Author: John Sanphillippo

Inside the Bubble

I was recently asked by a neighbor to write a blog post about greed in the super heated economic bubble here in San Francisco. I told her I think the problems that vex her are more complicated than pure greed, but I’d give it a shot. Keep in mind, where a person stands on any of these issues depends a great deal on their particular circumstances. The point of this post isn’t to argue in favor of one thing or another, but to illustrate how some people experience the city at this moment in time.

So… my friend has lived in the same spacious rent controlled flat in an old Victorian for many years. Her tenure predates the current tech culture by decades. Chatting over lunch in her kitchen and dining room is like visiting a bygone version of San Francisco where everything is more relaxed and comfortable and perhaps a bit less glossy. Over the last several years she’s seen half the buildings on her block transformed by the tsunami of money that has washed over the neighborhood. The elderly Chinese couple who own her building will eventually pass and when they do she knows their adult children will sell the place and she’ll be forced out. For her it’s not just a matter of leaving the building or even the neighborhood, but leaving the city altogether. There’s simply no possible financial scenario that will allow her to stay in the Bay Area on her income as a freelance graphic designer. That world is gone and she doesn’t have a Plan B.

Her preoccupation with the new money culture in the city has been especially stirred up by the activities of the building directly next door. Back in 2010 the owner of the building had a structural engineer certify that the building was unstable and therefore uninhabitable. This could be seen as a landlord who was deeply concerned for the health and safety of his tenants, or a legal tactic to remove them. A series of challenges ensued, but at the end of the day the building was emptied, fully gutted, and renovated. The apartments were then sold off as condos. The average sale price in 2014 was just shy of a million dollars for each of the one bedroom apartments. Some of the people who purchased the units were investors who then rented them at the current market rate of $4,950 a month.

One of those renovated condos was bought by a young Russian DJ. I’ve met him and he’s actually a perfectly nice guy. I’m listening to his audio stream right now – house trance techno electronica… Evidently he’s a big deal in international music circles. (I’m more of a Billy Holiday Ella Fitzgerald kind of guy, but I digress.) Shortly after he moved in he decided to take six months off and travel to Thailand. While he was gone he left the apartment in the hands of a popular home hosting service that arranges short term rentals to tourists and business travelers. In theory the service was completely turnkey with booking, cleaning and so on. But in reality the apartment needed a bit more care over such a long period of time than the company was able to provide. The Russian asked my friend next door if she could help out. “Could you” this and “Would you mind” that. Individually none of these favors was particularly onerous, but collectively it became a lot of work as the months dragged on. The Russian was having such a good time in Thailand he decided to extend his stay. At a certain point my friend let it be known that her services had gone beyond merely being a helpful neighbor and it was time she was paid for her work. An e-mail exchange ensued with a list of time that had been spent on various projects. The Russian felt that he had been misled. “That seems like a lot of money.” This was coming from someone who just spent nearly a million dollars on an apartment and can afford to spend half a year on vacation in Asia. You can see how this might rub my friend the wrong way. Hence her frustration with the freakish economic situation in the city.

On the other hand, there are a fair number of people who are living in tiny run down apartments with multiple room mates paying outrageously high rents who feel that a massive rent controlled apartment is a seriously sweet deal. Sure, it will come to an end someday, but dude! Really? You’re bitching that it doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee? Suck it up cupcake. Like I said. Where you stand on these issues depends a lot on your particular situation.

For those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with the local dynamics I’ll give you some context. On most nights friends and family gather around our kitchen table for dinner and we discuss the events of the day. Over the last few years we’ve hardly had a month go by where someone hasn’t had to pack up and leave the city because of eviction, unreasonably high rents, or a lack of available housing at any price. Other folks who already owned property decided to cash out and took their substantial profits to more affordable towns.

Last week we had a couple over who had rented a charming house with a back garden in Bernal Heights for nearly twenty years with the enormous benefit of rent control that kept their expenses well below the market rate all that time. The landlord sold the home a few months ago and the new owners evicted them in order to live in the house themselves.

They reluctantly moved to an apartment in Oakland. They don’t hate the apartment or Oakland per se, but it’s definitely a transitional space for them. They’re looking to move as soon as they decide what exactly they want and can afford. There was a lot of talk about how San Francisco has become inhospitable to people with normal budgets. At a certain point I asked them why they hadn’t prepared for the eventuality of the big move. They knew what the real estate market was like. Their eviction couldn’t have come as a surprise. They’re both professionals with solid incomes. They could have pulled together a downpayment and bought property at any point during the last twenty years when prices were more reasonable. Instead they enjoyed the benefits of a great rent controlled place. It was a perfectly reasonable economic decision and it served them very well for two decades. But there were trade offs. Now it’s time to come up with a new plan. Let’s just say they didn’t appreciate my interpretation of their situation.

A couple of months ago we noticed one of the longterm tenants of a nearby building packing up and loading his furniture into a moving van. We were shocked. He had lived in that apartment with rent control for forever. We all thought he’d eventually leave feet first. It turns out that the landlord paid him $30,000 to go voluntarily and he agreed to take the money. Once the landlord gets new tenants he’ll likely receive $3,800 or more per month for that unit so his $30,000 “investment” in freeing up the apartment will be repaid in eight months. $30,000 won’t buy you anything at all in San Francisco, but it’s pretty good seed money in many parts of the country. If this guy is smart he’ll use the cash to put a downpayment on a house in a less expensive town.

Now, here’s something else to consider. San Francisco is in an enormous economic bubble. It won’t last. These things never do. And when the bubble pops there are going to be a whole lot of folks who paid top dollar for real estate that’s going to be worth infinitely less. Any number of things could puncture the balloon: another Wall Street crash, an earthquake, a shift in foreign investors, or the inevitable maturation of the tech sector and its associated stock options and super sized bonuses… When that day arrives everyone’s situation may change and the general perception of who’s a winner and who’s a loser may flip as well. And we’ll all have to suck it up. That’s life.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

March 20, 2015
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Decline and Gentrification

Recently I attended a presentation at Mission Dolores Church sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle called “A Changing Mission”. The discussion was based on a newspaper article and associated short film about the neighborhood. It’s well worth a quick look here.





A week later I was in Lancaster, California to attend a similar meeting sponsored by the local city planning authority and the Strong Towns organization here. Lancaster is also changing, but in a different way than the Mission.

If I were to boil down the two situations into crude cartoon blurbs they might go something like this. “The Mission is being overrun with rich white people who are screwing up the place.” And “Lancaster is being overrun with poor brown people who are screwing up the place.” Like I said… crude. Obviously the reality is far more nuanced and complicated than that. But that’s pretty much the gist of things. Gentrification and economic decline are two sides of the same coin and a lot of folks don’t like any of it. The irony is both sides seem to want the same things even if they don’t know it.



