The Discipline to Plan for Our Future
By Donald Cohen | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | July 8, 2008 |
Imagine we in San Diego County had $2 billion to spend every year — that’s $5.5 million a day, including weekends and holidays — to help relieve traffic congestion, rebuild the urban infrastructure and lessen the impact of global warming. We could do a lot.
Or, imagine we leveraged that annual revenue to generate a massive $25 billion to invest up front in a new green and sustainable infrastructure for the 21st century. We could rebuild San Diego to get our homes closer to our jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and bring a higher quality of life to our neighborhoods. We could even expand on ideas used in other cities such as bicycle zones and universal broadband access to increase telecommuting. Read More
Simple Solution
By Murtaza Baxamusa | Published in voiceofsandiego.org | May 21, 2008 |
Sunroad and Blackwater are symptoms of a Land Development Code that does not work. As the Grand Jury noted recently, we have volumes of regulations that put inordinate burden on the little guy at the counter. And major and controversial development projects get a free pass.
In the Blackwater case, the dispute is over nuances of terms. The city claims this is a “security training facility” with a “shooting range”, and Blackwater claims this is a “vocational facility” with a “target range”. Regardless of what you call it, the community was neither informed nor consulted about the impacts of this project. Read More
Smart budgeting: Classrooms come first
By Murtaza Baxamusa, Susan Duerksen | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | May 13, 2008 |
San Diego Unified has many options besides layoffs
The San Diego Unified School District board will vote this afternoon on laying off more than 900 teachers. The consequences of that vote will ripple far beyond the careers of those educators and into San Diego’s economic future.
Investment in public education is prudent financial planning. A community’s business climate and economic strength are directly tied to education spending levels, smaller class sizes, student access to technology and well-trained, innovative teachers, numerous studies have shown. In a Brookings Institution survey, three-quarters of corporate managers said local education quality was the top criterion when they decide where to locate.
Especially now, as working families face the corrosive effects of a recession, it is critical to ensure — not jeopardize — a quality education for our next working generation. Read More
Stop Subsidizing Economic Doom
By Murtaza Baxamusa | Published in voiceofsandiego.org | March 10, 2008 |
Now is the time to plan a San Diego beyond a recession.
San Diegans are having a tough time making ends meet. The cost of living in San Diego is increasing faster than wages. Today, a single adult needs at least $28,510 a year for basic essentials and a two-adult working family with two children needs $71,385 for basic expenses including childcare.
Falling employment, stagnant wages, uncontrolled debt and slack consumer confidence are afflicting San Diego as much, if not more than, the rest of the nation. San Diego has the lowest average wage per job, when adjusted for the cost of living, among comparable metro areas in the United States. San Diego wages also have the lowest purchasing power, given local costs. In this context, low-wage workers are most vulnerable since they often lack a cushion of savings. Read More
Fixing the Inclusionary Housing Law
By Donald Cohen, Martin Akinfosile, Richard Lawrence | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | May 30, 2006 |
The San Diego City Council has an opportunity to affirm its commitment to solving the affordable housing crisis for the city’s working families.
Last week, responding to a lawsuit by the Building Industry Association, a Superior Court judge invalidated the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance on a technicality, and an apparently thin technicality at that. The judge gave the city the language it needs to fix the ordinance, and that should be done immediately.
In 2002, housing advocates and the City Council came to the table in good faith, seeking workable solutions for all stakeholders. It’s now clear that the BIA was not sincere in its commitment to build homes for all San Diegans. It has not acted in good faith.
When the City Council considered the first inclusionary housing ordinance, the council brokered an agreement between the housing advocates and the BIA to water down the ordinance. When the ordinance was passed, the BIA promptly went to court to have it overturned.
The BIA went to court a second time when the City Council agreed to a settlement that resulted in even lower in-lieu fees. The BIA then demanded that additional items be included in the settlement. So back to court it went.
The inclusionary housing ordinance needs to be legally amended – but it also needs to be strengthened so that real affordable housing gets built. The City Council has a chance to get it right – to craft an ordinance that creates housing that San Diegans can afford and puts in place an action plan to address the housing crisis.
