CM Duane Dominy invites a hail of popular opposition with proposal to rezone for new asphalt plant

Around two dozen people showed up at Tueday night's Metro Council public hearing to fight a bill sponsored by their conservative council member Duane Dominy--and recommended unanimously by the Metro Planning Commission--to allow a third asphalt plant built adjacent to their neighborhoods on Franklin Limestone Road. Here are some of their comments:

We're just a working class neighborhood .... We have two asphalt plants, a dump, an airport, and rock quarry. That's enough. Let's put this one somewhere else.

-- A worker living next door to current rock quarry

When I bought my house my Realtor® took me around by Murfreesboro Road so that I wouldn't see the industry .... Now I'm a single parent. I am in foreclosure. I've had difficulty working with the challenges of this economy and the banking crisis. There aren't many interior design demands today. With the existing quarry I'm in trouble. If we have more industry, I really need to move but I can't afford to.

-- Interior designer living nearby

In the beginning [at the first community meeting] we started with 35 dump trucks coming in to Franklin Limestone. The second meeting we went from 35 to 75. I heard him say tonight that there was probably 90 movements.

-- Business owner adjacent near asphalt plant

I wasn't notified. My Treasurer went to the last meeting and he asked Duane Dominy if he notified me. He didn't. Or our association. He notified a couple within the 200' or whatever the minimum is, and he asked him to do it, and he said he would: he would notify all of the residents in the Piccadilly Square Homeowners Association. He never did that.

-- President of the Piccadilly Square HOA

I've taken care of children who deal with asthma, and it really boggled my mind .... I called the councilman and said, "This is a bad idea. How could you put an asphalt plant in a residential neighborhood?" When we talk to parents of kids with asthma we tell them, "Avoid smoking. Avoid irritants." Some of you have children ... grandchildren and elderly neighbors. Would you put your child near an asphalt plant? It doesn't make sense. These kids would continue to have wheezing.

-- Pediatrician who lives in near the quarry

I voted for Duane Dominy to stand up for this community in times like this and to represent us for our best good .... I think he's a great guy ... but we feel like we've been abandoned on this project .... You can bring the big boys in and they can represent the different aspects of it but none of that has been proven .... We haven't received any factual evidence of any of these things that have been said for it.

-- Treasurer of the Piccadilly Square HOA

I like to go outside and play, and I use Franklin Limestone Road every day when I go to school ... and I like to have my window down because I like to the feel the air and I don't want to have to breath all those toxic fumes and get risk of cancer or any type of disease.

-- A little girl who lives and attends elementary school near the plants

If we lived in a world where everything was equal, CM Dominy's rezoning request would be on life support after that beating. Association officers, business owners, the working class, victims of the housing crisis, a mobilized kid; even a pediatrician took on Dominy for possibly exposing kids to high toxicity levels. Unfortunately, the council is not a world where everything is equal, and this bill now passes into the Vice Mayor's committee chamber of horrors to give it the air of legitimacy sans developers before it heads for third reading and likely final passage. But it seems to me that Duane Dominy is now willing to squander any working class cred he built during the fracas over the Fairgrounds on the fat cats of asphalt production.

Oh, and there should be a special place in hell for anyone who promotes projects that expose children to toxic chemicals to which they would not expose their own children.


UPDATE: CM Dominy won't move his rezoning request to third reading until he has visited an operational facility to see "what those pollutions are"; except that he has already visited an operational facility in Shelbyville.





So, he can move his bill to third reading while promising he won't based on a technicality. Savvy?

The one true urban neighborhood and other empty signifiers used by developers

The ultimate challenge for a marketer is ... to persuade people to buy something they didn’t know they wanted ....

If you ask a developer, marketer or advertising executive about the desires of younger condo buyers, the conversation almost immediately drifts into a fog of verbal abstractions. You’ll hear that these buyers want to be “edgy” and they want “attitude.” But more than any other word, you’ll hear “lifestyle.” This word will be used in sentences as if it had a specific, well-understood meaning.

-- New York Times, 2007

When the new offices of Nashville native restaurateur Chris Hyndman are completed in a few weeks, the window of his corner office will overlook the Gulch’s McGavock Street, an entire block built under Hyndman’s exacting creative force.

"The Gulch has taken on its own life. It’s almost a lifestyle as much as it is a location," said Hyndman .... "We take under-utilized real estate in great locations and let the restaurants and concepts drive the value, and we’ve created our own little universe over here ....

It’s becoming the true urban neighborhood that Nashville’s really been lacking he said, .... What’s different now is people are choosing to live here, and there’s more of a hipness to living here."