There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 film “Vertigo” where James Stewart mentions an appointment he has with a shady character in the Mission. Kim Novak looks concerned and comments, “That’s Skid Row”. That always gets a laugh from San Franciscans in the audience at the revival theaters. Many people who don’t know San Francisco well assume it’s all tourist spots, internet millionaires, and gay bars. If you walk around the Mission you’ll quickly discover a neighborhood full of families with young children, elderly pensioners, and lots of small mom and pop shops. Until the 1950’s the Mission was a working class neighborhood dominated by German, Irish, Italian, and Greek stock. After World War II white flight to the suburbs left behind a great deal of inexpensive real estate that was eventually filled by Central American and Asian immigrants, as well as various bohemian types. The neighborhood and its low wage workers were quietly ignored by city authorities as well as the more prosperous residents in more fashionable neighborhoods. This was a part of the city no one ever saw on a postcard.



The Mission deteriorated and served as a repository for the low rent light industrial activities that every city needs but are generally kept out of pricier neighborhoods: auto body shops, carpentry shops, iron and steel fabricators, glass cutting shops, upholsters, discount fabric warehouses, plumbing and electrical supply companies… But it was also the perfect place for nightclubs and after hours establishments since there were no hostile neighbors to complain. The Mission was noisy and ugly, but it was that unseemly quality along with the cheap rent that made it possible for a lot of people to scrape by while pursuing other activities that didn’t necessarily pay well. It’s no coincidence the Burning Man and other such movements emerged from the Mission rather than exclusive Pacific Heights or Sea Cliff. You might have to tolerate the occasional drug dealer or prostitute, but there was no HOA regulating your every move. The Mission was all about slack and that’s what made it interesting and vibrant, if a bit rough around the edges.



As the tech economy out in the distant suburbs heated up over the last twenty years more and more of the smart young IT professionals chose not to live in the dull suburban cul-de-sacs of Silicon Valley. They were looking for a grittier more dynamic environment and found it in the Mission. Tech workers endured a lengthy reverse commute in order to achieve a higher quality of life in their off hours at home in the city. In order to attract talent tech companies in the suburbs created the private so-called “Google Bus” system to shuttle workers from the Mission to corporate campuses an hour and a half outside the city. Tech workers had unlimited budgets compared to the existing Guatemalans, Vietnamese, and artists. Rents and property values rose considerably year after year. Today a one bedroom apartment in the Mission typically rents for $3,800 a month – if you can find a vacancy. If you want to buy that same place it will set you back well north of $850,000 and there is precious little on the market to satisfy the endless demand. If you want a single family home with a little patch of back yard you can buy the ruined shell of an old Victorian for a couple of million dollars and then spend at least as much to renovate it. Evictions and property conversions have skyrocketed. Bodegas and pho noodle shops are being replaced by boutiques and fine dining establishments. Hence all the fuss about gentrification driving out the working class. For the city’s coffers it’s a nice problem to have. The city is flush and is on a prolonged capital improvement spree that is transforming the local infrastructure and public spaces from parks, to school buildings, to libraries, to fire and police stations. Everything is getting a massive face lift and city workers have all been given substantial raises. But for the displaced residents it often means leaving the city altogether.



Now let’s get back to Lancaster which is in the Antelope Valley of far eastern Los Angeles County in southern California. Lancaster was a small agricultural community until in was discovered by the aerospace industry in the 1950’s. The high desert location not too far from Los Angeles made it the perfect place to develop and test rockets, fighter jets, and ultimately the Space Shuttle and Stealth Bomber. Along the way it attracted people from the city who were looking for a more relaxed environment at a lower price point. The area sprouted endless white middle class subdivisions and accompanying shopping centers. For most residents work and culture remained “Down Below” in Los Angeles proper. That became increasingly true as the aerospace industry ramped down and was phased out. What remained of the local economy was based primarily in building and servicing more suburban development.



The entire Antelope Valley, including Lancaster, was hit especially hard by the crash of 2008. Homes lost half their value overnight. Foreclosure and unemployment rates shot way up just as tax revenues plummeted and city services were cut. What was once a solidly middle class community became economically insecure and especially sensitive to further downward mobility – real or perceived. Both private developers and the City of Lancaster worked hard to deliver a better more up-to-date “product” incorporating the latest bells and whistles to jump start the resumption of growth after the crash. New homes boasted renewable energy packages and gray water recycling systems. The city began installing bicycle lanes. LEED certified office parks were promoted. And Lancaster’s economic development plan included inducements to battery and electric bus manufacturers for the growing market for clean energy and transportation. So far these measures have been too little too late. The solar and wind farms are great for generating clean power, but they don’t employ very many locals. New homes aren’t selling well and profit margins are down to a couple of thousand dollars per home which just isn’t enough to keep developers interested in building any more. The market for far flung exurban living has simply dried up. The bike paths that are all the rage in reviving city centers are effectively useless out in the distant sprawl. It isn’t the paths that are attracting prosperous new residents – it’s the urbanism the paths encounter along the way. Putting green lipstick on a sick pig hasn’t helped.



While Lancaster has concentrated most of its efforts on inducing new construction it has ignored its older building stock. Each new home and commercial complex built out on the edge of town only cheapens the older existing suburban fabric. There’s no economic justification for buying, maintaining, or improving a fifty year old home or thirty year old strip mall when brand new homes and shops sit unsold and half vacant. Unfortunately for old timers in Lancaster all that cheap property has proven very appealing to many of the lower income residents from down below in Los Angeles who are rapidly being displaced. Like the Mission in San Francisco many previously impoverished neighborhoods in central Los Angeles are experiencing serious gentrification and all those poor folks who are getting squeezed out have to move and live somewhere else. The last several years have been a perfect storm delivering a massive wave of new arrivals to Lancaster who are not only poorer than the existing population, but overwhelmingly black and brown. This has set off alarm bells with the already stressed locals with vocal demands for government policies to prevent “Them” from moving in. (I’ll refrain from commenting on the whole race thing here. It is what it is.) In the end these are powerful market forces that the city has very little control over. For those people who are financially able their first choice is to sell and move. For those who are trapped in a home that is worth less than they owe the choice is to tough it out and hope for a market rebound or to walk away and take a big loss.

So there you have it. Gentrification in one community and economic decline in another. These are two sides of the same coin. In the end I suspect the freakish bubble in places like San Francisco will eventually cool while the decline in outer suburbs like Lancaster will level off and stabilize. In the meantime it’s all pretty bumpy for the folks caught in the middle.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

March 14, 2015
What’s This Place For?

I was recently asked by Gracen Johnson (check out her site here) to elaborate on the possible future of suburbia. How are the suburbs likely to fare over time? This coincided with a city planner friend of mine who asked a more poignant question about the suburban community he helps manage. “What’s this place for?” If we can answer that question we might be able to get a handle on the possible trajectories of various suburbs.



For example, we all understand what a farm town is for. Small rural towns produce food. The people who live in the countryside are actively engaged in the business of feeding society. They take soil, water, plants and animals and convert it all into breakfast, lunch and dinner. For the people who want to live this way there are tremendous benefits: fresh air, open space, privacy, independence, a direct connection to nature, strong family bonds, tradition, and so on. Whatever else we might say about farm country we can be certain that it will carry on one way or another or else civilization will grind to a halt pretty quickly.



