The Recovery

Denver Jobs, yeah right

Is it just me or doesn’t it seem that “recovery” should actually begin with us recovering some relative level of sanity. Case in point: why would Denver waste money and space (and reputation, perhaps) with the booth above at last month’s The People’s Fair?  Is there not something wrong with this picture?  

‘Nother case in point: today’s lead story in an industry trade rag  “A quirky dynamic is at play these days at the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)—borrower scrutiny is at an all-time high, even as credit conditions begin to loosen…” GSEs = the much maligned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now in some form of receivership. So, no joke, the INTEREST ONLY loan is back with these bailout-sucking responsibility-shirkers. What’s the definition of insanity? Hum.

“We learned that borrowers were willing to pay a little extra for more options, so we enhanced the CME product by increasing flexibility,” says David Brickman, vice president of multifamily CMBS and capital markets at McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac.

The company believes that a certain volume of borrowers will gravitate toward the same combination of waiver requests over time. Brickman likens it to pizza—plain cheese pizza was all that was offered initially, with toppings being individually selected. But the company will track which combinations of waivers are most popular, and may offer a pre-packaged option, akin to a meat lovers or veggie pizza.

Yeah, I’ve got your cheese right here.

Funny thing about this new form of borrower scrutiny, it’s not happening in alignment with the Dates and Deadlines in our purchase contracts. No, it’s happening whenever the lender feels like it — whether or not final figures have been verified, docs have been drawn and the closing file has been fully, mutually executed at the closing table. Just last Wednesday I had a residential sale go fully through closing — and after all documents were signed and notarized the lender refused to fund. They blame it on “QC.” Any attorneys want to contact me? Journalists? How’bout a few legislators?

Here’s a crazy idea: what say you we we try a little lender scrutiny once we finally figure out that olives and anchovies won’t fix what’s broke. Yeah, and I’ll take that “to go.”

Evolution of Necessary

the snow must go on...Denver workshop

With current economic conditions being what they are, many of us are reevaluating “necessary.” I was passing through one of those generic big-box, infill malls the other day (no point in saying what city I was in because every one of those malls has the same stores anyway) and I noticed that the grounds maintenance person was so diligent in tidying the walk in front of a shop that he was using his gas-powered blower to blow the few remaining leaves from the tree branches. I would have loved to post here a video of this, but I was too slow on the draw — you’ll have to take my word for it.

This was just one of many recent “is this really necessary?” moments I’ve paused to consider. Those leaves would have fallen regardless of human intervention. The season is even called fall. It seemed a strange allocation of resources: time, gasoline, effort to do what nature would have done in short order anyway — and for free (!) without payroll tax, without petroleum use, without grinding blower noise. Is it time we all take stock of our homes, our businesses, our habits and identify those places that we can save resources without even compromising outcome? And, in doing so, we may find we even improve our quality of life.

I’ve been thinking this fall, too, about composting. This is one area in which, nature will do it for us — but our little bit of effort and forethought can greatly increase the beneficial results. Leveraged resource use is how we should all be thinking.

Will Allen, MacArthur genius grant award-winner and founder of Growing Power, was recently in Denver sharing his insights about enriching soil through vermiculture (worms) and composting. Although other soil-builders have differing philosophies and methods, Mr Allen sees composting as the critical Step 1. No one can argue with his results. He’s not only built up soil quality to increase garden yield, he’s even seen his methods increase grades and graduation rates (though that’s food for another post!).

Critical to a good compost is alternating layers of carbon and nitrogen, that is: pulpy woody matter and fermenting green matter. Lawn clippings, pine needles, wood chips, sawdust, vegetable food waste, weeds, even paper and cardboard are all beneficial contributors to backyard composting. Although meat and dairy can be composted, in a dense urban setting (such as I write about) these high-protein materials may cause odors  less amenable to backyard enjoyment and problematic to neighborly relations.

