[mikemike]

My city, and many cities in the Midwest and Northeast have shrinking populations and have a very difficult time coping with this because it requires a smaller tax base to support the local government and infrastructure and because uneven shrinkage creates blight (although here it is really uneven recovery that caused most of the blight). Earlier this week I was meeting with some people and walking them through census numbers and a discussion of this problem came up; I floated an idea which wasn't very well received by the audience from a political feasibility standpoint as they were democrats, but it did raise some eyebrows as far as being potentially effective at chipping away at both problems.

Instead of assessing property taxes purely on the property value, also have a component that is based on the cost of providing government services (municipal water and sewerage lines, roads, police, public transit, etc) which are much more expensive to deliver to low density areas compared to high density areas. A key to a city's success is high population density more so than just high population and getting people from low density areas to move to higher density areas can lower the costs for the high density area and if everyone goes from the low density area it can eliminate the costs of servicing that area.

Like I said, this idea fell flat with the politicians because although the shift in tax burden would be targeted at high cost to service residents it also has the potential to be punishingly regressive in certain hard hit low to middle income-low density neighborhoods where people have not rebuilt because they cannot afford it although it would be extremely progressive in other neighborhoods which survived the storm well and had large low income-high density populations and some high income-low density suburb style neighborhoods. The idea is that it regressive taxes to discourage socially corrosive behavior (like smoking or burning gasoline) is good thing, but this city has some very unique psychological and political considerations. I thought I would share the idea with any rust belters out there in pentaxforumland.

[ihasa]

I'm not keen on the idea of using taxes to attempt to directly manipulate settlement patterns. There could be so many unintended consequences. Would the rural poor find themselves forced out of agricultural areas into cities, for example. Perhaps investing in city centre housing stock and wooing employers might be better?

[shooz]

The offer for you to buy a home in Detroit is still open Mike.
You can fix it up on minimum wage.
Go to work in 20yr old car and everything.

[mikemike]

I'm not keen on the idea of using taxes to attempt to directly manipulate settlement patterns. There could be so many unintended consequences. Would the rural poor find themselves forced out of agricultural areas into cities, for example. Perhaps investing in city centre housing stock and wooing employers might be better?

This is more of an idea applicable to actual cities and suburban satellite cities, municipalities that provide a mix of services to their residents in exchange for property taxes.

The offer for you to buy a home in Detroit is still open Mike.
You can fix it up on minimum wage.
Go to work in 20yr old car and everything.

Detroit is probably in equally bad shape as New Orleans as far as the problems posed population atrophy goes. But I don't know why anyone would work a minimum wage job if they can do high value work instead.

I have been doing my part to rebuild New Orleans, for the past five and a half years. After katrina my list of possessions was down to a 2002 Impala (which I still have but is up to 150K miles so I want to replace it soon), a 2003 laptop, 3 pairs of basketball shorts, 2 pairs of regular shorts, 1 pair of jeans, 4 T-Shirts, 1 collared shirt, and $300 cash (and no debt). I moved back 2 months after the storm and was paying $1200/month for a 1 bedroom apartment. For the first year after I came back I was working 20 hours a week as a research assistant at $15/hr while taking 15 hours of computer science courses and also working 4 days a week as a laborer gutting and demolishing homes for about $100-200/day and in the few moments where I wasn't studying or working one of those jobs I helped my GF's parents and a few of my friends rebuild their home. Then in fall of 2006 the research project was picked up for commercialization so I was able to do that full time while I finished my last two semesters of school so I was just working that full time, studying, and still helping people rebuild their houses. I got married in 2007, changed jobs that year too, and almost bought a house right before the market crashed. Then in 2008 I went back to school for a masters degree in part to help keep the university of new orleans's enrollment numbers up. In 2009 I did we did our part to repopulate the city with one 1 baby and we are incrementing the population again this year.

With my wife and I's skills we could succeed anywhere we go and I have passed on job offers to relocate elsewhere but staying here and rebuilding is something that is very important to us. One thing that New Orleans has going for it over a place like Detroit is actually that the storm was such an acute and life changing event for everyone that it has given us a purpose and motivation to move forward together as a community. We have always known how to enjoy life more than most people and after coming through hell like that everyone lives their life with a survivor's gusto. Its really hard to communicate the kind of positive energy that is here but its almost like being in the stadium at the end of a come from behind football game with 2 minutes to go, a 6 point lead, and ball control; victory isn't certain but you are seriously amped and immersed in the experience.

[GeneV]

I wouldn't put this off on Democrats. We tried here to make the cost of utilities, schools, fees, etc. different for new outlying developments to encourage infill. It was the business community that fought it tooth and nail. We have effectively subsidized sprawl for half a century.

[Ratmagiclady]

Detroit's actually a prime example of where trying to use top-of-the-market-down solutions, (ie calling everything not profitable even in the face of Wall Street and regressive tax codes a 'liability' instead of seeing assets) ...serves no one but banks.