We also know what industrial cities are for. They take the raw materials from the surrounding countryside and transform them into finished goods. Grain becomes flour and bread. Timber becomes lumber, then homes and furniture. Iron ore and coal become machinery and power. Crude oil becomes gasoline, petrochemicals, and plastics. There are obvious trade offs for industrial workers, but for many people it’s a pretty good arrangement. If we expect to have manufactured goods in the future these cities will have to continue somehow.



The new post-industrial locus is a bit trickier to pin down. The service economy doesn’t actually produce any “thing” so the workforce is liberated to live just about anywhere in a way that farmers and factory workers can’t. Oddly, well educated highly paid people don’t actually spread out and inhabit a million cabins in the woods as you might expect. Instead they clump up in a handful of regions that provide abundant cultural amenities. At the same time the post-industrial economy exists in a physical world and all those people and electronic components rely on the underlaying farms, factories, and raw resources that support them. The so-called dematerialization of the economy still requires a serious amount of real “stuff” to function.



So what does this all mean for the suburbs? The nature of suburbia has always been consumptive rather than productive. People move to the suburbs in order to purchase and enjoy things: a spacious home, a good school district, security, a clean environment, more respectable neighbors, and so on. The majority of the commercial activity is actually in service to suburbia itself. The mortgage brokers, insurers, real estate agents, landscapers, school teachers, firefighters, orthodontists, pancake houses, and auto body shops are all there to help keep the suburbs humming along. But they’re all consumptive in nature. No one is making the tennis shoes sold at the mall or growing the oranges at the supermarket. This is compounded by the fact that the suburbs are maintained largely through debt. Private debt is required for all the mortgages, car loans, credit cards, student loans, and business loans while municipal bonds prop up many essential suburban government functions. The fact that many people don’t understand the difference between production and consumption is one of the big problems the suburbs are going to have to sort out in the future.

I’m going to get a lot of push back on this concept. I’m sure many of you think that your suburb is full of productive enterprises: the Krispy Kreme, the Jiffy Lube, the dozen Shell and Exxon stations, the Applebee’s, the Foot Locker, the Honda dealership, and the Kroger’s. But these are merely outlets for things that were produced elsewhere. Let me offer another example from my own life. I spent a chunk of my childhood in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s nearly everyone had some connection to companies like Rocketdyne, Litton, and General Dynamics. Those were the engines of the local economy for decades. And they did in fact produce real physical things. But they were all funded entirely by the federal government. Tax money was skimmed off the national productive economy (all those farms and factories) and then spent on missile guidance systems, satellites, and fighter jets. The same was true in Huntsville, Alabama and Marietta, Georgia. Remember what happened to all those places when the feds turn off the spigot during budget cuts? Money flowed in, not out. There’s a reason Peru doesn’t have a space program. The underlying national economy isn’t productive enough to support such extravagant government spending.

As the material abundance we enjoyed in the Twentieth Century tightens up suburbs will have to become much more efficient places that provide things the outside world needs and is willing to pay for. At the same time internal consumption and debt are going to have to be pulled back. That doesn’t necessarily mean a lower quality of life, but it does demand that suburbs retool and ask themselves, “What’s this place for?”

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

February 27, 2015
The New New Thing: Suburban Bunker Buildings

I have a theory about where the next culturally dynamic neighborhoods are likely to emerge and which building types will be the engine of that transformation. It may not be exactly what most people expect.

As American industry receded in the later half of the Twentieth Century it left behind an alluvial delta of redundant buildings that sat vacant for years, no longer useful or productive. All effort was focused on building the new suburbs. These abandoned inner city warehouse districts became so cheap and run down that they were eventually colonized by artists, immigrants, and bohemians seeking cheap rent and an environment where landlords and municipal authorities looked the other way. They weren’t necessarily safe, or clean, or attractive, but they provided a kind of freedom for the people who lived there.




The photos above are of friends in their 8,000 square foot live/work space in Philadelphia. The general dismissive attitude of many suburbanites is that such people exist outside the mainstream and are irrelevant to the lives of “real” people. Contrary to this common misconception all the creative types I know are highly skilled and hold down jobs as welders, carpenters, accountants, and technicians of various kinds. I know a couple who spend half the year in video production making car commercials and then pursue their art during the long hiatus. I know another guy who worked like a dog for a few years after college at a prototype lab for the pharmaceutical industry in order to pay off all his student loans and other debts. Now he’s free to do what he really wants without the burden of debt. These folks simply choose not to spend their money on a mortgage on a suburban home with multiple car payments, but their lives and economic productivity are very real.

Technically, living in an old warehouse involves breaking a hundred different rules and regulations, but they’ve been there for years and no one cares. It’s that kind of space and that kind of neighborhood. Unfortunately, the area is rapidly gentrifying and they may be priced out of the space soon as nearby warehouses are being converted to luxury lofts. That begs the question – where are the cheap funky emerging neighborhoods these days? You can’t live and work this way in a suburban tract home. Neither the physical space nor the local culture will allow it.

A couple of years ago I was in Salt Lake City having lunch with a prominent well-connected real estate agent. She’s the kind of charming knowledgable person I always seek out so it was a pleasure to see her again. I had explored various parts of Salt Lake from the downtown core all the way out to Daybreak in the distant suburbs. She spoke of the urban renaissance, the new streetcar system, and the many new developments in previously blighted areas. But I explained that the part of town that really interested me was the neglected and undervalued areas in the lackluster middle distance just beyond downtown that were neither sophisticated and urbane nor verdant and domestic. These semi-commercial, vaguely industrial, half-assed residential zones were neither fish, nor flesh, nor fowl. But they had the two qualities that fascinate me: they’re relatively inexpensive and generally ignored by the Upright Citizens Brigade. They’re close enough to downtown and the university that you could still ride a bicycle to access culture and employment, but just a short drive to suburban conveniences farther out. It’s the wrong combination for people with conventional tastes, but the perfect sweet spot for a certain kind of subculture that needs to be left alone in order to thrive. They need wiggle room that doesn’t exist in the highly supervised downtown or manicured suburbs. And many of these brick and concrete buildings are little bunkers where you could do just about anything within the raw space. They offer the one thing that’s in terribly short supply. Slack.



I sent these photos over to her and explained that these nondescript aging suburban bunker buildings were the next great building type. She was gracious and polite, but she obviously thought I was insane. Now granted, she isn’t the only person to come into contact with me to come to this conclusion – and not just because of my irregular taste in property.



This conversation came back to me this afternoon as I walked past a building that used to house a discount bakery outlet. As a much younger and poorer person twenty years ago I used to frequent this establishment myself to buy day old bread and not-quite-expired donuts. This month the bunker building was transformed into an upscale furniture store with in-house designer services. I poked around and explored the shop. I had no particular interest in the furniture itself and don’t think this kind of business could succeed anyplace other than a prosperous part of town. But it was the bones of the building itself that fascinated me.



