At Large: Honesty is a public official’s best policy. 4D
Business&Money
S U N D A Y , J U L Y 31 , 2011
SECTION D
WWW.TUSCALOOSANEWS.COM
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Financial cancer
Tuscaloosa-area foreclosures have hit poor, mostly black neighborhoods the hardest
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Densities are based on a study by UA Associate Profesors Brownwen Lichtenstein and Joe Weber.
STAFF GRAPHIC | ANTHONY BRATINA
These four maps of the Tuscaloosa area show the concentration of foreclosed properties from 2008 to the present. Since the recession, foreclosures have been on the rise.
By Patrick Rupinski Staff Writer
TUSCALOOSA he maps of Tuscaloosa were covered with blotches, going from a light red on their outer areas to a dark crimson core. “It looks like a cancer,” said sociologist Bronwen Lichtenstein, as she looked at them. In a way, it is a cancer — a fi nancial cancer that has destroyed people’s hopes and dreams. The maps produced by the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama pinpoint in increasing shades of red the density of foreclosures in Tuscaloosa neighborhoods and surrounding areas since 2008. Lichtenstein, an associate professor in criminal justice at the University of Alabama, has been gathering foreclosure data in Tuscaloosa County since
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February 2008 and said a pattern has developed. The foreclosure crisis here has hit poorer, more black neighborhoods the hardest. “From 2008 to 2011, we are seeing large clusters (of foreclosures) in Alberta and the west side of the city,” Lichtenstein said. “The general feeling that one gets from the media is that it is the average Joe and the people who were trying to get into the bigger home who are facing foreclosures, but it is not the rich folks who are losing their homes. It is the poorer black and white folks who are getting hit.” Wealthier people typically have more expensive homes and bigger mortgage payments. They also have more discretionary income, savings and investments, so if they lose their jobs, they have a nest egg to fall back on, she said. Poor and low-income workers typi-
GADGETRON
Droid 3 an underwhelming successor to Motorola’s smartphone lineup
I
t’s been 21 months since the original Motorola Droid hopped onto Verizon Wireless shelves and helped spark the monstrous sales that have led to Android overtaking Apple’s iPhone in smartphone market share. Nearly a year after an underwhelming sequel, Motorola has returned with the $200 Droid 3, the most powerful version of the device to date. The Droid 3 looks like its predecessors, but get closer and you’ll notice that the device has grown thanks to its new 4-inch qHD display, which replaces the Droid 2’s 3.5-inch display. WAYNE Under the hood is a GRAYSON 1GHz dual-core processor along with an ample amount of RAM at 512MB and 16GB of built-in storage. Benchmarking test results placed the phone’s raw power somewhere in the middle of the pack in comparison to 10 other recently released Android phones. But does the Droid 3’s dualcore processor mean a faster experience overall? Though the Droid 3 runs the latest and greatest version of Android, 2.3.4 Gingerbread, Motorola has skinned the operating system with the newest version of its Blur user interface. New Blur has some fl ashier, 3D animations that slightly tilt widgets and icons as you swipe through home screens or navigate the side-scrolling app drawer. It may be flashier, but Blur is still useless and buggy and it generally slows down the Droid 3. The dual-core processor allows the phone to blaze through rendering Web pages and Flash video (though scrolling is a bit jumpy) as well as powering video games from the Android Market. But exit back out to the home screen and you’ll often see Blur strug-
gle to catch up as it repopulates the home screen with icons and widgets. Easily the best feature of the Droid 3 is the device’s redesigned keyboard. Motorola has added a fi fth row of number keys and has spaced out each key from one another. This has enhanced the feel of the keys greatly and gives your thumbs a better sense of where you’re at while typing. The Droid 3 keyboard was already superb and Motorola has only made it better. It’s by far the best keyboard on an Android phone. The Droid 3’s 4-inch display is not very sharp and touch response was hit or miss. In terms of tapping icons and most normally sized UI elements, it works fi ne. However, clicking links within the browser was maddening at times, forcing me to zoom in to the link to make it large enough to click. The Droid 3 packs a front camera for video chats and a rear-facing camera with an 8 megapixel sensor and the ability to take 1080p HD video. The photos the Droid 3 produces are better than those taken by its predecessors, but suffer greatly due to a narrow angle of view, heavy noise in low light and a pervading blue hue to the images. As far as video goes, it’s not stellar. There’s a bit of stutter to the capture along with the same blue hue that pervades the phone’s photos. I wanted to like the Droid 3, but in the end it seems to be a collection of missed opportunities and good ideas executed poorly. Another minus is that the Droid 3 doesn’t come with access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. I’d recommend passing on this device and waiting on the upcoming 4G-capable Motrola Droid Bionic. Read Wayne Grayson’s Gadgetron blog at tuscaloosanews.com. Reach him at wayne.grayson@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0209.
