Geography of Manufacturing Jobs: Portland Metro #17 in Number of Manufacturing Jobs in US Metro Areas.

Brooking web page for this analysis is HERE.

The Portland Metro profile in one page PDF file is HERE. It indicates that:

1. Portland metro manufacturing job loss was nearly 26% from 2000-2010 and manufacturing jobs were 10.6% of all jobs in 2010.
2. Yet the ratio of manufacturing employment/jobs to all employment/jobs was 25% higher in 2010 than the national average; In 1980, the Portland ratio was only 6% higher than the national average. 
3. The average Portland Metro manufacturing wage of $48,810 in 2010 was higher than the national average.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Correction 1: New Excel Workbook Allows User Selection of Wages for 6 Oregon Metro Areas and 700 Occupations, And Calculation/Comparison of Affordable Rents and Median Family Incomes.

Correction 1. 
One of my many capable readers pointed out an error in one of my formulas, so I have reposted Excel workbook and deleted former workbook. Link below is to corrected version. 

Readers my recall that I recently posted HERE a comparison of salaried Real Estate sales agent income vs Median Family Incomes.

I decided to take the same wage data available for nearly 700 occupations in 6 different Oregon metro areas and create a workbook that does side by side comparisons for two metro areas, including the ability:

• To select and compare wages for different occupations,
• To see calculations of affordable rents,
• To see what share of wages would be required to pay for HUD 2 Bedroom FMR's,
• To see how wages compare to HUD Median Family Incomes.

Click to Enlarge Example

The Excel workbook HERE contains a worksheet that allows the USER to select up to 3 occupations and 2 different metro areas to reveal side by side comparisons of

1. Average and Median Wages,
2. Affordable housing costs using those wages,
3. The 2 Bedroom FMR for that area,
4. The share of wages required to pay for the 2 Bedroom FMR,
5. A comparison of wages to the HUD 4 Person Family Median Income.

Easy to Use

To see ALL of this data in this worksheet the user does NOT have to enter any data, but instead just select values from pull down lists found in 5 cells. (To prevent inadvertent data entry in this worksheet, data can ONLY be entered via the pull downs in the 5 cells where data entry is allowed; this worksheet is formatted legal sized to allow side by side comparisons).

Other Data in Workbook, Too

In the same workbook I have also included a worksheet that has ALL of the wage data for all 6 metro areas, including counts of jobs by occupation, share of jobs in each occupation, and wages at different intervals than just the median and average. The workbook also has  a worksheet showing the 2 BR FMR and 4 Person Median Family Income for the six Oregon Metro areas.

Downloading Tip-This workbook was created in Excel 2007 format.Some users report when they cannot direct view Excel files in this format from within their browser and that Excel files they save end up with a compressed .zip file extension. My suggestion is to RIGHT CLICK and save the file to your PC. Then navigate to the file you downloaded and look at its file extension. IF it appears as .ZIP extension, change the .ZIP extension to an Excel 2007 extension (.xlsx), and THEN open the file with Excel 2007/2010.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon to Get Work Support Streamlining Grant Funds.

Urban Institute PR is HERE.  Oregon along with other states will get $250K; PR says: 

During the first year, the nine states will thoroughly assess their current operations and develop plans for testing new ways of doing business. States that demonstrate they can execute their plans will compete for three-year implementation grants of up to $500,000 per year.

Note clear who Oregon grantee is; more information on grantees should be coming soon HERE.  [ Readers may recall that HAP is recent recipient of different $500k Urban Institute grant also related to work support; my prior post HERE].

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Tribune Runs PBA Response to My B-O-G-U-S OP Ed on Portland Housing Prices and Cost of Living.

Portland Tribune has run a response HERE [Family wage jobs are key to homeownership] from the Portland Business Alliance to my previous OP ED in which I said the housing data used was B-O-G-U-S in a PBA study that said that City of Portland housing costs were high compared to other cities.

