PHILADELPHIA — This year, Margaret Shepherd is knocking on the front door of nearly every house in West Oak Lane. Her daily rounds are part of a large-scale effort to stem foreclosures in this blue-collar, largely African-American neighborhood.

“I’m getting so much exercise, it’s ridiculous,” Ms. Shepherd said on a recent afternoon.

West Oak Lane has the kind of yo-yo economic history that marks many urban areas. The 80-year-old neighborhood had been on an upswing thanks to the efforts of local community groups, rising real-estate prices and years of easy credit that poured money into local businesses.

But unemployment and foreclosures risk wiping out two decades of progress. Now the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corp., funded through a combination of real-estate revenue and grants, is looking to buy foreclosed homes to keep them occupied and values stable. Instead of waiting for owners to come to them, the group brought Ms. Shepherd in to go block by block in search of stressed homeowners.

Foreclosures and unemployment are wreaking havoc in communities rich and poor. But these problems can have more severe effects in transitional urban areas just starting to come back, spurring efforts to prevent a new slide.

Boston Community Capital, a nonprofit that finances real estate in lower-income communities across Massachusetts, is buying foreclosed homes from banks and selling them back to homeowners at lower prices and under new mortgage terms. “The goal here is trying to stabilize neighborhoods by trying to keep homes occupied and productive,” says Elyse Cherry, chief executive of Boston Community Capital.

There are an estimated 1,500 homes in some version of foreclosure in the West Oak Lane area, which has about 20,000 homes, according to the Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofit that invests in Philadelphia. The metro area’s unemployment rate jumped to 8.2% in May from 4.9% a year ago, a rise that has fallen harder on areas like West Oak Lane, where residents tend to be less educated and many workers depend on hourly and overtime wages to make ends meet. According to data compiled by PolicymMap, 60% of West Oak Lane households earn less than $60,000 a year.

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Honorary title would cover parts of Harden Street, Farrow Road

By ADAM BEAM – abeam@thestate.com

Columbia officials want to designate a stretch of Farrow Road and a stretch of Harden Street to honor Martin Luther King Jr.

The designation, which would cost the city about $20,000 for street signs and memorial plaques, would be honorary only and would not require anyone to change their address, said Chip Land, Columbia’s planning director.

They would be the first Martin Luther King Jr. streets in Columbia, which has a park named after the civil rights leader.

There’s also a Martin Luther King Boulevard in Hopkins.

Columbia officials plan to announce the designation at the city’s annual Martin Luther King Day celebration, which has been delayed a week until Jan. 26 so it won’t conflict with President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

“Every capital city in America, or most of them, have a street name designation after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” said City Councilman E.W. Cromartie “We want to make sure that we would honor that.”

Hundreds of cities across the country have named streets after the civil rights leader. Last year, at least two national media organizations highlighted how most of the streets that bear King’s name are in poor, high crime areas.

Columbia’s designation would be no different, as the Farrow Road/Harden Street corridor is one of the poorest in the city, according to PolicyMap, a demographic mapping service.

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This article by Adam Beam on The State on Wednesday December 24, 2008.

Wealthier neighborhoods that avoided subprime borrowing will be hurt in the new year as the downturn weakens even healthy markets

By Prashant Gopal

2008 was the year that subprime borrowers and speculators got hurt by the real estate crisis. 2009 could be when everyone else gets hit.

Until now, the nation’s most serious home price declines have been in low-cost markets that were dominated by subprime mortgages, and in overbuilt markets such as Florida, California, and Las Vegas, where residential values are sliding fast toward pre-housing boom levels.

The Commerce Dept. reported Dec. 23 that November new-home sales in the U.S. fell to their lowest level in 17 years, down 35.3% compared with November 2007. And the outlook is even bleaker. The same day, Credit Suisse (CS) forecast that more than 8 million homes will go into foreclosure over the next four years, or approximately 16% of all U.S. households with mortgages.

That’s because the big story in 2009 could be that, with the deepening recession and mounting job losses, serious housing troubles could infect wealthier communities and markets that were just beginning to stabilize this summer before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15 sparked the most serious financial turmoil in decades. In fact, according to online real estate research firm HousingPredictor.com, based in Destin, Fla., housing prices nationwide will fall 12.5% next year, compared with an estimated 11.1% this year.

Housing and mortgage problems pushed the nation into a recession that could now amplify, draw out, and expand the reach of the housing declines.

Manhattan Hit, Too

Take Manhattan, for example, where condo and co-op prices soared years after housing bubbles in most other major cities popped. New York City’s real estate market was bolstered by residents who were still earning sky-high Wall Street bonuses and by a weak dollar that attracted overseas bargain hunters.

