do is allow companies to suck people dry for additional profit. If your priority is to rebuild the city and area then paying them 4 bucks an hour ain’t going to cut it. You need to provide better paying jobs and access. People can invest and the secondary job market and small business will grow.
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p>there ya go. That’s my point. The prevailing wage in New Orleans was already so low, that suspending Davis-Bacon didn’t create much new influx of construction workers willing to work cheaper.
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p>BTW, that’s not exactly how prevailing wage bidding works. There’s no such thing as “$9 hour for construction”. The rates are more specific than that. Here a typical Public Bid.
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p>Note, that 4th paragraph from the bottom, I must comply with Massachusetts prevailing wage rates. I am telling you, factually, that I can hire a heavy ‘dozer operator who is trained and efficient on his equipment for $15 per hour, and I can use him on a private job at that rate. But, because this is a public prevailing wage job, I’ll pay nearly $30.
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p>So to repeat, because I’m paying more and the City is paying me more, will there be less money or more money available for other projects?
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p>If, Davis-bacon (i.e. Prevailing wage) was repealed in economic zones in New Bedford, i) I could do that linked job for 10 to 20% less, because the trained labor is available, ii) and the taxpayers of New Bedford would pay less, and iii) more money would be available for other projects, and iv) the City would have an incentive to put public construction in designated economic zones because it’d be cheaper.
you are comparing New Orleans and Massachusetts, if you ask the question concerning work for less than $9 an hour, if you are in New Orleans the answer would be yes. I would not picture someone from MA flying down there for the work. So I don’t understand your point.
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p>The second part, specific to NO, is that they were no-bid contracts, so basically they screwed the workers. There’s no way around that.
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p>Now coming back your minimum wage, instead of the prevailing wage twist, the money that works would make will not allow the local economy to grow. It would be just too low.
Forget New Orleans. The point there is that prevailing wage was suspended and didn’t do very much because prevailing wage was already very low.
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p>Forget minimum wage. An $8.00 floor doesn’t do much either. Neither helps at all, nor harms very much.
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p>The point remains. Prevailing wage laws cause a construction job to cost 10 to 20% more than an equivalent job in the private sector.
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p>First, don’t you want to encourage developement in a blighted area?
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p>And second, wouldn’t you think that lowering the cost to development by 10 to 20%, by suspending prevailing wage laws in qualifying district would do just that?
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p>And last, wouldn’t you want your town and your taxes to save 10 to 20%?
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p>The answer to those 3 questions, I think, is obvious to anyone except an SEIU member.
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p>I assume then that the 10% to 20% savings wasn’t achieved in NO since by your assertion the suspension didn’t have a net effect on wages.
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p>If that’s true, then I’m assuming NO is an exception rather than the rule for any cost modeling of a suspension. Since you’d expect the 10% to 20% savings typically, I’m guessing you’d have to assume NO was atypical.
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p>If that’s the case, I would think that further upholding the suspension in NO as an applicable model for the effect of suspension elsewhere is inappropriate.
You guys are misunderstanding the effect of eliminating prevailing wage. Whether intentional or not, I can’t say.
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p>Prevailing wage rate for New Orleans are very, very low, therefore suspending the law resulted in no effect.
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p>Prevailing wage rates in FL after Hurricane Andrew were moderately high, and suspending prevailing wage actually had an economic effect.
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p>Prevailing wage rates in New Bedford are quite high compared to NO and FL. Suspending said rates should result in quite the savings and increased activity.
Options ii and iii above encourage a race to the bottom, leaving a company doing the right thing such as option i with not much business.
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p>I’m in the process of reading a relevant book called “Free Lunch” by David Cay Johnston, the theme of which is how often the government facilitates a reverse Robin Hood scenerio of robbing the poor to pay the rich. The mortgage industry has been a key beneficiary.
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p>If we want to play with tax incentives in these zones, that’s fine, but don’t touch wages. The minimum is too low as it is.
That’s the Special Economic Zones that were created to allow free market capitalism in parts of the country. The oldest and most successful such zone is the city of Shenzhen, which was previously a small fishing village near Hong Kong and is now one of the wealthiest cities in China. Of course Shenzhen’s success and the success of the other SEZs were dependent on talented people from all over China coming there to seek their fortune. I can’t really imagine the poor of America flocking to New Bedford. On the other hand, as much as the Liberal in me cringes at the thought of suspending wage laws, what we’ve been doing so far to revive blighted areas as largely failed, so this could be worth a shot.
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p>as well as rampant pollution, flagrant corruption, government subsidies, and horrible labor standards. Worth it? I wasn’t in Shenzen, but I’ve seen enough of China over a three month span to say: maybe.
Things are not nearly as simple as we often make them sound. Fixing the economy in NB is surely one of them. Sometimes people will suggest things like “Why can’t we have the Healthcare system like Finland’s?” and I have responded that it just isn’t that simple. There are layers and layers of details and gotchas, as you suggest above, in making any change to a complex linked system.
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p>NB doesn’t need a “quick fix”, it needs a plan and it needs committed people (again like your comment on Shenzhen).
Make them in New Bedford and float them out to sea – I read about a proposed wind farm 40 miles out, outside shipping lanes and migratory bird paths, but I can’t find the link right now. The turbines could be built in New Bedford and the people in the area could have good paying jobs.
http://www.saveoursound.org/si…
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p>It’s being pushed here as an alternative to Cape Wind, but I favor Cape Wind so I think we should build both.
and it comes off as oh-so-pretentious. Why should we bear any of the visual costs of our electricity when we can use our money and influence to make some poor community pay those costs.
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p>I tend to agree — let’s do both. But, there’s another point: a wind turbine factory in New Bedford, because of it’s water access and the reality that shipping by water is sometimes necessary due to size of parts and often cheaper and safer than by road or rail.
Only truly an idealist, naive, fool would believe that.
It WILL provide relief to bankers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directors and shareholders.
You would think Washington could have devised a better plan than this. I posted some highlights, with some critics and questions here 2 days ago.
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p>The last point in my post concerning the $4B touches on your concern a little.
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p>I would like to hear specifically (real details, who, how much, how…) from Kerry (or others) how this bill will help NB.
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p>Wind farms and mfg’ing the wind turbines suggested by JohnT for NB is a great idea. I don’t think it will singularly fix NB but it would be a start. It would bring jobs directly, improve housing, improve commerce, increase maritime business and maybe “begin” to build a foundation for an economic growth phase.
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p>But this will only be a start. Tourism and a renovated waterfront would be great, but only after people felt safe going to NB again, otherwise it would tank.
I knew we’d get there eventually, John. And no, I’m not suggesting that a turbine factory will solve all of New Bedofrd’s ills, but it’s certainly a place to start.