When the pandemic arrived, these departures surged so sharply that the San Francisco area has lately lost more educated workers than have moved in:

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But life in his sixth-story West Harlem walkup was starting to wear on him, just as remote work in the pandemic freed him to live anywhere and still conduct his pediatric health environmental research for a Manhattan hospital. And Tulsa’s new artistic vibe reminded him of Athens, Georgia, where he studied at the University of Georgia.

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The post How a Remote Work Incentive is Responding to Local Challenges and Spurring Economic Growth in Tulsa, OK appeared first on Economic Innovation Group.

Washington, D.C. — The nation’s largest remote worker relocation initiative, Tulsa Remote, is expected to contribute $62 million in new local labor income, or earnings, to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, economy by year’s end. The program is projected to add approximately 5,000 jobs to the area by 2025 on its current growth trajectory, according to a new Economic Innovation Group (91PORN) analysis released today.��

“How Tulsa Remote is Harnessing the Remote Work Revolution to Spur Local Economic Growth,” is the first study to analyze the economic impact of the country’s leading remote worker incentive program. The report’s findings suggest that such initiatives can play a potent role in local economic development strategies and help level the playing field in the national competition for talent.

Tulsa Remote offers a $10,000 grant and additional services to eligible remote workers who move to Tulsa to live and work for at least one year. Launched in November 2018 and supported by George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF), the program has brought more than 1,200 remote workers to the city through November 2021.����

������’s analysis finds that for every dollar invested in relocating the initial cohort of remote workers present at the start of 2021, there is an estimated $13.77 return in new local earnings in Tulsa. In addition, for every two remote workers who relocated to Tulsa, a third job was created in the local economy.��

“Remote work is an emerging frontier in economic development,” said 91PORN President and CEO John Lettieri. “Covid-19 has accelerated the untethering of home from the workplace for a large share of the labor market. This report illustrates how cities can harness that trend in attracting a mobile and high-capacity workforce to fuel local economic growth.”��

“Remote work is a ‘general-purpose’ technology now and it works,” said Adam Ozimek, Chief Economist at Upwork and a member of ������’s Economic Advisory Board. “Regions that boast lower costs of living, affordable housing, and higher quality of life are discovering new ways to compete for mobile talent and are turning to remote work incentive programs to lure valuable knowledge economy workers.”

“I see the value that the Tulsa Remoters are bringing to community initiatives and efforts. Not only do these new Tulsans bring additional income to the city, but they bring a sense of commitment and engagement as we work to build a more resilient city. I think that’s exciting and incredibly positive,” said Kian Kamas, Executive Director at Tulsa Authority for Economic Opportunity.

Key Findings from ������’s report:

• The Tulsa Remote program is estimated to contribute $62 million in new labor income, or earnings, to the local economy in 2021.��
• New employment based in Tulsa in 2021 as a result of the program is approximately 592 jobs, comprised of 394 relocated remote jobs belonging to program members and 198 newly created local jobs.��
• An estimated $13.77 boost in new local labor income was created for every dollar spent on the relocation incentive.
• On average, approximately one new job was created in Tulsa and one additional household member moved for every two remote workers who relocated.��
• The median income of program members was $85,000, while the average was just over $104,600. Fully 88 percent of program members have at least a bachelor’s degree, and nearly one-third of members work in the knowledge-intensive information or professional and scientific services industries.
• On its current growth trajectory, in 2025, the Tulsa Remote program is expected to add approximately $500 million in new local earnings and support upwards of 5,000 jobs, including thousands of relocated remote workers and at least 1,500 newly created full-time equivalent local jobs to support them.

Tulsa Remote’s promising early returns can offer lessons for other places and stakeholders considering similar strategies:

• Tulsa Remote provides more than a financial incentive; it is a full-bodied program that incorporates careful candidate screening and a number of initiatives designed to help with retention and community building.��
• The program directly addresses specific gaps–namely low population growth and lagging growth in high-tech, high-wage industries–in the local economy by attracting new, prime working age residents with valuable skills and strong entrepreneurial potential.
• Tulsa Remote is emblematic of an economic development initiative that leans into technological change and finds opportunity in current transformations in the workplace. That inclination left Tulsa Remote well-positioned to capitalize on the pandemic-induced rise in remote working.��

Many factors make Tulsa Remote unique, including its large scale, its sponsorship through a local foundation, and its backdrop in a mid-sized city that has put place-making and quality of life at the heart of its economic development strategy. Open questions remain whether the program can maintain its high retention rates, and it is too soon to tell whether and how the remote workforce will catalyze further economic development and local innovation. These considerations are reason to interpret these findings into Tulsa Remote’s early economic impact–and what the findings imply about the potential of other such schemes launched around the country–cautiously. Remote worker incentives are not a panacea in the modern competition for talent but should be viewed instead as a potentially powerful and complementary tool nested within broader development strategies.��

“There is now evidence that well-designed remote worker incentives deployed in the right context can shape up to have a meaningful local economic impact,” said ������’s Research Director, Kenan Fikri.��

Read the full 91PORN report, an independent analysis made possible through the generous support of GKFF.��

About the Economic Innovation Group (91PORN)

The Economic Innovation Group (91PORN) is a bipartisan public policy organization dedicated to forging a more dynamic and inclusive American economy. Headquartered in Washington, DC, 91PORN produces nationally-recognized research and works with policymakers to develop ideas that empower workers, entrepreneurs, and communities.

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The post Leading Remote Worker Program Generates Millions in New Local Earnings, New 91PORN Economic Impact Report Finds appeared first on Economic Innovation Group.

Nonemployer firms—that is, small businesses for which the owner is the only paid employee— represent roughly 81 percent of all small businesses in the United States. These firms can act as a litmus test for an inclusive recovery, helping us either support or refute the idea that credit is getting to the firms that need it most. While not a lot is known about nonemployer firms given the complexity and diversity of individuals they represent (from tech solopreneurs to street vendors to strategy consultants), we know from the Federal Reserve System’s that nonemployers are younger, more likely than other small businesses to be owned by immigrants, women, and , and much more likely (70 percent versus 15 percent of employer firms) to have revenues of less than $100k. We also know that their numbers have increased over time. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Nonemployer Statistics, there are about 26 million nonemployer firms in the United States, up from about 16 million two decades ago.��

The is just one of a series of reports from the Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS), a national survey of small businesses conducted by the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. If you are a small-business owner, consider taking the Federal Reserve’s , in the field until November 19.

