Urban Politics Midterm Flashcards

Question

Optimum Size? (Peterson Reading)

Answer 1

“Local governments must concern themselves with operating local services as efficiently as possible in order to protect the city's economic interest. But there is little evidence that there is an optimum size at which services can be delivered with the greatest efficiency”

Answer 2

- “The interest of cities is neither a summation of individual interest nor the pursuit of optimum size. instead, policies and programs can be said to be in the interest of cities whenever the policies maintain or enhance the economic position, social prestige, or political power of the city, taken as a whole” - “Cities have these interests because cities consist of a set of social interactions structured by their location in a particular territorial space”

Answer 3

- “In determining whether a policy is in the interest of a city, therefore, one does not consider whether it has a positive or negative effect on the total range of social interactions of each and every individual. That is an impossible task. - To know whether a policy is in a cities interest, one has to consider only the impact on social relationships and so far as they are structured by their taking place within the city's boundaries”

Answer 4

“Cities, like all structured social systems, seek to improve their position in all three of the systems of stratification - economic, social, and protocol - characteristics of industrial societies. In most cases, improving standing in any one of these systems helps enhance a city's position in the other two. In the short run to be sure, cities may have to choose among economic gains, social prestige, and political weight. - However, economics does seem to be a pretty important objective for most cities.

Answer 5

- “Export is of great importance to the well-being of a city” - “To export successfully, cities must make efficient use of the three main factors of production: land, labor, and capital” - “Land is the factor to which cities are bound. Cities remain wedded to the land area in which it is blessed or cursed” - “Historically the most important variable affecting urban growth has been an area’s relationship to land and water routes”

Answer 6

- “Climate also determine the cost and desirability of habitation; Soil affects food production in surrounding areas; Terrain affects drainage, rates of air pollution and scenic beauty” - “Cities intersection of land and location with the larger national and world economy is crucial to the city's fate”

Answer 7

“The discretion available to a local government in determining its land use remains the greatest arena for the exercise of local autonomy”

Answer 8

- “Cities must also attract productive labor. However local governments in the United States are limited in their capacity to control the flow of labor” - “Unlike Nation States cities cannot control movement across their boundaries” - “Competition among cities are now for highly skilled workers and professional and managerial talents like doctors” - “Through zoning laws, cities can ensure that adequate land is available for middle class residences. They can provide parks, recreation areas, and good qualities schools in areas where the economically most productive live”

Answer 9

- “Capital is the second factor of production that must be attracted to an economically productive territory” - “At the local level in the United States cities are much less able to control the flow of capital” - “Local governments cannot spend more than they receive in tax revenue without damaging their credit or even running the risk of bankruptcy” - “Local governments can entice the capital in their area by minimizing the tax on capital and on profit from capital investment” - “Cities can discourage labor from unionizing so as to keep industrial labor cost competitive”

Answer 10

Constraints that are imposed on cities and towns by other surrounding governments

Answer 11

Local government institutional structure (and variation!) - Strong mayor vs. city manager/council (and variations w/in these systems) - Electoral timing Regional fragmentation - Competition from surrounding local governments - Overlapping jurisdiction - Regional governments can help to solve coordination challenges restricted by powers/regulations from state and federal governments

Answer 12

- Cities where the mayor wields a lot of power. - In some cities, the mayor is a ceremonial figurehead and doesn’t have a lot of power. The electorate has an easier way of knowing who to hold accountable for anything(the mayor)

Answer 13

Many new england towns are governed by this system. - Creates a legislative body. - Everyone in the town is a member of the legislative body. - This can get messy and unpredictable. They are voting on zoning laws. - There is an executive branch: the select board(4-5 people) holds authority over appointing people to boards and committees.

Answer 14

Elected separately and the rest of the local government does not have a lot of say in educational policy.

Answer 15

- Housing development approval - People on these boards are usually volunteers

Answer 16

- Elected officials - Often represents a fairly represent subset of the electorate - Appointed officials

Answer 17

Local elections can happen at very different times(Presidential, Midterm, Off-cycle) When local elections happen at off-cycle times there is less turnout than when they coincide with presidential and/or midterm elections Many local elections are nonpartisan Reasons people participate in politics(vote) - You have to be interested in what’s going on - Personal stake - Partisanship - Time - Access to the franchise(polling place proximity/wait times)(knowledge about election timing) - recruitment/engagement (whether politicians/political parties actually reach out to electorates) Electoral demographics - People likely to turnout in off-cycle elections - White, old, homeowners - Senior homeowners are overrepresented in every city

Answer 18

People get to self-select into the types of communities that best fit their needs This could lead to segregation(communities of people who want good schools) People can get services that are more narrowly tailored to them Promotes self-governance: people get a more direct say

Answer 19

Goal of cities overall is to maximize economic position, prosperity. The more places you have to compete with, the more pressure People are going to go to place that offer them the optimal bundle of goods and services Balancing act of figuring out the optimal tax rate and bundle of social goods Peterson focus on economics and not politics

Answer 20

Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) - negotiated payments, a voluntary payment - so institutions pay it to keep up their reputation and also if they don’t pay it, the city could make for example BU’s life harder. To build the CDS required a lot of permits from the city of Boston. Also paying the PILOT is also about the institution's ability to pay. BU is a very wealthy institution so it can offered to pay the PILOT

Answer 21

well off individuals usually gets to vote with their feet

Answer 22

Strong physical infrastructure that bases an institution in a certain community. Anchor institutions challenge the framework that Peterson introduced because places like Boston that have so many anchor institutions(universities, hospitals) that are huge and always hiring people. So Boston does not have the problem of needing highly skilled talent because they already have those people and the demand for those people in Boston remains constant. Boston is not in competition for talent. They don’t need to pursue these developmental opportunities because they already have guaranteed institutions that attract capital.

Answer 23

The allocation of ambulances is based on the senior population.

Answer 24

Regional cooperation Important variations! - Voluntary agreements between local governments - Imposed top-down from state/federal government (Can mandate certain regional protections)

Answer 25

Internal capacity - smaller local governments have less capacity because they have less staff capacity so they might want to cooperate with some of the bigger cities to pool resources. They might also cooperate with other small local governments to apply for federal grants together. Mutual benefits - transportation(subways, trains) across different cities. Regional cooperation can help cities address negative externalities Basic technical assistance NOT Cities don’t want to act in their own interest (Don’t want to lose autonomy) Cities don’t want to share a tax base and resources (Don’t want to lose autonomy) Wealthy neighborhoods wouldn’t want to cooperate do to transportation and racial biases Political similarities can make cities want to cooperate with each other

Answer 26

Specialization and expertise Drawbacks - Whether SPD’s are efficiency enhancing - It’s hard to hold them accountable - There is not a lot of contested SPD elections(people who own more property have greater voting powers)

Answer 27

Overfishing - when multiple local governments are taxing the same tax base, this result in a problem where more taxes are being levied without an improvement in government services Strong relationship between having lot of different special purpose governments and greater taxation

Answer 28

“Few people like raising gas prices, but to people in rural communities-who typically drive long distances to everything-gas prices are a major source of concern” “There concerns are also farming, schools and property taxes”

Answer 29

“As the population in rural places dwindles, the possibility of school consolidation increases, and the identity of the town-it's schools-dry up and blow away”

Answer 30

“For many people in rural communities, people understand public issues through a lens of rural consciousness. This is a perspective that encompasses a strong identity as a rural resident, resentment toward the cities, and a belief that rural communities are not given their fair share of resources or respect” Rural Consciousness has three main elements: first rural Consciousness was about perceptions of power, or who makes decisions and who decides what to even discuss. Second it showed up with respect to perceptions of values and lifestyles. Third it involved perceptions of resources or who gets what”

Answer 31

The post World War II anti-communist scare”. Joe McCarthy was a US senator that is responsible for McCarthyism

Answer 32

Father of progressivism

Answer 33

“People in rural areas often perceived that government was particularly dismissive of the concerns of people in rural communities” “The urban versus rural divide is undoubtedly in part about race”

Answer 34

“The Democrats suffer in the transformation of votes seats most clearly in states that are hotly contested, like Pennsylvania, as well as in states where they typically expect to win majorities, like New York”

Answer 35

“Democrats are more likely to live in homogeneous Democratic neighborhoods, whereas Republicans are more likely to live in mixed neighborhoods “Democrats are usually in urban districts”

Answer 36

“In some places the minority parties only hope for legislative representation is If it's supporters are clustered so that they form majorities in one or more district”

Answer 37

“Because of the way voters are typically distributed across districts, the winning party typically receives a seat share that is substantially higher than its votes shares” “Within region city populations are often arranged in hierarchies, such that the largest city is twice as large as a second largest city, and so on”