-- Tennessean, 2011

It's almost like developers (and, in the case of the Tennessean's Bobby Allyn, the business reporter covering them) either refuse to learn the lessons of the collapse of the housing market bubble or refuse to acknowledge that there are lessons in the first place. Instead, they just hunkered down and waited for new chances to trot out the lifestyle language once again to convince people that they need to live in the Gulch whether they know it or not.

I've got nothing against the Gulch, but trying persuade people that there are no "true" urban neighborhoods here besides it is sheer hyperbole designed to evoke emotions that prompt decisions to live there. Nashville has a number of urban neighborhoods and even some suburban areas that are "urbanizing", so to call the Gulch "the true" urban neighborhood is meaningless.

And Mr. Hyndman's appeal to the area's hipness is disingenuous. The hipness of various digs has been marketed for years. "The fog of verbal abstractions" marketing hip is nothing new. In fact, "hip" is hackneyed. Hip has been marketed in Salemtown. It has been marketed everywhere. In 2007, hip was said to have hit a wall. There is nothing new or unpredictable about this pitch; nothing new or unpredictable about developers who retread the raggedy old formulas.

Unlike the reporter at the Times, Bobby Allyn did not ever bother to write objectively (and thus critically) about the abstractions applied to the Gulch. The Tennessean has turned writing promotional pieces for influential people into an art form.

There are some far-sighted qualities about communities that make for long-term, generational progress. Attracting buyers and renters with empty symbolism to the "saturation point" is not one of them. Even the code "multi-family" applied to rental spaces is unreal and deceptive, a floating signifier. Much of what passes for multi-family is not built for families, and growing sections of it are designed for lifestyle hipsters on the make and on their way somewhere else to raise a family.

Those robust, weakling real estate markets

Paul Krugman underscores the stupidity of opposing smart growth in Metro areas in the name of "free" market dogma:

someone will surely raise the claim that this shows that you mustn’t have “smart growth” policies because they cause housing bubbles. Can I say that this is deeply stupid? On one side, we’re supposed to believe that markets are efficient and wonderful; on the other, we’re supposed to believe that anything which constrains buildable land — which, you know, sometimes happens for entirely natural reasons — will send markets into wild irrational swings. Those poor, fragile, omnipotent markets, able to handle anything except mild government intervention…

Final throes of ATL sprawl

AJC blogger Jay Bookman recites last rites over the final days of Atlanta's suburban boom:

Even before the recession hit, the sprawl model of growth was showing serious strains in metro Atlanta. Admittedly, it was hard to see at the time. The U.S. Census Bureau, for example, reported that from July 2000 to July 2008, six of the 15 fastest growing counties in the country could be found here in the 28-county Atlanta metro region.

By the end of that eight-year stretch, however, the Atlanta boom had cooled considerably ....

Younger people forming households of their own are more interested in urban living than in recreating their suburban upbringing, and many older Americans are also looking to downsize their living arrangements. The rising cost of commuting and energy to heat and cool large homes are having an impact as well.

Government’s declining ability to subsidize farflung suburbia has also had an effect. In Atlanta and other areas, the transportation infrastructure needed to shorten commuting times and thus extend the suburban model still farther from the core is no longer practical or affordable; it has become a struggle just to service already developed areas.

Federal Action Prompting Metro Action on "Livability"?

Might the Mayor's Office be seeing what's happening in the Obama administration and appointing a local livability task force to be in position for federal money if the national task force makes it available?

As the White House plots a long-term sustainability and resource-management course, with a "livable communities" initiative among top presidential priorities in the 2010 FY budget, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan will work through a joint task force to involve the public in planning, expand transportation alternatives and transit-oriented development, and provide less costly housing near jobs, while coordinated federal investments in livability will encourage urban regions to create and follow integrated housing, land-use and transportation plans.

"Livability incorporates the concept of collaborative decision-making," said Secretary LaHood in testimony before the House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, noting that the new congressional transportation funding act also opens up an opportunity to recast the federal transportation policy and address housing and land-use concerns.

Secretary Donovan, observes E & E Daily reporter Josh Voorhees, said the combined DOT-HUD task force will work out federal housing-affordability measures that will include transportation, energy and other costs, to inform consumers and enable the market to price housing accordingly

We should keep an eye on how pie-in-the-sky intentions about livability start to unfold in real local communities. A little vigilance over whether the local Livability Task Force really listens to neighborhoods or is merely an exercise in pumping federal money into developers' pockets wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Housing Market's New Normal

Economist Krugman says that while we won't see a reinflation of the previous housing market bubble, housing prices seem to be stablizing on the way to recovery.