Here, we explore nonemployer experiences six months into the pandemic, whether these firms received the credit they sought, and what their experiences say about credit challenges that may continue during the pandemic’s second year. We use the Federal Reserve System’s annual SBCS, fielded in fall 2020, to understand the unique credit needs of these smallest of small businesses. (For information on how small employer firms fared as a whole, read the and ������’s latest “Taking the Pulse” update on how small businesses are faring, based on the .)

Insights from the Survey Data

Most small businesses, both employers and nonemployers, were in a precarious position early in the pandemic: about 80 percent reported financial challenges in the 12 months leading up to the fall 2020 survey. Among nonemployers specifically, 32 percent described their financial condition as “poor” six months into the pandemic, with the share highest for Asian-owned firms (52 percent) and lowest for white-owned nonemployers (28 percent). A majority of nonemployers reported that the firm was the primary source of income for their household, and upwards of 80 percent reported an impact on their personal finances due to pandemic-related challenges.

Source: Federal Reserve System, Small Business Credit Survey 2021 Report on Nonemployer Firms

Given these vulnerabilities, did nonemployer firms get the help they needed? Unfortunately, no. Nonemployers were both less likely than employer firms to seek emergency funding and less likely to be approved when they did. This was true regardless of the race or ethnicity of the owner. COVID-19-related assistance included a range of new funding sources, such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the COVID-19 , or EIDL, program (EIDL applications are through December), designed to help small businesses stay afloat. Although PPP and EIDL were fairly evenly accessed by nonemployers (35 and 37 percent of nonemployers applied to the loan programs, respectively and 29 percent for EIDL grants), 19 percent did not seek assistance to any program even though they reported a need for funds.�� Additionally, about 30 percent of nonemployer firms reported collecting unemployment insurance, made possible through the CARES Act which expanded eligibility to independent contractors and other self-employed workers.����

Many nonemployers reported uncertainty about the different programs and eligibility requirements, or they lacked banking relationships necessary to secure funding. For the PPP specifically, 57 percent of nonemployer firms received the full funding amount they sought, compared to 77 percent of employer firms. Of the 65 percent of nonemployers who did not apply for the PPP, the most cited reasons were that the owner expected that the “business would not qualify for a loan or for loan forgiveness” and “the program/process was too confusing.”

Source: Federal Reserve System, Small Business Credit Survey 2021 Report on Nonemployer Firms

Elizabeth McGinsky of the Enterprise Center in Philadelphia shared that “due to opaque communications about the rules for collecting unemployment��and PPP assistance, our nonemployer firms typically weren’t in a position to access either [for fear of] future bills or tax liabilities…or, in the case of unemployment, they may not have been able to navigate unemployment red tape at the state level.” Jeff Wicklund, also of the Enterprise Center, noted that “Wording like the ‘paycheck protection program’ made it sound like the program was for employer establishments, so our nonemployer businesses did not realize they were eligible even after rules changed to expand eligibility.”��

The experience of the staff at the Enterprise Center, which served more than 1,200 small businesses mostly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 2020—a 50 percent increase from 2019—suggests that communications and information was in fact just as much as a barrier as program eligibility and credit availability. And Enterprise Center’s experiences were not unique.

Frustration Leads to Solutions

Such perspectives of nonprofit leaders, particularly in older industrial places, shed light on the complexity and diversity of nonemployers and the challenges that even the most resilient businesses and most robust small business ecosystems face. Over the past year, Federal Reserve Banks hosted critical conversations with small businesses and local and national intermediaries that brought to light the range of business needs in the pandemic. The conversations underscored the difficulty this sector had accessing credit given the lack of support structures and established banking relationships. It was there we heard that customized, community-based outreach through trusted intermediaries proved a gamechanger for nonemployers seeking credit—an important lesson for any future efforts. Examples include Neighborhood Allies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that with disadvantaged firms; MidTown Cleveland in Cleveland, Ohio, whose director of AsiaTown initiatives noted the ; and from across the nation that emphasized the importance of networks and collaboration when filling information gaps.��

Fortunately, stories like those shared above prompted programmatic and policy changes intended to increase access for small businesses in greatest need. For example, in March 2021, the PPP began clearly distinguishing loan amounts for sole proprietors both with and without payroll costs. And translation to multiple languages is readily available on the PPP and EIDL sites today.

Towards Inclusion of All Small Businesses — Why Data Matter

Part of the reason why programs may not be well targeted to many nonemployers may be that policy makers simply do not know enough about them. The SBCS gives us critical information that can be used to better inform and shape more effective policies that can respond to this diverse bedrock of small businesses. We know from the SBCS that 94 percent of nonemployers anticipated pandemic-related challenges in the 12 months following the fall 2020 survey, yet one-quarter of nonemployers still planned to add employees. The 2021 survey will offer insight into what became of those predictions, and whether policy and programs rose to meet the need of some 26 million firms across the country.��

The is in the field now and—with sufficient survey responses—we can ensure that the experiences of all small businesses, particularly the smallest and most vulnerable, are documented, debated, and applied long after the worst of the pandemic is behind us.

If you’re a for-profit, small-business owner with 0 to 500 employees, the Federal Reserve System invites you to before November 19, 2021.��

To learn more about the SBCS, visit .

�������ٱ��:��

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Nearly two decades ago, the concept of “smart decline” gained serious traction in legacy cities, most notably in Detroit and Youngstown.��

The concept of “smart decline,” or managed decline, makes some theoretical sense. Since the 1970s, nearly every social and economic trend in the United States has produced significant headwinds for legacy cities and particularly those located in the Great Lakes region. Many people believed those trends would continue indefinitely. If you’re not going to grow, why not be realistic about your prospects and begin to work toward shrinking your footprint by mothballing infrastructure and relocating residents from declining neighborhoods?

So, there is an academic argument to be made that managed decline is a pragmatic approach to present-day economic realities.��

There is also an argument to be made that it is fatalistic and that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even more importantly, a strong case can be made that the idea of “smart decline” hurts the people who live in these cities, and that the tactics that it employs (dismantling neighborhoods and relocating residents) begin to sound a lot like the “urban renewal” of the 1960s that was so catastrophic for these places, and for lower-income Black residents, in particular.