TUSCALOOSA COUNTY FORECLOSURES Here’s a look at the number of foreclosures in Tuscaloosa County during the last four years: ■ 2008: 528 ■ 2009: 863 ■ 2010: 836 ■ January-May 2011: 240 Source: UA associate professors Brownen Lichtenstein, criminal justice department; and Joe Weber, geography department
cally lack a financial cushion, she said, and when tough times hit, they have few options. Lichtenstein said interviews she has done with several people whose homes are in foreclosure show how they got into fi nancial trouble. One was a middle-aged man without health insurance, she said. He lived with
his mother in a family-owned home. “The family home had no mortgage, but either he or his mother had some medical bills they were not able to pay. So they took out a mortgage to pay those bills, and then he lost his job and couldn’t make mortgage payments, so they lost the home.” Another interviewee was a woman who lived in a trailer but had a regular job with reasonable pay, Lichtenstein said. The woman wanted a better house and bought a modestly priced house before the recent recession at a time when housing prices were rising. The woman got an adjustable mortgage after being told that if she made her monthly mortgage payments for a year, the lender would refi nance the mortgage at a lower interest rate, Lichtenstein said. But the woman was unable to refi nance and her interest rate SEE HOMES | 3D
Healthy beehives are thriving amid the bustle of city living By Carla K. Johnson The Associated Press
CHICAGO | Among the wildflowers and native grasses in the garden atop Chicago’s City Hall stand two beehives where more than 100,000 bees come and go in patterns more graceful, but just as busy, as the traffic on the street 11 stories below. The bees are storing honey that will sustain them through the bitter winter and be sold in a gift shop a few blocks away. “Already this season, one hive has produced 200 pounds of surplus honey, which is really a huge amount of honey,” said beekeeper Michael Thompson after checking the hives one July morning. “The state average is 40 pounds of surplus honey per hive.” The Chicago bees’ success could be because of the city’s abundant and mostly pesticide-free flowers. Many bee experts believe city bees have a leg up on country bees these days because of a longer nectar fl ow, with people planting fl owers that bloom from spring to fall, and organic gardening practices. Not to mention the urban residents who are building hives at a brisk pace. Beekeeping is thriving in cities across the nation, driven by young hobbyists and green entrepreneurs. Honey from city hives makes its way into swanky restaurant kitchens and behind the bar, where it’s mixed into cocktails or stars as an ingredient in honey wine. Membership in beekeeping clubs is skewing younger and growing. The White House garden has beehives. The city of Chicago’s hives — nine in all, on rooftops and other government property — are just part of the boom. “I’ve seen hives set up on balconies and in very, very small backyards,”
PHOTOS | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ABOVE: Beekeeper Michael
Thompson applies smoke to settle down the more than 1,000,000 bees that live in a hive on top of City Hall in Chicago. LEFT: Thompson removes a small section of a hive on top of City Hall in Chicago. Beekeeping is thriving in urban areas across the nation, driven by hobbyists and entrepreneurs.
said Russell Bates, a TV commercial director and co-founder of Backwards Beekeepers, a 3-year-old group that draws up to 100 mostly newcomers to its monthly meetings in Los Angeles. The group is “backward” because its members rely on natural, nonchemical beekeeping practices. All their hives are populated by local bees they’ve captured — or “rescued” as the group’s members like to say — from places they’re not wanted. “We don’t use mail-order bees,” Bates said. “Local bees have adapted
to this environment. They’re the survivors.” City governments, won over by beekeepers’ passion, are easing restrictions. In recent years, New York, Denver, Milwaukee and Santa Monica have made beekeeping legal. The Backwards Beekeepers group is working to legalize beekeeping in Los Angeles. The mysterious disappearance of honeybees, fi rst reported in 2006 by commercial beekeeping operators who lost 30 to 90 percent of their hives, led some state agriculture departments to SEE BEES | 3D