Lies, Damn Lies, & CCC Statistics

I figured I needed to supplement the last post I did about Downtown with some data and maps. As you know, I'm not the biggest fan of downtown development, mostly because it hasn't worked like promised. It hasn't created the jobs and the increased tax revenues are being held out of reach from city government through PILOTS. Let me again clarify that downtown and the Medical District are two different things, even though the Center City Commission's fiefdom runs all the way to Midtown. The above map and the following data I hope will illustrate that.

In the map, the green area is the core of downtown. Auction to the north, EH Crump to the south, and basically 3rd street to the east. These are census tracts 22, 42, and 43. In 1990, the population of this area was about 2,400 people. It is up to 4,000 today. Here's the rest of the demographics as of last year.
MHI- $43,000
Median age-44
Unemployment-6.3%
46% White
49% Black
White Collar Employment- 75%
Blue Collar- 25%
Percent of Population with Bachelors Degree- 26%
Graduate Degree-21%
Vacancy Rate of housing Units-26% (ouch)

Next up is the Orange area. That's Census tract 1 and its primarily Mud Island. In 1990 there were 1,300 people there. Today it is close to 5,000.
MHI- $60,000
Median age-33
Unemployment-6.8%
64% White
26% Black
White Collar Employment- 89%
Blue Collar- 11%
Percent of Population with Bachelors Degree- 32%
Graduate Degree-41%

The off-white area is Uptown and whatever it is called north of Uptown. It is census tracts 2 and 21. 1990 there were 3,300 people here and it has fallen to 2,200 now.
MHI- $12,000
Median age-32
Unemployment-23.6%
3% White
94% Black
White Collar Employment- 38%
Blue Collar- 62%
Percent of Population with Bachelors Degree- 5.1%
Graduate Degree-1.8%

The pink section is census tracts 23, 41, and 44. In 1990 the population was 9,500. Today it is 6,500.
MHI- $15,700
Median age-32
Unemployment-25%
10% White
88% Black
White Collar Employment- 35%
Blue Collar- 65%
Percent of Population with Bachelors Degree- 5.7%
Graduate Degree-3.3%

I hope you have enough background data to critically assess some of the statistics thrown around about Downtown. Also want you to see how small an area and how economically polarized it is. Remember those wildcat parking lots south of the Forum. Those folks live in area (1980's Beirut as Phil Jackson likes to call it) with the median household income of $15,700. Quite nice of the CCC to call code enforcement on them. In the end, I made the core of Downtown green because I like to think of it as Memphis' own little Green Zone of exclusivity. So sheltered and so protected from the unpleasant poverty just a couple blocks away. 3rd is like a seawall on a vast ocean of 160,000 people living below the poverty line covering dozens and dozens of square miles. We should absolutely pour more money into the area to make the lifestyles of those 4,000 people even better.

Downtown Development Is a Failed Policy

I have been watching the Panhandling and Single Beer Sales Ban Ordinances battle for a few weeks. I keep hearing numbers like $5 billion invested over the past 10 years, 20,000 people live downtown, 60,000 people are employed there, etc, etc. Now I am not going to call the Center City Commission liars, but they have an expansive definition of Downtown. Downtown is primarily 4 census tracts, you can throw in Mud Island but living on Mud Island isn't the same as living Downtown. Those census tracts run from EH Crump to the south, Auction to the north, Danny Thomas to the east, and the river to the west. What happens is that the CCC's turf and the Medical District's turf overlap east of Danny Thomas. So I figure the CCC is poaching some of those job numbers to pad their stats and including Mud Island in the population numbers. I just wanted to cast a bit of a critical eye on those tossed around numbers. Over at West Tennessee Liberal, there has been a great job done examining all that "studying" the CCC has done and their heavy reliance on a policy out of Seattle. To say the CCC is cherry picking data from that policy evaluation would be considered pushing the boundaries of the proper usage of the term "cherry picking".