Tomorrow I’ll post images for a step-by step visual primer in the assembly and filling of a backyard, no-turn compost system. If kept adequately watered to promoted beneficial organism growth, the full box will result in valuable, rich compost in approximately 8 months without needing to be turned over manually. To harvest finished compost, simply remove one side of the pallet frame. We assembled the pallet using just baling wire. Although not demonstrated in my photos, be sure to line pallets with hardware cloth (a tough wire mesh) and build a cover with mesh and 2×4’s. The hardware cloth will keep out animal pests — a critical consideration for composting in the city.

Here’s another person’s version of a slightly different approach to building with pallets:

[Note: Please get permission before taking a business’ pallets. Most businesses reuse their pallets but may let you take broken or otherwise unusable ones. Just because they are set outside, doesn’t mean “finders keepers.”]

Slow Money, Coming Fast

This week a grassroots movement is sprouting. It’s about fixing America’s economy from the ground up… starting with food.

Check it out at Friends of Slow Money.

If we’ve been in touch recently, you may be aware that I’m a founding member of the Slow Money Alliance, and that I’ve been in and out of town lately networking with folks supporting this powerful movement. Please consider a $5 contribution through the above link to show your support. Let’s make a statement about our priorities of creating sustainable communities and sustainable economies. It all begins with us – take action by clicking on the above link or read more below. This Time Magazine article describes our first national organizational meeting held last month.

Woody Tasch, founder of the Slow Money Alliance, has been Chairman Emeritus of Investors’ Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations, and family offices that, since 1992, has facilitated the flow of $130 million to 200 early-stage companies and venture funds dedicated to sustainability. He is president of the newly formed NGO Slow Money. Woody was formerly treasurer of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. He is an experienced venture capital investor and entrepreneur and has served on numerous for-profit and nonprofit boards. He was founding chairman of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance, which supports venture investing in economically disadvantaged regions.

From the Time article:

Could the trouble with money be that it’s…too fast? Sure, you may think, it leaves your pocket too fast. But Woody Tasch, a longtime investment professional and founder of the Slow Money Alliance, is talking not about anyone’s spending habits but money as a system: as money increasingly functions as electronic blips shuttling from screen to screen in speculative transfers, it becomes divorced from its effects in the real world and less reflective of actual wealth. The result, he says, has been bad for our economy, the planet and the individual investor. The antidote, according to Tasch, is expressed in the subtitle of his book, Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Farms, Food, and Fertility Matter….

The individual businesses he’s zeroing in on may be small, but Tasch is thinking big: “We’re setting out to build an organization of one million Americans to invest in food systems around the U.S.” He envisions “catalyzing investments of $25 million a year or more as a first step.” Though he is only now starting to raise money, Tasch says the response to his model has been “extremely heartening.”

Slow Money differs from traditional socially responsible investing in that the partnerships are deeper, as the Alliance works to build not just a firm’s profitability but also supportive structures. For example, rather than just lending money for, say, a farmer’s barn, they would look at the farmer’s other infrastructure needs, such as storage, retail outlets, transport to markets, etc. Also, inherent to the model is the notion that part of the “return” is the social and environmental benefit a company represents.

And continue to watch this space to explore with me how concepts of slow money and restorative economies impact our urban areas, too!

The New American Lynching

I love community.

Sparked by an interview I recently heard on the radio, I’ve been working over the past week to assemble my thoughts about gentrification. The complexity of the topic is attested to by the fact that most of what I read about gentrification is either biased to the point of being insulting to intellect or so convoluted that all logical argument or relevance to economics is utterly lost.

Giving my thoughts, then, to the charged topics of economics, race, community, inclusion, exclusion and new and old antagonisms affecting our neighborhoods and our nation — I couldn’t have been more sickened to read about the apparent lynching of a census worker.

With the word “fed”  somehow scrawled upon his chest, the murder suggests itself to be related to the victim’s part-time community data gathering work in his home state of Kentucky. This was a man who thought it was safe to knock on doors and talk with neighbors. According to one person he interviewed “he ask[ed]  some basic questions including the size of her house, how many rooms it had and how much she paid monthly for electricity.”