Changing the game in legacy city housing markets

Legacy city mayors, who generally have a much better feel for what their residents need than theoreticians do, have wisely repudiated this idea. Under Mayor Mike Duggan’s leadership, Detroit has rejected “smart decline.” First elected in 2013, Duggan ran under the slogan, “every neighborhood has a future.” He was reelected by a 72 percent landslide in 2017. People have begun to move back to Detroit’s urban core for the first time in several generations.

Detroit still has a long way to go. Even as the core revitalizes, the population loss continues in most of the city’s outer neighborhoods. But there has been an undeniable sea change in terms of people coming to believe that the city can once again be a place where people who have a choice would want to live.

In Akron, Mayor Dan Horrigan, first elected in 2015, has followed a similar trajectory, , “I’m not going to manage my own decline.” Instead, reversing Akron’s 60 year population decline has become the mayor’s lodestar.

In 2016, Mayor Horrigan commissioned , a comprehensive and wide-ranging examination of the city’s housing market and the condition of its neighborhoods. Many strategies to increase the supply of marketable housing and to drive up demand for living in the city’s neighborhoods were recommended. Foremost among the report’s recommendations was a citywide residential property tax abatement program.��

In April 2017, Akron City Council passed legislation establishing a citywide, 15-year, 100% for all new residential construction and for all renovation of existing residential units in excess of $5,000.����

The program has been a game-changer. The median sales price of a listed home in Akron has increased from $56,000 in 2015 to $101,000 in 2020, building wealth and equity for existing homeowners. In 2015, only around 10 new residential units were built in Akron—a city which contains around 97,000 housing units. Since 2017, 579 housing units have been constructed or renovated under the tax abatement program, with an additional 1,439 housing units currently under construction or in the planning and design stage.

Cities like Detroit and Akron are demonstrating that legacy city housing markets still have a lot of life left in them, particularly when local leaders take the time to understand the supply and demand fundamentals of the real estate market, to leverage their still-substantial geographic assets, and to compete head-on with their suburban neighbors for people and investment.

These cities need marketable, new, or newly-renovated housing to attract and retain residents. If you don’t build it, they can’t come (or won’t stay). In order to do this, they need incentives to overcome the difficulties of making projects pencil-out in markets where real estate prices are abnormally low.

They also need to focus on creating places where people would want to live, by working tirelessly to improve the day-to-day city services that residents directly experience. If you build it, they still might not come (or still may leave).��

Mayor Duggan has focused on basics like street lighting, bus service, and removing vacant and abandoned houses. And in 2017, Mayor Horrigan persuaded Akron voters, by a margin of 70-30, to pass Issue 4, which provided much-needed additional funding for street maintenance, police, and fire protection.

What legacy cities need from national housing policy

The distinction between legacy city real estate markets and those in the nation’s most influential and prosperous places is often ignored, but it is an important one. The reality is that many of the most-frequently discussed housing policy topics, such as displacement by gentrification, middle-class people being priced out of the urban market, and failure to build enough new apartment buildings to accommodate demand due to stringent government regulation, are simply not live issues in most legacy cities.��

In the legacy cities of the Great Lakes region, like Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Akron, Erie, and Flint, low property values, the inability to secure financing to build or rehabilitate housing, and a glut of vacant and abandoned properties, rather than financially-crippling housing costs, are the largest and most-pressing real estate challenges. And, unlike superstar cities on the coasts, these cities are inhabited primarily by working-class homeowners living in single-family homes.��

The Biden administration’s prospective new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Marcia Fudge, represented large portions of both Cleveland and Akron in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, which contains some of the most challenged and disinvested legacy city neighborhoods in the nation. With Fudge at the helm, the administration should be well-positioned to understand and address housing challenges in legacy cities.��

HUD should augment its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) by creating new programs specifically geared toward legacy cities. For example, the new programs could help establish housing trust funds, which could leverage additional private and non-profit funds for real estate development, particularly in the often CDBG-ineligible middle neighborhoods which compete with suburban communities for residents and investment.

Affordable housing for low-income renters is a nationwide challenge

At the same time, there are housing policy challenges that legacy cities share with the rest of their counterparts around the nation. One of these is the housing affordability crisis that low-income households are facing.

While legacy city real estate markets, with median housing values that are well-under $100,000, are easily affordable for anyone at just about any income level who can qualify for a mortgage, they are still not affordable for renters at the bottom of the income distribution.

As Alan Mallach , just about anywhere in the United States, no matter the housing market, 80 percent or more of all renters earning under $20,000 will be cost-burdened, and most will be paying 50 percent or more of their income on shelter.��

The lack of housing affordability for renters at the low-end of the income distribution is an especially difficult problem in legacy cities, despite their bargain-basement sales prices, given the high-proportion of low-income households in these cities. In Detroit, for example, 31 percent of all households earn less than $20,000, as compared to just 14 percent of all households in the United States.

As Mallach , unlike strong-market cities, weak-market cities do not have a “middle-class affordability problem,” but they still have a low-income household affordability problem. They often also have a housing quality problem on top of this, due to their aging and often dilapidated housing stock, which results in many lower-income households paying a high proportion of their meager income to live in poor quality housing that is all-too-often rented out by disreputable landlords.

��In weak-market cities, house prices may go nearly all the way down to zero before they reach their market level, but rental rates do not work the same way. A house that is worth only $20,000 on the open market will still rent for a minimum of $500 to $700 per month, just so the landlord can cover the cost of owning it, and make at least a small return on investment.

Unlike gentrification, or middle-class people being priced out of the urban market, low-income housing unaffordability is a national problem, affecting legacy cities, superstar cities, and all cities in between.

The existing policy tools to combat unaffordable housing, such as housing choice vouchers, public housing, and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit are important, but incomplete solutions. The Biden administration should consider additional policy alternatives such as a federal housing allowance to enable more low-income households to find decent housing at an affordable price.��

Using the moment

As 2021 unfolds, the future is full of both challenges and opportunities for legacy cities. Ongoing social and economic disruptions in the nation’s superstar cities could prove to be an opportunity for legacy places, as residents, businesses, and investors are now more willing to give them a second look.��

The Biden administration must now take a fresh look at the nation’s urban housing challenges, with a careful eye toward legacy places. Working together with Congress, the administration can implement public policy reforms that will do more to foster economic opportunity and urban revitalization in the places that need it the most. The tens of millions of people living in America’s legacy places deserve a better future than “smart decline.”

