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Demographic shift: poverty and suburbs

Alan Ehrenhalt's essay in last Sunday's edition of The Dallas Morning News ( "Trading Places," August 17, 2008, 1P) should be required reading for leaders, city planners and anyone interested in effective responses to poverty in the U. S.

Ehrenhalt predicts that more affluent and younger residents of major metropolitan areas across the nation will continue their migration to the central cities. At the same time, the cost of housing and the associated forces accompanying the movement of the upper classes back downtown will force low-income people, including a growing number of immigrants, to move out of the inner city to the suburbs.

Read his essay and give me your feedback.

If Ehrenhalt is correct, the cities of America will begin to look more European, except for our ubiquitous downtown freeways.

Thinking about the future of our work, it seems clear that our approach will need to be dual dimensional. We'll need to turn our eyes to the suburbs and our partners there, while working hard to carve out spaces for the poor who desire to remain in the inner city.

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"Snooty" is never pretty

Here's one for the books.

If you live in the Stonebriar subdivision in Frisco, Texas, pay careful attention to the make and model when you buy a pickup.

Jim Greenwood is learning his lesson the hard way.

You see, Jim bought himself a brand new Ford F-150 pickup, brought it home to Stonebriar and parked it in front of his house. I bet he was proud of that new truck. I sure would be. You know, new car proud, the emotion that makes your eager to show your neighbors?

Bad mistake.

Jim started receiving notices from the Stonebriar Home Owners Association (HOA) notifying him that he was in violation of the rules of the community that prohibit parking pickup trucks in driveways out front of homes.

As it turns out, that's not quite true.

The HOA does allow residents to park "luxury" trucks on driveways, including the Cadillac Escalade, the Chevrolet Avalanche, the Lincoln Mark LT and a few others, like Chevy Suburbans and Hummers. . .just not the standard Ford F-150.

Bill Osborn, a member of the HOA board, explained, "The high-end vehicles that are allowed are plush with amenities and covers on the back. It doesn't look like a pickup. It's fancier."

When Greenwood appealed, noting that his truck is not a lot different from the Lincoln, the HOA responded, "It's our belief that Lincoln markets to a different class of people."

Can't believe they said that!

Snooty just isn't pretty, is it? Class is a bigger issue in this nation than we'd like to admit, but then, this is not a new development.

Tomorrow I'll post a note about an interesting development that is starting to play out in the nation's cities. It seems that wealthy folks are actually moving back to the central cities of America, while the poor are moving to the suburbs.

Watch out, Stonebriar! The pickups are headed your way.

[This post was inspired by reading Steve Stoler's report, "HOA: Pickup not in right class," in The Dallas Morning News, Sunday, August 17, 2008, 2B]

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Urban America needs this war to end

I care about the cities of our nation.

Millions and millions of us call the city home.

Cities concentrate both amazing opportunity and staggering difficulty.

The inner cities of our nation need renewal.

Renewal costs.

At present, funds are drying up for housing, public and higher education, health care, nutrition, infrastructure maintenance and development, employment training and many other necessities of life and growth.

Our inner city communities need help, leadership and new life--the kind of investment that could lift an entire generation of youth out of poverty and onto a new path.

What I have in mind is a "Marshall Plan-type" approach that could break the cycles of generational poverty that continue to devastate our children.

As a nation, we were actually making progress in this direction.

Then came the war.

The cost of the Iraq War staggers the imagination. You can watch a running tabulation of the soaring costs at: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html. You'll also be able to see the comparative costs as to what these expenditures could purchase in other, much needed services and capital improvements.

Last night we watched the destruction continue, the loss of life, the crippling injuries. . .now inside the "Green Zone" of security.

I find the costs, the rationale and our approach in this conflict bizarre and bewildering from start to finish.

It is time for this war to end, for the incredible spending to stop for the sake of our children, our cities and our national future.

More than 4,000 American dead. Tens of thousands wounded. And this, before we count the Iraqis--and yes, they count too.

The Iraq war should end. Our safety and security as a people would be better served for the next generation if we would turn our attention toward improving life in our urban centers.

The costs are far too high to justify taking even one more step in the current direction.

Our cities need the war to end.

Our children and our grandchildren deserve better.

The cost to our urban centers in terms of the loss of American lives will forever remain inestimable.

It is time that people of faith and moral courage speak up.

Urban America needs this war to end.