Answer 38

In representative electoral systems, gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency “Gerrymandering often makes things worse for the Democrats when Republicans have drawn the districts, and a Democrats improve their seat shares when they have the opportunity to draw the district”

Answer 39

“On their own, low-profile elections like a state supreme court retention election rarely attract much voter interest, so tying opponents to divisive national issue is a common campaign tactic” “From the candidates’ vantagepoint, the rationale behind such attacks seems obvious. National politics is rife with people and issues that are evocative to voters. To say “Obamacare” or “Mitt Romney” is to cue a set of meaningful associations with the national parties, the social groups that support them, and the positions that they take. Contemporary state and local politics are presumed to be mostly devoid of such symbols, meaning that national politics can serve as a ready benchmark against which to understand otherwise unknown state and local candidates”

Answer 40

“Just as an Egg McMuffin is the same in every McDonald’s, America’s two major political parties are increasingly perceived to offer the same choices throughout the country” “To ignore state and local politics is a costly omission, as it means ignoring the politics that elect the vast majority of officials in the U.S. as well as the policy areas where states and localities hold sway”

Answer 41

“One way to stop taking the nationalization of contemporary politics for granted— and to recognize the importance of studying nationalization—is to think back to America’s earliest days as a nation. For the framers of the U.S. Constitution, citizens’ state-level loyalties were expected to be far stronger than those to the newborn nation” “Citizens were also more likely to encounter state employees than employees of a distant federal government”

Answer 42

“It is not just partisan leanings that differ across American communities. Political mobilization and political behavior do, too. Since many political activities require face-to-face interactions, people who live in certain places are more likely to be asked to sign a petition, attend a campaign event, donate to a candidate, or vote than people living elsewhere”

Answer 43

“One feature of nationalized political behavior is that it is oriented toward the national level of government and its divisions, to the near-exclusion of the state or local levels. Still, how people engage in national politics is known to be related to various individual-level factors, from their social class and racial and ethnic background to their religious backgrounds and engagement, age cohort, and other characteristics” “But those differences are primarily due to compositional differences in who lives where rather than the contextual effect of living in a specific place. When political attitudes and behavior are nationalized, similar people subject to similar information environments and mobilization efforts should respond in similar ways”

Answer 44

“To contend that American political behavior is nationalizing is not to argue for the death of distance or the irrelevance of geography. To the contrary, this book is motivated precisely by the fact that geography remains a powerful determinant of so many aspects of Americans’ social and economic lives. The quality of schools, the danger of crime, the availability of jobs, the presence of pollution—all of these concerns affect some neighborhoods, municipalities, and regions far more than others”

Answer 45

“One proximate cause emphasized here is the transformation of the U.S. media market. As Americans switch from reading print newspapers and watching local TV news to online news sources and cable television, they are moving away from news sources that provide significant information about state and local politics” “People think about themselves as members of varying social groups, and those attachments prove critical in explaining how they handle new information, the attitudes they adopt, and the actions they take. Two people might be categorized as identical based on demographic categories, for instance, and yet they may differ dramatically in what they understand those categories to mean for their lives” “Overwhelming media attention on the U.S. presidency might be one factor behind the disproportionate interest in national politics”

Answer 46

Basically since authority seemingly has shifted from state and local governments to the federal government voters care more about national politics

Answer 47

The observation that the American economy has grown more nationally integrated over the same period gives reason to think that economic factors might play an important role as well. During its history as an agricultural and then industrial country, America’s economies were very distinctive regionally: cotton was the product of south and later the southwest, cars were made in the midwest, and potatoes came from Idaho and other northern and western states. But the service-oriented economy of recent decades has reduced regional economic distinctiveness” “These economic shifts remain a valuable backdrop that might help explain the nationalizing political parties”

Answer 48

“Few voters have different partisan identifications at different levels of government, further undermining the capacity of state or local politics to sustain divisions that are not animated nationally”

Answer 49

Revenue from taxes Intergovernmental transfers charges/fines Parking tickets and speeding tickets

Answer 50

Property Sales tax Individual income tax

Answer 51

Public services (Public transportation) Higher value housing

Answer 52

Physical location(less vulnerable) - Being close to a beach - Having anchor institutions - Having lots of land area for development Demographics of community - Having lots of school age children will put a lot of fiscal pressure on the school system - Having an aging population are less expensive for a city than school age children - Having a lot of people with college degrees is attractive to businesses Property tax rates Access to amenities Urban/rural divide Cost of housing Crime

Answer 53

State/federal funding can come with strings attached! Ex. cities have to engage in Regional planning to get the funds

Answer 54

Most large investments in cities are structured as block grants, which means you have to apply for the $$$ Lots of paperwork And you have to wait for a bit for the $$$ Many cities don’t have great grant writing ability: like they don’t have the staff that know how to apply for the grants Bigger richer cities are the ones that have the capability to apply for grants

Answer 55

Preemption law - the state government taking away power from the local government Ex. states banning local governments from banning plastic bags Why do states do preemption law? - Symbolic partisan politics - To get headlines - Businesses lobby the state - Like a grocery store might find it annoying to just use reusable bags in one local government district and plastic bag everywhere else in the state, so the grocery store lobbies to the state to get that local government to not ban plastic bags Tax and expenditure limits(TEL) - State governments can limit how much a local government can spend or raise or both. What is the rationale behind setting these limits? - To limit taxation at the local level

Answer 56

You can vote on it! Budget override = a community asses a specific amount of property taxes in addition to it levy limit (The general budget of a community and a budget override is just asking for more money for the general budget) Debt exclusion = a community can assess additional taxes to pay their debt services(principal + interest) for a specific capital project (ex. a new school building) (Debt exclusion is used to fund specific projects like building a new school) These types of votes usually have low turnout If you are in a community that is less diverse than budget overrides and debt exclusion are less likely to pass

Answer 57

Political geography How democrats are distributed may be a disadvantage for them and this happens in 50/50 split states Democrats tend to be more spatially clustered than republicans particularly in more dense and urban areas. If we were in a proportional representation system, it would not matter where democrats live Rodden runs thousands of simulations Districts get drawn every 10 years for the census; the party in charge gets to draw the districts in some places; in other states districts are drawn by bipartisan commission Legislative districts have to be equal in population Incumbents prefer to have districts drawn these ways so that they can get re-elected This pattern is seen in the industrial core In contrast in a red state the clustering of democrats might be the only way that democrats gets legislative seats

Answer 58

Cramer's argument: Living in a rural area has a causal effect on your political views Where I live shapes my values and thus will determine who I vote for What are things in rural places that people are concerned about? - Gas prices because things are so spread out so people have to drive a longer distance - People in rural areas are looking around them and they are not liking what they see and that is what shapes there politics - Hard work vs. the social safety net (Poor rural people don’t want welfare and a safety net due to their pride. So when they vote for people like Trump they are not voting against their interest because they aren’t interested in things like welfare which is not something that Trump is offering) - Race - They are concerned that cities make decisions that affect the rural areas but the cities don’t listen to what the rural areas want - They aren’t fans of public sector or university employees (In rural areas the people who are working in the public sector usually make the most money; so like school teachers which is not the case in cities where public school teachers don’t make that much money) - The tourist economy (People buying there very expensive 2nd homes; this drives up urban resentment; also creates this perception of urban areas being richer than they might actually be) - That they have different lifestyles than people who live in urban areas

Answer 59

People use their views on national politics to make their judgements on local politics What is the nationalization of state and local politics? - The rise of cable news and the internet news is focused on national news - Massive decline in local media providers - Big growth in polarization and partisanship - We as voting citizens are holding politicians accountable for the stances they are taking on national issues and these are things that they have no control over

Answer 60

“Political leaders often use threats to public safety as a rationale for legislating segregation with zoning laws for example” “As zoning practice is spread through the 1920s, emphasis on the enhancement of property values became the dominant argument; almost universally, it was believed that the wrong sorts of people's residing, or even working, in an area could negatively impact property values”

Answer 61

“Aside from adding wealth to property owning and voting residence, city governments had a separate reason to protect and enhance property values - taxes” “When property values declined, municipal officials face the unwelcome task of raising taxes or cutting the budget” “As Municipal governments began to spend vast sums on improving the lives and environments of residence, ensuring that white, wealthy residents benefit from the new city services became a utmost importance” “As a result, in many cities, black areas lacked municipal services such as paving, water, sewage, lighting and garbage removal”

Answer 62

“Fighting racial zoning was one of the early nationwide causes to be adopted by the NAACP, and due to the organization's work in 1917, the Supreme Court ruled as racial zoning unconstitutional and Buchanan versus Warley”

Answer 63

“Generally, higher turnout is associated with greater participation of the poor and people of color, populations that both tended to be opposed to zoning plans and stood to lose from their implementation. Thus, I expect that where turnout was higher, the likelihood of enacting zoning was lower”