Now that the dollar has strengthened, the economic woes have spread to potential New York home buyers across the globe, and thousands of New York financial professionals are collecting severance. Manhattan apartment prices, as a result, have dropped as much as 20% since the summer, said Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive officer of real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Miller’s analysis is based on contracts signed in recent months, rather than actual closings.

“Mid-september was a milestone,” Miller said. “That’s where you saw a pronounced slowdown in transaction volume.”

HousingPredictor.com is projecting a 19.4% decline in Manhattan home prices in 2009. And Moody’s Economy.com is predicting that condo prices in New York City, Northern New Jersey, and Westchester County will fall 29% by the fourth quarter of next year.

“Nationally, we think this recession is going to be worse than anything we’ve seen in 40 years,” said Marisa DiNatale, senior economist for Moody’s Economy.com. “If the economy gets that bad, then you will start to see foreclosures in Manhattan as well.”

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Is the country in or headed for a deep recession?

If so, be happy you’re living in Lubbock.

A report published by Business Week ranked the Hub City among the 20 safest places to live in the U.S. during a major downturn where vast portions of the population are employed by government, health care, education, agriculture and legal services.

“I think it’s totally logical and accurate,” said Gary Lawrence, CEO for the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance who examined the report and wasn’t at all surprised by its findings.

Business Week compiled the data with the help of PolicyMap.com, which made use of extensive demographic information in determining which cities would stand up best over the course of a recession.

Of the 20 Metropolitan Statistical Areas selected, Lubbock ranked 11th based on what the authors described as “layers of protection” involving health care and education sectors as well as its locale inside an energy-producing center.

Corpus Christi was the only other Texas city ranked in the report.

Amarillo economist Karr Ingham, who publishes the monthly Lubbock Economic Index on behalf of Lubbock National Bank/LEDA, said the report’s premise has some roots.

“I’ve always wondered how Lubbock shows up in these reports,” he said, alluding to another report two weeks ago by bond rating company Moodys, which also cast Lubbock in a good light.

“Lubbock always seems to come out on the favorable end of these analyses,” said Ingham, who has followed the area’s economy for a dozen years.

“One thing we know about the Lubbock economy is when it’s put to the test, it just dusts itself off and continues to grow at modest, but steady pace,” he said.

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This article by Chris Van Wagenen appear in the Lubbock Centennial on Friday October, 17, 2008.

posted by Jon Lansner/ocregister.com

Consider this example.

BusinessWeek has new rankings out citing 22 selected U.S. cities that may do better than most in what’s likely to be an ugly patch in the nation’s economy history. BW writes: “Other local economies, those dominated by stable industries, could be relatively well-cushioned. BusinessWeek.com worked with data from PolicyMap.com, a demographics and data site run by Philadelphia’s Reinvestment Fund, to identify the best places to live during a recession. We looked at places where large portions of the population worked in anticyclical industries such as government, health care, education, agriculture, and legal services.

Guess who made the list? Our Irvine, no less! (Money magazine’s annual “best place to live” list ranked Irvine the #4 city in the nation. Read it HERE!)

So what was BusinessWeek thinking? It notes Irvine’s 37.8% share of jobs in those coveted anticyclical industries. And BW writes: “Irvine is home to the University of California at Irvine and — like much of Orange County — hasn’t been hit as hard by the subprime crisis as other parts of California.”

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This article by Jon Lansner appeared in the Orange County Register on October 16th, 2008.

Cities with a strong presence in health care, education, law, energy, and the government will feel the impact of a downturn less

By Prashant Gopal

Read the story on BusinessWeek.com here.

Oct. 13′s 937-point surge in the Dow notwithstanding, the economic crisis has left Americans—even those with no obvious connection to Wall Street—wondering about their own future. The 401(k)s of many Americans are still on shaky ground, foreclosures are spiking, and employers in big cities and small towns alike are struggling to adapt to a new environment of tight credit and feeble consumer spending.

Government leaders are working to avoid a depression—or at least a late-1970s-level recession—but if things get really bad, some places will suffer more: states such as California, Florida, and Nevada that are buried under a growing mass of foreclosures, cities like New York and Chicago that have large numbers of financial sector jobs, and manufacturing towns that are already suffering from weak sales of cars and other durable goods.

Other local economies, those dominated by stable industries, could be relatively well-cushioned. BusinessWeek.com worked with data from PolicyMap.com, a demographics and data site run by Philadelphia’s Reinvestment Fund, to identify the best places to live during a recession. We looked at places where large portions of the population worked in anticyclical industries such as government, health care, education, agriculture, and legal services.

