Three questions for places in the New Year

Cedar Rapids winter overflow shelter
(swiped from cbs2iowa.com)

1. Can we do better by our mentally ill and addicted citizens? People living on the streets are a constant of urban places, even in smaller cities like Cedar Rapids. Of the cities where I spent time, Seattle seems to have the most aggressive street people, including one fellow downtown known for periodically shouting at no one in particular, "Excuse me, sir? SIR? SIR? FUUUCK!" There have been reports of urinating in front of stores, and following other people for blocks. No wonder Seattle's mayor called homelessness "an emergency" a few years ago (Treatment Advocacy Center 2016). But variations of these phenomena are found everywhere. In New York City last month, a police officer was attacked by three homeless men.

One plausible if somewhat-dated estimate had the homeless population with severe mental illness at 325,000 (Treatment Advocacy Center 2016).  Homelessness comes in many forms, and much of it is driven by issues of supply and affordability. People living on the streets are often mentally ill or addicted to substances (which are not mutually exclusive categories). Nationally, estimates range around a third of homeless who are severely mentally ill, though local studies have found higher proportions (Baldwin 2016). (People who are homeless for economic reasons tend to be less visible to the general public, and probably to researchers, too.) Their situation has been exacerbated for decades by deinstitutionalization and closing of psychiatric hospitals, driven by state budgets as well as idealism.

While institutionalization is not the solution for everyone, neither is it compassionate to allow people to drift and struggle, facing perils of crime, weather and eating food from dumpsters. Can we improve access to addiction treatment and antipsychotic drugs? Provide better transitional living situations? Support more research into causes and cures? Meanwhile, we rely on short-term heroic solutions like shelters, or try to law the problem away by making sleeping on the streets a crime.

Downtown Washington, Iowa

2. Is there potential for economic development in small towns and rural areas? This is a question we've visited before, but with the imminent reconvening of Iowa's office of rural affairs (a.k.a. the state legislature) it's worth looking at what might be done for underperforming areas besides tickling their feelings of resentment with culture wars bills.

A recent Brookings study argued that small towns and rural areas might do best by cooperating with nearby small cities (Arnosti and Liu 2018). If our economic future is going to be anchored by digital and knowledge-based skills, policies to revive extractive industries like mining should be recognized for the false promises they are; instead, "rural America's best bet might be to support economic growth in urban centers, including micropolitan areas, and strengthen linkages between urban and rural communities." Successful metros can and do subsidize projects elsewhere in the state; successful metros near rural areas improve access to jobs and capital for rural residents while retaining social connections; and some of those taking advantage of nearby opportunities will return to their hometowns (the "boomerang" effect). Richard Florida (2018) notes that not all rural counties are suffering population and job loss, though the examples he cites--a Tesla factory in Storey County, Nevada; an expanded casino in Love County, Oklahoma; and an expanded retirement community in Sumter County, Florida--smack of smokestack-chasing and so may be limited in their instructive utility.

Arnosti and Liu approvingly quote Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith, who argues, "In order to compete with the big cities, rural America needs fewer factory towns of 5,000 people and more small university cities of 50,000." They argue states should (1)  empower communities' and regions' capacity to chart their futures; (2) prioritize local job creation over recruitment of firms like Tesla or OCI NV; (3) strengthen post-secondary education; and (4) seek to close regional disparities. There's a lot there to choose from; we'll see if Governor Reynolds or the Iowa legislature pursues any of it, or sticks to the ever-popular culture wars.

(Photo by Tela Chhe, from flicker.com via minneapolis2040.com)

3. Can Minneapolis 2040 [a] work? [b] serve as a model for other cities? In December 2018, the Minneapolis City Council passed a new comprehensive plan. Most notable among its many topics, the plan calls for policy changes that could conceivably have an earth-shaking impact on housing supply and affordability by allowing duplexes, triplexes and apartments in a vast area of the city where they are not currently permitted (Schuetz 2018, Sisson 2018). If it plays out as hoped, the increased density will produce substantial improvement in the city's environmental footprint, better community connections, an opportunity for all those people who say they want to live in walkable communities actually to do that, and more fiscally-sustainable infrastructure. As Strong Towns Tweeted: Minneapolis 2040 will undoubtedly have a huge impact on economic justice and the affordable housing landscape. But allowing neighborhoods to adapt and grow incrementally will have an even bigger impact on something more fundamental: pure finance. 

Other cities, starting next door with St. Paul, are looking at what Minneapolis has done and are preparing to ask their doctors if Density might be right for them. But there remains much work to be done to turn this legislative miracle into on-the-ground reality.


Anyone who follows politics knows that the fight doesn't stop with enactment; it just rolls across the street to a new bar. The zoning code will need to be changed to incorporate the new goals i.e. to make them legal. As in any place facing housing issues, landowners and developers will need to be assured there's profit to be made in these kinds of projects. And specific projects are sure to be protested by affected neighbors (Schuetz 2018). On the other hand, new Mayor Jacob Frey chose to spend his political capital on passing this, and it did pass, and that alone represents an intriguing new page in this story.