NewGeography.com blogs

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a health crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen. But the disease’s damage doesn’t stop there. With millions of people forced to stay at home, the economy has cratered. 701,000 people lost their job in March alone—the worst month for American jobs since the Great Recession in March 2009.

At CORI, we knew there was an economic crisis happening in rural America even before this crash. Small town industries have been declining, tech jobs have boomed only in cities, and young people have left their rural hometowns in search of opportunity. And without good access to broadband, rural areas haven’t been able to tap into the digital economy’s growth.

All those existing challenges made us worried about what could happen when a COVID-related recession hit. Led by our in-house economist Mark Rembert, we created an Employment Risk Index, which ranks counties by how vulnerable they are to losing jobs based on three factors relevant to the COVID crisis: employment in high-risk industries, employment in small businesses, and age of workforce. What we found was troubling: Rural America faces a disproportionately high employment risk.

20th century industries are hardest hit

Our analysis found four industries at highest risk from COVID-19, whether through decreased demand or an inability to employ remote work: tourism, manufacturing, transportation, and natural resource production. In metro areas, these industries make up just 43 percent of all jobs. In rural areas, they represent an astonishing 56 percent.

View the geographical data and read the rest of this article at Center on Rural Innovation (CORI).

Reprinted with permission from American Geographical Society ags@americangeo.org

Aidan Calvelli is Research and Communications Analyst at CORI. He has edited books and articles about democracy and the presidency that have been featured by national news outlets and publishers. Aidan grew up in Rochester, NY and Shelburne, VT, and holds an A.B. in Political Theory from Brown University.

A new report authored by Joel Kotkin, Ali Modarres, and Wendell Cox examines how California's planning policies are contributing to the affordable housing crisis. An excerpt follows and a link to read/download the entire report.

“California’s leaders speak much about housing affordability, but their policy agenda seems designed to prolong and worsen the crisis. As it has done for almost a generation, the state has placed ever increasing burdens on housing developers, and now seems determined to “solve” the crisis by adding more challenges to anyone seeking to expand housing.

The failure of this approach should be manifest. Governor Newsom has called for building 3.5 million new homes by 2025. Yet housing construction continues to be muted, with the 2019 building permit number of 119,000 below the last two years and far below the 315,000 permits issued in 1986, when California had one-third fewer residents. At the current rate it would require more than 30 years to build 3.5 million houses.

Much of the political leadership sees the housing crisis as the result of a shortage in housing supply. However, supply alone cannot resolve the housing affordability crisis. The supply of housing has to be affordable to middle and low income households.

Clearly, the state’s principal housing strategy, Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), has not restored housing affordability. RHNA requires metropolitan planning agencies, counties and cities to zone sufficient land for housing production targets. But land and regulatory costs in the state are so high that builders can earn a competitive return on investment only on houses that are too expensive for nearly all middle-income households to afford.”

Read or download the full report here.

I want to highlight a great development here in Indianapolis. The city of Indianapolis has approved allocating $25 million to fund federal paycheck protection program loans underwritten by the Indy Chamber. (Full disclosure: I am a consultant for the chamber).

The SBA’s forgivable Paycheck Protection Program was such a big hit that the loan funds were entirely allocated in short order. Congress just provided an additional allocation of funds, with $30 billion reserved for CDFI (community development financial institution) type lenders.

The Indy Chamber is an existing CDFI that was already making loans through its Rapid Response Loan fund. The city’s $25 million will significantly scale up this local effort by providing the initial capital needed to underwrite these loans.

These new PPP loans are being targeted as businesses with 50 or fewer employees and in amounts of $75,000 or less. So this program is directly targeted at true small businesses.

There’s definitely a lot of work still to do, but Indy is on the forefront of local communities mobilizing to help small businesses navigate through this crisis

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century.

Montreal’s mayor Valerie Plante has “widened” some sidewalks to provide sufficient space for pedestrian use while providing sufficient social distancing. Where implemented, sidewalks have been widened to 4.5 meters (nearly 15 feet) by extension into streets (with barriers to protect from car and truck traffic.) This action is being taken only in the highest volume areas of the city.

New weekly unemployment insurance claims continue to moderate, but remain at levels unseen before the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, new claims filed since March 1st are now above 20 percent of pre-outbreak employment in some states.

Michigan has been hit particularly hard, with the worst mortality rate in the country and the second-worst share of pre-outbreak employment that have filed unemployment insurance claims.

Read the full article at Heartland Forward.