In a crisis of affordable housing and unsustainable infrastructure, they outsource industry, foreclose on half of Detroit, cut *everything but spiralling law enforcement costs,* then hand *billions to real estate scammers in hopes of propping up housing prices to *keep* them where no one can afford them, then pretty much spend more money knocking housing down rather than let the price fall too much while *still* keeping people out instead of spending a *thing* on doing something useful with a parted-out but still mostly-good industrial city.


Instead they spend billions levelling the place to keep corporate profits up, (and housing unaffordable, when what they *should* be doing is probably levelling *half* of those areas to make parts for fixing up the *other* half, using those factories to make *useful* things and sending out national calls for *anyone* willing to give it a go.

This is America, where our chief problems boil down to capital tied up at the top, unsustainable infrastructure, and *inertia....*

They want a global economy and can't find a use for *Detroit* in circumstances like this? Perfectly good city being used for *nothing.* Well, call her a fixer-upper.

This is a town that was in a matter of months when the United States were a lot poorer, retooled to become the 'Arsenal of Democracy.' In months. And they're propping up real estate, oil, and ethanol profits to let a place decay, somewhere no one wants to *be* cause there's nothing to *do,* by making *cuts,* when we could be spending the same kind of money to be making solar cells and wind turbines and all that, which we need to do *yesterday,* never mind appoint wingnuts to tell the town of Escanaba they don't have local autonomy, and 'blame the libruls' cause if someone doesn't oppose LGBT people's basic human rights, gay dudes will cross-dress and infiltrate women's bathrooms for some unaccountable, but apparently very scary reason?' Or fomenting anti-Muslim paranoia while the actual people talking about blowing stuff up out there are Religious Right militias... (I'm not even kidding.) Then they want a 'market-based solution' to Detroit real estate? (Well, as long as 'free market' doesn't mean 'Actual cheap housing' when demand's low, even for speculators,)

Pure lack of vision. Any good vision, anyway.

You could probably even farm it, probably not for food cause the soil's messed up, but maybe industrial soy, corn, or better yet *hemp.*

Nah. Blame the unions. Elect people who represent the greedy, hatefully-insane, or both. What do they think Detroit's gonna be, an office park?

[redrockcoulee]

I'm not keen on the idea of using taxes to attempt to directly manipulate settlement patterns. There could be so many unintended consequences. Would the rural poor find themselves forced out of agricultural areas into cities, for example. Perhaps investing in city centre housing stock and wooing employers might be better?

Will

settlement patterns are in effect subsidized by tax dollars no matter how they go. Roads, aquiring water rights, loss of productive land are all costs less likely to be borne by the developer than by society (governments).
The advantage of setting down an actual policy with goals means that governments can steer development or even redevelopment into areas that means less new infrasture construction or less of an environmental social negative. And still the market place sort of decides because a person can still perfer to move into an area that requires lots of new infrastruture if they are willing to pay more for it.

As far as wooing employers it sure seems to be that each state is completing with tax breaks for companies relocating from another state, in other words no new jobs or employers, just shuffling them around. Not sure of a solution that would create new jobs without competing with existing ones unless it is with new technologies or against oversea competetion?

[thazooo]

I'll have to disagree with your idea, in Jackson, Ms. it would be too much of a financial burden for the home owners. Not for the reasons you might expect though. We have a declining population, 11,000 since the 2000 census., 20,000 since the 1990 census. These numbers alone cause some problems but they are compounded by the fact that Jackson is the State Capital. All Government buildings are tax exempt, as well as none profits, Hospitals owned by churches, and the University of Mississippi medical complex. These are the biggest employers in the city and we get a Giant influx of people daily from the surrounding bedroom communities. This taxes ALL city services and we get no compensation for the wear and tear on our city. The few pennies of tax from folks buying lunch don't add up to anything. Rather than increase my Tax Burden so that out of towners have good streets and infrastructure while they're in town, I'd suggest a City Tax on all non residents that work in the city. If the cities good enough to work in, the Bedroom Community folks can help pay to keep it up.

Just my 2 cents.

[GeneV]

I'm not sure that a difference in tax makes sense, but chargin more for commodities sold by the City might. Anything carried in a pipe, such as water and sewer, incurs massive losses as the length is increased, not to mention the power to pump it. It looks to me like impact fees for new developments would make sense, so that the purchase price of a new home out in a more remote area reflects the cost to the taxpayers of building new schools, fire stations, etc. when there are currently stations that will end up abandoned as people move outward.

It may be that cities were a large percentage of the population lives in densely urban surroundings, such as NYC or CHI, should, and probably do, pay higher taxes for fire and police. However, America doesn't have that many cities where there is that type of truly urban living. In the case of NYC, the urban areas are their own boroughs and people are paying for others in fairly similar circumstances.

In most cities, we are talking about new construction spreading out to the city limits, while older construction deteriorates. I would say it may or may not be the internal density of the suburb itself that is the driving cost factor, but its distance from the source of the service is a problem.

[mikemike]

I wouldn't put this off on Democrats. We tried here to make the cost of utilities, schools, fees, etc. different for new outlying developments to encourage infill. It was the business community that fought it tooth and nail. We have effectively subsidized sprawl for half a century.