It’s a big flexible durable space like the old inner city industrial buildings. The walls and floor are concrete and the ceilings are exposed wood and steel. The former loading docks make perfectly segmented rooms with high ceilings and the ability to adapt to many uses including indoor/outdoor applications. Paint and some inexpensive drywall partitions transform the space very quickly. The front room was mostly glass and open to the parking lot, but the vast majority of the building was entirely private. This is a perfect example of the new new thing. This is where the starving bohemians will end up if they want to continue doing their work in a big, affordable, mostly unregulated spot. In an expensive real estate market people will colonize any vacant building and make their luxury furniture showroom work. But in depressed suburban markets these buildings are ripe for economically displaced artists. Gather enough interesting and entrepreneurial types in one such neighborhood and it could be the social and cultural engine that pulls up an entire dying suburban strip.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

February 14, 2015
The Argument for Less Infrastructure

What would our neighborhoods look like if we voluntarily reduced the amount of infrastructure? This isn’t a purely academic question. As municipal, state, and federal budgets get squeezed there’s going to be a point at which we have no choice but to stop building new roads and even reduce the amount of maintenance on the roads we already have. We could approach this situation with dread and a sense of loss, or we could embrace it as an opportunity to get a better quality of life for a whole lot less money.

I grew up in New Jersey. Like most states the New Jersey Highway Trust Fund is just about bankrupt this year. Unless the gas tax is raised all revenue will go exclusively to debt service. If revenue were to drop below a certain point, due to lower gas prices or lower demand for gas, there won’t be enough money to service the debt either. We’re likely to see triage one way or another.

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This is the historic Water Witch subdivision above Sandy Hook that was first built in 1895, not too far from New York City. Twenty five years ago I had friends who bought an old house here when the neighborhood was only beginning to come back after a long period of decline. Back then the houses were old and in varying states of disrepair. My friends saw the potential and started renovating their place and helped spearhead a revitalization of the neighborhood. These days it’s a posh address with rather expensive homes. But notice the narrow gravel roads.

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Water Witch is a private community, although it isn’t “gated” in the contemporary sense. That means the HOA members pay to maintain the roads not the government. This is a really important distinction. When people believe their property tax money entitles them to certain things they often have high expectations. They tend to have a very different attitude when they know they’re going to be writing a check directly for the level of service they ask for. This difference in who pays for the roads leads to different outcomes. Back in the late 1980’s I was privy to HOA meeting debates where some members demanded that the roads be paved. They were tired of the ruts, mud puddles, and problems of snow removal. The dirt roads were one of the things that had kept property values depressed for decades. So a consulting engineer was brought in and explained exactly what it would cost to pave the roads. It would be many millions of dollars divided by the forty two homes in the community. That conversation came to a halt instantly. So much for paved roads at Water Witch. The compromise was to maintain the gravel roads to a slightly higher standard with annual adjustments that were far more cost effective. The resulting bucolic country lanes twist up the hill and provide a feeling of retreat from both the nearby city as well as the surrounding suburban sprawl. It also ensures that no one will ever be temped to speed since the roads won’t physically allow it. This keeps the neighborhood safe for pedestrians and cyclists. And it also happens to be more ecological as an extra bonus.

Justin Tinapay Photography

Justin Tinapay Photography

Justin Tinapay Photography

Now, there were some people in the HOA that didn’t even want to pay for the annual gravel upgrades. These weren’t what you would call poor people, but no one wants to pay for anything if it isn’t absolutely necessary. It was suggested that the community clubhouse could be rented out for special events to generate the needed revenue to pay for road maintenance. Other people objected. Why live in a private community if an army of strangers would come marching in day and night? So the HOA found a sweet spot. The clubhouse would be rented for only twelve events per year between April and October. Valets would be hired at the expense of the renters to manage traffic. Those twelve days would bring in enough money to pay for the road work each summer. It was a reasonable compromise and a good financial deal for everyone. The fact that Water Witch was distinctive and countryfied compared to the unrelenting highways and strip malls of most of New Jersey made it that much more desirable for people looking for a unique event space. People pay extra for charm.

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By the way, notice how some people have paved their private driveways with asphalt or stone while the HOA roads and the parking lot at the Clubhouse are gravel. It matters who’s responsible for paying for things and how those decisions are made.

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In contrast, here’s a newer upscale residential subdivision not far from Water Witch. Notice the massively wide paved roads and enormous cul-de-sac. I have to ask… What does all that paving really do for the neighborhood? You could land an Airbus A380 on this much tarmac. But what’s the point? You can be quite sure that when these roads become cracked and potholed the wealthy well-connected residents of these grand homes will mobilize and bang heads at the public works department. Somehow the government will be made to absorb the expense of repave things even if the (very high) property taxes from these specific homes doesn’t come close to covering the real cost of maintenance. Would these home owners accept a different standard if they were directly responsible for maintaining their own road?

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Now let’s look at a more reasonably priced home in a middle class neighborhood. This is my sister’s house in another part of the state. She and her family live in a respectable 1960’s tract house on a half acre lot. Look at the cul-de-sac in front of her place. It’s nearly a half acre as well. Look how tiny the parked cars are compared to the amount of pavement. Again, what exactly does the neighborhood get out of this arrangement other than a massive heat island effect in summer, a storm water runoff problem, and a lot of high speed traffic that puts children, pedestrians, and cyclists in danger? Think of all the ways that much land could be put to better use to add value to the neighborhood instead of just chipping away at the county budget.

At a certain point hard choices are going to have to be made. The current political conversation involves questions about how to raise taxes while lowering levels of service. But there is another way. We could spend a whole lot less money both publicly and privately and still get a higher quality of life. I’m not sure we as a society are really ready to have that conversation.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

February 6, 2015
Military Memorials: Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

I was researching material for a blog post about the town I grew up in (Toms River, New Jersey) and accidentally stumbled on something completely unrelated that I find deeply disturbing on multiple levels. It was a roadside memorial dedicated to a fallen soldier. I looked up his name and realized that he had gone to my high school and his family lived very near the house I had once lived in. United States Navy SEAL Denis Miranda was twenty four years old when he perished in Qalat, Afghanistan. He has two surviving brothers on active duty.

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Denis Miranda is currently being “honored” by a cheap metal highway sign at the back of a ShopRite supermarket next to the employee parking lot and a storm water retention ditch. The chain link fence behind the sign is used to pin up banners advertising cold beer on sale. It isn’t dignified enough to commemorate the death of a native son. What exactly is his mom supposed to think as she drives past this sign on the way home from church? Is it comforting? Do his father and brothers meet at the sign to have a solemn moment of prayer and remembrance while summer traffic backs up at the intersection waiting for the light to turn green? Is the placement of the sign meant to inspire passing motorists to think deep thoughts about the nature of war and patriotism? And what does this kind of monument say about the way our society values its fallen? What does it say about the fact that this might actually be the best spot in town to express public gratitude or collective loss?

www.njrunforthefallen.org

Then I realized there was an entire state wide trail of these memorial signs all along the New Jersey coast, each marker representing a veteran who never returned home. The tragedy of all those lost lives and family sacrifices worked on me and I got angry at the memorials themselves. Is this really the best we can do?