It can adopt a second amendment to the ordinance to require the construction of affordable housing and eliminate the in-lieu fees altogether. We can say to builders: Either build your entire project affordable to households earning less than $90,000 per year or build at least 10 percent of it for families earning less than $32,000 per year.
Despite arguments being put forth by opponents of inclusionary housing, it has had an impact in San Diego and across the region.
In Carlsbad, Chula Vista and San Marcos, inclusionary housing ordinances have been an extremely effective tool in making housing affordable to working people. The builders in these cities are required to build the units, and consequently more than 4,000 homes have been created that are affordable for the working class. These are 4,000 homes that would not have been built without strong inclusionary ordinances.
In San Diego, the BIA has stated that the cost of inclusionary has been added to the price paid by the home buyers. The truth is the builder does not set the price of the homes it sells, the market does. For the last five years, the market has been willing to pay much more than the original asking price of the builders. Profits have been at record levels, not because the builders asked for those prices, but because the buyers bid them up. In the hot real estate market we’ve experienced in San Diego, it’s a little hard to imagine builders saying they don’t want to accept what the market will pay because their profit margin will be too great.
Furthermore, builders do receive subsidies from the city for complying with the law. They qualify for density bonuses and additional waivers on development requirements. They qualify for expedited processing, which can save them six months to a year in planning. And their large projects even qualify for federal, state and local financing subsidies. As matter of fact, seven of the nine rental housing allocations from the 2002 state housing bond have helped finance inclusionary housing developments in the county.
The BIA argues that inclusionary zoning does not help the affordable housing crisis. We agree. The city of San Diego’s current ordinance is not as effective as it could be because the builders negotiated a compromise that drove the in-lieu fees so low that the fees are insufficient to construct the inclusionary units or serve as an incentive for the builders to build them.
In the midst of the legal and political rhetoric, the hundreds of thousands of families who are experiencing the deep economic pressures of the housing crisis have only one question: When are we going to get serious about building housing for San Diego’s working families?
Akinfosile is co-chair of the San Diego Organizing Project. Cohen is executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives. Lawrence is president of the Affordable Housing Coalition.
Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Yes. We should make downtown for everybody
By Henry Rodriquez, John Harder, Richard Lawrence | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | October 14, 2005 |
Should the San Diego City Council allow project to continue with a community benefits agreement?
The San Diego City Council is finally ready to approve the final phase of the downtown redevelopment project voters approved in 1998. The Ballpark Village Project will produce a host of benefits to our region including $20 million per year in tax increment and sales tax.
On its face, the Centre City Development Corporation is pursuing a laudatory goal of requiring Ballpark Village developers to build on-site for-sale housing for moderate income families. Unfortunately the “deed restrictions” in the fine print will actually shoehorn an expensive and illusory housing solution into the development.
In fact, CCDC’s on-site plan was the subject of much criticism from housing experts and affordable housing advocates from the moment it was proposed. So, it should have been no surprise after the City Council delayed approval of the project in July that the developer had meetings with community leaders from surrounding neighborhoods and nearby industrial maritime employers.
First, the expensive on-site plan would target families with incomes of approximately $64,000, far higher than the $19,000 to $35,000 most advocates believe should be targeted to meet the demand created by the thousands of downtown service workers and their families. CCDC projects in their updated community plan that job growth downtown will create 18,000 new low-income households. But, including projects in the pipeline, there are only 300 affordable units for low-income families in all of downtown.
More importantly, a closer reading of the CCDC plan, revealed that “buyers” would be denied the opportunity to grow equity in their home – the reason most people choose to buy rather than rent a home. These units would have restricted deeds, meaning that anyone purchasing the units cannot sell their property for more than the original price, indexed by any cost of living increase. Worse, these “purchasers” are not protected from a price decrease. In other words, there is no financial upside and plenty of downside. There are, though, effective ways to encourage affordable homeownership that keeps prices low and allows buyers to at least share in the equity appreciation and build family wealth. ACCORD looks forward to working with the City Council on creating policies that improve home ownership opportunities for working families.