Is our world so out-of-kilter that someone would be killed for simply quantifying the reality of our American neighborhoods and communities?

UPDATE: It’s actually so out-of-kilter that it now seems Mr Sparkman took his own life in this convoluted manner in effort to have his life insurance pay out. If this is true, it puts everything in a different and even more horrifying perspective. God help us all.

Bill Sparkman, peace be with you, regardless.

Gentrification Whisperer?

Shotgun homes in Houston's Third Ward

Finally I heard an intelligent conversation about gentrification. There was no ax-grinding. There was no embedded bias. There was consistent logic and intelligence applied. I’ve been scanning media and blogs for such a conversation for a long time now so I know how rare this is.  (And from a politician, too!) It’s all novel enough that it’s worthy of more than just a re-tweet, so indulge me here in some ramblings and response. And engage with me, please, if you are so moved: as gentrification is a community-wide issue, it warrants community dialog.

For the purpose of this discussion, I’ll define gentrification as I most commonly hear it discussed: a result of market demand or property speculation which increases housing costs and disrupts the social fabric and often the architectural integrity of a community, causing physical and psychological displacement and dislocation to longer-term community members.  Antagonisms, a byproduct of gentrification, form along socio-economic lines, along cultural/racial lines and, too, along lines of history, value systems, land use, density and street life.

Texas State Representative Garnet Coleman has been getting press the past few years for an anti-gentrification campaign on the basis of historical and cultural preservation for his district: Houston, Texas’s Third Ward. Recently he was featured in an interview with National Public Radio. Coleman not only represents the Third Ward in the Texas legislature but he was raised there.  He points to historical and cultural landmarks of his neighborhood and asks “Why isn’t culture historical?” He cites historic Philadelphia as a model of such preservation.  A discussion of cultural value, as opposed land value, is a far more interesting discussion to engage with than the typical bitterness-fueled anti-developer, anti-[name the group], and anti-change anti-gentrification rant which I more often hear. Change is inevitable. The more valid question to me is: can a community help direct the pace, depth and direction of change.

Houston urban neighborhood

Houston’s Third Ward is an area immediately southeast of downtown Houston which developed a vibrant African-America residential and business community despite the many and various mechanisms of overt and institutional racism. The Third Ward is, too, a geographic recordation of redlining – policies which for generations restricted areas in which minorities were allowed to live and own property.  Historically, redlining affected not just African-Americans but also Jews, Catholics and immigrant groups.

A corollary in Denver might be the Five Point business district although a historical distinction is that Five Points evolved into, but was not originally founded as, an African-American community center. That is to say, there was a cycle of displacement and resettlement in Five Points, too, in the early nineteen-teens.

Denver urban neighborhood

Neighborhoods see major demo-graphic turnover when one group moves out or when another group shoehorns in. Contemporary urban housing has been through a number of these cycles. In most recent decades: consecutive waves of white flight and then black flight out of the inner city in favor of the suburbs was followed by urban resettlement of the vacancies by “cultural creatives” who, after reinvigorating such population-declining areas are, themselves,  pushed out by a gourmet coffee culture and the fatter wallets and more-robust housing expectations that accompany a five-dollar cappuccino .

Coleman has been using tax increment financing tools to combat pervasive gentrification by securing long-term affordability in rental housing and, thus, providing for the preservation of a mix of economic strata despite general rise in housing values.  The Third Ward’s Mayor is using deed restrictions and covenants to preserve affordable ownership opportunities.  Such sophisticated financial mechanisms aren’t available to the average person on the street. So what does someone living in a gentrifying area do to help preserve their ability to stay in their own home and community? How do us common folk engage with issues of gentrification by means other than throwing stones?