The Star-Ledger Archive

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This is the sign commemorating the loss of Marine Private First Class Vincent Frassetto who died in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. His memorial is on the side of a cloverleaf intersection near the Ocean County Mall. This same roadside spot is also favored by people placing signs advertising rug sales and warnings about pedophiles who may be lurking in public places. Will anyone ever make a pilgrimage to this sign by parking on the edge of the mall and walking across the grassy cloverleaf with loved ones to ponder the life and death of Vincent Frassetto? Or is the public assumed to be too busy to get out of the car so we better catch them while they’re trapped at a red light? Again, the quality and location of the memorial simply isn’t in keeping with the scale of the sacrifice.

marines.togetherweserved.com

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Google

Major James Weis of the U.S. Marine Corps died in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Here’s his home town roadside war hero monument. It got me thinking about the people who organized these memorials – all devoted and well intentioned no doubt. Did they truly believe that these arrangements were appropriate? Were the folks on the committee looking around for a sacred place of honor and decide, “Hey, how about we put these cheap highway signs next to the left hand turn lane by the muffler shop and the Krispy Kreme.”?

So… where exactly should we put memorials to fallen veterans these days? What form should those monuments take? We used to live in the kinds of towns were there were obvious places to erect an obelisk or a bronze statue. Now most of us live in tract home subdivisions, work in office parks on the side of a highway, and shop at strip malls. Could it be that these flimsy sheet metal markers reflect our true values and who we really are? Am I the only one who thinks this is weird and distasteful?

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

January 30, 2015
Peak Oil, Yes and No

I have an Australian friend who works on an oil drilling platform off the coast of Tasmania. He sent these photos from his phone. Pretty cool, huh? These photos got me thinking about the Peak Oil meme. For the uninitiated there are two camps on the subject.

One camp says there’s an unlimited amount of oil, natural gas, and coal in the ground and new technology will always be able to bring it to market. Since global demand is insatiable there will always be money on the table to incentivize new supply. This camp tends to shrug off environmental concerns and puts people and economic growth first.

The other camp says there’s a fixed amount of fossil fuel in the earth’s crust and at some point the cost and complexity of wrestling the last sour crumbs to the surface will hit a wall the market can’t bear. Concerns about environmental degradation and social justice loom large in this camp.

When oil reached $147 a barrel in 2007 the Peak Oil folks felt victorious. They also insisted that record high fuel prices, not merely financial chicanery, precipitated the economic crash of 2008. Today fracking, shale oil, and new deep water discoveries have created a glut of supply with significantly lower energy prices. There’s currently a lot of, “We told you so” from the other side.

My view on the subject is colored by my experiences growing up during the oil shocks of the 1970’s and the resulting economic repercussions. Those shocks were caused by geopolitics in the Middle East during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. They had nothing to do with any physical lack of oil in the world – just supply chain disruptions. But those disruptions were devastating to my family in ways that many people don’t necessarily remember clearly today.

My parents had just purchased their first home in suburban New Jersey the year before the oil crunch hit. I was seven years old. Like many young couples my parents had put every bit of their savings into the down payment and were stretched very thin in terms of the monthly payments. Everyone in our extended family was working class with middle class aspirations so home ownership was at the top of the must-have list. New York City was falling apart back then so they drove an hour and a half south until they found a four bedroom fixer-upper on a quarter acre lot in a good school district that they could afford. The house wasn’t perfect, but my folks were convinced that it could be improved over time with sweat equity. Their mortgage was $203 a month. At the time that was a heavy burden relative to their modest income. (Adjusted for inflation that would be the equivalent of $1,153 today.)

We had oil heat like most people in New Jersey back then. A 300 gallon tank in the back yard would keep the house warm for about a month. From early fall until late spring we burned up six tanks on average per year. When we first moved in heating oil sold for 24¢ a gallon. 24¢ x 300 gallons was $72 (or $409 today). That was the number that my parents used when they put together their household budget before buying the house. At the worst point in the oil crisis heating oil sold for $1.20 a gallon. That’s $360 a tank compared to the mortgage payment of $203 (or $2,045 vs. $1,153 in today’s dollars). Think for a moment about your own mortgage or rent. Now think about what would happen to your personal finances if your utility bill unexpectedly became almost double that sum for half the year.

At exactly the same time that our household budget collapsed under the weight of that heating bill, the cost of nearly everything else also rose significantly. Oil is used in the manufacture and transport of just about everything from beef and milk to lawn mowers and toilet paper. As fuel prices rose that additional cost rippled through the entire economy at the precise moment people had the least ability to absorb the increases. Consumer demand for many discretionary items collapsed, people lost their jobs, and the overall result was a considerably lower standard of living. That process played out over an entire decade and did serious damage to my family.

Today most heat in New Jersey comes from natural gas which is cheaper, cleaner, and produced domestically. Problem solved, right? Well… I’m not so sure.

Google

The US still imports large amounts of natural gas and oil from other parts of the world – primarily Canada and Mexico along with Venezuela, Columbia, Nigeria, and the Arab nations. These things are priced in a global market so in spite of the “America is the new Saudi Arabia” talk prices can become volatile based on events in other parts of the world. The Bakken shale oil coming out of North Dakota is priced right along with the oil coming out of that oil rig off the coast of Tasmania. If even a small amount of the global oil supply were to be choked off for any reason (the Strait of Hormuz gets shut down due to war, or the Ras Tanura oil terminal is disabled by terrorists) the price of oil would skyrocket worldwide. Natural gas is harder to transport across the seas so that market might appear to be more insulated than the oil market, but if the price of oil jumped it could cause more of those economic ripples that were so troublesome in the ’70s. If you’re unemployed due to an oil shock and you lose your home to foreclosure it may not help that domestic natural gas remains relatively affordable. Peak Oil doesn’t have to be real for me to be concerned about energy and my household security.

I never ever want to find myself in a similar position as my parents so I organize my affairs as if Peak Oil is a legitimate possibility, regardless of the particulars. Listed below are some of my personal rules. Notice, this isn’t a conservative or a liberal list. There’s no mention of bomb shelters or gas masks or firearms to defend against zombies. Nothing on this list will make anyone poorer or less happy. If life continues to be endlessly prosperous and bountiful no one will be missing out on anything. And by the way, these are all things that our great-grandparents did as a matter of course.

Keep debt to an absolute minimum. Live below your means in a smaller less expensive place than you can actually afford. Get that mortgage paid off entirely as soon as possible. Unless you have six kids you don’t really need a 2,600 square foot house with a three car garage and a bonus room. Think about the debt you will take on for a fancy kitchen remodel so you can keep up with the Joneses – and then think about how nice it would be to not have a monthly payment of any kind instead. The fancy kitchen is fine if you can pay cash, but that old Formica might look a whole lot better in a mortgage free home. If the economy gets funky and you lose the house to foreclosure the bank could end up enjoying those granite counter tops while you pack your bags and move in with your crazy brother-in-law.