The post The Case Against “Smart Decline” – Housing and Urban Development in Legacy Cities appeared first on Economic Innovation Group.

The views expressed here are my own and not the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.

The , or CRA, passed in 1977 in response to broad-based redlining that was especially detrimental to Black individuals and families. Redlining, the discriminatory practice of denying people access to financial resources because of their race, choked the growth in many poorer, often Black neighborhoods. The law was meant to ensure banks responded to the credit needs of individuals and neighborhoods in which they are chartered to do business, and is up for its first significant revision in 25 years.��

My position as Community Affairs Officer (CAO) is rooted in the CRA. Shortly after it was enacted, the Federal Reserve Board asked each of the 12 Reserve Banks across the country to appoint a CAO to provide training and support to financial depository institutions (aka banks) to help them understand and comply with the CRA.

Like the law itself, the CAO role and the community development department have evolved, and must continue to evolve, in response to changing economic and social challenges facing lower-income individuals and communities. More than providing technical assistance and programming for banks, our community development team gathers and shares data and insights for and about lower-income communities in our 4th District (Ohio and part of Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) on topics like economic and workforce development, small business and housing. We help Bank leadership, state and local policymakers, financial institutions and practitioners, make more informed decisions based on how the economy is working for all residents –not just some.��

CRA dollars matter��

Despite all the changes in the Community Development field, CRA remains a critical tool to address systemic disinvestment in lower-income and minority communities. This is especially true in many areas of the that suffer from a legacy of deindustrialization, segregation and sprawl.��

We know:

• Most Americans still live in racially . And older industrial cities are 30 percent more racially segregated than the national average, according to in-depth of 70 such places by Alan Berube and Cecile Murray.
• Unfortunately, residential segregation today mirrors many of the redlined neighborhoods of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Check out the archive of Home Owners Loan Corporation maps at the University of Richmond’s site.��
• The Black-white wealth gap widened because of redlining, but it largely through disparities in earnings, according to my colleagues Dionissi Aliprantis and Daniel Carroll. Despite Black households experiencing years after the recovery from the Great Recession, the pay gap is still significant in places like Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Cleveland. Even in later years of the recovery Layisha Bailey and I count more places where between minority and white workers increased than decreased. From what we know of the sectors and populations hardest hit by Covid-19, documented well in the , these pay gaps are likely only to be exacerbated, not improved.��
• According to ������’s latest Distressed Communities Index, more than half of Black individuals in the Midwest live in economically distressed zip codes, compared to 35 percent nationally. And of the region’s majority-Black zip codes, 82 percent are distressed. “In the Midwest in particular, Blacks are disproportionately urban, and urban areas are disproportionately distressed,” the authors write.��
• The legacy of racism remains a drag not just in Black individuals and communities in Midwestern cities, but the broader economy and surrounding regions. says it best: “if the consequences of those disparities were limited to these cities’ African American communities alone, perhaps they would be easier for some to ignore. But these gaps have larger reverberating effects on the local economy that threaten wider progress and prospects.”

Here in Ohio, banks invest billions of dollars every year in CRA-related investments in the state and surrounding. Take Huntington’s recent $20 million, 5-year focused on access to capital, affordable housing and homeownership and community and business lending. Or Key Bank’s $16.5 million, 5-year and Fifth Third’s $32 billion, 5-year Community Commitment, both announced in 2016.��

Bank investments can’t erase history, but they can prevent a repeat and optimally combat systemic racism by investing in people and places that , individuals, and businesses.

Have your say

The real opportunity to make sure CRA works for both banks and communities lies within the implementation of the law itself. The Federal Reserve Board recently announced its own proposed changes through an (ANPR). The is open until February 16th and Reserve Banks across the country including our own, are engaging with the public around a whopping 99 questions about potential changes to the law’s implementation. These include:

• Providing greater transparency about what counts for CRA consideration, e.g. publish an illustrative list and a pre-approval process (Q71). Right now it’s hard for banks to know what counts and may prevent more strategic investments, prompting programs like that help but don’t resolve the underlying uncertainty that banks face.
• Updating where it is CRA activity should count, e.g. consider having nationwide assessment areas for internet banks, smaller geographies for small banks, ensure banks’ assessment areas do not arbitrarily exclude LMI census tracts (Q3), and potentially expand areas for CRA consideration (Q68, Q69)
• Ensuring community development financing and retail services are responsive to LMI communities and customers, e.g. how to define banking deserts in rural and urban contexts (Q25) and what data are best to assess the usefulness of banking products for LMI consumers (Q29) and community development financing activities (Q47).

The risk of CRA modernization if not thoughtfully implemented, is big. One can imagine that much is missed in a diverse country served by such a varied and changing set of financial institutions. That’s why I encourage everyone with a stake in community development, from bankers to community stakeholders to local policymakers, to take a look at the ANPR and submit a comment on issues for which you have unique insight. The rulemaking process will benefit from your perspective.��

I’m proud that my position is rooted in legislation of such importance to low-income communities, especially those economically sidelined by racist systems. Yet history is a reminder that having a law in place is not enough. We must ensure that the CRA reaches its potential just as we must help ensure that individuals and communities reach theirs. And that’s a job by and for all of us.

Related Resources

Members of the public can on the Advance Notice of Propose Rulemaking until February 16, 2021.��

“,” Speech by Loretta Mester, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Policy Summit 2017

“,” A Panel with Richard Rothstein, Darrick Hamilton, and Kendra Freeman, Policy Summit 2019

– Data, analysis and programming that advances racial and economic inclusion, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

: A series of virtual events hosted by all 12 Federal Reserve Banks to understand the implications of structural racism in America’s Economy and advancing actions to improve economic outcomes for all.

“The CRA Is Important for Underserved Communities, and Your Input Can Help Modernize It,” Susan Schaaf, 2020

– A Traveling Exhibit available in cities across the U.S.

The post CRA, Racism & the Federal Reserve: A Midwest Perspective appeared first on Economic Innovation Group.