Answer 64

“We find that individuals who participate in community meetings on new housing developments differ starkly from the broader population. they are older, whiter, long-time residents, and more likely to be homeowners” “The meeting minutes revealed that these forums are dominated by an unrepresentative and privileged group of neighborhood defenders” “Community meetings are dominated by neighborhood Defenders - that is, individuals from the immediate surroundings. The wider community, in contrast, is barely represented” “Participants are usually more socioeconomically privileged than those who do not attend zoning board meetings”

Answer 65

“The only predictor of the number of comments a participant is going to make is partisanship. Democrats are less likely than Republicans to make multiple comments at a meeting” “Commenters are overwhelmingly white”

Answer 66

“In addition to being demographically unrepresentative, meeting attendees overwhelmingly opposed the construction of new housing” “Women, republicans, and homeowners are significantly more likely to oppose the construction of new housing. “Democrats are more likely to support projects than Republicans are” “Black support for new housing is significantly higher than other racial and ethnic groups” “White meeting participants in more diverse communities are less likely to be supportive of new housing”

Answer 67

“Housing supply should be reasonably responsive to demand. this implies that national and regional housing markets should produce enough additional housing to meet increases in demand, as driven by population and job growth” “Within a city or Metropolitan area, some new housing should be added in the neighborhoods with highest demand, where people most want to live” "Markets should provide a diverse set of housing choices that match household budgets and preferences” “Regardless of income, all people can afford decent quality, stable housing in healthy communities”

Answer 68

“Compared to many consumer goods and services, housing has some unusual characteristics that can create market frictions and make it difficult to achieve these outcomes. First, housing supply adjusts slowly over time. Developing a new subdivision or apartment building takes time. Unlike most consumer goods, home builders can't quickly ramp up production to meet a rapid increase in the demand for homes” “Second, housing demand and supply are deeply rooted in place. People choose where to live based on the location of their job, their family and friends, and amenities like school quality and weather. Increasing demand for homes in California can’t be satisfied by building more homes in Oklahoma” "Third, all changes to housing supply require explicit approval from local governments. Ford and General Motors don't have to ask government permission to increase the number of cars or SUVs that their factories produce. but it is illegal for landowners and builders to construct a single new home without the approval of the city or county in which the land is located”

Answer 69

“Chapter 3 looks at the flip side of this problem: the United States builds too many homes on locations that are environmentally vulnerable and / or damaging. Within large Metro areas, most new housing is contracted at the urban fringe, far from job centers and public transportation, In car dependent locations. Millions of homes have been built in parts of the country that frequently and predictably suffer from severe weather and natural disasters: areas adjacent to rivers and oceans that are prone to flooding, Western lands at high risk of wildfires. the harms wrought by climate change are not shared evenly: Black, Latino, and Indigenous community disproportionately occupy land that is at high risk of extreme heat, flooding, and other climate-related events” “Chapter 5 addresses the limitations of home ownership as a strategy for wealth building. Currently, home equity is the largest single asset for most middle-income americans. But this is risky for individual households because it concentrates rather than diversifies assets, while home equity can be difficult to assess for short term needs” “Home ownership is a major driver of persistent racial wealth gaps between Black and white Americans”

Answer 70

“Existing policies and programs have created winners who are invested in protecting the status quo. homeowners who receive federal tax subsidies for their suburban, car oriented Lifestyles wield enormous influence over city councils and state legislators, as do industry groups such as home builders and mortgage bankers”

Answer 71

“Across US cities and neighborhoods over the past 30 years, the places where housing was most expensive had generally built less new housing than moderately priced communities. not enough additional homes have been built in locations with the highest demand”

Answer 72

“In many parts of the United States, the development process gives too much difference to current residents-especially affluent homeowners-who don't want their communities to change. But those preferences are imposing economic, environmental, and social cost on the rest of the country-especially on low-income people, black and Latino families”

Answer 73

Land near City centers or other large shop clusters is more expensive than land at the urban fringe, because people will pay to avoid long commutes. and densely populated cities with decent quality public transportation systems, land near subway stations or high frequency bus lines is more expensive” “People will also pay more to live in places where local government services improve their daily quality of life. Nearly all public school systems and the United States use Geographic boundaries to determine catchment zones: where you live determines which school your child has the right to attend. The perceived quality or desirability of different schools is capitalized into land values: the prices of structurally identical homes located on either side of catchment zone boundaries can vary enormously” “Other locally provided public services that affect land values include public safety (crime prevention), maintenance of roads and sidewalks, parks and recreational spaces, even something as mundane as reliable trash pickup” “To make housing in desirable locations cheaper, use less land per home”

Answer 74

“High-rise apartment buildings make Financial sense in Manhattan and downtown San Francisco, where lots of people are willing to live in small homes close to jobs, restaurants, and museums. High-rise apartments don't make financial sense in most distant suburbs, small towns, or rural areas, where developers don't need to economize on land costs”

Answer 75

“Zoning regulates housing simply through four primary channels. first, zoning laws by the city or county into separate regions called zones that map on to designated Geographic areas. Second, they specify what types of structures and land use are permitted or prohibited in each zone. Third zoning laws set out dimensional requirements for all structures, such as maximum Building height or minimum lot size and width. Fourth zoning laws set out the process for obtaining permission to build new structures hey. A key distinction is whether development is allowed by right or requires discretionary approvals. By right approved by administrative staff, As long as the proposals confirm with use type and dimensional requirement. On the other hand, some types of development are required to go through a more extensive review process, sometimes called conditional use or special use. the process for obtaining conditional use approvals varies widely across localities but often require the developer to present the proposal at public meetings”

Answer 76

“Broadly speaking, researchers have relied on three approaches to measuring zoning stringency:surveys of local planners, reviewing and coding legal documents, or inferring stringency from observable housing market data “One of the most reliable indicators of restrictive zoning turns out to be a very intuitive measure: places where housing prices or rents are high relative to household income almost always have restrictive zoning”

Answer 77

“In regions where housing is expensive, employees have to offer higher salaries to attract and retain good workers. Not building enough Homes at divers price points in close proximity to major job centers is particularly damaging”

Answer 78

“Zoning reform should embrace two key principles. First, each jurisdiction should allow a diverse range of residential structure types and home sizes. second, the development process should be simpler, shorter, and more transparent” “Localities should Target better housing outcomes, not just better policies on paper” “Allowing housing at a range of price points within every community helps a larger regional economy” “As long as land use regulation is entirely a matter of local control, it will be impossible to achieve widespread zoning reform. Every community has a block of existing homeowners who passionately resist changes to their neighborhood-and who are willing to devote time, energy, money, and political capital to fighting proposed reforms”

Answer 79

zoning/land use regulations Permitting process construction/labor cost Funding the construction of public/subsidized housing and homeless shelters

Answer 80

Subsidies for low-income renters (e.x housing choice vouchers) Primarily funded at the federal and state levels, local governments do not have the resources to target demand side interventions

Answer 81

Zoning(residential, commercial, and industrial) Land use regulations (regulating how things get built) - Special permits - Public participation requirements

Answer 82

Rising housing costs - communities do not allow enough housing to be built to meet demand economic/racial segregation - some communities use these tools to exclude

Answer 83

Affects access to a variety of public goods and services, including schools, safe green spaces, clean air, high quality public transportation Affects who you peers are (in ways that are good and bad) High housing costs ensure that access to high opportunity communities is restricted to the most privilege

Answer 84

Residential areas don't want to hear the construction of industrial areas Ensures different amenities in different places Zoning can be used to prevent commercial areas from becoming residential areas and vice versa Bad idea: Redlining

Answer 85

Racial zoning was the most explicit form Variety of ways to restrict undesired residents from moving in Restrict supply of housing - No multifamily housing allowed - Onerous requirements for the construction of multifamily housing

Answer 86

Why did these zoning ordinances emerge? - Helping the people who voted for you - Racism and segregation - Public safety and services - Taxes - in places where there were higher property values, the residents were eager to protect their property values and had this fear of seeing their property values go down. These are the people that will likely show up and vote at public meetings. - Down zoning - restrict density - Up zoning - bringing the density up

Answer 87

Huge range of regulations governing wide variety of facets of land use: Septic Wetlands Inclusionary - making sure within an area there is some affordable housing Parcel shape

Answer 88

By right development - is granted when a development proposal strictly conforms to zoning and building codes and, thus, qualifies for construction without requiring discretionary approval Special permit - developer must submit their plan to the planning boards and usually a public meeting happens and as we know that public never likes new development