New Single-Family Home Sales Up from Last Month, Still Down from Last Year

Economists believe that the continued month-by-month increase indicates that bottom was hit in January. I hope that the slowness of the recovery and the supersaturation of supply will continue to motivate market reforms rather than prompt an easy return to the housing market abuses of the Bush era.

Metro Police Officer Attempts to Discourage Home Buyers in Salemtown

A Salemtown resident reported at tonight's neighborhood association meeting that some potential buyers told her that, when were waiting for her to show her townhouse, a passing Metro police officer suggested they might not want to live here. Police attending the SNNA meeting responded that the department does not condone officers attempting to depress the hyper-local housing market while on duty. They also said that they would pass on their disappointment to the Central Precinct.

If cramdown is allowed for luxury yachts and vacation homes, then why not for primary dwellings?

The Senate failed last week to solve a double-standard that favors the rich in bankrupcy law:

Bankruptcy law currently bars modifications on primary residences, while allowing modifications for vacation homes, family farms, and yachts. The amendment would permit bankruptcy courts to restructure the debt on home mortgages by reducing the principal owed, extending the repayment period, and reducing interest rates. Under the bill, eligibility is limited to homeowners with mortgages originated before 2009 that are worth less than $625,000, 60 days delinquent, and subject to a notice that a foreclosure may be commenced.

Extending the same bankruptcy protections to primary residences that currently apply to luxury yachts and vacation homes is not only fair, but would reduce foreclosures by about 20%, according to Credit Suisse, and benefit about 800,000 households, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. Strengthened bankruptcy protection is also beneficial to middle-class families who are not themselves facing foreclosure: the 2.4 million subprime foreclosures that the Center for Responsible Lending predicts will occur in 2009 will result in a $352 billion decline in property values for homes in neighborhoods surrounding those foreclosures, with an average decrease in property value per home of $8,667.

Preventing foreclosures in those neighborhoods will keep property values up, benefiting all homeowners. Indeed, an analysis by the Center for Responsible Lending found that similar legislation would avoid 600,000 foreclosures and thus maintain $72.5 billion in wealth for families not facing foreclosure. Modification of mortgages in bankruptcy will help maintain property values, while keeping middle-class families in their homes, limiting the self-reinforcing spiral of foreclosures and falling home prices.

Mitigating Higher Metro Property Reappraisals?

At the same time that the Metro Property Appraiser is hitting Nashville with news about increases in the values of land and buildings that are not necessarily consistent with housing market downturns, we contracted an appraiser who works with lenders to give us a market-oriented estimate on our home for 2009.

The popping of the housing market bubble looks like it is hitting our market area dramatically, according to the contractor's report:

After record sales volume in 2006, the number of home sales in the Middle Tennessee area has declined sharply over the past two years. The MLS reports that in 2006 there were 41 sales in the subject's market area. In 2008 there were 30 sales. So far in 2009 there have been 3 sales [is that a rate that would project 9-12 total?].

The numbers that I am seeing from the Metro Appraiser don't look affected by that kind of dramatic drop. We have yet to appeal a reappraisal, and I'm going to give the community meeting process a chance to see if it will help me understand the gaps between Metro's numbers and those of lender-sanctioned appraisers. However, this year we may appeal Metro's estimate of our real property values.

By the way, I have been tweeting my thoughts on our reappraisal under the hashtag, #09metroappraisals at Twitter.

Tea Party Quote of the Day

Viva la Mancini:

It seems that the worse part of the Tea Party movement is its underlying philosophy: when it comes to the free market, unintended damage is OK ....
So what if people are unemployed, not able to feed their kids, without health care, losing their homes? “Stay away from my free market,” they say. “We’re not all in this together,” they say. “Running up the national debt for the military industrial complex is A-OK, but doing it to stimulate the economy and get the American people back to work? Hell, no!”

Is It Too Late for Governor Bredesen's China Office to Score Us Some of That Corrosive Chinese Drywall?

Phil Bredesen's 2007 opening of the Tennessee China Development Center may have been just behind the building supply curve that brought noxious and corrosive Chinese drywall to housing starts from Louisiana to Florida from 2003 to 2007. I'm sure there are other toxic products that the Chinese (or is that the Germans?) could still bring us through the Governor's trade initiative. But as it stands homes and families elsewhere are being destroyed by sulphur-laden "free"-trade drywall. Just another "benefit" brought home to you by the untrammelled global economy.

And It Would Suck to Be Phoenix

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the housing price tumble continues:

According to numbers released Thursday, a 20-city average of home prices fell 2.8 percent in January, faster than the 2.6 percent drop recorded in December. Overall, the 20-city Case-Shiller index reported by Standard & Poor’s has fallen 19 percent in the past year and nearly 29 percent from its peak in 2006.