TO BE CONTINUED…

Shine a Light on Green

Installing solar PV at RiverClay

I was privileged to be a partner in developing the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental (LEED) certified condominium in the Rocky Mountain Region. RiverClay Condominiums was certified at the Silver level by the US Green Building Council. Sadly there continue to be many nay-sayers among traditional developers about the relative value of LEED-certification. This opinion may be formed by mis-information about relative costs and a reluctance to leave behind “business as usual.” But from a consumer standpoint it is indisputable that a third-party, rigorously-verified “green” standard gives far greater assurance about the authenticity of any claim to sustainability or higher-performance. And business as usual no longer has any place in business given the current economic conditions that those practices have led us to.

International Energy Delegation tours solar array at RiverClay

If you are a home buyer or renter and seek to live your values, don’t settle for caveat emptor. Demand, instead, “buyer be informed.”

Are there green- or energy-performance standards other than LEED? Absolutely! Are they all equally quantifiable and equally authenticated? Absolutely not!

If you are considering a “green” home, make sure you go into the transaction with a list of specific questions and concerns and don’t settle for any answer that is not verifiable by a credible source. If you are represented by a real estate agent, make sure this person has expertise with high-performance, sustainable systems. And, too, know the basics of the rubric of any performance standard cited. Some standards are based on the developer simply checking a box. Others require claims to be audited by a neutral third-party expert. Still others look to verify beyond a single point in time to historical performance, that is: has the original performance claim, in fact, been met. Don’t overlook older homes that have been improved by an energy remodel; new isn’t always better when it comes to certain aspects of construction.

As LEED and other green building standards have increasing history in the market there will be more “certified” homes to chose from. And some certifications will fall by the wayside while others aggregate a degree of market dominance. Today green-certified housing along the Colorado Front Range is relatively limited – but the good news is that its inventory is growing as consumers place higher expectations on the performance of their homes. Send me a comment if you want assistance in identifying some of these new options in the Denver metro area.

It’s been the case in the recent past that “green” costs more but as market demand increases, energy-effective performance will become not a privilege of the rich but a protocol for the populace. High-performance can no longer be a luxury for the financially endowed. Vox populi will have to be heard now that so many are struggling to make household budgets meet basic needs: we can longer afford to squander our resources.

By taking care of what we have, by demanding efficient performance, by voting our values with our dollars, by investing in our communities from our homes outward, by re-engaging values and habits of self-reliance and appreciation, we can all come again to live a “rich” life.

Where in your home, in your consumer choices, in your personal exchanges can you make what you currently have perform better and last longer? Do you know how to evaluate the efficiency of your current home and its systems? Do you know where to find high-performance standards?

Save with Something Free

Act now for one of these...

If you are a Colorado customer of Xcel Energy, it seems you can get a free low-flow, high-efficiency showerhead. What’s the catch — dunno yet. But Xcel has been running an impressive slate of rebates and savings programs and this seems to be right in line with other recent offerings.

If you received a mailer about this program, simply return the postage-paid postcard. Or you can order by phone by calling  1-866-397-3354. I’m not sure what happens when you call (it’s late night as I type this and you apparently need to call during Xcel’s regular business hours).  [UPDATE: I ORDERED BY PHONE; THEY SAY IT TAKES 6 WKS TO ARRIVE. QUESTIONS ASKED ARE AS DESCRIBED BELOW. WAITING FOR DELIVERY.]

The fine print: offer ends October 9th (next month), only one per household (don’t be greedy), allow six weeks for delivery (be patient but be pleased that shipping and handling is also at no cost to you), quantities are limited (you’ve got a fair start if you are reading this as I’m writing it in early September), and you have to be a Colorado Xcel customer (that seems fair — but what, I wonder, does Denver Water think about this? Recall that last time Denverites conserved a lot of water, DW wratched up costs to compensate itself).

Part of this initiative may be building out Xcel’s consumer database. They’ll ask you questions including number of persons and showers in household, do you own or rent, and does your water heater run on natural gas. A free showerhead would seem a reasonable quid pro quo for such relatively innocuous information.