Answer 89

The meetings take up a lot of time, so the type of people who show up to these meetings will be those who have an interest in the meeting topic, thus homeowners are more likely because they have a stake as homeowners. Sense of efficacy - if you participate, you have to think that your voice is going to matter. So those who have longevity in the neighborhood probably feel like they will be heard. Also renter vs. homeowner Education - do you understand the lingo of zoning to understand what a new development is going to mean to your neighborhood? There are also language barriers - are meetings just down in English, so do immigrants have any incentive to participate in these meetings Political recruitment really matter? - Formal mechanism - laws that says developer have to send notices to tenants letting them know a development is happening - Informal mechanism - homeowners talking to each other about local politics in ways that renters may not

Answer 90

Intensity of opinion People don’t like changes to their neighborhood Homeowners have really well-developed ideology of housing People who are of the neutral stance don’t want to take a stance that puts you at odds with your neighbors Housing developments has a lot of concentrated costs and diffuse Concentrated costs: construction noise, inconvenience related to parking, may lose view

Answer 91

National movement to push against corruption Required local governments to post things in advance and make sure all meetings were open for public observation Pro for transparency - Encourage official to take on stances that are popular so they can keep their position - More diverse subset of voices and perspectives - Political legitimacy - makes people feel like they can trust the process more if they can actually see it, easier to hold the decision males accountable; democratic - Reduce collegiality in governing bodies Con for transparency - May end up with chaotic chorus of voices who can make a decision - Inefficient

Answer 92

Neighborhood defenders, gentrification, and supply skepticism - Wealthy areas are better able to organize to oppose housing - Developer avoid areas where they expect high opposition - Gentrifying areas bear brunt of development pressures; reluctant to endorse solutions oriented towards market-rate housing - Supply skepticism: solid majority of people who believe that the housing market can be subject to supply and demand; this can be explained because we have so much inequality in housing development; people don’t perceive that new housing is helping with the broader housing crisis because new houses is usually really expensive

Answer 93

Require changes to the local zoning near mass transit (including bus routes) to build new housing Allows communities to have more transit rate housing

Answer 94

Less than 10% of the city/towns housing stock is affordable which enables local Zoning Boards of Appeals to approve affordable housing developments under flexible rules if at least 20-25% of the units have long-term affordability restrictions Subsidized housing inventory affordable units/total units should = greater than or equal to 10%

Answer 95

Rent as a percent of income OR area median income

Answer 96

“From the 1930s until the late 1960s, U.S. housing policies were caught between innovation and regressive racial attitudes that produced a multitiered approach to public policy: homeownership and development for white residents, public housing or extractive and predatory tenancy for African Americans in the wake of urban renewal practices” “This not only made Black children vulnerable to dangerous vermin, but the absence of housing options outside the urban ghetto meant their parents were easily coerced into paying high prices for the substandard housing” “The dearth of housing and a never- ending supply of tenants meant that there was no incentive for landlords to improve their property. Instead of making necessary repairs, landlords schemed to create more dwellings out of existing units. Small apartments were subdivided into even smaller apartments” “This environment was not only a barrier for Black renters; it was also used as “proof” that African Americans lacked fitness as homeowners”

Answer 97

“Even though African Americans had been largely excluded from the FHA’s innovative economic tools that made homeownership cheap and easy for millions of Americans, that did not mean that Black people did not buy homes. But racism and exclusion made the costs higher while the quality was lower, and the result rendered homeownership differently for African Americans in comparison with their white peers. Black housing was valued differently from white housing, thus stripping its supposed asset- like quality away” “The average value of a single- family home in an urban community was $8,400, but the average value of a Black Owned home in an urban area was $3,700”

Answer 98

“The essence of this “uneven development” was investment and development for suburbs, compared with extraction and deterioration in urban core communities”

Answer 99

“FHA officials, over time, would claim that the exclusion of African Americans from mortgage protections stemmed from their own financial conservatism and not racial discrimination, but the agency’s underwriting criteria for mortgage insurance prioritized racial considerations. For example, the FHA’s Underwriting Manual, which spelled out the terms under which the agency would insure a home mortgage, considered a neighborhood to be “far less stable and undesirable” if white school children had to attend public schools where “the majority or a considerable number of pupils represent a far lower level of society or an incompatible racial element” “The fact that the FHA began as an agency intent on expanding homeownership to lower- income families made its later claims to exclude African Americans for economic reasons ring hollow” “Officials within the agency contended that African Americans were too poor to be homeowners. By the 1960s, FHA officials would also claim that the organization’s middle- class orientation let them ill equipped to deal with lower income African Americans when new legislation compelled them to by the end of that decade” “Racial concerns shaped the public policies of the FHA from its inception. Because the federal government relied on “experts” from the housing industry to shape its emergent housing policies, it imported the racial common sense of the real estate industry, including the foregone conclusion that Blacks and other nonwhites should be separated from whites to preserve property values”

Answer 100

“Conversely, the more exclusive the suburb and, therefore, the more difficult the entry of African Americans, the greater the financial exploitation of urban Black renters and buyers desperate for better housing. The continued disinvestment and marginalization of the urban core helped to sustain suburbanization and all of the financial benefits for business that came along with it”

Answer 101

“Private land developers were then supposed to redevelop the heavily subsidized land with affordable housing for those who had been displaced by the clearance program. Instead of rebuilding urban communities and allowing for the return of those who had been displaced by the federal bulldozers, private developers built condominiums and apartments and refurbished shopping districts for a middle- class clientele while ignoring the housing needs of those who had been displaced” “Although tens of thousands of Black families were upended by renewal practices, not all of them qualified for public housing; for some, their income was too high”

Answer 102

“To qualify for the services of the VHMCP, prospective clients had to have been turned down at least twice by the FHA and the VA before they would be directed to a participating lender.79 The VHMCP was an underwhelming response to the overwhelming housing needs of African Americans. Even though the program was primarily intended to help minority buyers who could not secure financing, the VHMCP was also utilized to find loans for those in rural areas. To underline the depth of racism within the real estate industry and the FHA, consider that even with a program largely intended to help minority buyers, the VHMCP’s overwhelming assistance went to “non- minorities.”

Answer 103

“Subsidized housing is resource-intensive, and provides housing for a variety of groups for which market-rate housing is unaffordable, including low-income families with children, people with disabilities, and low-wage workers. Black and Latino people are disproportionately represented among those populations, and thus particularly affected by an insufficient supply of subsidized housing” “We use the umbrella term subsidized housing to refer to any housing made more affordable by government support or regulation, regardless of whether it received a public subsidy. This includes housing supported by public subsidies through federal, state, or local government programs”

Answer 104

“The Greater Boston region faces two simultaneous and interrelated subsidized housing problems. The larger—and well-documented—issue is that there are not nearly enough subsidized units to meet the region’s pressing needs. But, existing units in Boston’s suburbs may be allocated inequitably and inefficiently, leading to vacant units in subsidized housing developments, lotteries that are not fully subscribed, and potential biases in who gets access to subsidized housing”

Answer 105

“Information about subsidized housing in Massachusetts is deeply fragmented across multiple units of government and nonprofits. The absence of complete, centralized databases means that residents of one city or town are often completely unaware of available units in a neighboring community “ Each jurisdiction—and sometimes each development— comes with its own complex application process. This administrative burden creates a formidable obstacle to the region’s subsidized housing seekers” “Suburban subsidized housing is often exclusionary on several dimensions. It can be restricted to residents of a suburban jurisdiction through the use of local preferences. Moreover, it is often too expensive for many low income households. It is frequently located in transit inaccessible locations, creating impossible commutes for households lacking vehicles”

Answer 106

“Many communities favor applications from their own residents” “Some communities limit the most affordable of their subsidized units to senior households” “Many suburban subsidized housing developments are financially out of reach for low-income homeseekers “Much of the region’s subsidized housing is being built in places that are inaccessible or undesirable to many low-income homeseekers” “Racial and economic discrimination is rampant in the Boston metropolitan area, and limits the ability of Black, Latino, and low-income homeseekers to equitably access the region’s subsidized housing”

Answer 107

Implementing effective policy change requires leadership, resources, and time. An Office of Fair Housing can coordinate the reforms we describe below, reduce policy fragmentation, and provide a central institution to lead on fair housing. This office could work with the new governor and attorney general to develop Massachusetts’ Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing plan”

Answer 108

Massachusetts must develop processes that ensure that all sectors of the housing development and application process are complying with both the letter and spirit of fair housing law. This includes developers, realtors, property managers, and housing consultants developing lotteries/marketing plans. The new governor’s administration can take various actions to improve compliance, such as setting clear guidelines, offering training for developers and property managers about fair housing, randomly auditing lotteries and marketing plans, and providing adequate staffing for enforcing fair housing violations”

Answer 109

Housing data are collected by multiple state, local, and private-sector actors. This fragmentation makes it difficult for prospective applicants to find new housing and for policymakers to evaluate the efficacy of different policy programs. Massachusetts should create a state-level position whose responsibility is to oversee the centralization and evaluation of housing data across the state, including for subsidized housing programs. They should implement durable systems to ensure that these data are regularly updated and analyzed to ensure equitable access to subsidized housing”

