NewGeography.com blogs

Anyone who needed a poll by the LA Times and LA Business Council Institute to tell them that overwhelming numbers of Angelenos consider homelessness the city’s biggest problem hasn’t been paying attention for quite a while.

And anyone who thinks homelessness in LA can be addressed without confronting public corruption overlooks a problem that tears the fabric of the city.

The odor of corruption hangs over a deal at a warehouse at 1426 S.Paloma Street on the industrial edge of Downtown LA. The City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti approved a lease that requires $35,000 a month in rent for space to be converted into a 115-bed homeless shelter there. They’ve also agreed to pay a nonprofit $4 million a year to run the shelter.

The numbers involved are relatively small compared to the $1.2 billion voters approved under Prop HHH three years ago to address the crisis.

You can look here to see why they nevertheless indicate the potential for much bigger problems.

And you can consider these 10 questions, which Garcetti has been unable or unwilling to answer for weeks and months while the shelter has yet to open even as the city pays $35,000 a month to the landlord:

1. Why isn't there a homeless shelter in operation at 1426 S. Paloma Street?
2. What sort of market analysis was done on the lease
3. Do plans still call for the development of a shelter at the property
4. If so, when is it expected to open?
5. Are there any concerns that the landlord of the property has been involved in cases of money laundering and counterfeiting in the past?
6. How was Home at Last CDC chosen as the operator of the homeless shelter?
7. How was the $4 million annual value of Home at Last CDC’s services determined?
8. Are there any concerns that Home at Last CDC has recently demonstrated a lack of organizational capacity and transparency about its operations?
9. Are there concerns that city documents indicate plans for 60 fulltime employees to staff a 115-bed facility?
10. Has the city surveyed industry standards on staffing levels for emergency shelters?

These shouldn’t be tough questions for a mayor with hundreds of public employees on his staff, including dozens dedicated to communications and homelessness programs.

They are offered without apology because the people of anyrepresentative democracy has a right to know – and because LA will never meet the challenge of homelessness unless we start to talk about public corruption.

Jerry Sullivan is founder and chief columnist for SullivanSaysSoCal.com @SullivanSaysSC

The folks at EMSI, a labor market analytics firm, have issued their latest Talent Attraction Scorecard. They look at, among other things, the places that are gaining the most skilled workers. Obviously their ranking heavily correlate with population growth. What I found most interesting is their specific look at smaller counties and even “micro-counties” with a population of less than 5,000. Plenty of names you might not know but are worth checking out.

Also, I couldn’t resist posting the “This City Is Making a Comeback” bingo game that was circulating on the internet recently. Pretty hilarious. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having most of these things. In fact, they are great to have. But still a fun meme.

This post first appeared on aaronrenn.com.

Heartland Forward is a first-of-its-kind "think and do" tank committed to advancing economic performance in the center of the United States.

President and CEO of Heartland Forward Ross DeVol, states: "Throughout my decades of research experience, I've observed that national research and policy discussions too often overlook the center of the country, especially its small cities and rural areas. The Heartland region faces more economic challenges than the coasts, but it also holds immense potential, and that's why I felt so strongly about launching an organization like Heartland Forward."

You can learn more about the organization at www.heartlandforward.org

London’s Daily Telegraph reported on September 21 that the cost of HS-3, the high-speed rail line from London’s Euston Station to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is now expected to cost £106.4 Billion. The Telegraph notes that this cost is double the amount maintained by former Prime Minister Theresa May’s government until her recent resignation. In fact, the cost is more than three times the £33 billion announced in 2010, which is indicated in a detailed times in the Telegraph article.

Chapman University President Emeritus and Professor of Economics Jim Doti gave more than the red meat of prognostication at the recent mid-year update on the economic forecast from the A. Gary Anderson Center at the Argyros School of Business and Economics.

Doti also offered a couple of headscratchers to the crowd that gathered at the Musco Center on Chapman’s central-casting campus in Orange. It was the sort of stuff that takes an economist to come up with but offers a fair intellectual challenge to anyone who cares to consider the data and analysis behind the econometrics involved.

Here’s the short version: Doti told the crowd that Orange County’s housing market is a bit underpriced these days.

Underpriced?

With a median price for a single-family home well above $700,000?

Yes, declared Doti, who backed up his contention with some research by a class of Chapman students under his supervision.

The research was based on four key data points produced with the application of regression analysis to assign dollar values to certain aspects of OC’s housing market.

All of that was factored into an equation to compare OC with 107 other metro markets across the U.S., as measured by the federal government as of 2016, the most recent data available.

The four factors were:

• Median prices for single-family homes, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau

• Median household income, as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce

• A score for natural amenities that considers factors such as weather and other quality-of-life conditions, as reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture

• Pacific Ocean shoreline

The analysis compared OC’s 2016 median home price of $733,000 to the $322,000 median nationwide.

Then it applied the regression analysis to account for the difference, figuring how much a higher median income, plentiful natural amenities such as a Mediterranean climate and varied topography, and 42 miles of coastline add to the value of a house in OC.

Here’s how Doti and his econometrics crew figured it:

Take the national median home price of $322,000.

Consider that OC’s median household income was $86,000, about 25% higher than the national level of $68,800. Factoring that in as part of a mean-regression calculation adds $137,000 to the price of a home in OC, based on a broader market of would-be buyers able to pay more.

Also consider OC’s amenities score of 8.74 from the USDA compared with an average 3.05 for the 3,142 counties throughout the U.S. That’s good enough, according to Doti’s analysis, to tack another $95,000 to the price of a home in OC.

Then there’s the proximity to the Pacific Ocean, which adds another $194,000 to the market for OC homes.

Add it up: $322,000 + $137,000 + $95,000 + $194,000=$748,000.

That’s slightly more than the median of $733,000 recorded for 2016.

And that’s economics – as explained by Doti with the help of some econometrics that help drill down on the supply and demand of OC, where homes are so expensive in no small part because the market is so attractive.

Jerry Sullivan is founder and chief columnist for SullivanSaysSoCal.com.