Live in a place where you can actually walk or ride a bicycle to all of your daily needs including work, school, the doctor’s office, the post office… This doesn’t mean you have to give up your car or stop driving. It just means you’ll have options and flexibility. And this doesn’t have to be Manhattan. Lots of small rural towns and some older suburban areas still have these qualities. Don’t let the grand double height entry foyer out in the McMansion subdivision off the side of the highway distract you from what’s really important in life. It ain’t chandeliers.

Figure out how to keep the house heated and cooled with the minimum amount of fuel of any kind. Start with the low hanging fruit by adding lots of insulation. Then think about adding modest extra sources of heat such as a small south-facing greenhouse addition or a back up wood stove. If you have the money you could spring for some technological bells and whistles like solar panels, but that’s very last on the to-do list after the cheaper more effective conservation stuff is done. Remember, Denmark is the most energy efficient, most “green” nation on earth with 20% of it’s power coming from windmills, but the other 80% of their energy still comes from dirty old fossil fuels like coal. They just use it very sparingly. First get your household consumption way, way down. Then think about green power to supply what little you do use.

Find cost-effective ways to secure a plentiful supply of water that isn’t dependent on mechanical pumps or distant supplies that you have no control over. Rainwater catchment off your roof is one such option. Water security is especially important for people who live in a desert or a region that suffers from long periods of drought.

Keep a really well stocked pantry to help ride out future difficulties. Mine can make a Mormon grandma blush. Maintaining a well stocked pantry is a sensible form of insurance and a hedge against future inflation, unemployment, or temporary shortages.



Produce useful things. Plant a big veggie garden and some fruit trees. Keep chickens. Keep honey bees. Keep meat rabbits. If you have enough space for a dog, then you have enough space for a couple of small dairy goats. If you’re a vegan pacifist you can adjust by ramping up the garden even more. If you’re a skilled hunter you can fill the freezer with venison.



Cook. (Nuking a tray of Lean Cuisine doesn’t count.) Learn to bake a loaf of bread from scratch. A pot of bean soup is ridiculously inexpensive and dead easy. If your kids will only eat pizza then learn how to make it at home. In fact, teach your kids how to make it themselves as a family project. This stuff isn’t rocket science. While you’re at it learn to sew or knit or do woodworking. These skills can be rewarding unto themselves as hobbies, and you never know when they might actually become necessary.



Get to know your neighbors and build relationships of trust with like-minded people in your community. These associations can be extremely helpful in a crisis. If Peak Oil never occurs you’ve lived a comfortable, affordable, secure life surrounded by good people. How cool is that?

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

January 21, 2015
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Sprawl (Sort of)

I’m a longtime advocate of walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, transit-served neighborhoods. But lately I’ve been having impure thoughts about suburbia. Let me explain.



What often passes for a neighborhood in America is a low grade assemblage of chain convenience stores, big box outlets, franchise muffler shops, multi-lane highways, and isolated cul-de-sacs. Even when it’s physically possible to walk or bike from Point A to Point B it’s not pleasant, safe, or convenient. I bet there are big parts of the town you live in that look like this.



Here’s what’s happened to the housing stock in previously desirable post war suburbs. They’ve aged and were passed over in favor of new development farther out on the edge of town. The homes are out of fashion. They’re too small. They don’t have the right modern features. There are questions about the quality of the local schools. And there’s a general perception that the kinds of people who remain may not make good neighbors. These properties sell at significantly lower prices relative to the larger region. It’s often assumed that they’re unlikely to appreciate in value so they’re considered a poor investment.



This is what the commercial building stock is like. Cheap disposable plywood and cinder block boxes and industrial sheds set behind a patch of asphalt parking lot. These photos happen to be of Portland, Oregon, but they could be from a thousand other places. They’re all the same. This actually looks a lot like where I grew up in New Jersey.

Sure, the sleek new Pearl District and Historic Pioneer Square are fashionable and urbane. But the vast majority of people will never live there. Most of Portland, like most of America, is sprawl. Forget what you’ve heard about urban growth boundaries, streetcars, and jack booted liberal thugs who make you live in a shoebox apartment and take away your car. The reality on the ground is that most of Portland is indistinguishable from everyplace else.

But here’s the fascinating thing to me – and the source of my recent epiphany about aging sprawl. I always assumed that these neighborhoods would all devolve into the new slums – and many certainly are doing that. Ferguson, Missouri anyone? But it doesn’t have to go that way. These forgotten suburban neighborhoods can just as easily be the new sweet spots for small enterprise and a renewed middle class.

I stumbled on the intersection of 42nd Avenue and Killingsworth (see all photos above) and thought, “What a crap hole.” But then I started to poke around for a couple of weeks. There’s more going on than immediately meets the eye.

Here’s the deal. In the 1970’s and 80’s the cheapest real estate was in America’s abandoned downtowns and industrial zones. They were colonized by people looking for freedom – economic freedom from high rents and mortgages, as well as regulatory freedom to do as they wished without the Upright Citizen’s Brigade shutting them down. Now those places have all been picked over by high end developers and transformed into luxury “lifestyle” centers. The same is true of many close-in historic streetcar suburbs like Portland’s Alberta Arts District here. So if you either can’t afford, or simply don’t want, the premium city condo or the deluxe outer suburb McMansion… where do you go to do your own thing on a tight budget?



This is Pollo Norte here on a miserable intersection where two busy roads collide. A friend brought me here for take away dinner one night and the food was simple, but spectacularly good and it was served by charming people. We arrived at 6:30 on a Tuesday and the place was packed. We were lucky to get the last whole chicken and some side dishes just as they sold out. The place is open until ten but they were overwhelmed by many more customers than they expected. This was their first month in business and they couldn’t keep up with demand. Aside from the great food, the customers all seemed to know each other and were in good spirits even though there wasn’t enough food to go around. They were celebrating the success of a great new local spot. Good beer and companionship were their consolation prizes. Now the owners need to ramp up production and work with their local suppliers to obtain more of the organic free range ingredients in keeping with their mission statement about quality and regional sustainability. This is a good problem for a new business to have.

Google

By the way, I pulled this image off Google Street View. This is what the building looked like before the Pollo Norte folks scrubbed it clean, gave it some paint, and infused it with new life. It’s still a piece of crap concrete block bunker, but these buildings can be reinvented to good purpose with the right attitude and community support.