Few regions of the United States exemplify what it means to be a legacy place better than Northeast Ohio. This 12-county region, with a population slightly larger than Connecticut and slightly smaller than Oklahoma, was once an exemplar of working class economic prosperity.��

This densely-populated region is comprised of four closely-connected core cities—Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Youngstown—all located within 20 to 50 miles of one another. These cities were globally-significant centers for industrial production, on a truly massive scale that is difficult to even imagine today, in the heavy industries which built the American economy in the 20th century—steel, rubber, tires, automobiles, and machinery.��

Since 1970, the region has struggled like few other large metropolitan regions have. While the United States as a whole has increased its population by 64 percent over the past 50 years, Northeast Ohio has lost 7 percent of its population, shrinking from 4.1 million to 3.8 million. Its four core cities, which had a combined peak population of nearly 1.5 million, are home to barely 700,000 people today and are collectively smaller than Cleveland alone was in 1970.

Like the United States as a whole, the region has been transitioning from an industrial, production-based economy to a post-industrial service and consumption-based economy, but at a far slower rate. Once a model of industrial economic prosperity, Northeast Ohio has fallen behind nearly all of the nation’s other large metropolitan areas in terms of median household income and educational attainment. In 1960, median household income in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area was only 9 percent higher than in the Cleveland metropolitan area. Today, median household income in Washington, DC, is 82 percent higher.

Decades after the heavy industries that built this region collapsed, urban and economic policy people still do not have a clear idea of what to do about, or for, Northeast Ohio. The region is still one of the nation’s largest and most urban. It is far less industrial than it once was, but it is still more industrial than most other metropolitan areas, and it is still a place where many people build things and transport things for a living. It has transitioned to a “knowledge-based” economy, in sectors such as “Eds and Meds,” but not as comprehensively or as rapidly as other places.

Today, more and more people across the political spectrum are beginning to ask questions about the nation’s economic policy framework, and about the decisions that have been made in Washington, DC, and on Wall Street over the past several decades, which have had the net effect of concentrating more and more wealth and prosperity in fewer and fewer places.����

The previous murmurs of concern and discontent over growing economic disparities between people and places have, now after an economically-crippling pandemic and a contentious presidential election, grown even louder and more urgent.

It is more difficult than ever for someone without a college degree to get ahead economically. Here in Akron, four in five adults do not have a four-year college degree. In Cleveland, Canton, and Youngstown, the number is even lower. Even in the United States as a whole, after decades of transition to a “knowledge economy,” two in three people still do not.��

The economic prospects for many in the non-college working class are growing dimmer, and there is little substantive policy discussion about restoring broad-based economic prosperity for working class people.��

No demographic group has lost more trust in our political institutions, or has more pessimism about their economic future than people without a four-year college degree.��

Perhaps the most profound demographic shift between our recent presidential election and elections in the not-so-recent past was in the realm of educational attainment.��

Trump won the vast majority of white, non-college votes, and although non-white, non-college voters still overwhelmingly supported Biden, Trump made historically-significant inroads here as well, to the surprise of many pundits.��

As the Wall Street Journal recently , the white-collar/blue-collar political divide in this country is deepening. In the 2000 election, Bush won 49 of the most college-educated counties in the United States, while Gore won 51. In 2020, Trump won only 16 of the most college-educated counties, while Biden won 84.��

Today, many in the working class are angry and mistrustful. They have borne the brunt of this nation’s social and economic decline, as blue-collar jobs, pay, and benefits have eroded and continue to disappear, and as the once-stable neighborhoods that they call home have continued to decline.��

At the same time, many in my own professional class exhibit a startling lack of appreciation for (and increasingly do not possess even a rudimentary understanding of) the jobs, people, and systems that are in place to meet our basic physical needs and which make our civilization and way of life possible.

The aspirations and points of view of people who work with their hands to make things, build things, fix things, transport things, provide food, produce energy, and extract natural resources are increasingly a mystery to those in the professional class.

Many of my fellow “knowledge workers” have the relationship between these jobs and ours backwards. It is these jobs, not ours, that form the base of the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If it wasn’t for these jobs, our jobs would not exist.

This growing class and educational divide was dramatically reflected in the 2020 election results here in Ohio. Despite polls that indicated that the election would be closer this time, Trump (once again) defeated his Democratic opponent by eight points.����

For the first time since 1960, and for only the third time since 1892, Ohio did not vote for the winning candidate. What was once the most politically-competitive state in the union is undergoing a seismic political shift.��

The Democratic party was once indisputably the standard-bearer for the American working class. But over the past several decades, non-college voters have increasingly shifted toward the Republican party. For the first time in generations, neither party has a lock on the American working class.��

Northeast Ohio has been a stronghold of the Democratic party for decades. The shift in the presidential vote in this region over the past 12 years has been truly profound. I am not aware of another large urban region that shifted more dramatically toward Republicans and away from Democrats between 2008 and 2020.

Every county in the region, including Cuyahoga, which is the most heavily-Democratic county in the state, swung between 5 and 38 points toward Trump.

The three counties along the Pennsylvania border, Ashtabula, Trumbull, and Mahoning, the latter two of which comprise the Youngstown-Warren metro area, and were traditionally the most-reliably Democratic counties in Ohio outside of Cuyahoga County, all swung between 28 and 38 points toward Trump. Trump won all three counties in 2020.

In 2008, Obama won nine of the region’s 12 counties, and carried Northeast Ohio by nearly 392,000 votes. In 2020, Biden won only two of these 12 counties, and carried Northeast Ohio by only 92,000 votes.

We are in the midst of a political realignment in the United States, centered around social class and educational attainment. How extensive and far-reaching that realignment will be is, as yet, unclear.��

What is clear is that working class people increasingly feel alienated from the mainstream of both political parties, and are increasingly supporting the populist movements that are embedded within each party.��

In the wake of the 2020 election, thoughtful factions within both parties are beginning to discuss pivoting their policy platforms to more intentionally help the working class.��

It is unclear to this writer whether the mainstream leadership in either party will do so. But it is equally clear to this writer that leaders in both parties should.��

Too many working class people in too many legacy places like Northeast Ohio are being left behind.

In the previous installment of this series, I said that it is time to start helping the people in these places, by helping the places. Northeast Ohio, and legacy places like it, could benefit greatly from place-based approaches to economic development, and from bipartisan public policy proposals that make working class people and places a priority.

