Correction: HUD Metro Transportation/ Growth Plan Comment Window Closes THURSDAY; My Comments.

Comment window closes on THURSDAY, not Wednesday....
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The comment window on the Metro transportation and regional growth report is closing this THURSDAY. A copy of the comments I have just submitted are HERE, read it to see all of my comments. (I have included a a partial explanation below, as well as information on how YOU can comment).

I extracted HERE a SHORT housing/transportation performance section from the urban growth report; page 5 includes a table showing cost burdened HH's by sub area. I also went in an dug out housing related appendices from their HUGE urban growth report (771 pages) and have posted Appendices 7-10 HERE.

PROBLEM: The Growth Report Appears to Project Incomplete/ REDUCED Demand for Rental Units With Subsidy Needs.

My calculations from a table on page 72 (A8-21 in the printed report) show that Metro projects that the demand for the two lowest rent categories will SHRINK by 39%, from 29% of all rental units in 2005 to 18% of total rental units in 2030.

MOREOVER, In the lowest rent category, the ONLY category where metro shows that subsidy will be required, metro projects that category will shrink by 56%, from 20% to 7% of all rental unit demand.I might be missing something here but the reduction of subsidy need for rental housing seems highly UNLIKELY,and NOT supported by any trend that I can see.

I could understand if Metro was saying that subsidy needs would increase at higher rent points in the future, but this is NOT what the table appears to say to me. (IF someone believes I am misreading what this table shows, please add a comment with the alternative explanation).

COMMENT OPPORTUNITIES: Comments are due BEFORE COB on October 15th.
On Sept. 15, Metro opened a 30-day public comment opportunity for the Regional Transportation Plan, framework for urban and rural reserves and urban growth report. Remaining comment opportunities are:

Tuesday, Oct. 13
4 p.m. (open house) | 5:15 p.m. (hearing)
Clackamas County Public Services Building, 2051 Kaen Road, Oregon City

Thursday, Oct. 15
4 p.m. (open house) | 5:15 p.m. (hearing)
Metro Regional Center, 600 NE Grand Ave., Portland

Submit comments in writing

Greatest Place Comments
Planning and Development
600 NE Grand Ave.
Portland, OR 97232
greatestplace@oregonmetro.gov

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

For First Time, Annual Oregon Housing Council Minutes Combined Into Single Searchable PDF File.

In looking for 2008 Oregon Housing Council minutes, I found that the Housing Council website had a combination of minutes in three separate formats: MS Word, PDF text readable files, and PDF scanned files (which users cannot search for text).

In order to improve the usefulness of the minutes, and to increase transparency, I converted both the MS Word documents and PDF scanned files into PDF text readable files. I then combined the minutes for all 10 Oregon Housing Council meetings in 2008 into a single PDF text readable file, and added bookmarks for each meeting. I have posted that file HERE.

It is now possible (for the first time) to download a single document containing all of the Oregon Housing Council minutes for 2008 and do a text search for a specific keyword or topic and retrieve ALL instances where that keyword or topic appeared.

I am hopeful that in the future the Oregon Housing Council will publish all of it's minutes in a single most useful format: text readable PDF.

My DRAFT Analysis: Oregon "Shovel Ready" Projects in U.S. Conference of Mayor's Report Top $706 Million.

Clarification 1: Clarified that 2 housing projects I referenced were public housing projects only, I count 6 additional HUD CDBG projects that also reference housing, none of those were in Portland.

Found the US Conference of Mayor's "Shovel Ready" report HERE.

I put together a DRAFT Oregon summary with a count of $$, jobs, and cost per job by sector and Oregon city HERE as a PDF; it also includes a list of all Oregon projects. [PDF is 7 pages, print on legal paper, landscape].

My initial review indicates that there were only 2 public housing projects in Oregon, in Eugene (568 housing projects nationally); I found 27 HUD CDBG funded projects from Oregon cities (total of 3,253 nationally). Within the 27 HUD CDBG funded projects I count 6 projects that also reference housing, none of those were in Portland.

Funding required for 11,800 job in Oregon exceeds $706 Million; Average funding required per job in Oregon is $59,570; Lake Oswego funding required per job is tops in Oregon at $114,000+ for claimed 700 jobs for sewer project. [My preliminary conclusion is that Oregon funding required per job is less than national average].