The developers encountered many affordable housing advocates who argued that the housing could be provided more economically outside of the CCDC planning area where land is cheaper. But the developers, JMIR and Lennar, insisted than the housing be within the CCDC planning area as required by CCDC in addition to meeting the desire of housing advocates to build more housing targeting to lower income families. What emerged was a remarkable agreement to build twice as much housing that could be rented to families with incomes of $19,000 to $35,000 per year.
To put this in perspective, we should remind ourselves that San Diego’s affordable housing ordinance only requires that builders in a redevelopment area pay an “in-lieu” fee rather than actually build affordable housing. That path, routinely approved by CCDC and the City Council, is the established norm inSan Diego. The Ballpark Village would set an important precedent by agreeing to actually build units as described in the City’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance rather than paying the fee.
The off-site inclusionary proposal has been well received by a broad spectrum of community leaders, housing advocates, labor and business leaders and environmental groups who are properly concerned about the future of our downtown.
The full package of community benefits offered by the developers goes much further than this housing proposal toward meeting the needs of more working families.
For example, the developers have committed to build the nation’s first large-scale residential high-rise building to stringent “LEED Certified” conservation and energy standards. This commitment to cutting-edge efficiency will benefit the entire community by minimizing the demand that Ballpark Village will put on our already pressured electricity grid.
They have also committed to providing job training and placement opportunities to ensure that as we build workers get new skills and job experiences that they will carry their families into a far more prosperous future.
JMIR and Lennar should be praised for addressing the concerns of people and businesses that live and work in the communities surrounding downtown. They should be further complimented for producing an affordable housing plan that meets the common sense test.
Remarkable as it may seem, some believe that what happens downtown should only be determined by those who live and own property downtown. The debate over the Ballpark Village project may well determine if we, as a city, believe that downtown belongs to all San Diegans – including downtown residents, the people who work downtown, the families in neighboring communities feeling the crunch of rising land values and the taxpayers of the city that are investing to make downtown a vibrant urban center.
The City Council represents the entire city and should act quickly to move the project forward. Further delay endangers the important commitments made by the developer and the project itself. The market is a rapidly changing environment, and this is a good news story ready to become an even greater story.
Lawrence is co-chair of the Affordable Housing Coalition. Harder is a member of the San Diego Organzing Project’s board of directors. Rodriguez is pastor of St. Jude Shrine of the West.
Should San Diego adopt an ordinance mandating certain wage levels for businesses contracting with the city?
By Doug Barnhart, Mel Katz, Stephen P. Cushman | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | April 8, 2005 |
Yes: Taxpayers pick up the tab for public assistance for low-paid workers
The living wage proposal is good public policy, and the City Council should implement it quickly. This ordinance will help taxpayers, businesses and workers.
We should all acknowledge that our economy is harmed when people who work every day can’t afford to buy a home, spend money on their children, save for a college education and do not have adequate health care. Even Henry Ford understood – during the depression – that people needed enough money in their pockets to purchase the cars that would make his business profitable and grow the economy.
As community members, we have a vested interest in the city of San Diego’s contracting practices. Thousands of people working – in our libraries, parks, police cars, fire stations, water treatment facilities keep the city functioning.
Opponents of living wage policy decry the proposal as a mandate on private business. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have established a myth that these workers are really not our responsibility because they are employed by private businesses. However, the hundreds of janitors, security guards, landscapers and other contracted workers that work on city facilities perform a vital public service.
We perpetuate the myth that these workers are not important when we prepare the city budget and therefore we need to ask whether we are living up to the standards we set for ourselves. Right now, these workers earn low wages, receive no health benefits and often do not get paid sick or vacation days. These compensation packages do not, and should not, meet any definition of minimum employment standards.
There are consequences to these employment practices. For example, to afford San Diego’s cost of living and high housing costs, these workers have to put in 50, 60 or even 70 hours per week, usually at more than one job. They double up with other families. Their families struggle to make ends meet.
