Monday Mailing 073018

Monday Mailing

Year 24 • Issue 40 30 July 2018

1. Minimum-Wage Workers Can't Afford Typical 1-Bedroom Apartment in 31 Oregon Counties 2. Reducing Cities' Carbon Footprints 3. In Twist, Trump Administration Backs Obama's Monument Decree 4. Why Are Developers Only Building Luxury Housing?

5. What Makes Walkable Communities Work 6. When Push Comes to Shove, Here Are Local Leaders' Priorities 7. Resources for Finding and Creating Images for Promotional Materials 8. CityLab University: Inclusionary Zoning 9. Analysis: All Wildfires Are Not Like, But the U.S. is Fighting Them That Way 10. Building Blocks Podcast Series: Connecting People, Places and Policies 11. Zoning for People & Transit with Form-Based Codes 1. Minimum-Wage Workers Can't Afford Typical 1-Bedroom Apartment in 31 Oregon Counties A minimum-wage worker can't afford a typical one-bedroom apartment on a single full-time job in 31 Oregon counties.

Even with the minimum-wage hike that took effect this month, a Portland-area worker would need to work more than two jobs -- 81 hours a week -- to make the rent.

In all but a handful of counties, it would take a work week in excess of a 40-hour full-time job. The statewide average is a 65-hour work week.

Quote of the Week: “Build your life on your dreams: because dreams never have bad endings” ~M.F. Moonzajer Oregon Fast Fact: High above the city of Portland the International Rose Test Garden features more than 500 varieties of roses cultivated continuously since 1917.

The numbers from the National Low Income Housing Coalition's "Out of Reach" report show the escalating impact of rising housing costs across the state.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Reducing Cities' Carbon Footprints Many eco-minded individuals are proactively working to reduce their carbon footprints, but what happens when entire cities try to minimize their carbon footprints, and are the efforts worthwhile?

Implement Incentives for Alternative Transportation Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate a typical passenger vehicle emits approximately 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. That’s one of the reasons officials in Washington, D.C. want to give incentives to people who use alternative forms of transportation.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. In Twist, Trump Administration Backs Obama's Monument Decree A dispute over acts of Congress in 1906 and 1937 has put the Trump administration in court -- and into the unusual position of supporting a proclamation by former President Barack Obama.

Contrary to President Donald Trump's numerous efforts to shred Obama's legacy, U.S. Justice Department lawyers are in Obama's corner as they defend his expansion of a national monument in Oregon.

That puts the Trump administration in direct opposition with timber interests that Trump vowed to defend in a May 2016 campaign speech in Eugene, 110 miles south of Portland.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Why Are Developers Only Building Luxury Housing?

Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Developers in my city are only building luxury housing.

They're not building anything that ordinary people can afford."

This is a common lament in the tense debates over growth and development in many North American cities. Sometimes, the observation is made simply to call attention to the need for housing that's affordable to those across the income spectrum.

It may also, however, be used as an argument against market-rate housing development. “It's not going to help the people who truly need help," say those who favor maintaining strict local limits on the use, height, and intensity of development, to those who would relax such limits. If only well-todo people who can already afford nice homes will benefit from new construction, why risk your community's character and stability and quality of life just to let developers make more money?

To access the full story, click here.

5. What Makes Walkable Communities Work The walkable movement has picked up its pace.

Since construction began on Seaside, Fla., and other communities in the 1980s, developers have built hundreds of towns where residents can live, play and sometimes work without pulling their cars out of the garage. Many destinations that matter to residents—stores, parks, schools, restaurants and churches—are within a five-minute walk.

Many new developments are stand-alone, like the first wave of walkable projects. But planners have also been using the same principles in recent years to help reinvigorate an estimated 750 aging suburbs or dying shopping centers, according to Ellen Dunham-Jones, co-author of the book “Retrofitting Suburbia.”

To access the full story, click here.

6. When Push Comes to Shove, Here Are Local Leaders' Priorities When forced to choose among competing priorities, local government officials said finance, economic development and infrastructure are most important to ensuring the future success of their cities or counties, according to a new Route Fifty survey. Social services, healthcare and other citizenfacing services were among the lowest priorities.

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The survey, “Critical Priorities for Local Government: A Candid Survey of Local Government Officials and Agency Leaders,” took into account the responses of a mix of elected, appointed and career public officials at the local level. Respondents consisted primarily of senior-level officials.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Resources for Finding and Creating Images for Promotional Materials Images help bring your story to life and you can use them on almost all your promotional materials such as fliers, websites, videos, newsletters, and social media. If your program is just getting started, you can use stock photos to spruce up your marketing materials. If you have your own, you can edit them using free tools available online.

To access this resource, click here.

8. CityLab University: Inclusionary Zoning In Washington, D.C.’s rapidly gentrifying Petworth neighborhood, the recently opened Fahrenheit building could easily be seen as a symbol of the area’s increasing unaffordability. Its bright red exterior and ground-floor craft cider house send a powerful signal about the price of the apartments above, which range from $2,400 to $2,745 for a two-bedroom unit. But all is not as it seems. Three of the Fahrenheit’s 31 units are available at below market rates as part of the District’s inclusionary zoning (IZ) program, which, in fiscal year 2016, offered two-bedroom apartments for an average rent of $1,636.

In D.C. and around the country, inclusionary zoning (also sometimes called “inclusionary housing”), is an increasingly popular way to produce affordable housing through the private market. And while these programs only produce enough units for a lucky few low- and moderate-income households, they remain one of the main tools cities have for maintaining neighborhood diversity, and keeping high-opportunity areas affordable.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Analysis: All Wildfires Are Not Like, But the U.S. is Fighting Them That Way So far, the 2018 fire season has produced a handful of big fires in California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado; conflagrations in Oklahoma and Kansas; and a fire bust in Alaska, along with gardenvariety wildfires from Florida to Oregon. Some of those fires are in rural areas, some are in wildlands, and a few are in exurbs.

Even in a time of new normals, this looks pretty typical. Fire starts are a little below the 10-year running average, and the amount of burned area is running above that average. But no one can predict what may happen in the coming months. California thought it had dodged a bullet in 2017, until a swarm of wildfires in late fall blasted through Napa and Sonoma counties, followed by the Big One – the Thomas fire, California’s largest on record, in Ventura and Santa Barbara.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Building Blocks Podcast Series: Connecting People, Places and Policies Enterprise Community Partners hosts the podcast series, Building Blocks: Connecting People, Places, and Policies, a space for thought-provoking conversations about the current issues, trends, ideas and big questions facing the affordable housing and community development field in the United States.

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This podcast series is hosted by Laurel Blatchford, President of Enterprise Community Partners.

To access the podcast series, click here.

11. Building better Communities with Transit Podcast: Zoning for People & Transit with FormBased Codes The zoning code is the most used organizing structure for building cities today. It tells landowners and developers how tall they can build buildings and what kind of use is allowed inside, among other things. But zoning codes have also been fairly controversial because they are sometimes a tool to segregate and separate people and uses, often in unsustainable ways.

As local officials and residents look for ways to build better communities, a more recent innovation has begun to move zoning codes away from a strict prescription of uses and car-based infrastructure and instead focus on the urban form and the spaces between buildings: form-based codes.

To access the podcast, click here.

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