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Mayor Tom Leppert Challenges Us

Last Thursday morning, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert provided the keynote address during Central Dallas Ministries' 13th Annual Urban Ministries Prayer Breakfast. Over 1,100 guests filled the hall at the Hilton Anatole Hotel to hear the Mayor and to pray for our city.

The Mayor challenged us all to engage more actively in the battle to overcome poverty and to craft a high quality of life for every resident of Dallas.

I expect that his speech will be streaming on our website soon. For now, your can read about the event in The Dallas Morning News' report from last Friday morning (March 14, 2008) right here: Dallas mayor urges businesses to fight homelessness .


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hope, cities and leadership. . .

Jerry Brown, former California Governor, Presidential candidate and Mayor of Oakland, shared the following comments in an interview with oral historian, Studs Terkel for his book, Hope Dies Last. We'll be discussing this book this Thursday at our montly Urban Engagement Book Club meeting.

I found Brown's observations interesting, practical and hopeful in very ordinary ways. We've seen what he describes here in Dallas among the people with whom we work.

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“We try to deal with (our problems) neighborhood by neighborhood. What I find as mayor, it’s not abstract, it’s block by block. It’s just people living their lives. They don’t live their lives in ideology. They live their lives by what they face every day. Very few people generalize, or stand back and look at the big picture. It’s getting rid of a drug dealer on the corner, or creating a group to watch out for the neighbors, or working to fix up a local school. All these things build community life. At the same time, the media, national entertainment, advertising, brand shopping – and work people have to do – occupies a lot of daily life, so people don’t have much energy left over to organize their neighborhoods or work on civic issues. But there are thousands of people in a place like Oakland who do just that: they find the time.” (p. 223).

"In some of these lower—income neighborhoods, it’s like a continuing disaster that pulls people together, while at the same time fostering a lot of antagonism and anger.” (p. 224).

“In a city like Oakland, where we have eighty different languages in our public schools, all different races, ethnicities, religions, and political ideologies, somehow we’re holding it together. That’s hopeful. Why can’t we do the same with the world at large?” (p. 224).



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Not in our neighborhood—role reversal

Almost twenty years ago, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price caused quite a stir when he began a campaign to drive liquor billboard advertisements out of South Dallas. Mr. Price whitewashed a number of billboards himself as a way to call attention to the inordinate number of such signs in his district. He also pointed out the presence of far too many establishments with licenses to sell alcohol in his part of town. As a minister in far North Dallas at the time, I remember cheering him on, to the chagrin of some of my own parishioners.

More recently, protest efforts, community organizing and legal action have combined to focus attention on the area around and between Lincoln High School and Pearl C. Anderson Learning Center. The area immediately around Pearl C. is home to 10 liquor stores.

Not long ago, one of the stores lost its license to sell alcohol. The community celebrated the decision by Dallas County Clerk Cynthia Calhoun to close Buy N Save Discount Beer & Wine. Unfortunately, her decision was overturned last week by a Dallas County judge who cited “procedural errors” in the ruling and sent the case back to the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission (TABC). The TABC could decide to renew the store’s license or call for another public hearing on the matter.

Since the mid-1990s, neighbors, school leaders and students have been working to get the stores closed due to their proximity to the schools. In 1995, their efforts paid off as the Dallas City Council passed an ordinance that established a 1,000-foot alcohol free zone around specified schools.

Unfortunately, the existing stores were “grandfathered” and allowed to continue business inside the zone around Pearl C.

All sorts of negative activities have been reported and documented as occurring in and around stores like Buy N Save that do business in the Lincoln/Pearl C. area, including prostitution, selling alcohol to minors and drug trafficking. For years, students walking to and from school have been subjected to all sorts of negative experiences, influences and harassment.

Neighbors and school leaders have been vigilant in their protests and watchfulness, but the stores remain.

I’m reminded of Mr. Price’s earlier actions on behalf of some of the same families, and his entire district.

Why should South Dallas be subjected to such influences? Folks in North Dallas wouldn’t put up with such circumstances even for a moment. What's more, they would be heard. Folks in South Dallas don't seem to get the same sort of hearing, attention or responsiveness from public officials as those who live up North.

If you live in Dallas, write your Council Member, as the Council is considering the creation of more alcohol-free zones around other public schools in the city.

[For more details, see “Move against beer store near school reversed,” by Scott Goldstein, The Dallas Morning News, Thursday, March 22, 2007, page 8B.]