Median sales prices for homes are dropping nationwide and assessments are rightly dropping with them. This comes as good news to taxpayers, but the DC city council is annoyed that the tax assessment appeals board is granting appeals.

In a meeting with Gandhi yesterday, D.C. Council members questioned whether the quasi-independent appeals board has enough real estate expertise and whether it is caving too quickly to property owners.

“Do we feel the need to explain to the board that what they do directly affects our revenues?” asked council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D).

Some members suggested changing the format and composition of the board.

So according to Vincent Gray and other members of the council, the assessment board is supposed to politicize assessments to suit the council’s fiscal indiscipline. The council could always just raise the tax rate to compensate for the loss, but that would prove politically unpopular; it’s always easier to scapegoat the tax collector.

When real estate prices deflate and consumer spending dives, does gentrification wither? In real estate, sale prices and rents are “stickier” when falling than when rising. Thus, rents and prices should not fall as fast as a drop in consumer spending warrants. Consequently, shops suffer this gap between revenue declines and rent declines, causing them to go out of business much faster than they otherwise would.

The New York Times discusses an example of this unfortunate process playing out right now in the once-gentrifying Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles.  The paper notes that

The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in Manhattan to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.

However, these gentrified neighborhoods did not just change economically.  They changed socially, too, attracting a base of residents with the  job skills, education, and worldly curiosity to support a variety of local retail shops.  Even when these shops that opened under brighter economic times shutter their doors due to a souring neighborhood economy, the intrinsic demand sparked by the changing neighborhood culture does not disappear.

When happy days are here again, these neighborhoods will likely sprout coffee houses, soap shops, thai restaurants and the like rather than pawn shops, tatoo parlors, and car repair shops of the long-gone decades of disinvestment.

Are you running up hefty credit card bills on expensive dates to impress women?  Dude, careless extravagance is so 2007.  This economy is impairing the dating scene for America’s go-getters, as more Ivy League  i-bankers exchange coke lines for bread lines:

“It’s been incredibly stressful for me,” said Neil Welsh, 27, the guy in the suit, who until last year was marketing director for a booming real estate company. “I was so used to using my financial situation to leverage my dating.”

The horrors!  While some families worry about buying groceries, ambitious, single twentysomethings fret that potential mates might have to judge them on personality and character instead of W-2 forms.

Though this economy is inflicting real pain on millions of people, one small benefit is that it’s forcing our society to re-evaluate our priorities and materialistic attitudes.

Needing a change of scenery. Image source: The Office, NBC

The Post today reports on the phenomenon of “ecomigration”, the resettlement of people due to environmental factors.  The Post article misses some important points, but also shines light on the climate hysteria gripping small numbers of paranoiacs in rich countries.

First, the Post fails to mention that people have migrated due to changing environments since the dawn of mankind.  Rivers dried up, people moved.  Volcanoes erupted, people moved.  Soils were exhausted, people moved.  Wild game disappeared, people moved.  This is not a new phenomenon.  What is new is the global movement based on the actual consequences (or the fear of consequences) of global warming.  Global warming’s consequences are far more gradual than those of the more immediate ecological catastrophes of history and pre-history.

The story mentions that the president of the Pacific archipelago of Kiribati is considering the wholesale resettlement of his countrymen to another, preferably higher, country (the Netherlands need not apply).  Though Pacific islanders in Kiribati may want to relocate to escape a slowly rising ocean, the Post fails to acknowledge the bigger story of the past century: huge numbers of people, particularly in poorer countries, have abandoned the countryside to seek riches in low, coastal cities.  No place is this more true than in China, where cities such as Shanghai draw migrants from rural, inland provinces.  For these millions of Chinese, ecomigration stands for economic migration and these cities’ locations at sea level have not deterred the domestic movement.  I suppose the Post has tired of writing stories about Chinese urbanization, though.

Instead, the article relates the story of the Fiers, a Montgomery County family so afraid of climate change that it moves to…  New Zealand.  Huh?