Prolonging the Inevitable on Wall Street and Making Things Worse for Main Street

U. of Texas government/business relations professor James Galbraith predicts dire consequences ahead with Obama's current trajectory of helping banks buy toxic assets:

When a bank's insolvency is ignored, the incentives for normal prudent banking collapse. Management has nothing to lose. It may take big new risks, in volatile markets like commodities, in the hope of salvation before the regulators close in. Or it may loot the institution -- nomenklatura privatization, as the Russians would say -- through unjustified bonuses, dividends, and options. It will never fully disclose the extent of insolvency on its own.

The most likely scenario, should the Geithner plan go through, is a combination of looting, fraud, and a renewed speculation in volatile commodity markets such as oil. Ultimately the losses fall on the public anyway, since deposits are largely insured ....

The oddest thing about the Geithner program is its failure to act as though the financial crisis is a true crisis -- an integrated, long-term economic threat -- rather than merely a couple of related but temporary problems, one in banking and the other in jobs.

Southern "war of attrition" in housing market continues

On a day in which increased nationwide housing sales were credited with giving the stock market lift, the south continues to slump. Existing home sales in our region fell 16% in February, with median home prices dropping 10%.

Maybe John McCain actually won after all

Paul Krugman maintains that the Obama administration essentially believes that the fundamentals of our economy are strong by launching a $1 trillion plan to buy toxic assets by offering low-interest loans. The Nobel Prize-winning economist begrudges the Treasury its plan and puts it in perspective:

In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

Or to put it another way, Treasury has decided that what we have is nothing but a confidence problem, which it proposes to cure by creating massive moral hazard.

You ready to risk some more of your money while the wealthy financial firms rake in the benefits?

UPDATE: And, as if getting no-risk, positive yield government assistance were not enough, financial industry executives are now threatening to demand guarantees that their compensation will be limitless and that they will be free from government regulation in exchange for going along. Honestly. Of all the arrogant postures to take. Who do these people think they are that they are entitled not just to government support, but to government support on their terms?

A cost of Nashville's cushion from the country's housing market malaise?

We've been fed the "good news" from Realtors® and media about how the implosion of the housing market has only lightly touched Nashville. And now for gray cloud behind the local chorus's silver lining. Smell the coffee homeowners.

Jim Cramer Just the Stock-Picker Tip of Business Journalism's Tainted Iceberg

Last Friday on The Newshour, two journalists tried to use CNBC stock picker Jim Cramer, who did not have the best week last week, as a foil and distance their brand of business news from CNBC's notorious reputation for unreliable stock market coverage. The guy from Business Week maintained that they wrote critical stories on the financial sector rather than merely hawking financial stocks. The syndicated columnist agreed and complained that when newspapers act as "a voice in the wilderness" nobody pays attention, so they give up.

Leave it to the Columbia U. professor, whose academic journal is monitoring journalists. For him the problem boils down to one of power:

There were good stories about warning about housing bubbles, also good stories about dangerous mortgage instruments, consumer-type stories.

But I think, when you look back at the record, you'll see that confronting powerful institutions about their lending practices, not to mention Wall Street, was inadequate.

"Washington Mutual is using creative retail approach to turning the banking world upside down," Fortune in 2003. "Sachs Appeal: Goldman Sachs has Emerged from the Market Bust as a Trading Colossus," Forbes, 2007. You could really pick any number of these stories.

And what you're looking at there are stories that aren't really warnings, but, in fact, is the opposite. They're basically saying, hey, these institutions are all clear.

I thought that the academic put journalism's problem in a larger context than that of the journalists, who were strictly focused on cherry-picking counter-examples to CNBC's coverage and complaining about how hard critical reporting is. Of course it is. If it weren't it would not matter so much.

No "fairness" firebreak could stop this disaster

A Michigan editorial expresses the arbitrarily leveling consequences of this recession:

In its early stages, the foreclosure crisis caught up people who got mortgages for which they wouldn’t qualify under traditional lending criteria. They took out mortgages with low introductory rates and little or no money down, then found they couldn’t sell or refinance when rates adjusted upward or a balloon payment came due. Today, the crisis is affecting millions of people who did play by the rules, who didn’t buy “too much house” or get a “too good to be true” mortgage. They bought a reasonable house and qualified for a reasonable mortgage based on their income and savings. Then they lost their job or took a big pay cut, and now the value of their home is lower than the balance on their mortgage. It’s not “fair” that hard-working people get laid off. It’s not “fair” that the value of their well-tended house shriveled. But it’s reality, and there but for the grace of God go I.

A Dispatch from Foreclosure Ground Zero on the Bail Out

Scrapping to stay right-side-up.