Secure in the Capital

Topping our list was Arlington, Va., a highly educated urban community just across the Potomac River from Washington, followed by the District of Columbia itself, where many residents work in government or related services. The federal government employs thousands of residents, keeps lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, and journalists busy, and pumps money into the region through outsourcing jobs and multimillion-dollar contracts to companies such as Bethesda (Md.) aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin (LMT).

While D.C. didn’t enjoy Manhattan’s Wall Street-driven growth during the past couple of decades, it’s now in an enviable position. The capital has become a hub for companies that do defense and homeland security work in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“We don’t have a Wall Street,” said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. “When there’s a crisis like this, the Fed goes out and hires a bunch of people to help out. I suspect they’ll bring Wall Street guys to Washington and put them up in hotels or empty office buildings and put them to work.”

Government towns tend to be relatively stable because—even though budgets are slashed—the public sector still must pay the salaries of politicians, building inspectors, police officers, military personnel, and tax-authority employees. Cities that we think might benefit from government employment include Chesapeake, Va., near the massive Norfolk Naval base, and the state capitals of Baton Rouge, La.; Lincoln, Neb.; and Madison, Wis.

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The upheaval shaking Wall Street will hurt privileged enclaves as well as working-class neighborhoods from coast to coast. Find out which will fare the worst

By Prashant Gopal

Read the story on BusinessWeek.com here.

How many former Lehman Brothers bankers or AIG (AIG) executives are likely to be buying a Park Avenue apartment or a home in Darien, Conn., this year? Most likely answer: not many at all.

As anyone who works on Wall Street, invests in the stock market, or just reads the newspapers knows, the past few weeks for the financials sector have been as ugly as Frankenstein’s sister. People have seen their net worth eviscerated, if not obliterated completely.

But Wall Street’s woes are going to have a direct impact on communities around the U.S.—and not just because the proposed $700 billion bailout will result in higher taxes for most Americans. The pain will spread beyond the banks themselves to their back-office and IT operations, accountants, lawyers, and other professional service employees who depend on work from finance companies. It will also reach regional banks across the country. Credit-card companies and firms that deal with auto loans are also vulnerable as the credit market tightens. Even insurance companies, which have remained relatively strong, could be hurt if the economy worsens and workers drop existing policies and decide not to take on new ones. From CEOs to security guards, the financial, insurance, and real estate sectors employ approximately 9.8 million people in the U.S. alone, nearly 7% of the entire American workforce, and their spending potential is even greater.

New York’s Ripple Effect

Moreover, many of these jobs often tend to cluster around certain towns; bankers in one community and tech support in another. And while Manhattan is at the center of the turmoil, the fallout will be nationwide. Already the financial sector alone has lost 10,000 jobs through July, or about 2% of finance jobs.

Moody’s Economy.com projects that New York City and its suburbs will lose 65,000 finance jobs by the middle of 2010, or 11% of the total. Economists are projecting that Manhattan real estate prices will finally sink under the pressure of financial-sector layoffs and shrinking Wall Street bonuses. Wall Street accounts for about 12% of jobs in the city of New York, and a quarter of salaries.

“New York is the stone in the puddle that ripples across the country,” said Scott Simmons, vice-president and founding partner of Crist/Kolder Associates, an executive recruiting firm in Chicago.

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By The Numbers Guy, Carl Bialik

A new Web site allows home buyers, real-estate developers, nonprofit groups and any other interested parties to map neighborhoods for free using a wide range of data, such as per-capita income, education levels and unemployment. PolicyMap is a clever tool that makes government statistics more useful and accessible, though it also highlights some limitations in the U.S.’s numerical self-knowledge.

A part of a PolicyMap of percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees in 2000, in Sen. Barack Obama’s Chicago neighborhood (his home is marked with an X). The darker shading indicates a higher percentage of residents graduated college. Dark purple means more than 22.94% of residents have bachelor’s degrees.

PolicyMap was created by The Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based organization that finances urban development. The group found that it needed mapping tools to help it choose neighborhoods for investment, and also to help investors track their projects in the context of neighborhood characteristics rather than through unenlightening pie charts. “We want to be able to get good data into the hands of people who are making public-policy decisions,” Maggie McCullough, director of PolicyMap, told me.

The internal mapping project launched as a public tool in May, sharing for free all data PolicyMap gets for free, mostly from the federal government — roughly 80% of the 4,000 indicators PolicyMap says it provides. The rest of the indicators, including projections bringing older federal data up to date, are available only to subscribers, of which the site had fewer than 200 as of last week, according to Ms. McCullough.

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This article by Carl Bialik on The Wall Street Journal on August 4th, 2008.