Fier, 38, a computer security professional who used to work at NASA, said he thought hard about the risks of global climate change. He knew moving to a new country would be difficult but thought that the dangers of staying in the United States were worse. Several years ago, he drew up a list of countries and studied how they might fare over the next century. He examined their environmental policies, access to natural resources and whether they would be safe from conflict. He decided that New Zealand would offer a comparable quality of life, has an excellent environmental record and is isolated from global conflicts by large tracts of the Pacific Ocean. Its tropical, subtropical, temperate and arctic zones also offer a variety of “bioenvironments” as a hedge against the vagaries of climate change.

I wonder if this move was really rationally decided or if the Fiers are privy to a crystal ball the rest of the burgeoning Washington area is not. Aside from national and county parklands, Montgomery County is far above sea level, so the Fier family’s fear must be based in something other than climate.  One must suspect the move was more of a political statement.  New Zealand is becoming the new Canada.

Fier offers some sophistries to rationalize his irrational move:

[Fier] argued that people who do nothing in the face of risk are the ones who are being irrational: If even a fraction of the consequences of global climate change that scientists are forecasting come true, disasters such as Hurricane Katrina might become the norm, not the exception. In a world afflicted by overpopulation and environmental degradation, he asked, is the irrational person the one who acts or the one who says the future will look after itself?

It’s impossible to see how moving to New Zealand protects one from environmental harm.  New Zealand has less arable land per capita than does the U.S. and its isolation makes the importation of food an expensive endeavor.  Furthermore, although New Zealand has its virtues, it is hardly a cultural, cosmopolitan mecca of the world.  The Fiers’s move to New Zealand is somewhat reminiscent of the white flight from American cities in the post-war years.  Fearing perceived dangers of the urban core (read: minorities) and aided by government subsidies for highways and housing, white Americans of means fled city centers for culturally homogeneous idylls in suburbia.  One can’t help but suspect the Fiers are motivated by a similar fear of what they perceive to be vile forces beyond their control.

More shocking is the tone-deaf callousness of the academic quoted for the story:

“The guy who moves from here to New Zealand is no different than the guy who moves from the lowland in the Philippines to the highland, or from El Salvador to Honduras,” said Rafael Reuveny, a political economist who studies ecomigration at Indiana University at Bloomington. “Down the road, probably sooner than we think, we are facing major environmental changes. These changes have started to occur and are moving relatively slowly, but the pace of change will accelerate in our lifetime.”

It seriously strains credulity to state that the family that moves from one of the richest counties in the richest country on earth is “no different than the guy who moves from the lowland in the Philippines to the highland”.  The former moves by choice as a fashionable political statement, whereas the latter moves when he finally has no other choice as the putrid swamp water laps at his rusted door.  Only from callousness or startling ignorance can one equate these two situations.

Furthermore, the article curiously states that “[w]ithin the United States, regions that are vulnerable to hurricanes appear to be producing the greatest number of domestic ecomigrants,” citing the gulf coast as a prime example:

Thomas Hoff, 50, of Lakeland, Fla., may soon be an ecomigrant. He said he has come to regret moving to the Sunshine State from Michigan a quarter-century ago and is exploring his options.

“The snow is looking better every cotton-picking hurricane that comes through now,” Hoff said. “I am constantly watching the tropics every hurricane season. You don’t know what is going to happen.”

The grass is always greener on the other side for some (for Mr. Hoff, it’s fondly icier on the other side).  The article conveniently forgets to note that while Mr. Hoff may be nostalgic for the Great Lakes State, the tide of recent history is against him: Florida’s population grew an astonishing 14% from 2001 to 2007.  And “safer” Michigan?  Only one percent.

A story on ecomigration should highlight those who are truly displaced by the environment, and not the middle-class ennui of Americans looking for an entertaining change of scenery.

Image source: LA Times

Much has been made of the surprise passage of California’s Proposition 8, which amended the Declaration of Rights of the state’s Constitution to state that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”  What hasn’t received much attention, however, is that the city council of Washington, DC, may move in the coming months to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.  In the past, the main obstacle cited is Congress; even if the city council approved a same-sex marriage bill (probably with near-unanimity), Congress, which has legislative authority to overturn any DC law, would overturn it in a heartbeat.

But since the Democrats now control Congress and the White House, the city now faces the best opportunity to introduce a marriage bill that would face the lowest chance of Federal opposition.  However, even if the measure escaped a snarling Congress, the measure would likely face stiff opposition from a large bloc of city residents.  If the civil rights measure is put to popular vote in Washington, DC, voters may in fact reject it.