The city’s contracting practices also burden taxpayers and businesses that have to pick up the tab when workers receive taxpayer-funded public assistance like Medi-Cal or Section 8 housing vouchers and when uninsured workers can’t pay their medical bills. In the last few years, local hospitals have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in uncompensated care. As a result, employers are faced with growing health care premiums – a situation that the Chamber of Commerce has called a “hidden tax to businesses.”
Living wage laws create a level playing field for businesses that pursue city contracts. Countless numbers of employers in San Diego invest in their employees by providing decent wages and health care. In return, they get reduced absenteeism, less turnover, greater company loyalty and ultimately higher productivity. But the city’s contracting practices makes it difficult for these companies to compete. They are up against employers who pay minimum wage and do not provide health care.
The living wage policy is a good and reasonable effort for the city to be honest about these contractual relationships. It eliminates distorted contracting incentives, and alleviates the burden on business and taxpayers created by poverty-wage jobs. And it says to our work force that we value our hard-working public servants enough to enable them to provide their families with food, shelter and health care.
If we value the services provided by our workers, then we have to value the workers who provide the service. It’s good management, it’s good business and it’s good government.
Katz, chief executive officer of Manpower Inc. in San Diego, is a former chairman of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. Barnhart is chief executive officer of Barnhart Inc., a San Diego-based building, engineering and construction management company. Cushman is president of the Cush Automotive Group Inc.
No Plan for Meeting Community Needs
By Donald Cohen | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | December 19, 2003 |
In the past four years, I’ve sat on the city of San Diego’s Strategic Framework Committee, the Affordable Housing Task Force, the Workforce Investment Board, two committees at the Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor’s Committee on Smart Growth and a host of other efforts and political campaigns addressing our region’s infrastructure, transportation, health care, jobs and other needs.
And every one of these, bar none, with broad representation from businesses, developers, community leaders and labor leaders inevitably draw the same two conclusions. First, we have massively underfunded vital regional needs. Second, leadership is essential if we are to raise the resources we need to create a city that lives up to the promise of a vibrant, healthy and prosperous San Diego.
Just look at a partial list, where there is already strong consensus among leaders across diverse constituencies:
Local hospitals lose about $300 million per year because almost 400,000 San Diegans (91 percent of them working, according to the Chamber of Commerce) don’t have health insurance.
The infrastructure deficit in our urban communities (in other words money for parks, libraries, road repair, water main upgrades, etc.) is well over $1 billion and probably closer to $2 billion.
We need hundreds of millions of dollars to support initiatives to develop a large number of housing units affordable to the people who drive our trucks, clean our buildings and teach our children.
A real mass transit system (integrated rubber and rail) with a vision of getting people off the roads, out of traffic and home in time to be with their families will also cost hundreds of millions, if not billions.
We need hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new downtown library and a world-class network of branch libraries that can meet the data and information needs of our growing population.
And, of course, if we are to bring our firefighting capabilities up to a reasonable standard we need to purchase new helicopters. The city would need to hire an additional 800 firefighters just to meet the national average of 1.31 firefighters per thousand (we’re now at .8 per thousand.)
Our community colleges, colleges and universities need more resources, not less, to help our work force prepare for the jobs of the future.
Our system of social services that serves both the middle class and the working poor — from health clinics and child care facilities, to homeless services and drug rehabilitation programs — is woefully under-resourced.
This list could go on — more police protection, a new airport, more open space, brownfield cleanup, etc. (I encourage readers to add to, or subtract from, the list.)
The danger here is to reduce what should be a serious debate about priorities and resources to simple sloganeering and stunted political discussion. In fact, the real tragedy is that there isn’t much of a public debate at all. And worse yet, there is no plan of action.
Instead, many of the same constituencies, while bemoaning the lack of resources for real needs, will publicly proclaim their allegiance to the mantras of “no new taxes” or “slash the size of government.”
But a real discussion begins with the realization that there is no free lunch, that you get what you pay for, and yes, lots of things are worth paying for. Our schools are worth paying for, public safety is worth paying for, environmental cleanup and protection are worth paying for, our neighborhoods are worth paying for, health care is worth paying for, libraries are worth paying for, and much more. And many of us are willing to pay our share to make this city great.
