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Monday, November 26, 2007
Johns Creek on right track with housing allowance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just as it is risky to heap praise on living evangelists, it can be risky to heap praise upon start-up cities. One never quite knows how these things are going to turn out.
But the infant city of Johns Creek in north Fulton County offers an impressive example to cities old and young alike of the proper way to entice police officers to live intown.
The traditional Big Government way is to sell bonds and create a new “affordable” housing program, ostensibly to make it possible for policemen, firemen, teachers and assorted public employees to live near their work. For police, especially, neighborhood visibility reassures the homefolks that their homes and businesses are secure.
The Big Government approach is really more about empowering politicians and enriching their connected friends than it is about providing housing for the sought-after public employees. Teachers and police are simply a marketing opportunity to sell a new taxpayer-subsidized program.
Johns Creek is doing it right. The new city is in the process of hiring a police force that will consist of 56 sworn officers and 13 civilians. Officers will earn an average of $42,000. The typical house in Johns Creek sells for $400,000, unaffordable on a policeman’s salary.
The solution? Johns Creek is offering officers a housing allowance that averages about $600 per month to live in the city.
Bingo! That is precisely the way to go. It’s targeted. It’s adjustable. It has the potential to achieve a desired public policy of having officers present and visible in the community. And it can be discontinued if warranted — not for those who made housing decisions based on the subsidy, but for those not yet committed.
As with Johns Creek, “affordable” housing efforts really should be cleareyed and narrowly focused. Public officials should be able to articulate precisely why some lucky souls are entitled to a gift that may come at the expense of others struggling to make ends meet. In the Old Fourth Ward in the city of Atlanta, a gentrifying neighborhood causes angst among some nostalgics. Between 2000 and 2006, the city’s population increased 17 percent, from 416,474 to 486,411. Neighborhoods close to the downtown business district, like the Old Fourth Ward, are moving upscale.
This is commonly where politicians intervene with proposals to make housing “affordable” to some preferred group — often insisting that their neighbors provide the subsidy. In the case of the Old Fourth Ward, a master plan is being developed, but City Councilman Kwanza Hall wants to make certain that it includes housing for teachers, recent college graduates and artists. One solution he proposes is higher density in some parts, with a substantial number of units set aside as affordable. That means, of course, that a portion of their rents or their mortgages are paid by their neighbors.
Unlike the Johns Creek proposal, it’s not clear why taxpayers or neighbors are expected to be patrons of artists, for example, or why their presence in a given neighborhood is a compelling public purpose. And who decides which artist is entitled to a housing subsidy and why? And once selected for a public bounty, does the artist have no obligation to reciprocate — to donate a small abstract to a public building, for example, or to sketch a park scene for the enjoyment of the subsidy-payers ensconced in their high-rises?
And once the artist chooses to abandon the property, to whom does the windfall profit belong? Certainly not to the artist, for he surely has no expectation that the public treasury is an entitlement bestowed on him individually. Since the allotment is to guarantee that an artist will occupy neighborhood space, the property should be kept perpetually “affordable.” The now-affluent artist should make it available at something near the purchase price to an artist of the city’s choosing to preserve the quality of the neighborhood mix.
Silly? But of course. A city has no business designating some neighborhoods, or parts of them, as an entitlement for a preferred group. If they want police in the city, or teachers, they should follow the Johns Creek example: Give them cash and be done with it.
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today marks the start of what the National Retail Federation regards as the beginning of the online Christmas shopping season. It’s “Cyber Monday,” the season’s first big online shopping day, boosted by consumers returning to work and making purchases from their office computers. More than half of adults shop at work, according to the federation.
“The online community is getting more competitive as the amount of new customers slows,” Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, an online arm of the National Retail Federation, told the Associated Press. Free shipping without conditions, such as a minimum purchase, has jumped to 41.4 percent from 36 percent last year, he said. In addition, a third of Web-based retailers are having one-day sales today, while 42 percent plan some kind of promotion, according to the group’s survey.
Consumers are expected to spend $33 billion online this season, up 21 percent from a year ago. Last year’s growth rate was 23 percent.
ComScore Networks, which tracks Internet spending, reported Sunday that online sales, excluding travel, auctions and corporate purchases, rose 22 percent to $531 million on the day after Thanksgiving from a year ago. Today’s online sales are projected by ComScore to exceed $700 million.
Today is a break from politics and from the left-right skirmishes. Consider it a sampling of the Internet savvy. Two questions: 1) How has the Internet changed your Christmas shopping? And 2) If a proposal is made in this year’s General Assembly to tax online purchases, would you object? Should online purchases be treated the same as in-store purchases?