Candidly, it was a real pain to put this draft together, Mayor's organization clearly did NOT go out of their way to make the data accessible to the public [only format is PDF, and it's a crappy PDF format at that]; expect other open government groups will eventually post entire report as Excel.

Will post more details and views of Oregon data in next few days, including any corrections to this DRAFT analysis.

CORRECTION: State and Oregon Housing Cost Burden Data from 2007 ACS, With Rankings and Comparisons.

Good thing I called the link below a Draft.

I discovered an error in the formula I used to calculate the severe cost burden rate for homeowners. I have corrected the PDF file, and the link below, to point to the correct version of this document. The earlier version of the PDF has been deleted and let's hope this is the last correction I need to make.

I have prepared a draft PDF document HERE that contains a comprehensive set of housing cost burden data from the 2007 American Community Survey, including state level data for Oregon and data for several Oregon counties and cities.

Key Points About This Housing Cost Burden Data:

• Data for all states included, as well as Oregon cities and counties large enough to be included in the ACS.
• File includes both homeowner and renter household cost burden rates and rankings.
• Both 30% or more cost burdens and severe (50% or greater) cost burden rates are included.
• The ACS tables used to calculate these cost burdens are also identified.

Within the document there are several sections

1. First section is alpha listing of states showing renter and homeowner cost burdens, with a set of columns showing % below or above state cost burden is compared to U.S. Average. (Green cell background indicates that state has lower cost burden than U.S. Average).
   
2. Second section is alpha listing of states, showing state cost burden rankings.
3. Third section displays cost burdens for Oregon cities and counties large enough to be included in the ACS. (Cities or counties with cost burdens greater than statewide average have yellow backgrounds).
4. The final section is a step by step description of process I used to calculate renter cost burdens.
   

Oregon Life Expectancy: Eight Largely Rural Counties Showed Declines for Women from 1983-1999.

(I know this is not exactly a housing story, but I'm gonna shoehorn it in here anyway).

Various mainstream media stories in last couple of days have reported that life expectancy has declined in some counties in the United States from 1961-1999 or 1983-1999. The Oregonian story HERE says that 180 counties in the US had declining life expectancies for women from 1983-1999 .

None of stories I have seen have included Oregon specific data on life expectancies. However, I was able to track down and extract Oregon county level data from the source; a PDF file of the original report that led to the media stories, with national summary results, can be found HERE.

The Excel file I created HERE contains two worksheets with an extract of selected information for All Oregon counties A. From 1961-1999 and B. From 1983-1999. (When looking at the data my read is that for any given year the data shows the life expectancy for a person born in that year).

1983-1999, Life Expectancy for Women DID Decline in Eight Oregon Counties
According to my calculations, there ARE EIGHT counties in Oregon where the life expectancies of women declined from 1983-1999. The Oregon counties with declining life expectancies for women from 1983-1999 were largely rural: Clatsop, Grant, Harney, Lake, Linn, Malheur, Morrow, and Union. The largest decline in LE for women was 1.3%.

1961-1999, NO Declines in Life Expectancy.
My summary calculation using data for the longer period of 1961-1999 (with Multnomah County data included below to provide a county specific example):

1. Life expectancies in ALL Oregon counties increased for BOTH men and women. Male life expectancies grew faster than women. (Multnomah County LE for men increased by 7.5 years, and for women by 5.1 years).
   
2. As a result of the variable rates of men/women growth, the gap between life expectancies of men and women declined. (The Multnomah County gap declined by 30% or 2.4 years).
3. Women still had substantially longer life expectancies than men in 1999. (Multnomah County women LE was 79.35 years vs. LE of men at 73.71 years, a remaining gap of more than 5 1/2 years).

New CBO Iraq/Afghanistan War Costs Estimate: $800 Billion Thru ‘08, $1.2-$1.7 Trillion Thru 2017.

This new 16 page estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is HERE.

(Story link is posted on oregonhousing blog as those levels of spending will crowd out spending on many other programs, including housing).

First 50 Posts in Single PDF, With Web Links.

It dawned on me that it might be useful to publish an occasional listing of all stories in a single document.

So HERE is a two page PDF file with the headlines of the 50 stories published to date on this blog. (Links are active within the PDF so a mouse click on that story should get you directly to it; stories with audio or video are highlighted in red).