Here’s another tiny concrete bunker a few blocks down the road. It’s owned by a woman who runs a 550 square foot commercial kitchen called Dash here. She rents out space to a variety of small scale producers who need an inspected facility in order to comply with health codes. When I dropped in I was able to speak with Nikki Guerrero as she was readying her Hot Mamma Salsa for market in local shops. here. Nikki started out selling small batches of salsa at farmers markets and now has expanded to several local grocers. She’s successful enough to support herself with the salsa. I don’t think Dash was intentionally organized as an incubator per se, but it serves as the next step up after people are ready to graduate from home cooking (Oregon has a cottage food law here) and street vending. This is not only profitable for the woman who owns the building and cost-effective for people who rent space, but it also cultivates community among various small business people as they share the space. The beauty of this business model is that any cheap ugly building in any uninspiring location can work so long as zoning and NIMBYs don’t get in the way. When your neighbors are industrial sheds and no name convenience stores you don’t get any push back.



Miss Zumstein’s Bakery across the street here is owned by Anja, a native Portlander who finds it difficult to afford property in the trendy parts of town now that the city has become much more expensive than in her girlhood. She recently opened her bakery/cafe on 42nd Ave. because so many of her friends have recently colonized the neighborhood. Price has pushed people into places to live that they wouldn’t necessarily have chosen otherwise. Now the big task at hand is how to make the ugly traffic corridor a proper walkable Main Street on a tight budget. She said the new Pollo Norte is a great indication of the kinds of small independent businesses she’s working with to carve out a new business zone in an otherwise not-so-great location. Anja was very supportive of the people at Dash (Hot Mama Salsa et al) and was thrilled that a new bicycle shop opened up nearby. Cheap ugly space and lots of enthusiastic like-minded people are their primary resources.



This is Cat Six Bikes here. Two bike guys just opened up shop seven months ago. They were working for someone else in a more established neighborhood and finally decided to do their own thing. There are so many cyclists in Portland that if there’s a three mile stretch without a bike shop it’s actually a problem for a lot of people who need parts and service. They identified this location, realized it was more affordable than other more fashionable parts of town, and decided to fill the need.

They almost rented the building that the Pollo Norte people are in now, but the current location was ultimately a better deal. The dentist who owns the building and runs his practice next door provided a deep discount on the rent because he lives in the immediate neighborhood and wanted to help establish more independent businesses in the area. The alternative probably would have been a check cashing place or a cell phone outlet. The guys were able to pull together their business and populate their initial stock and equipment for $10,000 which they had in savings. There was no need for a loan. They’re both handy and were able to do the carpentry and interior work for the shop themselves.

Google Google
Google Google Google Google Google

But here’s the other thing they mentioned that got me exploring the rest of the neighborhood. The guys share a house – one lives with his girlfriend upstairs and the other lives downstairs. The house is nearby in the Cully neighborhood where little post war homes often have pretty large lots. Many neighbors do varying degrees of urban agriculture – some for a livelihood. This is absolutely not an option in the city center.

Of course they ride their bikes to work since things are relatively close compared to the far more disbursed newer suburbs far from the downtown core. They were confident that over time they would be able to convince the city to implement road diets that would calm car traffic and make it safer and more pleasant to walk and ride bikes in the area. The primary factor in their favor is that highway expansion and car-oriented improvements are fantastically expensive, while bike infrastructure is ridiculously cheap. They also decided that what the neighborhood lacks in big city urban amenities it makes up for in gardening and door-to-door domestic community as well as significantly lower cost. Many of their friends had already moved to the area so they weren’t alone.



And what about all those tragic little post war ranch homes? Well, it turns out that they’re radically less expensive than either a condo downtown or a McMansion in the newer suburbs. With a little love they can be transformed into something to be proud of. They’re bigger than an apartment, they have a garden, and they’re a whole lot closer to the city center. They’re also a short walk or bike ride to the emerging 42nd Ave, business cluster.

I’m not saying that all, or even most, aging suburbs will blossom. But it’s at least a possibility. The real question to me is… what pushes a neighborhood down vs. what lifts it up? So far what I’m seeing is that a dead downtown contributes to even deader close in neighborhoods. A thriving downtown attracts more people to the city and creates an economic incentive for people to get creative with the reinvention of not-so-fabulous nearby areas. So if you want your struggling suburb to succeed, support your downtown.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

January 17, 2015
The “Inner Cleveland” of Trendy Cities

Check out these photos and try to guess where they were taken. If you thought Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, or a dozen other Rustbelt towns you’d be mistaken, although your confusion is completely understandable. It’s actually Portland, Oregon – that bastion of liberal, crunchy, hippie, yuppie, hipster, eco-friendliness. Go figure. I’m not putting down Portland. Portland is great. I love Portland. I’m making a point about the reputation of some cities and how we perceive places differently based on a lot of vague stereotypes. If the only images we ever saw of Portland all looked like this it would be hard to persuade people to migrate there – even if the photos don’t portray the complete reality on the ground.



To be perfectly honest, Portland is a small blue collar city out in the sticks with a fairly recent trendy overlay. Its economy is fair-to-middling. Stable, but nothing to write home about. It’s primary source of dynamism comes from inflows of cash, talent, and people from other more expensive west coast cities who seek out a higher quality of life at a lower price point. That migration is fueled by the popular image many people have about the city more than the reality on the ground. Over time this branding becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now check out these next photos.



When you look at these pictures what do you think of? Portland? Seattle? Boston? Chicago? It’s actually Cincinnati.



How about these photos? San Francisco? Maybe a cool part of LA? Nope. It’s Pittsburgh.



How about these photos? Brooklyn? Chicago? Boston? How about Buffalo? Yep. Buffalo.



Are you looking for a great walkable vibrant neighborhood, but really want a single family home with a patch of garden to go along with all the cool nearby shops and fun stuff on Main Street? Maybe something with a bit of historic charm instead of a cookie cutter tract home? Well, for north of $500,000 you can get one of these great places in Portland. Or…



For about $200,000 you could get something like this in Buffalo. Don’t have $200,000? If you’re willing to work on a fixer upper in a transitional neighborhood really close to the areas that have already gentrified you can find something for $50,000.



How about one of these in Cincinnati for between $50,000 and $200,000?

Will you make as much money in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, or Buffalo as you might in Seattle, Chicago, or Brooklyn? No. But when your housing cost has been radically reduced you really don’t need nearly as much cash. It isn’t how much you earn that matters. It’s how much you have left over at the end of the month that determines how well you live. Personally I spend 90% of my life within a five block radius of my apartment in San Francisco. Do I love having ready access to the rest of an amazing city? Absolutely. Could I afford to enjoy most of what San Francisco has to offer if we hadn’t bought our place a million years ago when the Mission was still a cheap funky neighborhood? Not even close.

Here’s my advice to both young people who are just starting out as well as older people who are struggling to manage in a tough economic environment. Stop fighting expensive housing markets. Stop trying to wedge yourself into an overpriced shoe box apartment in a mediocre neighborhood in a top tier city. Stop driving an hour and a half out to an isolated subdivision just to hold on to your status in a big metroplex. It’s not worth it. The interior of the country is absolutely full of amazing places at a price you can comfortably afford. Give yourself and your family a big raise and leave the coast behind.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

January 10, 2015
Towns With a Past, Towns With a Future

Over the last fifty or sixty years most towns have been dedicated to accommodated cars in order to cultivate business and permit people to live better more convenient lives. For new developments out in a former corn field this was effortless since everything was custom built with the automobile in mind. But older towns that had been built prior to mass motoring were at a distinct disadvantage.