Legacy places which still specialize in making and transporting things could be helped by a reevaluation of our national trade and industrial policy; by antitrust reform which would take a hard look at how deregulation has eroded civic assets and strangled lending and capital formation; and by new approaches to urban redevelopment which recognize that legacy city real estate markets don’t look like those in superstar cities. We need to start making more urban policy with cities like Cleveland and Akron in mind, and less with Washington, DC, and San Francisco in mind.��

Recently, eight mayors from cities in the Ohio River valley wrote an , calling for a “Marshall Plan for Middle America.” The plan called for “an ambitious federal response to save our industries and communities from destruction.” The for the plan discusses a variety of strategies for regional cooperation and federal investment and intervention.

I don’t know enough about the specifics to know whether this is the right approach for the Ohio Valley, or whether the same general concept would make sense for cities in the Great Lakes region, where I live. My sense is that it will need to be fleshed-out further. But the fact that leaders in this part of the country are talking about the collapse of industries and communities in Ohio and in neighboring states, and putting forth bold proposals to do something about it, is a huge step in the right direction, and I commend these mayors for their leadership.������

Many commentators in the wake of the 2020 election have said that Ohio is no longer a bellwether. But I wonder about that. Perhaps Ohio is telling the rest of the nation something about our economy and how it has left too many people in too many places behind. Perhaps the rest of the nation should listen.

Jason Segedy is the Economic Innovation Group’s inaugural Legacy Cities Fellow. You can learn more about ������’s Legacy Cities Fellowship and Jason’s background��here.��

The post The Post-Election View from Northeast Ohio appeared first on Economic Innovation Group.

The 2020 election made clear that the American electorate is starkly divided between economically vibrant and stagnant places. In this analysis, we examine the political map using three of the most tangible indicators of economic well-being in the counties supporting each candidate: growth in population, growth in employment, and growth in the number of new businesses. On each measure, we find a profound gap between the cohort of counties that voted for President-elect Biden and those carried by President Trump. From 2010 to 2019, the number of people in counties won by Biden grew by an average of 3.1 percent over the period, while the counties won by President Trump averaged an increase of just 0.6 percent. Biden counties also accounted for a remarkable 82.5 percent of new businesses added to the economy and 72.8 percent of employment growth since 2010, underscoring the economic dominance that has accompanied their expanding populations.

The sluggish growth of red America is due in part to the fact that population has actually declined across a large share of Trump counties since 2010. Even as the typical county’s population increased by a modest 1.0 percent nationwide between the start of the decade and 2019, 57 percent of Trump’s counties lost residents. To be sure, Biden counties are not immune to population loss, but a far smaller share of them—37 percent—shrunk over that time, based on analysis of figures. The political implications of population growth are evident: In the more than 1,400 counties that gained population, voters split 62 percent to 38 percent in favor of Biden. In the remaining 1,700 counties, Trump won the vote count 58 percent to 42 percent.

The country overall has added more than 19 million new residents since the start of the decade. Despite only winning one-fifth as many counties as Trump, Biden’s constellation of locales gained about two-thirds of all population growth—over 12.6 million residents. Biden managed to take many of the population centers that generated the greatest number of new residents, such as Maricopa County, AZ (Phoenix), Harris County, TX (Houston), and King County, WA (Seattle).��

Population growth is closely intertwined with economic growth and has important implications for economic dynamism—the process of creative destruction that reallocates the economy’s resources across firms, industries, and geography to foster productivity advances, innovation, and ultimately economic opportunity. Research that population growth is a key contributor to new firm formation, which drives a dynamic economy. This correlation between population growth and economic dynamism may also explain the concentration of economic strength in counties that voted for Biden. Recently released data from Brookings that Biden counties accounted for 70 percent of GDP in 2018, and those counties are similarly dominant across a range of indicators, including firm creation and employment growth.��

Between 2010 and 2018, the U.S. economy was in the midst of what became its period of sustained peacetime growth in history, adding roughly 305,000 net new businesses and 18.2 million net new jobs. Counties won by Biden accounted for an overwhelming 82.5 percent of new firms and 72.8 percent of employment growth, according to data from the . Importantly, these two phenomena are self-reinforcing: blue America’s new businesses advantage is itself an employment advantage. has shown that young start-ups (as opposed to older, established businesses) are the main drivers of job creation in the United States.

These disparities are not merely the result of a few large Biden counties (e.g., Los Angeles County) tipping the scales; rather, they reflect a broader trend across most Biden counties and most Trump counties. For example, 52.6 percent of counties won by Biden experienced net firm growth between 2010 and 2018; yet, only 35.0 percent of Trump counties did. The story reads largely the same when looking at employment figures: 81.9 percent of Biden counties had an increase in employment, while only 67.6 percent of Trump counties saw their employment rise.��

Despite the clear differences in economic vitality we find between Trump and Biden counties in general, red and blue America are each a heterogeneous mix of places that run the gamut of economic well-being. Legacy cities, such as Detroit and Baltimore, struggling with industrial transition and years of population loss remain solidly in the Democratic orbit. Meanwhile, Trump won several economically dynamic counties, including Collin County, TX, outside Dallas; Lee County, FL, encompassing Fort Myers; and Utah County, UT, in the suburbs of Salt Lake City.��

Nevertheless, the economic chasm that generally divides red and blue strongholds is, in part, a byproduct of the fact that U.S. growth and dynamism have become increasingly concentrated in a relatively small share of . Aggregate national economic figures tend to obscure a deeply uneven story of regional divergence, one with profound social and political implications—and one of intense bipartisan concern. Indeed, this divergence is one of the great challenges of our time, and one of the most difficult that President-elect Biden will inherit when he takes office in January 2021. Tackling it will require a policy agenda designed to provide the tools and resources necessary to help struggling communities adapt to economic change and thrive in a future full of uncertainty. One such idea is for a place-based “Heartland Visa” for demographically and economically stagnant areas of the country—a proposal Biden . In the wake of a devastating economic crisis that ended a decade-long economic expansion characterized by its “left-behind” places, it will take a host of such policies working in concert to help ensure the next map of recovery looks more inclusive than the last.

The post The Dynamism Divide: Examining the 2020 Election Through the Lenses of Population Growth, Jobs, and Business Formation appeared first on Economic Innovation Group.