Answer 110

Massachusetts should create a centralized and regularly updated system that provides detailed information about available subsidized housing. While Housing Navigator provides a promising, user-facing tool, Jennifer Gilbert at the Housing Navigator strongly believes “collecting and maintaining high quality data must start with a state-level responsibility to ensure that it remains continuously up to date.” A centralized database would ensure equal access to information about subsidized housing. User-facing tools like Housing Navigator would remain accurate, and homeseekers would not have to rely on imperfect affirmative marketing plans as key sources of information. Any data collection efforts must focus on the entire life cycle of the subsidized housing unit. While it is fairly easy to collect information at lease-up, it is just as important to have up”

Answer 111

Massachusetts should create a simplified application for all subsidized housing—akin to the Common App for college applications—that would allow subsidized homeseekers to use the same form to apply for multiple subsidized housing developments. Massachusetts has already begun this effort by creating a common application for state-funded public housing.50 While property owners and lease managers might need to ask for additional, specialized information at a later date, this streamlined paperwork would reduce barriers to applying to housing lotteries in multiple developments. Additionally, by making additional information separate from the common form, regulators and policy makers will be able to clearly see what additional information is requested and if these requests create inequitable or unfair burdens on prospective tenants. New York City’s Housing Connect may provide a helpful model for merging fragmented housing systems into one common application system”

Answer 112

Even with the issues we have identified here, building new housing is better than not. Housing near transit is better than housing far from transit, but housing far from transit is still better than nothing. Housing at the outskirts is better than not building at all. We need to open up for more housing everywhere. This means that Massachusetts needs to further its efforts to remove the local land use regulations/zoning that make it difficult to build multifamily housing. The shortcomings we have identified in this report—in the operation of lotteries, the marketing of new housing, the lack of comprehensive data and information, the locations of developments, and others—are not a reason to prevent or delay new housing of any type, but instead are calls to action. There are numerous ways to improve affordable housing, from new planning to long-term maintenance, and every step of the process should be examined to keep us on track to increase the housing supply and the equitable access to subsidized housing”

Answer 113

MBTA Communities pushes the state toward building in transit-accessible communities. While it does not mandate subsidized housing, facilitating the construction of multifamily housing also makes it easier to build affordable housing. State and local officials must set land use and zoning to allow for the construction of multifamily housing in places in walkable communities where people can commute by mass transit. When communities refuse to follow this plan, the new governor’s administration should be prepared to promptly take action to achieve compliance and prevent communities from using various delay tactics to avoid upzoning and building new housing”

Answer 114

While seniors are an at-risk population, it is clear that suburban communities use these restrictions in order to make multifamily developments more politically palatable. They prevent other vulnerable (and more racially diverse) groups—including families at risk of homelessness—from accessing housing in high-opportunity areas. We encourage the state to limit their use and to carefully evaluate community need and the racial implications of their prevalence”

Answer 115

While it is understandable why communities would like to prioritize their own residents, the housing crisis is regional. When suburban communities implement these local preferences, they are signaling to disproportionately Black and Latino residents of Boston and Gateway Cities that they are not welcome in these communities. Equitable solutions must approach our housing crisis regionally. Removing local preferences should also be paired with housing marketing plans that include a broader and more equitable set of communities, to ensure that the housing is actually available to and allocated to people throughout the region, rather than just those who live in the community and are more likely to be aware of it”

Answer 116

While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts currently evaluates whether affirmative marketing plans comply with fair housing law, the evaluators are not tracking the outcomes of these plans. They do not currently even have the data to examine whether affirmative marketing plans adequately reach underserved communities—or whether they yield undersubscribed lotteries, as we have found in this report. Beyond assigning this impact-tracking responsibility to particular staff, the state should ensure that contact lists are updated and include surrounding cities with large nonWhite populations—not just the city of Boston. The state could use this information to create clear guidance and templates that make it as easy as possible for developers and consultants to comply with fair housing requirements”

Answer 117

“For most middle-income Americans, the equity accumulated in their homes is the largest single source of wealth. homeownership has been marked as a Cornerstone of the American lifestyle, as a source of both individual wealth building and Community stability. but there are substantial downsides - for families and for the nation - to rely on home ownership as the primary strategy for accumulating wealth. For individuals in households, putting all their savings into a single asset is financially risky. Decades of discrimination and housing and mortgage markets have limited Black and Latino becoming homeowners, contributing to persistent racial wealth gaps. Current homeownership subsidies in the federal income tax code are highly regressive, with the largest benefits accruing to affluent households

Answer 118

“One reason why buying a home is a great deal, relative to other asset types, is because of federal policy choices. Almost no one in the United States by their home outright. Homes are too expensive for most households to purchase with cash. Home buyers in the United States can buy a home with while paying less than 10% of the purchase price upfront, financing the remainder through a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, at prime interest rates that have been below 6% since the Great Recession”

Answer 119

“However, homeownership breaks one of the key rules of finances: diversification. Financial planners recommend that clients spread their stock portfolio across a range of companies and industry such as index fund rather than putting all their money into a single company” “Another drawback to storing all your savings in your home is that extracting cash from real estate is more complicated than fishing change out of a piggy bank. In financial terms, housing is an illiquid asset” “Selling your house is a lengthy and complex process even under good market conditions”

Answer 120

“Because most people's homes are located near where they work, homeownership commits another Financial sin: returns to home ownership are positively correlated with returns to employment. That is, the likelihood that your house appreciates the value over time mirrors the health of labor markets in your city or region”

Answer 121

“Redlining was a practice used to limit black and Latino families from becoming homeowners so that's yet another barriers and why homeownership is filled with inequity and not a great source for people of color to gain wealth that's why homeownership needs to be more diverse and people should not be relying on just home ownership to build wealth”

Answer 122

“Overdependence on home equity leads to another unpleasant social consequence: homeowners react with hostility toward anything - or anyone - they believe will negatively impact their property values. homeowners political engagement may not be unambiguously beneficial to society, if it primarily promotes their narrow financial interest at the expense of others - especially less affluent renters”

Answer 123

“Behavioral economics offers some insight into why humans systematically don't set aside enough rainy day savings. we place more weight on our happiness today than our unhappiness tomorrow, have limited ability to foresee negative shocks in the future, and are overly optimistic about our financial prospects improving”

Answer 124

Capital A affordable housing - deed restricted; the deed includes information about the way to use the property; if you own a particular property, the deed limits how much that property can be sold for. There is a legal mechanism that keeps that housing from being more expensive; you can't have restrictions on race, age, and gender Naturally occurring affordable housing - multifamily residential properties without government or nonprofit subsidies and with rents that are affordable to households at 80 percent of the AMI Subsidized housing inventory - Policy tool that the state of massachusetts uses to track whether a town is at the 10% threshold ofChapter 40B

Answer 125

Age restrictions Bedroom size Inaccessible location of subsidized housing Lottery preferences - target people with: - Housing insecurity - Veterans - Local preferences - this has an obvious racial bias

Answer 126

You can’t apply for housing if you don’t know that it exist There is no centralized data on affordable housing Lengthy application with financial documentation just to enter a lottery Different applications for every state and local policy program, and at times, individual developments

Answer 127

Communities often prefer senior housing to family housing No impact on school enrollments/school budgets Potentially less traffic May allow current residents to age-in place by downsizing Potential match between people who vote and meeting participants

Answer 128

Subsidized housing is often studied as a single good - Political scientist focus on housing production: market-rate vs. affordability - Policymakers, local officials, meeting participants express preferences for affordable housing as a category Affordable Housing Rent subsidy types - Rent based on individual income - Rent based on area median income(AMI) Unit size - Small units are suitable for 1 -2 people. 2+ bedrooms are necessary for larger families Age restrictions - Units designated for seniors - White towns are way more likely to have age restricted housing Richer towns produce less affordable housing

Answer 129

“American partisans are increasingly sorted by population density. While both parties have been suburbanizing for decades, Republicans have become much more likely to live in low-density suburban and exurban areas than Democrats. By multiple measures, metropolitan areas have become more polarized along an urban-to-rural continuum. Geographic polarization has grown along with Congressional polarization, income inequality, and residential income segregation”

Answer 130

“spatial policies”: the Interstate Highway Act. The largest public works project in American history, the carefully planned 41,000-mile system stimulated growth of a new class of suburb heavily reliant on federal housing and transportation policy, especially in the Sun Belt (Hayden 2003; Jackson 1985). Highways facilitated urban-suburban partisan sorting by enabling whites and middle-and upper-income citizens to move from declining cities into single-family residential neighborhoods along suburban freeways” Interstate highways added to urban-suburban polarization by growing Republican suburbs and speeding white flight from major metropolitan areas’