In order to keep up with changing times older neighborhoods, particularly older Main Street business districts, did whatever possible to retrofit themselves. The roads were widened, sidewalks were narrowed, street trees were removed, obsolete buildings were torn down to make way for parking lots, new zoning regulations and building codes were introduced to ease traffic and ensure abundant free parking. Unfortunately for many historic towns there simply was no contest. New strip malls and office parks could provide endless free parking and massively wide roads. If you add in the competition from big box national chains and the politics of race and class driving people across municipal borders for lower taxes and segregated school districts… Main Street never had a chance. The irony is that the more towns tried to accommodate cars the less pleasant they became.



Google Earth

This is a Google Earth image of the area around Cheviot, Ohio. The people of Cheviot self-identify with the fictional 1950’s TV town of Mayberry made famous by The Andy Griffith Show. It really is a lovely place, but it effectively has no business district anymore thanks to the Western Hills Plaza Shopping Center half a mile away which straddles Green Township and the Westwood district of suburban Cincinnati. Harrison Avenue, Cheviot’s century old Main Street, is circled at top right. Western Hills Plaza is circled at bottom left. The Home Depot, Target, Kroger, and Dillard’s make it impossible for mom and pop shops on Harrison Avenue in Cheviot to sustain themselves. Half the shops are empty and the others limp along. It’s a shame, because Cheviot is a charming town full of great old commercial buildings and solid housing stock. It’s a good town full of good people. The German Catholics who settled and built this part of Ohio have managed to hold on to a fair-to-middling set of arrangements through the worst years of decline, but the town is a shadow of its former self. It has excellent bones, but the flesh is sagging through no fault of its own.



However, Cheviot has one thing that Western Hills Plaza doesn’t – a walkable, bikable, fine-grained pleasant neighborhood. That may not sound like much, but it’s more than nearly anyplace built after 1950 anywhere in North America can boast. Cheviot is an actual town, not just mindless suburban sprawl. That’s a rare commodity these days and a lot of people are hungry for it. Just about every home in Cheviot is within a five or ten minute walk of the old business district, local public schools, library, churches, and parks. It has become unusual in America for people to live in this kind of environment and it’s coming back in fashion with increasing demand and limited supply. There’s an opportunity here for people with the right attitude.

Google Earth

In contrast let’s say that you lived here on this cul-de-sac in Green Township and you wanted to go to one of the fast food places directly behind your back fence. This is the route you’d need to take.

Google Earth

If you’re used to driving everywhere everyday you might not think twice about hopping in the car. In fact, you might not even realize that the Burger King and KFC are so close. But if you were somehow forced to walk one day you might be surprised at how hard it would be given all the walls, fences, and drainage ditches that stand between you and your fast food. And the walk would be a miserable and potentially dangerous experience. The highway and its cavalcade of concrete and plastic bunkers is so wretched when you aren’t in a car that developers and city planners go out of their way to keep homes as isolated and buffered as possible. This radical separation of uses makes perfect sense in a car-oriented environment. Who wants to look out at a highway strip mall from the back yard? But it’s Hell on foot. And don’t even think of riding a bike. You’ll either get hit by a speeding car or attract the attention of the local police who will immediately identify you as a deviant. Being a pedestrian or cyclist in this environment constitutes “probable cause”. You must be unsavory if you lower yourself to such desperation here. Sitting at a bus stop in this setting is no joy either.



So here’s the challenge of the next few decades. The aging sprawl in Green Township and similar nearby post war suburbs like White Oak, Sharonville, and Deer Park on the edge of Cincinnati aren’t aging well. Their roads and sewer systems are right at the point where they need complete overhauls and there’s no money for any of it. Don’t expect Columbus or Washington to send big checks because they’re broke too. The housing stock in these places is neither charming in a Norman Rockwell sort of way, nor sufficiently Mad Men modern. Their roofs, windows, kitchens, baths and furnaces all need replacing right about now and there isn’t a lick of insulation in most of them. Fifty years ago these suburbs were white middle class havens with their backs to inner city decay and race riots.



Now newer more prosperous suburbs Like Mason and Beavercreek farther out attract wealthier residents looking for larger homes with all the latest bells and whistles along with premium public schools and lower taxes. Green Township has less than half the average family income of Mason. Homes in Green Township and other similar areas sell for $75,000 although many homes can be found for considerably less. Mason homes sell for north of $250,000 with many at much higher price points. Meanwhile downtown Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine are rapidly gentrifying as people who prefer an urban environment reinvigorate long abandoned neighborhoods. The poor are being displaced in the process and they’re going to have to live somewhere. Given the trajectory of these shifts it isn’t looking good for the so-so suburbs in the middle distance. We can expect more “Fergusons” on the horizon although the particulars are unknowable at this time. This economically induced migration won’t be good for the poor either. They just spent the last few generations sucking up the desiccated crumbs of 19th Century industrialism and now they’re being shunted off to the stale left overs of 20th Century sprawl just in time for it to die.



But there’s hope for some of these places. Pressed up against both Cheviot and Green Township is Westwood, a former streetcar suburb that also uses Harrison Avenue (the old streetcar route) as its long-lost Main Street. Westwood was once an independent town, but was annexed by Cincinnati a hundred years ago. It fell out of favor beginning in the 1950’s when the streetcar was ripped up and shiny new subdivisions and shopping centers were built-in places like Green Township. Moving children out of Cincinnati public schools to another jurisdiction a mile away was one of the primary motivations as racial tensions in the city grew. Taxes were also lower in the new suburbs. (Is any of this ringing a bell?) Cincinnati has recently figured out that it can’t compete with Mason or Beavercreek for that particular share of the upscale suburban real estate market, but it’s looking at the success of Over-the-Rhine and wondering what the family friendly conservative Republican Catholic version of revitalization might look like in Westwood. In other words, what can parts of Cincinnati provide in the way of a value-added “product” or “experience” in their century old neighborhoods of single family homes that Mason can’t. There’s a chance that Westwood’s competitive advantage might just be walkability and historic charm. The city adopted a form based code for this part of Westwood and has been investing money in the schools and parks with plans to create a town square in what is now an awkward triangular intersection next to the Carnegie library. There are also existing businesses and subtle interdependent institutions that simply don’t exist out in new suburban locations. If you want your cello or violin repaired you’re not going to find that sort of thing at the mall between the food court and the Sunglass Hut. A more pedestrian oriented Westwood with unique family oriented destinations and activities could be an engine that pulls the area in a better direction. Sooner or later all those Hipsters downtown are going to start getting married and having kids and their going to want a house with a patch of garden. There could be an advantage to having that life three miles from downtown instead of twenty-two miles out in Mason. On the other hand, Westwood could simply languish and be dragged down by the failing sprawl that surrounds it. It could go either way. Time will tell.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

December 20, 2014