Since there are no public opinion polls of District residents gauging opposition to same-sex marriage in the city, it is hard to predict how a ballot question would fare.  However, if we extrapolate November’s exit-poll results on Proposition 8 from California, the civil rights landscape in DC looks a little bleak.

In the best scenario, a DC vote would reflect the results among California’s urban voters.  Forty-five percent of California’s urban voters opposed Proposition 8.  Since all DC voters qualify as urban voters, if the proportions voting for and against held the same, a ban would lose.

(All the following data are drawn from CNN’s exit-poll of California and extrapolated based on each cohort’s share of the DC electorate as provided by MSNBC’s exit-poll of DC)

If we extrapolate from other measures, the outlook isn’t as good.  Based on income group, the results show a ban would just squeak by.  Interestingly, among all income groups, only those making less than $30,000 and those making more than $150,000 opposed Proposition 8 by a majority.  The vast middle supported it.  Now if we multiple each group’s support and opposition in California by each income group’s respective proportion of the DC electorate, a same-sex marriage ban would pass in DC by a slight majority.

It gets worse.

In California, 53% of college graduates opposed Proposition 8, whereas only 42% of those without college degrees opposed it.  Though 58% of District voters are college graduates, that is still not enough to stop a ballot measure in the city.  Based on education, a ballot measure in DC would ban same-sex marriage with a 52% majority.

Finally, race is the pink elephant in the room few want to bring up.  Traditionally, black voters, gays, and those with socially liberal views overwhelmingly vote  for Democrats.  However, on the issue of homosexuality, one Democratic constituency, blacks, holds views strong opposed to those held by other Democratic constituencies (social liberals, gays, etc.).

An astounding 70% of California’s black voters cast ballots in favor of Proposition 8 and an even more astounding 75% of black women voted in favor.  Proposition 8 only found greater support among self-identified 2004 Bush voters (80%), white evangelicals (81%), Republicans (82%), McCain voters (84%), weekly churchgoers (84%), conservatives (85%), and those who approve of the war in Iraq (85%), among others.

When we extrapolate each ethnic group’s vote in California to adjust it for each group’s proportion of the DC electorate, a same-sex marriage ban easily passes by 61% of the popular vote in the District.

Admittedly, California and DC, though both Democratic strongholds, differ in some important ways.  DC is entirely urban, whereas California is home to urbanites, a huge portion of suburbanites, and sizable rural counties.  Furthermore, unlike DC, California is more ideologically diverse and contains some very conservative areas (San Diego and Orange Counties, most notably) as well as liberal enclaves such as San Francisco, Hollywood, and Berkeley.  Washington’s singlemindedness leans decidely leftward, but in California the tilt, though still to the left, has counteracting forces that DC largely lacks.

Nonetheless, it’s premature for the city council and gay civil rights campaigners to assume that everyone shares the same view of what constitutes a civil right.  Though same-sex marriage might not raise eyebrows in upper Northwest, not all DC residents are ready to embrace a progressive view of marriage.  When the council starts to debate such a measure, don’t be surprised when you hear opponents ironically claiming civil rights for me, but not for thee.

The Post reports what everyone else suspects: few members of the board that oversees Metro are regular riders. Furthermore, many of those same board members drive to the Metro board meetings at WMATA headquarters and don’t bother to pay for the privilege of parking there. This news comes as the board considers cutting service in the face of a constricted budget and rising operating costs.

Sadly, it should not come as much of a surprise that those in the position to shape transit policy themselves don’t even ride the very systems they advocate.  Members of Congress afford themselves massive surface parking lots on the Capitol grounds and even a car allowance financed by the taxpayer.  Even liberals such as former HHS-nominee Tom Daschle wouldn’t be caught dead bearing the indigities of one of America’s most extensive transit networks.

When those in power are disconnected from the consequences of their policies, there exists less of an incentive for careful consideration.  DC Councilman and WMATA board chair Jim Graham unwittingly proved this point very well:  “Few D.C. Council members have children in the city’s public schools, [Graham] said, ‘but we all vote on the budget. We’re all engaged.’”

And what a fine job they’ve done!