Answer 131

“I find that when people are experimentally provided with information on government responsibilities, they are able to connect their experiences of performance with their opinions of government. These results demonstrate that confusion about government responsibilities can frustrate accountability”

Answer 132

"Relies on the ability of citizens to judge the per-formance of governments and reward or punish the respon-sible politicians at the ballot box. Theoretically, this process incentivizes politicians to respond to the preferences of their constituents. In turn, via regular elections, it helps citizens getpolicies that represent their wishes. But if citizens are unable to assign responsibilities to politicians and appropriately judge them for performance, this process may be interrupted”

Answer 133

“My findings demonstrate that voters lack of knowledge about government responsibility can be improved by information” “Incumbent politicians have generally done better when the economy has recently performed well. On the whole, this has been taken as evidence that citizens are capable of holding government accountable in at least one important policy area”

Answer 134

"Aggregate administrative metrics of performance, while objective and often readily available, are divorced from people’s individual experiences” “Individual-level survey measures of performance, however, are vulnerable to a host of perceptual biases. Instead, we would ideally measure performance both objectively and at the individual level”

Answer 135

“The services that local governments provide are also an ideal test of how people use easily accessible cues to judge government. The everyday experiences of the average person involved ubiquitous contact with local government-provided services—for example, roads, police protection, and garbage removal”

Answer 136

“Contrary to this expectation, I find that the effect of transit performance on respondents satisfaction with local government is quite close to zero and far from statistical significance (table 1, cols. 3 and 4). Despite salient cues in their daily life about government performance, people do not use this cue to a substantively large degree when judging their government. This result suggests a roadblock in the connection between service performance and evaluation of local government” “People may not judge their governments for performance because they do not know who is responsible for public service”

Answer 137

“This trend exists on top of what is already a growing gap in roadway deaths between the U.S. and other countries. Speed limits on local roads are often higher in the U.S., laws and cultural prohibitions against dangerous driving can be weaker, and American infrastructure in many ways has been designed to enable speeding cars”

Answer 138

“Those baseline conditions may mean, researchers suggest, that American roads — and the pedestrians walking along them — have been especially susceptible to potential new risks like smartphones and bigger vehicles”

Answer 139

“In the dark, pedestrians are harder to see than other road users. They typically don’t wear reflective gear or lights, and their outerwear is often dark in color. American roads also weren’t particularly engineered with this risk in mind”

Answer 140

“Though this data doesn’t capture exactly what people are doing on their phones, evening is when people often coordinate social activities and manage after-hours work messages and tasks. America’s round-the-clock work culture may contribute to that trend” “Similarly, ownership of smaller vehicles (like sedans, coupes and station wagons) is down since 2009. But total pedestrian deaths from these same cars are up more than 70 percent, suggesting the bulk of the problem cannot be attributed to increased car size alone” “One theory is that Americans have been migrating toward the Sun Belt, including parts of the country that developed in the auto age, that have particularly poor pedestrian and transit infrastructure, and that have some of the highest pedestrian fatality rates” “Nationwide, the suburbanization of poverty in the 21st century has meant that more lower-income Americans who rely on shift work or public transit have moved to communities built around the deadliest kinds of roads: those with multiple lanes and higher speed limits but few crosswalks or sidewalks. The rise in pedestrian fatalities has been most pronounced on these arterials, which can combine highway speeds with the cross traffic of more local roads” “Research has found that pedestrian deaths over the last 20 years have declined in downtown areas and increased in the suburbs, often in places where lower-income residents live. Such suburban arterial roads are also where many communities have allowed multifamily and affordable housing construction that has been less welcome in neighborhoods with inherently safer streets” “In more recent years, the rise of homelessness in many American cities since about 2016 has also put a growing vulnerable population on streets in conflict with speeding cars. In 2021, 70 percent of Portland’s pedestrian fatalities were among the homeless”

Answer 141

the rehabilitation of city areas by renovating or replacing dilapidated buildings with new housing, public buildings, parks, roadways, industrial areas, etc., often in accordance with comprehensive plans Federal government support + funding with cooperation from local governments Neighborhoods had little to no ability to contest urban renewal Disproportionately affected lower income and non-white communities

Answer 142

Zoning/land use Policy, fines, citations Investment in the built environment Transportation decision are sticky; they are really hard to undo/shift behaviors; and they shape politics longterm

Answer 143

Decisions made in the past Public preferences Funding from higher levels of government Regulations at the state and federal level Decision made by surrounding local government

Answer 144

Subsidize - any kind of law or regulation that makes it easier or more attractive to drive. Subsidize don’t need to involved direct financial transfer Traffic laws/regulation - Not well enforced - They favor drivers and not pedestrians - Speed limits - MUTCD (Favors drivers) (Why aren’t speed limits enforced? - it's hard to catch everyone who speeds) - Crosswalks (If you get hit by a car and you weren’t in a crosswalk, you get blamed for it as opposed to the driver) - Parking spaces (This is another reason why it's hard to get more bike lanes because it takes away parking spaces) (Business owners are often counter-intuitively against bike lanes because they drive cars and they want the convenience of being able to park near their businesses) (It's also cheap to park) Why should we not subsidize driving? - Driving is dangerous and it kills people - We are so focused on cars that there is less investment in public transportation - Our number 1 contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is cars The federal government has made money much more available for building roads and highways than for pedestrian and bike lane infrastructure No regulation on vehicle height - lots of studies show that you are likely to survive getting hit by a shorter vehicle Car Interest groups don’t want their large cars to be regulated Parking minimums - Based on the size and units a building, a certain amount of parking must be built - It makes it much more expensive for the developer to build. Rent is much higher for a place that has parking - A lot of these policies are getting the number of parking needed in a given community wrong - They make it that housing is more car oriented Congestion pricing - Most public transportation you have to pay a fee to use them but for the most part roads are free to drive on thus incentives driving We are inculcated from pay a lot of money for reckless driving because of car insurance A person hit by a car can not sue the car manufacturer because they don’t have a contract with the car manufacturer

Answer 145

Spacial policy feedback - Policy shapes politics - policies can increase voter turnout which then reinforces particular support for said policy Ex. Social security leads to increased voter turnout among seniors, thus politicians do not want to be the people that says let's get rid of social security. This feedback loop keeps the policy in place Interstate highway system - This causes increased white, Republican migration to suburbs while democrats and non-white residents stay in cities disproportionately. This create urban-suburban polarization; purity polarization in metro areas - This reinforces support for interstate highways and incentives more car friendly policies - Urban-suburban divisions are much bigger in the South and this has to do with political parties in the south having a partisan divide along racial lines. White voters in the South are largely Republican and Black voters are largely Democrats in the South

Answer 146

What is necessary to hold local politicians accountable? - We need awareness of policy outcomes - Attribution of responsibility for policy outcomes

Answer 147

“Retrospective voting studies typically examine policies where the public has common interests. By contrast, climate policy has broad public support but concentrated opposition in communities where costs are imposed”

Answer 148

“In the United States, state governments have been the locus of action for addressing climate change. However, the lack of a holistic measure of state climate policy has prevented a comprehensive assessment of state policies’ effectiveness" “We do not find evidence that more stringent climate policy harms states’ economies. Our results make clear the benefits of state climate policy, while showing that current state efforts are unlikely to meet the US goal under the Paris Climate Accord” “Despite the diversity in the design, stringency, and comprehensiveness of states’ climate policy regimes, scholars lack holistic assessments of the effectiveness of these efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Most of the extant literature assessing the impact of state climate policy focuses on renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which are one of the earliest-adopted and most widely used tools to promote a transition to a cleaner energy system. In general, RPS policies have helped to increase renewable generation capacity in states that have implemented them”

Answer 149

“We find that more stringent state climate policy regimes are associated with meaningful reductions in CO2 emissions, and we do not find evidence that more stringent climate policies undermine economic growth in the states”

Answer 150

“Despite broad public support, investment in US infrastructure has not kept pace with growth, population shifts, and rising exposure to climate change risks. One explanation lies in politicians’ electoral incentives: because, in the short term, voters see only the costs of investment and not its benefits, politicians have incentive to pander and spend less than what they or their fully informed constituents would prefer. Local newspapers could help reduce this constraint by increasing politicians’ confidence that voters will receive information that justifies higher spending. In a survey experiment, we found that informing US city and county elected officials about news coverage of infrastructure failures increased support for a costly investment for those in competitive electoral settings. When motivated by reelection, politicians need the benefits of investment to be visible in order to justify its costs. Our results demonstrate the political importance of the nonpolitical news covered in local newspapers” “Pipes, rails, roads, and wires connect people to one another and provide a foundation for economic growth. In a political era characterized by extreme partisanship, infrastructure is one of the few government priorities on which Americans widely agree”