We need a serious conversation — not just another task force — about what we want to do together as a city and region and how we can get the resources we need to pay for it. Then we need a plan of action.
Unfortunately, very few political leaders, held in check by their political consultants and the latest polling data, have the guts to stand up and lead this kind of conversation. Gray Davis’ greatest failure wasn’t the budget deficit. That was not of his making. His greatest failure was not involving all Californians in a serious discussion of our budget shortfalls and what our priorities should and could be and then making it happen.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s greatest failure wasn’t saying “I’m going to repeal the vehicle license fee.” He was a candidate trying to get elected, saying what he thought he needed to say. His greatest failure was not telling the voters that repealing the VLF also could mean cutting police, fire and other services that we all want and need.
There is no magic bullet, but we can’t do any of this without real leadership from government, business, labor and community organizations. Real leaders tell the whole truth. Real leaders take responsibility for their mistakes (we all make them). Real leaders don’t pit one need or group against another — they look for solutions that meet all our needs. We need leaders who have the guts to lead. Or at least have the guts to try.
Credit: Cohen is president of the Center on Policy Initiatives in San Diego.
Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
County Practices Diminish Services
By Mira Jang, Sundari Baru | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | August 10, 2001 |
With the advent of the New Economy and the flurry of downsizing by corporations, government agencies have joined in the effort to streamline by cutting permanent jobs and replacing them with temporary workers.
This restructuring has taken hold of our largest government agency — the county of San Diego. The Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego-based research and policy center, recently conducted a study of the county’s use of temporary workers. The findings in the report, “Temporary Government: The County of San Diego’s Growing Use of Temporary Workers,” were alarming.
The study, funded by the Rosenberg Foundation, found that the county employs over 17,000 workers, about 1,832 (as of January) of them non-permanent workers directly hired by the county. Most temporary workers receive no health or pension benefits. Temporary workers hired through temporary help agencies sometimes receive lower pay than their full-time counterparts.
The county charter allows for the use of temporary workers in positions that are “emergency, seasonal or temporary in nature.” Unfortunately, many of the positions being filled are not truly temporary in nature. They are clearly full-time, permanent jobs that have been turned into temp jobs so that the county could avoid paying benefits.
Our review of county records describes a clear management strategy that focuses on head count over the quality of service. County officials have explicitly converted full-time permanent positions into “permanent temporary” positions. In his performance plan, John A. Miller, director of the General Services Department, says the county will “use permanent staff for up to 80 percent of workload requirements and utilize temporary staff/consultants for the balance of workload needs.”
The county is intent on capping its permanent work force in favor of hiring more temporary workers, despite the demands of a rapidly growing population. The county is hiring so many temporary workers that it overspent its budget allocation for temps by at least $10 million in the three previous fiscal years. In the current fiscal year, it has exceeded the budget by $721,000 as of January.
If temps seek county-funded health care through emergency care or health clinics, the taxpayers end up paying anyway. For a county mandated to provide health care for the uninsured, it is sadly ironic that this same public agency fails to provide health insurance to its own workers.
Consider, for example, the experience of a former county temporary worker who was hired through a temporary help agency. Janette Mahnken, 41, worked as a receptionist, account clerk and intermediate clerk typist for three years at the Department of Information Services, making as little as the minimum wage and no benefits. She performed full-time work on a long-term basis, and she passed the Civil Service exam. Yet, even after three years, she was denied a permanent position. Without any health insurance Mahnken visited county-funded health clinics to treat various problems, including a kidney infection, costing her several thousands of dollars.
But this isn’t just a matter of providing equal access to health insurance to all workers. It’s also about the quality of services taxpayers receive. Take, for example, an incident at the county-run center for abused and neglected children.
Three years ago, when a 13-year-old ran away from the Polinsky Center, 43 of the 144 staff positions were vacant, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. An official admitted that temporary, lesser- paid, and sometimes inadequately trained workers were employed to handle the overload. These temporary workers are allegedly given only a 15-minute video and a handbook as training.