This is Part II of a two-part series examining legacy cities in post-COVID world, based on interviews that I conducted with practitioners working in municipal government and community development in ten cities in the Great Lakes. In Part I, three major themes that emerged from these interviews were discussed: 1) Moving Beyond the Eds and Meds Economy; 2) The Enduring Importance of Place; and 3) The Advantages and Disadvantages of Smaller-Scale. Here in Part II, I discuss four additional themes that will be important for legacy cities to consider as they move forward, beyond the immediate crisis of the pandemic.

Theme #4:�� LEVERAGING STRATEGIC ASSETS AND CAPACITY��

Many legacy cities are battling systemic challenges that affect their entire region:�� economic stagnation, population decline, and the intangible, but very real psychological effects that disinvestment and decline can have on residents and businesses.�� These challenges often result in a lack of confidence in the place, which can manifest itself across the board geographically – from local residents to prospective investors across the country.

Given this reality, it is of the utmost importance that legacy cities learn how to leverage their still-substantial geographic and civic assets.��

One example of a community that is doing just this is Erie, Pennsylvania. This important port city, located on its namesake lake, and adjacent to beautiful Presque Isle, one of the most-visited state parks in the country, has seen its fortunes fade, declining from a population of 138,000 in 1960 to 96,000 today.

But like so many legacy cities, Erie is not ready to go gently into that good night. Its largest employer and only Fortune 500 company, Erie Insurance, led by CEO Tim NeCastro, and the Erie Downtown Development Corporation, led by CEO John Persinger, have established a key strategic partnership to revitalize Downtown Erie.

NeCastro, an Erie native, could have chosen to locate his company and its 3,000 employees anywhere, but he made a deliberate decision to choose downtown Erie. His company helped seed the Erie Downtown Equity Fund with a $5 million contribution that leveraged nearly another $25 million from 11 other local organizations, including local universities, hospitals, banks, and foundations. The fund supports strategic real estate purchases and the redevelopment activities of the Erie Downtown Development Corporation.��

Impressed with the level of local commitment to the Downtown core, Boston-based Arctaris Impact Investors recently committed to making $40 million worth of Opportunity Zone investments in Erie.

It is hard to overstate the importance of raising this type of capital for gap-financing in legacy city real estate markets where it is difficult to make the financials pencil-out for real estate development projects.��

In places like Downtown Erie, commercial and residential rents, lease rates, and sales prices are often too low to turn a profit in the near-term. Even for projects which are potentially profitable upfront, it becomes a Herculean task for developers to build their capital stack. It is not uncommon for a developer to have to cobble together a dozen or more funding sources just to make a project happen. All but the most committed, creative, and audacious developers will probably just choose to take their investments to a more prosperous city or a thriving suburban market.

While the key to successful community development in legacy cities most certainly involves establishing strategic partnerships and raising financial capital, it also requires a knack for tactical implementation and marketing – and for knowing when to go big or go home.

In Erie, the team intentionally eschewed smaller projects to show the community, potential investors, and prospective tenants that they were committed to the long-term future of downtown. According to Persinger: “Early wins and low-hanging fruit are not enough. We needed to do something big and bold to shock the market back to life.”��

The initial development plan will invest nearly $125 million in three key blocks of Downtown Erie, establishing 477,000 square feet of new mixed-use development, over 150 market-rate residential units, a food hall, and the first new downtown grocery store in decades.��

This big-and-bold development effort was intentionally-designed to shake-up people’s perceptions of downtown Erie – those within the community, as well as those outside of it. “This wasn’t just EDDC dreaming this up”, said Persinger, “it was based on lots of conversations with prospective investors and tenants – not ‘build it and they will come’. We are helping to build critical mass and distribute financial risk.”��������

But, no matter how much cities like Erie do right at the local level, they are still facing headwinds, due to global and national economic realities which are bigger than any of them. It calls for a serious and substantive national public policy response, which is where I turn next.��

Theme #5:�� PUBLIC POLICY REFORM

I have about what I call “The U-Haul School of Urban Policy”, which is the fatalistic idea that there are many cities in the Rust Belt that are going to fail, and that the best that we can do for them is to essentially place them in hospice care, while telling their residents to move elsewhere for opportunity.

The reality is that large numbers of people and untold billions of dollars in investment capital cannot just walk away from our legacy cities, without disastrous social and economic consequences for the millions of people who remain. No matter how much some people might wish it to be so, these places are not going away.��

Alan Mallach, in his book, The Divided City, says it best:

“As a nation, we must decide what we want the future of these cities to be. Our present course relegates many cities to a sort of limbo, where, despite their best efforts, they drift gradually downward, losing jobs, becoming gradually poorer, and offering progressively less hope for those who live there. Is that the only vision that we have for hundreds of small cities and towns that dot the American heartland?”

For too long, the economic policy elite in this country have offered little to the people in these cities other than telling them to move away. It is time to start helping the people in these places, by helping the places. These cities need a public policy regime that intentionally supports place-based economic development.��

In my conversations with practitioners, there were a number of ideas for public policy reform which came up repeatedly:

Trade and Industrial Policy Reform – Every legacy city that I interacted with for this series has been severely harmed by the trade and industrial policies that the nation has pursued over the past several decades. It is time for a wholesale re-evaluation of those policies. While it is true that we are not going to bring manufacturing as it existed in 1955 back to these cities, that objection is red herring that is nothing more than a convenient excuse for maintaining a status quo that decimated the economic base of these communities. Due to their advantageous geographic locations and skilled labor forces, there is still an important place for manufacturing in these places.�� Their residents deserve more from our policy makers than the implication that any reconsideration of our trade and industrial policy is somehow regressive. They also deserve more than the once-every-four-years pandering that results in vague promises of a new industrial plant in a distant exurb that never materialize.

Antitrust Reform – The consolidation of nearly every type of economic activity over the past three decades has destroyed many of the best paying jobs and undermined many important local institutions in legacy cities, as corporations, banks, airlines, utilities, and newspapers have been bought-up by national or global conglomerates with little interest in the goings-on in these places. The trend toward larger-and-larger corporations with monopoly power has strangled lending and capital formation, and has weakened the civic fabric of these places. It is time for the federal government to take a hard look at how deregulation has harmed these communities and for it to strengthen antitrust laws that would foster greater economic competition.