Answer 151

“Investment in infrastructure maintenance is a form of preventive spending: it entails short-run costs in order to avoid larger costs in the future. Research has long pointed to electoral incentives as a constraint on policies that deliver future benefits. Politicians believe that when voters evaluate incumbent performance, preferences for lower taxes and fees in the short term will override their support for policies with long-term benefits”

Answer 152

If a politician is limiting investments out of concern about electoral backlash, not because of their own policy preferences, they should become more willing to spend if they believe that voters will consent. This belief may be shaped by whether information available to the politician also becomes available to voters. Learning about vulnerabilities in existing infrastructure could shift voters’ perceptions about when an investment will pay off”

Answer 153

“This study focuses on the role of local newspapers in shaping the incentives for elected officials regarding infrastructure investment. We conducted a survey experiment with over 650 elected US local officials to measure the causal effect of news coverage about infrastructure failures on politicians’ support for a costly repair project”

Answer 154

“One problem that emerges in electoral relationships is pandering, or decision making that follows popular opinion despite a politician’s judgment that the decision is not in voters’ best interests” “Pandering is distinct from responsiveness to voter preferences because of information asymmetry. In pandering models, politicians share a common interest with voters but know more than voters do about the consequences of a policy choice. Voters have an immediate policy preference that they think corresponds with their interest, but if they had access to information that is available to politicians, their policy preference might change” “We propose that the pandering model applies to most local decision making about infrastructure.1 Local governments operate under tight fiscal constraints; with rare exception, spending must be funded by revenue from local taxes or fees. We assume that politicians and voters share a common interest in setting taxes at a level just high enough to maintain a functioning infrastructure. New infrastructure spending requires voters to pay a tax or fee increase immediately”

Answer 155

“Often, elected officials have access to private information revealing that deteriorating infrastructure poses risks to public safety or economic growth. Because the vulnerabilities are not readily visible to the broad public, politicians disregard the information in order to avoid electoral retaliation for raising fees”

Answer 156

“The presence of news media can reduce the information asymmetry that undergirds pandering by making it possible for voters to learn more about the state of the world. Even as their audiences and budgets shrink, local newspapers remain a critical source of information about community conditions and events” “We hypothesized that local elected officials are more likely to support a fee increase for infrastructure investment when news coverage of infrastructure failure makes the benefits of investment visible to their constituents” “We further predicted that the effect of news coverage would be particularly strong for politicians facing more electoral pressure. Incumbents who face competition have more incentive to pander to voters’ immediate preferences” “The results from the experiment appear in Figure 1. Across all respondents, those who were told that water main breaks had been featured in the newspaper expressed more support for increasing water rates to fund pipe replacement” “The effect of news differed across electoral contexts. Learning that infrastructure vulnerability had been featured in the news clearly increased support for investment among politicians who faced competition”

Answer 157

“Within the control group that did not hear about news coverage, politicians who had faced a competitor reported significantly lower support for investment than did those in uncompetitive contexts. This result is consistent with the theory that the incentives for pandering are strongest under close electoral competition” “We found more support for investment within the control group among those whose elections had been uncontested. Those who had more reason for concern about electoral punishment opposed the investment unless newspapers made information about its benefits available to voters”

Answer 158

Local governments are not going to solve climate change but their cooperation is essential for addressing it. Mayors think they have more control over climate change than education

Answer 159

Passed in 2022(along with CHIPS and Science Act) Collectively provide over $400 billion that have been set aside for funding climate initiatives Investments come in the form of tax credits and grants targeted to individual and state and local governments Tax credit - is received by individuals or corporations when filing their taxes Grant - if you are eligible for the resource, you can apply for grants from the federal government Grants take more time to review so the streamlined process can take a long time Smaller local governments may not have the capacity to apply for grants People aren’t fully aware of how much money is available for doing things in order to get a grant or tax credit

Answer 160

Mayors see their most powerful potential tool as: - Their influence over building codes(laws and regulations that govern the internal structure of a building)(what are the requirements in terms of accessibility; do you need a fire escape)(Can impact how energy efficient a building is) - Their influence over zoning - Their ability public persuasion

Answer 161

Low levels of local knowledge about IRA provisions Lack of capacity to apply for grant funding Local permitting process and public opposition (Building requires homeowners, contractors, or developers to navigate complex land use and construction regulations/requirements) (Clean energy projects can generate a lot of community opposition) Local building codes and environmental regulations

Answer 162

White and higher income communities show greater opposition to wind projects Litigation was the most common form of protesting the wind projects Stokes found that democratic and republican areas do not have different levels of opposition

Answer 163

“Unlike many education systems around the world, the U.S. system is highly decentralized; historically, this ensured a prominent role for local voices. Despite the supposed value placed on local control, however, school board elections typically are low profile, parochial, and low turnout, often enabling organized interests to dominate”

Answer 164

“Off-cycle scheduling of school board elections and low voter turnout allow teacher unions to enhance their influence in local education policy (Anzia 2011), and union endorsed candidates have an advantage in school board races”

Answer 165

“While educator unions continue to be major sources of campaign support, including state and national union organizations that are also “outside donors,” we show that wealthy individual out-of-state donors overwhelmingly support reform candidates competing with union-backed candidates”

Answer 166

“Christian Right and non-Christian Right candidates ran “remarkably similar campaigns,” with both types running “low key” campaigns”

Answer 167

“Local districts have become critical actors in the implementation of new federal and state policies, for example, as authorizers of charter schools and as managers of new portfolio models of education reform. These new policies linked to accountability and school choice have increasingly drawn bipartisan support at the national level and citing extant local-level examples helps proponents make the case that their recommendations are feasible. Recognizing this, national actors may have a growing interest in participating in the shaping of local political regimes. Campaign contributions are one key lever for local political involvement”

Answer 168

“Her research draws upon a network of donors within a single Congressional District, in which “individuals are considered to be connected if they donate to the same political organizations”

Answer 169

“We gathered two types of donations for each site. First, we collected primary donations—donations that do not go through an intermediary to travel to a recipient, including donations made directly to a committee for a candidate, ballot question, referendum, or recall. In addition, we collected secondary donations—donations that pass through an intermediary. Secondary donations include donations to political organizations that, in turn, make primary donations to candidate committees, ballot questions, recalls, or referendums”

Answer 170

Based on biographical information gathered from web searches, many of these individuals share common ground in terms of their wealth, professional fields (particularly finance and technology), and involvement as founders or board members of educational organizations” “Based on their wealth, many of these individuals are likely to be top political donors in federal and state elections as well” “The evidence of shared giving patterns across so many outside donors in the 2012–2013 school board elections fuels our interest in examining the factors that might be driving this pattern. We assess four possible explanations that could predict the donor affiliation network we observe for 2012–2013: ideological similarity, federal campaign contributions (which are largely party-based), geographic proximity, and shared affiliations with education organizations”

Answer 171

“one of the key factors associated with federal election contributions does not play a significant role in local school board elections (Bonica 2014). This may reflect the fact that education politics has scrambled traditional partisan and ideological alignments, with intraparty disputes emerging in both parties (for instance, pro– and anti–charter school factions among Democrats and pro– and anti–Common Core factions among Republicans)”

Answer 172

“Comparing across the statistically significant variables, the education organization affiliation variable has the largest coefficient. Shared education organization affiliations are strongly associated with the school board contribution network. Donors who share a single network tie through board memberships at the same educational organization are predicted to donate to approximately 1.5 candidates or committees in common, other things being equal” “In addition to the significant role of donor networks formed through education organizations, two other factors are also significantly related to the school board contribution network. First, geographic proximity (based on residing in the same zip code or a neighboring zip code within a one-mile radius) is statistically significant, although the coefficient is smaller than organizational ties. The geographic clusters of donors are concentrated in two zip codes in Silicon Valley (one in Atherton and one in Palo Alto), the Upper East Side of New York City, and Northwest Washington, D.C. Echoing the work by Sinclair (2012), this finding could indicate a social component to school board contribution patterns through local social functions and fundraising events; however, these are also wealthy areas, so our measure could indicate shared interests and propensity to donate among people who live in very expensive zip codes” “Finally, the network of federal campaign contributions is also statistically significant, but the coefficient is quite small. As we noted above, our donor network predominantly includes Democrats, and there are new education organizations designed to mobilize reform-minded Democrats to contribute to education elections such as DFER. There are some interesting implications from the prevalence of Democrats among outside donors in school board elections. The local opponent for many of these donors is another key Democratic Party constituency—teacher unions. Moreover, the large outside donors include some left-leaning Democrats; for example, eight contributed to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for the Senate. Yet, these same individuals gave heavily to candidates facing off with union-backed candidates in local school board races. Thus, our findings show how organizations and donors are mobilizing behind opposing sides in a brewing policy debate within the Democratic Party”

