Save me a spot

I have to confess: I get all of my news from essentially two sources: nytimes.com and the Planetizen Newswire. I’d like to dedicate today’s post to all the urban planners out there. And apologize for it being a little incoherent.

I am not a huge fan of cars. They’re generally bad for the environment and disconnect us from our surroundings. That said, a car is probably the first thing I’d buy if I moved back to Buffalo. In some places, they aren’t as superfluous. Anyway, people (my housemates included) should try harder to avoid unnecessary driving, in my opinion. Today I read this article about eliminating parking requirements for new development in DC. It struck a cord as DC is the place where I kicked my car-loving habit in the first place.

The debate, I guess, is the walkable city-ites against the commuters.

Advocates counter that parking is about more than drivers’ convenience; it can profoundly affect the look and feel of a city…

In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees.

Some of this is definitely a matter of personal preference. I, for one, wouldn’t mind if I never saw another plaza again. As Jane Jacobs aptly points out, having one more tree in a neighborhood doesn’t really do a whole lot to save the environment, but I’ve got to imagine that discouraging cars and pushing people toward rapid transit would. In the DC example though, Georgetown springs to mind, and not just because I spent so much time there. It’s the only place in the city where I regularly hung out that didn’t have a metro stop. I’ll refrain from what I think about their not having a metro stop and just make the obvious point that Gtown has very little parking, and the buses that run there are infrequent and unreliable (shout out to you, 38B!).

So basically, besides hating cars and loving that planners are considering disregarding them in my old place of residence, I’m reflecting on neighborhood-by-neighborhood planning. At my current job we’re working on some incentive zoning stuff and talking about how it probably won’t fly in every neighborhood in Seattle. Maybe I should go to grad school and learn about this stuff.

Power and Potential

Amber sent me this link to a blog detailing the experiences of various congressmen and -women as they accepted the challenge of eating on $21 for a week, or $3 per day. This is the average food stamp benefit in America. I took a moment to get over the fact that this is actually 33 cents more per than my housemates and I have per day. And then I poked through the posts.

I identify with all of what I read: sometimes it feels easy, like I’m getting used to being hungry; other times, I’m sure that it’s just not possible to do, and I go spend money outside of the budget on something more complicated and expensive than I need. And the post about the spilled milk? I was just jealous that she had been able to squeeze milk into the budget! Hands down my favorite thing to have the fridge, my roommates veto milk off the grocery list every time. If I have brittle bones as an old lady, I will blame this year.

Some days, I get so angry as I walk up the hill from the bus stop to our house. I’m always hungry during this walk, and when my stomach is growling, I spend it thinking about what we’ll have for dinner. There’s no chance it’ll ever be ready by the time I get home because most of my housemates commute farther than I do. On top of that, we can’t agree on how to spend our food budget, so we don’t shop much. The selection in the fridge–especially on nights when we haven’t designated anyone to cook–is meager at best.

I don’t have nearly enough perspective to know if I’m wining or not, but I definitely feel thoroughly insecure, both in terms of food and finances. I know that I have a support network, that I have money in the bank (no matter how quickly it’s being siphoned off by my cell phone and student loan bills), but this is about solidarity, and I’m not really tapping into those resources now because that’s not the point.

Last night, our lovely community mediator reminded us that money and food are both currencies of power.

It puts a lot of our household tension and my personal feelings into perspective. I feel totally powerless. I want to buy both binders for the kid in front of me in line at Rite Aid who finds out that he only has enough money for one. I want to help the person who approaches me on the street to buy lunch. These are things that I used to do in the past; now I’m reaching for what’s left when you don’t have much money or food.

Our mediator told us to act from a place of abundance. So far, this is probably even more difficult than not having (enough?) money or food.

Fall into the Gap

Every August, the Census Bureau releases the poverty, income, and earnings data from the American Community Survey. When the research director at my new job caught wind of my data analysis/consulting/math major background, he roped me in to work on analyzing the Census data during my first weeks on the job. I’m glad I got to ease into the new office by doing something that I know how to do, even if it was kind of stressful to turn the report around so quickly.

And, of course, I learned something new. Our report for the Seattle area focused a lot on the gap between the poor and the rich: the 20% of households with the highest incomes took home almost half (48%) of the region’s income last year while the bottom fifth took home only 4%. Sure, I kind of think everyone should make the same amount, but personal views aside, this is still totally outrageous. A gap so wide leads to all kinds of divides, and I really think it’s at the root of so many social problems (unequal opportunities for education, jobs, home ownership; higher incarceration rates among certain groups; health problems).

Our report got some press coverage, and one academic brushed these figures off as nothing new. That seemed weird to me, and for your consideration, I present yet another NY Times article. This isn’t even me taking sides with Obama; I’m just totally fascinated by fiscal policy, and I love it when doing good results in a win for everyone.

In a nutshell, the years when we had Democratic presidents were years of greater growth of the GDP and years when lower-income families experienced faster economic growth than higher-income ones, thereby closing the gap slightly. Meanwhile, the very richest stayed very rich, so I guess all these tax credits people are always making a fuss over might not be a huge deal. (Check the link for “the accompanying table”):

The accompanying table, which is adapted from the book, tells a remarkably consistent story. It shows that when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families — which means that incomes were equalizing. In stark contrast, it also shows much faster income growth for the better-off when Republicans were in the White House — thus widening the gap in income.

The table also shows that families at the 95th percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12 percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less well-to-do. Families at the 20th percentile fared much worse under Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 percent). Eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43 percent increases a family’s income by just 3.5 percent, while eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent.

Not to get all partisan, but perhaps this is something for all those generous Republicans to consider.

Bringing Home the Bacon

God bless my dad for suggesting this week that maybe my roommates and I should try buying bacon as a cheap and tasty option for our grocery list.

Through the volunteer program, we’ve got a household food budget of $80 per person each month. In a month with thirty days, that’s about $2.66 per person per day.  It’s such a discouraging figure that I barely know what to do with myself. On top of that, our community is not meshing well at all, and we can’t agree on anything for a grocery list, especially nothing that I actually want to eat. I hadn’t been thinking of simplicity in terms of not eating what I want–why shouldn’t we all be able to eat what we want? But we’re not in my economic dream world of everyone living at the mean; we’re being simple. At $2.66 a day, that amounts to a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and rice and beans. It makes me feel ridiculous, but the food situation has been far and away the biggest disappointment for me and the hardest thing to adjust to. I guess it’s hardest to give up the “wants” that we think are needs.