At this point you are wondering what does this have to do with the title of this blog post. Well, here we go. What was promised when all this downtown redevelopment started and was embraced as development plan by local government, was that by bringing downtown up it would raise the whole city. Let me say now that has proven to be a failure on an epic scale. It is true those 4 census tracts have gained population over the past 10 to 20 years. Woohoo, 20,000 people live in "downtown". Well in the past 10 years the city as a whole has lost 50,000 and we've lost even more over the past 20 years when you factor in all people we added through annexation. There are about 160 census tracts in the city, about 2/3s of those have lost population, the biggest losers being the census tracts closest to downtown. Compounding that, much of those 100 census tracts have poorer people living there today than 20 or even 10 years ago.

As for downtown being an economic hub and job creator, this is not as what the data is showing. The commute times for people living immediately around downtown but not in the 4 census tracts have greatly increased (here's a flyer article about it). Why are people who live the closest to downtown having to drive or ride our crappy MATA system further and further east if downtown is such economic engine? The CCC recently increased it's subsidies to office space renters to try to get more businesses downtown. Good luck with that. In addition, there are so many pilots issued downtown that last seemingly forever, the city still isn't get much property tax revenue out of the area.

So after banging the CCC on it's data, I'd now like to quote some of their statistics from a poll they did a couple years ago. (Note, this poll disproportionately sampled middle/upper class white folks, kind of tells you who their focus group is. Middle and upper class white folks make up about 25 to 30% of the city's population) Here was the question- "Why do you not go downtown more often?" The 3rd most common answer was "too far to drive" by 15.8% of respondents. Maybe if we would have dispersed some of that $5 billion around the city we could have kept more people in it and folks wouldn't have had to drive so far to go to our more modest downtown. The 4th most common answer was "not interested" with 12.5%. People could have stayed uninterested in downtown and still lived in Memphis, but no we lost these taxpaying residents AND they don't want to come downtown. Thank god we have $35 million boat dock to change these folks minds. Number 2 and number 5 are my favorites. 2 was "parking is inconvenient" and 5 was "parking was expensive". What did the CCC do not a little over a week ago? Bust all the wildcat parking lots south of the FedEx Forum and on the edge of one of those downtown census tracts. The CCC was down $11,000 at one of it's related Central Parking lots and sent code enforcement out to bust folks muscling in on CCC action. I'd like to add that the neighborhood where this wildcat parking was happening is one of the poorest in the city. I believe Phil Jackson, coach of the Lakers, said it looked like Beruit in the 1980's. Yet the CCC says screw you (even though we are sucking at our job), we are still a subsidized monopoly with government protection. Oh, and coming in #8 with a bullet at 4.6% of the vote, panhandlers. Yes CCC you are all over doing your job well as a government protected monopoly.

By CCC's own survey not only are they failing, but Downtown development is failing. The city poured finite resources into downtown and neglected the rest of city as it crumbled. Now we have squatters on condominium complexes all the way out in Fox Meadows. (Boohoo says CCC, we can't sell our $200,000 condominiums in Downtown, even sans squatters.) You have homeless people sleeping in Audubon Park (but they better not in Confederate Park!). There are over 8,000 empty houses in the city. Yet we still have to focus all our attention on the #8 problem in downtown. We have to fill up the jails with the homeless and panhandlers, costing tax payers not only in Memphis but all of Shelby County hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs and hundreds of thousands more in jail costs. So when all these homeless people and panhandlers go to your neighborhood, cause fires in vacant houses (which costs thousands of dollars to the fire department to pay to put out and a couple thousand more for the city to demolish), sleep in your parks, and ask you for money at the gas station, ask your city council person why your neighborhood
1) doesn't have a direct line to the police department like the CCC even though downtown is the safest area of the city?
2) how much money was invested in the past 10 years (because it sure ain't $5 billion)
3) doesn't have super duper, glorified neighborhood association with direct ties to the City Council like the Center City Commission
4) where are the PILOT revenues to fix our neighborhood up
5) how did you vote on the Panhandling and Single Beer Ban ordinances that brought all these panhandlers and homeless folks here

and finally
6) Do you as a city council person think downtown development has benefited this neighborhood?