Remember a low-flow showerhead conserves not only water but also power, presuming you are heating the water in a standard hot water tank . I’d imagine there are lesser savings, though savings nevertheless, if you have already made the leap to on-demand or tankless water heating.

If you believe you don’t need a low-flow showerhead, take the flow challenge: cut the top off a standard gallon milk container, fit it around your showerhead and time your standard shower flow for 24 seconds while catching the water in the container. If you fill the container in 24 seconds or less — you’ll save with Xcel’s gift.

If this program is of interest to you, don’t forget to check out Xcel’s other rebate programs.

**** CONSUMER UPDATE ****

<<SEPT 10TH: Mayor John Hickenlooper has announced that the City of Denver will receive $6,079,500 from the U.S. Department of Energy to improve community energy efficiency through its Greenprint Denver programs. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) will provide dedicated funding for the City to embark on a community-wide energy savings plan.

The community-wide energy savings plan will reach Denver’s neighborhoods in the coming weeks and months through a variety of projects, including:

• Expanding home weatherization assistance, helping Denver residents stay warm this winter;
• Installing 7 bicycle checkout kiosks near light rail stations, part of the upcoming bike-sharing program;
• Providing job training to homeless veterans to plant 4,000 trees in Denver neighborhoods.

Funds have also been allocated to make improvements to City facilities and infrastructure, including to:

• Conduct energy audits in recreation centers and libraries;
• Make energy efficiency improvements in City facilities, expected to save $400,000 annually;
• Accelerate the adoption of building and energy codes to better reflect energy efficiency in building projects; and
• Replace incandescent traffic signals with LEDs at 200 intersections. The new lights use 88 percent less energy.

Projects are expected to begin later this fall. For more information.>>

I’m One in 130 Million

Back in February of this year I was notified by my bank that two of my credit cards had been compromised in late-2008 in a batch theft through a credit card processing company called Heartland Payment Systems.

It’s inconvenient and messy to have credit and debit cards unceremoniously turned off: there’s the scramble to get new cards and to notify anyone who you’ve set up on automatic payments. And when your record-keeping isn’t perfect, there’s the guilty-sounding-regardless-of-actual-innocence round of explanations you have to make, mea culpas for why you’ve become delinquent. I had one very rude customer service rep (ironically, my professional real estate database provider) apparently wearied by a general spike in delinquent accounts  actually challenge my explanation because, as he said, “Yeah, right, you and everyone else are victims!”

As it turns out, yes,  it was me and everyone else…or at least one hundred thirty million of us! Yesterday’s news coverage by National Public Radio of the Department of Justice’s press release was the first indication I had of how great the scope of cards affected was.

But to clarify reporting errors and ambiguities of yesterday’s news coverage: 1) the indictment was breaking news but the fraud itself took place last year, 2) fraud victims were likely notified long ago so, other than normal precautions, this news should not cause a rush to panic, and 3) there appear to have been no social security numbers compromised — so no identity theft actually transpired.

But it is a wake up call. Transmission of personal and financial data is as abysmally insecure as it is ubiquitous to modern life.

And a misuse of this data can have dramatic impact on your ability to buy or refinance a home.

To lenders, you are only as good as your credit rating. And your credit rating is only as good as you and accuracy combined. Learn how to protect your accounts. Take a moment to review your credit history from all three consumer credit reporting (aka data selling*) companies:  contact Experian, Equi-Fax, and TransUnion directly. To the best of my ability to translate legalese, the third-party companies who offer to aggregate and facilitate your credit report requests appear to reserve for themselves the right to sell your contact data yet additional “third-party affiliates.” For this reason alone, I’ll go direct with the reporting agencies. You’ll, of course, balance convenience with paranoia however you see fit.

*CONSUMER ALERT: Why consumer credit reporting corporations should be allowed to make a yet additional layer of massive profit by reselling our personal data, and making us further vulnerable to fraud, is fodder for a future post.