We are entrusting essential public services to be run by underpaid workers with no benefits and no job security. Is that the best we can do?
With an economic downturn looming and job insecurity on high alert, it’s especially crucial to think about how we want our government run. San Diego residents and workers deserve a more responsible, high-quality county government.
Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
The ballpark : What jobs will it bring ?
By Enrico Marcelli | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | August 21, 1998 |
In the coming weeks, the details of the ballpark district agreement will be subject to intense scrutiny. Is it a good deal for the taxpayers? Will there be sufficient funds to cover the annual costs and debt service? Where will the $21 million in “other” funds come from? Are there adequate protections to guarantee that core services such as libraries, police, fire and park maintenance are not threatened?
But there is one crucial question that has been noticeably missing from the ballpark debate — what kind of jobs will result from the City’s $225 million investment?
It has been noted that one of the central economic benefits of this new project will be the creation of hundreds of permanent new jobs . Who would argue that economic development and job creation are not legitimate goals of public investment?
That includes public investment generated from visitors to San Diego in the form of a Tourist and Occupancy Tax — the so-called “not-a-real-tax” tax. And the taxpayer contribution to the new ballpark district goes beyond direct tax receipts. The revenue we lose through tax and fee waivers on new private development projects is yet another form of investment in economic development.
But our investment in job creation must be subject to the same level of scrutiny as other any public spending to determine if the return on our investment is broadly shared. To determine the overall economic impact of these new jobs requires an assessment of not just the quantity of new jobs created, but more importantly, the quality of these new jobs .
The release of SANDAG’s Economic Prosperity Strategy Report unveiled that one of the most persistent and troubling features of our new economy is the growing economic disparity between the high-income, professional, hi-tech occupations of the future and the low-wage service industries that are producing the greatest number of jobs . The income gap is real and it is growing.
In addition to wage disparity, several other features of our economy merit equally serious attention. The proliferation of the use of temporary and contingent workers undermines job security, and therefore economic security, for many families. In addition, the 600,000 San Diegans who lack health insurance are a threat to the security of our families as well as an impediment to economic growth of the region.
These structural weaknesses in the regional economy are issues that must be addressed in any and every economic development initiative.
The success of the ballpark project ultimately depends on tax revenues from significant ancillary private development, including additional hotel rooms, new office space and retail establishments. Therefore, in the absence of specific policy to create good jobs , the very financing structure of the deal guarantees the creation of low-wage service and tourism jobs .
Politicians and planners have the responsibility to evaluate critically the ability of these new employment opportunities to promote shared economic growth that supports working families. If this is not done, the distinct possibility exists that the Ballpark and the economic “development” it spawns as a result of what economists call a “multiplier effect,” may actually perpetuate an already established trend of people working more and earning less.
At the very least, publicly supported investments should result in the creation of jobs that provide family-supporting wages, substantial job -training opportunities for career development, health benefits and pension benefits that provide for secure retirements. In short, we ought not promote low-wage or “dead-end” employment opportunities with public funds. It ‘s a bad investment of limited taxpayer dollars.
The mayor and City Council have an opportunity to guarantee that our contribution to building the new ballpark and entertainment district is an investment that will create good jobs and shared economic prosperity.
First, the city should produce a Jobs Impact Report that would describe the quality of net new jobs created by our investment. Are they, in fact, new jobs or are they simply substituting for similar jobs lost in other areas of the region as a result of new competition from downtown development? Do these jobs pay family-supporting wages? Do they provide health benefits and pensions? And is there sufficient employer commitment to training and human-resource development so that each job is a pathway to an even better job ?
Second, the City Council should require that any benefits we give to private businesses in the form of development subsidies or credits are based upon basic principles of mutual responsibility and accountability. The council can condition any public subsidy or credit to a private business, quid pro quo, on that firm’s commitment to hire workers at decent wages and provide health benefits.
Finally, the City Council should set as a matter of policy that no public dollars will be spent on economic development to create jobs that don’t provide livable wages or that increase the ranks of uninsured workers.
MARCELLI is research director for the Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego-based research and policy center formed to investigate the changing regional economy and the impact on jobs .