Answer 173

“Outside money may not be a bad thing if it comes from donors whose values and interests align with those of residents in the target communities. It might even be a good thing if outside donations offset the dominance of local elites with parochial interests or raise the visibility of elections. Perhaps bigger campaign war chests and close election battles will fuel voter engagement in school board elections, long plagued by low levels of participation. If local attention, engagement, and voting are enhanced by nationalized campaigns, the rise of large outside donors in school board elections could support “new localism,” making local elections more vibrant and relevant, in spite of growing state and national policy leadership” “Yet, new research also suggests that attitudes toward education policy among the very wealthy differ from most Americans. For example, the wealthy are more supportive of market-oriented reforms, such as charter schools and merit pay for teachers, but they are less supportive of paying more taxes for early childhood education and federal spending to improve schools (Page, Bartels, and Seawright 2013). Outside donors’ policy preferences for education may differ from the preferences of voters in school districts that attract outside donor interest. Moreover, local school politics has sometimes been more pragmatic and amenable to negotiated compromise than national education debates (Henig and Stone 2008). The nationalization of local education politics might draw local leaders into the more ideologically polarized and unwavering position taking that has contributed to national-level gridlock”

Answer 174

“We analyze a decade of California school board elections and find evidence that voters reward or punish incumbent board members based on the achievement of white students in their district, whereas outcomes for African American and Hispanic students receive comparatively little attention. We then examine public opinion data on the racial education achievement gap and report results from an original list experiment of California school board members that finds approximately 40% of incumbents detect no electoral pressure to address poor academic outcomes among racial minority students”

Answer 175

Translate directly into social inequalities later in life, including future earnings, employment status, and incarceration rates

Answer 176

“After decades of inaction by state and local po-litical authorities, in 2002 the federal government took unprecedented steps to address the racial achievement gap in education when it enacted the bipartisan No ChildLeft Behind (NCLB) law. Specifically, NCLB’s “theory of action” was based on holding local governments account-able by measuring and making transparent student academic achievement outcomes, with the requirement that information on racial student subgroup performance be made available to parents and the public to “help advance the law’s equity objectives” “By making racial group test scores (and test score gaps) transparent to parents and the general public, local elected officials were expected to face greater political pressure under NCLB to raise the performance of all student subgroups (includ-ing racial minorities) as voters received more detailed performance information that could be used to sanction or reward school boards at election time” “However, even after governments publicize this newly available student performance information, it is still possible that voters privilege (or disregard) the achievement outcomes of some groups of students compared to others”

Answer 177

“Substantively, this indicates that, across districts, incumbents are less likely to get reelected as white student achievement rates decline” “In short, to the extent that democratic accountability occurs for school board elections, incumbent reelection success appears to be tied to the learning outcomes for white students, whereas there is little evidence that incumbent board members are electorally sanctioned for substan-dard learning outcomes for racial minority students” “ In short, when the analysis is confined to the two largest demographic student groups—whites and Hispanics—incumbent reelection fortunes are tied to the learning outcomes for white students but not for Hispanic students”

Answer 178

“We then tally responses to the question, “In your opinion, is the achievement gap between White students and Black and Hispanic students mostly related to the quality of schooling received, or mostly related to other factors?” and find that only 24% of respondents believed that the achievement gap is mostly due to the quality of schooling received. Put another way, fully 76% of respondents who identified that the achievement gap exists believe it is due to factors outside of schools’ (and, by extension, school board members’) control, such as homelife, culture, poverty, or other wider societal factors” “To summarize our analysis of public opinion about the achievement gap, it appears that two likely reasons we observe racial inequality in democratic accountability in school board elections are that (1) nearly half ofAmericans are simply not aware of the particular challenges and lagging achievement of racial minority students, and (2) among those who are aware of the achievement gap, the vast majority do not attribute the gap directly to the quality of education received and,accordingly, do not hold their school board members responsible for the disparate outcomes”

Answer 179

“The fact that such a sizable proportion of elected officials detect little electoral pressure to address the needs of their racial minority constituents (irrespective of the size of the minority student population, the presence of descriptive representation on the school board, or the actual size of the achievement gap in the district) raises several troubling and important questions about the link between democratic accountability, representation, and political equality” “As Table 4 reports, school board members ranked “closing achievement gaps” among the lowest priorities facing their district. Just over 45% of board members ranked the achievement gap near the bottom of their priority list (either as their fourth or fifth priority)” “Given the results reported above that a significant proportion of school board members per-ceives little electoral pressure to address unequal educa-tional outcomes for racial minority students in their district, it is perhaps not surprising that few board members then choose to prioritize it as an issue while in office”

Answer 180

“Righton Johnson, a lawyer with Balch & Bingham who sat in on interviews, told me that it became clear that most teachers thought they were committing a victimless crime. “They didn’t see the value in the test, so they didn’t see that they were devaluing the kids by cheating” “Those who cheated at Parks were never convinced of the importance of the tests; they viewed the cheating as a door they had to pass through in order to focus on issues that seemed more relevant to their students’ lives” “After more than two thousand interviews, the investigators concluded that forty-four schools had cheated and that a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation has infested the district, allowing cheating—at all levels—to go unchecked for years.” They wrote that data had been “used as an abusive and cruel weapon to embarrass and punish.” Several teachers had been told that they had a choice: either make targets or be placed on a Performance Development Plan, which was often a precursor to termination”

Answer 181

- Low student-to-teacher ratio (Smaller classroom size) - How well-funded the school is - Graduation rate - Which colleges are the students going to - Standardized testing scores(universal measure) (Easy to compare across districts) - Extra-curricular activities - Advanced level classes - New technology - Neighborhood - school safety measures - Racial biases - a solid chunk of white parents use the percent of non-white students to judge if a school is “good” - Teacher quality and integrity(this is more challenging to measure) - Public Perception(online reviews) - Values that the school is instilling in the kids

Answer 182

“He explains the problem in terms of Campbell’s law, a principle that describes the risks of using a single indicator to measure complex social phenomena: the greater the value placed on a quantitative measure, like test scores, the more likely it is that the people using it and the process it measures will be corrupted. “The end goal of education isn’t to get students to answer the right number of questions,” he said. “The goal is to have curious and creative students who can function in life”

Answer 183

Local governments w/ an aging population might not care to fund the school system There might be underinvestment in the school system if the community is racist Fragmented local governments makes it possible for different people to choose to mixture of amenities that best suites their lifestyles

Answer 184

Overwhelmingly comes from State and local government This allows space for inequalities to get baked in State and federal dollars are allocated on a per pupil basis, so a decline in school aged children will lead to school closures due to less funding 10% of funding comes from the federal government

Answer 185

Property taxes: - assessed value times property tax rate - If you raise the property tax rate too much this might affect the assessed value because the high property tax rate makes the community less attractive to live in - Higher property taxes alone do not get a local government the revenue it needs to spend on schools -Assessed value of property is what is the best indicator of how much a revenue is available to spend on schools - Towns with high property values can tax themselves at low rates and raise a lots of money

Answer 186

A separately elected school district School board

Answer 187

Desegregation - Milliken v. Bradley - only can mandate cross-jurisdictional plans if theirs racist intent;proving racist intent is extremely difficult - Now if you want to desegregate schools it has to happen through voluntary cooperation Improvements within districts - Redistribution of resources - Financially limited by property tax revenue which is uneven by district - San Antonio v. Rodriguez - 45% of school funding comes from local taxes - The court has said that it's fine to have unequal school funding, so we are probably not going to have a court based reform - This means that most reform must be voluntary and confined within districts

Answer 188

Busing overhauled in 2013 No more busing “zones” Algorithm will produce at least six schools parents can choose from - at least 4 have to be high or medium quality (as determined by standardized test scores) Rejected a “walk-zone priority”

Answer 189

Pro’s: Where you live doesn’t matter in choosing a school Con’s: Equity concerns: the people who would benefit from this system are those who have time and resources to

Answer 190

Desegregation involving suburbs - Metco Improving city schools without desegregation - Charter schools - Curriculum schools - Standardized tests and other accountability measures Who has a stake in school reforms? - School board members - Teaches and teachers unions - Parents - Broader community members

Answer 191

Is to have lots of different success measures. not just one like in Atlanta

Answer 192

School board elections are bringing a lot of outside resources Outside money is actually left leaning and primarily going toward reform candidate and not unioned candidates Reform candidates - calling for school and teacher accountability, much easier to fire teachers who aren’t meeting a certain measure

Answer 193

Incumbents were only punished when white students struggled School board members are aware of this and they don’t feel electoral pressure to address poor academic performance amongst racial minority students

Urban Politics Midterm Flashcards

(217 cards)