Cohen vs Herenton: The Row on the River

So the 9th congressional race is already starting to warm-up. Let me be the first to say I'm really surprised Herenton is actually running. I thought he was just politicizing the grand jury process. I got a feeling it is going to turnout like Michael Jordan's final return to the Wizards. Not so good and tarnishing his reputation. Since he does seem to be running I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents about the race.
1) Cohen should be happy Herenton didn't get indicted. Herenton would have made the race all about his victimization. The government is after him because he's black yada yada yada. That now is a minor talking point for Herenton.
2) The race isn't about issues. If it is just personalities, this where Herenton wants it to be, but that doesn't mean Herenton would win (His message sounds anachronistic since the elections of Obama and Wharton). It just gives him the best shot at winning. The last 2 years for Herenton were rough. MSARC, the animal shelter, the rise of blight, constant crises and scandal, and Herenton exhausting his base. Cohen should point out Herenton did a decent job 10 YEARS AGO, but has been an ever increasing failure the last decade, even admitting he wasn't interested in the job of mayor the last few years. This leads to point 3.
3) The generational divide in black Memphis voters. Herenton's core base are older black folks. They remember what it was like before 1991 and how big a deal it was for the first black mayor to be elected. This is my reference to the above map. In the urban core of Memphis, the demographics of the black community are skewed. Lots of older people (55+) or younger people (under 20). In 2007 Herenton did his best in these areas of the city. His weakness surfaced with black voters under 40. These folks have families and moved out to areas like Frayser (not so much in the 9th), Raleigh, and Hickory Hill. They also live in more integrated neighborhoods with higher incomes. Herenton underperformed in many of these precincts by 15 to 20 percentage points. Over the past 2 years, Herenton's base has gotten older (smaller) while he has gotten more erratic and unproductive as mayor. It will be interesting to see how a younger, predominantly black political organization like New Path handles the emergence of this generational divide. They aren't going to support Herenton, but they may also try to hedge their bet and not endorse Cohen either.
4) Herenton is entirely on defense. Cohen has inroads to Herenton territory and a huge fundraising advantage. Herenton will try to milk as much free press as possible. Cohen is going push on the Hickory Hill and Raleigh fronts, target areas in Herenton's urban core, and attack the higher income areas of Whitehaven. That's a lot of defense to be playing on multiple fronts on your "home" turf. Plus, Cohen's already done this and against the exact same campaign narrative.
5) Herenton only has one line of attack. "I'm black, he's white". Every attack by Herenton should always be redirected back onto one of his failures of the last few years and highlighting what Cohen has successfully done. In addition, Cohen should be campaigning for Randy Wade non-stop. There is a proxy war that will tell a lot about the congressional race, Wade (Cohen) vs French (Herenton) for Sheriff. If Wade does well, Cohen will do well.
6) Cohen says something dumb. Cohen needs to stay aggressive and be a smart counter puncher to Herenton's attacks. Herenton's used to bullying people into submission. Cohen has to stay calm and not get flustered into a gaffe. Herenton will get more and more erratic as Cohen stands-up to him and keeps the pressure on. This fits back into the Cohen narrative of Herenton being a shadow of himself and from a past era.

Why Doesn't the City Council Just Replace the School Board Members

The school board told the City Council to f themselves tonight. This seems like the final humiliation for the Council. Since there is no recourse through the courts, the only step left is electoral battle. The Council and school board districts are identical. School board members normally run unopposed, have little funding, and aren't the most organized campaign staffs. School Board races are also low turnout elections. City Council members' electoral campaigns have greater financial resources and experienced staffs. With these advantages in the districts it doesn't make sense that many of the members on the city council run tickets and support candidates for school board races. The School Board and MCS have lower standing in the community than the Council. Plus, there is an endless flow of scandal that comes out of MCS. Council, if you have an advantage on the electoral side of a fight, use it and break the political deadlock.