I will let readers evaluate for themselves the complete PBA response. Several points I saw were: 

1. Portland is less affordable than our peer regions because our housing prices are high relative to our incomes, a point Mr. Cusack did not address.
2. Personal income in our region has been declining for more than a decade and now sits below the national average and is 16 percent to 21 percent lower than Seattle, Denver and Minneapolis metros.
3. [PBA is looking with private and public sector partners for] ....creative and collaborative ways to increase the number of higher paying, family-wage jobs in our region.

 My thoughts about PBA response:

1. With regard to 1st point, since it was clear that housing price index used was indeed B-O-G-U-S, PBA needs to come up with a DIFFERENT housing cost index from which more valid comparisons across cities can be made.
2. PBA continues to use "personal income" for comparison purposes. Since annual and three year American Community Survey data on household income is readily available AND includes data for both renters and homeowners I suggest that "household income" may be a better income standard to use. (I have no idea why PBA response is apparently now focused on "homeownership"; as I pointed out in my OP ED, the ACS indicates that homeowners are only 55.5% of City of Portland households). 
3. I suspect PBA is right that City of Portland incomes relative to national average and other peer cities may be falling, but partners and PBA need to look closely to see if there are any age/educational differences that help explain some of those differences. I am all for unsubsidized and transparent ways of increasing higher paying jobs, and encouraging families to live in the City, and it will be interesting to see what specific revenue neutral suggestions PBA and its partners present in the coming months.  

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Urban Institute Has Extensive Evaluation of Chicago PHA Family Case Management Demonstration Program.

Main page for this research is HERE.

The Supporting Vulnerable Public Housing Families Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration, an innovative effort to test the feasibility of using public and assisted housing as a platform for providing services to vulnerable families. The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration has produced a successful model for providing wraparound services to residents in public and assisted housing settings. The briefs in this series describe service implementation and costs, along with participant outcomes across four domains: employment, health, housing and relocation, and children and youth.

Evaluation of 6 different topics are included in this research:

1. An Overview of the Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration
2. A New Model for Integrating Housing and Services
3. Tackling the Biggest Challenge: Intensive Case Management and CHA Residents’ Health
4. Moving "Hard to House" Residents to Work: The Role of Intensive Case Management
5. Relocating Vulnerable Public Housing Families
6. Reaching the Next Generation: The Crisis for CHA's Youth

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Correction: Oregon House Hearings Set for Multiple Housing Related Bills.

Correction: One of my alert blog subscribers has pointed out that HB 2436 is a document recording fee bill and NOT a "Real Estate Transfer Tax Bill" as I have previously stated. Duly noted, and this has been corrected in this and prior post.

1. Ways and Means Committee Real Estate Document Recording Fee Bill.
Following up on Monday's House Revenue Committee hearing, the House Ways and Means Committee has a Friday February 6th 9:00 AM hearing scheduled on the Real Estate Document Recording Bill, HB 2436. The hearing is set to meet in House Hearing room F.

2. Prevailing Wage Bill
A Monday February 9th 8 AM hearing date has been set before the Oregon House Business and Labor Committee on HB. 2430, a prevailing wage bill. The hearing is set to meet in House hearing room E. The bill is being sponsored by Representative Schaufler at the request of Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council, Associated General Contractors, Oregon Opportunity Network.

3. OHCS Related Bills Include IDA Account Eligible Income Redefinition, and Lender's Tax Credit.
A Thursday-February 5th 1 PM hearing has been set for several housing related bills before the House Sustainability and Economic Development Committee . The hearing is set to meet in House hearing room E. The bills are:

HB 2256: Requires Housing and Community Services Department to adopt rules establishing threshold amount above which housing grant or other housing funding award proposal requires review and approval by State Housing Council.
HB 2257 Allows Housing and Community Services Department to make loans or grants from Community Development Incentive Project Fund without review or recommendation by Community Development Incentive Advisory Board for purpose of preserving affordable housing.
HB 2258 Changes definition of "lower income household for purposes of statutes relating to individual development accounts.
HB 2261 Authorizes Housing and Community Services Department to finance loans that qualify lender for tax credit with proceeds from tax exempt bonds.


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