CDBG Reform – The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) has been an important tool used by cities for decades to provide decent housing, expand economic opportunities, and combat neighborhood decline. Although it is flexible in many respects, it is restricted to serving neighborhoods at 80% area median income, or below. This means that the strategically-important “middle neighborhoods” in these cities, which are potentially competitive with suburban communities are often ineligible for these funds.��

HUD should create a new program, specifically geared toward legacy cities, that would help middle-class neighborhoods that are just beyond the upper end of the CDBG income restrictions. This program could help create housing trust and historic preservation funds which could help to leverage additional private and non-profit dollars for real estate development in middle neighborhoods. Not only would this new program provide more flexibility and much-needed funding, but it would also send a message to local non-profits and foundations that middle neighborhood stabilization is an important national strategic objective.

Theme #6:�� HOUSING AND N91PORNHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION

As the name implies, are racially and economically diverse places of predominantly single-family homes and small business districts, populated primarily by the middle-class. They comprise between 25 and 40 percent of the population in most legacy cities. Unlike the most distressed neighborhoods, these places are, for the most part, still physically, economically, and socially intact. But, given their older stock of housing and their proximity to areas of disinvestment, they are in danger of losing their residual strength and slipping into decline.��

Because they are neither the most troubled, nor the most successful residential areas in a city, they are often overlooked. But overlooking them is a serious mistake. It is far easier to stave off disinvestment and decline before it begins, than after it has set in.

The City of Cleveland, recognizing this, has created a Middle Neighborhoods Initiative, with its own dedicated project director. The purpose of the initiative is to incentivize middle neighborhood development, with a special focus on housing rehabilitation and small business development. Jason Powers, the project director, says that Cleveland’s middle neighborhoods are best viewed, not in isolation, but in the context of the regional housing market: “Neighborhoods are a consumer product. How do we create demand for our product?”

Making these neighborhoods competitive with suburban areas involves ensuring that they have the housing and amenities that people want, and marketing them appropriately. Powers says that people sometimes view marketing as superficial work that you do on the side, if you have the resources, but points out that it is mission critical: “Selling a place is just as important as selling homes.”

In fact, successful neighborhood revitalization often comes down to psychology – changing the narrative and the perception, by building confidence with tangible changes on the ground. The City of Sandusky, which sits on Lake Erie, midway between Toledo and Cleveland, and which was recently voted “America’s Best Coastal Small Town” by USA Today, is “taking advantage of the advantages”, according to City Manager, Eric Wobser.��

The city is capitalizing on its assets, including its waterfront location, and Cedar Point, which is home to more large roller coasters than any amusement park in the world. By leveraging its strength as a tourist destination, with noticeable improvements to its public spaces, its downtown, and its neighborhoods, it is drawing suburbanites back to the city, along with urban expatriates from nearby Cleveland and Columbus who want to live in a small coastal town that still has the urban amenities that they crave.

��Theme #7:�� ECONOMIC INCLUSION IN MINORITY AND DISINVESTED N91PORNHBORHOODS

��It is no secret that legacy cities, particularly in the Great Lakes region, are some of the most disinvested places in the U.S. They are also some of the most racially and economically segregated – with many older, lower-income, predominantly Black urban core neighborhoods, ringed by newer, higher-income, predominantly white suburban areas.��

Whether the issue is hypervacancy and widespread abandonment in Youngstown, or a municipal water supply poisoned by lead in Flint, these cities are living with the legacy of decades of explicit and implicit policy decisions that served to cut many of their minority and low-income residents off from opportunity and the civic amenities that most suburban residents take for granted.

In many of these neighborhoods, the housing market has all but ceased to function, destroying equity for many homeowners, many of whom are now underwater in their mortgages, and making it all but impossible for residents to get home equity loans to improve their properties. This is a particularly serious problem in working-class Black neighborhoods.

Many of these neighborhoods also desperately need new and improved housing that could be built on the thousands of publicly-owned vacant lots which are holes in the neighborhood fabric. But unlike the overheated real estate markets upon which many urban policy discussions revolve, these neighborhoods face a different challenge. Instead of prices that are too high, displacing existing residents, they face prices that are too low, trapping residents in substandard housing, and generating comps that make it impossible for new housing construction to financially pencil-out.��

Despite the low prices, housing is still not affordable for many. As Cheryl Stephens, Executive Director of East Akron Neighborhood Development Corporation, points out: “There are working class people who need housing that is within their budget. We need to be more expansive in our definition of what’s affordable. People have a limited number of choices about where to live that meets their budgetary constraints.”

In addition to having weak housing markets, these neighborhoods face significant challenges with poverty and an overall lack of economic opportunity. Few jobs or businesses exist in many of them, necessitating long walks or bus rides for residents without reliable access to a vehicle to access jobs or even just basic services.�� As Stephens says: “People should be able to live and work in the same community.”

All of these complex and interrelated problems – a lack of marketable and affordable housing, a lack of jobs, and high rates of poverty – point to the need for more community development capacity. This, too, presents a challenge.

According to Dan Baisden, neighborhood planner with the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, many legacy cities lack sufficient community development capacity: “We need to invest in community development resources to build stronger communities.”

Moses Timlin, Neighborhood Strategy Coordinator with the Genesee County Land Bank, in Flint, Michigan, echoes this concern: “The biggest challenge is strategic implementation.�� Flint updated its master plan in 2013, but there is limited capacity to help implement it.”

CONCLUSION��

It is clear that legacy cities are places with significant challenges, as well as opportunities. While there is a lot that they can do at the local level to improve economic conditions, there are significant limitations on their ability to change their fortunes, absent public policy changes at the national level to help improve their economic position.

These cities are working hard to pioneer what Pete Saunders describes as “Rust Belt Urbanism”, an urban policy framework that can speak to and focus on the authenticity, resilience, and affordability of older industrial cities, while also squarely acknowledging their cultural, economic, and social challenges.

They have gotten the ball rolling. Now, they need the help of investors, policy makers, and elected officials at the national level.

Jason Segedy is the Economic Innovation Group’s inaugural Legacy Cities Fellow. You can learn more about ������’s Legacy Cities Fellowship and Jason’s background��here.��

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