This is a big difference from the situation I am talking about new development vs. atrophy. The Jurisdiction of the City of New Orleans extends to the limits of the geographic boundaries of Orleans Parish (County) so there is no way for Orleans Parish to charge anything to the next parish to discourage sprawl. There are also no huge tracts of undeveloped land in Orleans parish waiting to be bulldozed and turned into cul de sacs or developers stupid enough to try doing that if there was such a tract.

Many cities have reached the point where their population to needs to surge by 50%+ to fill back up to capacity, New Orleans proper would almost need to too double her population to reach historical levels and Detroit would need to almost triple its population to reach the hay days of the 1960s. There is no way the kind of growth needed to recover the peak population levels of either of these cities can happen in a healthy way in any less than 20 years.

In the case of New Orleans, people lived in a lot of places where humans should not have settled and should not have used for something like housing which cannot tolerate occasional floods. The rapid post-war growth of the city was done in an unhealthy way with houses being built using slab-on-grade instead of utilizing the time tested architectural patterns of elevated housing to cope with flood events. That led to the disaster that we had where those slab houses were devestated.

Today you have jack-o-lantern blocks where you have Block A with 20 lots with 3-4 inhabited houses and few blocks east you have Block B with 20 lots and 12-15 inhabited houses and a few blocks west you have Block C with 18-19 inhabited houses. From the infrastructure perspective it would be extremely desirable for these 3-4 households on Block A to relocate to Block B or Block C then close that last mile infrastructure of streets, sewer lines, etc. on Block A. Right now what you have is the people who live on Block A have extremely low home values since the surrounding blight depresses their value and a homestead exemption means that they pay little or no property taxes and the other property owners are able to squeak by blight regulations as long as they keep their lawns cut and their building doesn't fall down and still pay low taxes because their property value is extremely low, but their block still incurs 90% of the upkeep costs for the infrastructure of a fully inhabited block.

I know that other cities are facing this problem too, I heard a story on NPR a couple weeks ago about somewhere in Ohio (Dayton I think) where the city is trying to buy out low density areas so they can shut-in the infrastructure and reduce their fixed costs.

[GeneV]

I can't comment on New Orleans, which has a fairly unique history. Most other cities around the country are dealing more with new development.

Our city has purchased some run down tracts just to help surrounding owners and to cut back on crime. I don't see taxing existing less dense urban areas differently, though. People living or owning there did not necessarily buy in knowing that it would become less dense, the way a developer knows that outlying areas will need new services.

[MRRiley]

I'm not sure that a difference in tax makes sense, but chargin more for commodities sold by the City might. Anything carried in a pipe, such as water and sewer, incurs massive losses as the length is increased, not to mention the power to pump it.

At that point the rural areas would justifiably be able to charge more for the power generated "out there" and then pumped to the cities Gene. Very little of the power consumed by our cities is generated within the city limits. Water is the same way. Many cities in CA could find themselves paying even more for the power and water that they get from surrounding areas.

[GeneV]

At that point the rural areas would justifiably be able to charge more for the power generated "out there" and then pumped to the cities Gene. Very little of the power consumed by our cities is generated within the city limits. Water is the same way. Many cities in CA could find themselves paying even more for the power and water that they get from surrounding areas.

Mike, they do already. That cost is definitely built into what the city pays. The city just then charges the same back to everyone. Our city paid a rural area tens of millions 60 years ago (when that was huge money) for the water we are just starting to use. They then paid millions to litigate for decades with a minnow about it, but that is another story. They pay for the transport of the water.

[Fries]

In parts of my province the problem of keeping services up with a shrinking population is real and getting bigger. The chosen solution seems to be to concentrate the school, kindergarten, sport facilities and more stuff in one place to bring down the costs for the community combined with a active policy to prevent home owners from not maintaining there property even if nobody lives there anymore. And if that's to late leveling the derelict property and replacing it with something better looking (doesn't have to be a building). The provincial/state government is also investing in better roads and infrastructure to keep up the local economy. The big difference between your and our situation (apart from Katrina) is that this is playing out in rural region with villages. In the south of Holland cities are affected to.

Fact is that the local community's don't have the recourses to pay for all of this and thats why help from the national/European level is necessary and being debated. Building a city/village cost money but slimming down a city isn't cheap either. On the long run everybody benefits from a easier and cheaper to run city so outside government help should be a option to consider. I do realize the financial and political climate in the US makes this not the easiest of fixes and we in Europe perhaps have more a tradition of doing this although money is tight here to.

Anyway, I wish the people of New Orleans all the best in there efforts to rebuild their city and keeping it alive.

[MRRiley]

Mike, they do already. That cost is definitely built into what the city pays. The city just then charges the same back to everyone. Our city paid a rural area tens of millions 60 years ago (when that was huge money) for the water we are just starting to use. They then paid millions to litigate for decades with a minnow about it, but that is another story. They pay for the transport of the water.

I mean they would raise the rates even more... of course then the city would raise their services prices even more, rural areas raise... death spiral...