Things have gotten so bad in Detroit, the law of supply and demand no longer applies

I knew that Detroit had a problem with enforcing laws, but I had no idea the laws of economics – chiefly, the law of supply in demand – apparently does not apply in the Motor City.

The Midtown area of Detroit is, as I’ve mentioned before, a very decent area that has shown signs of life in recent years.  And politicians have figured out that it’s a heck of a lot easier to piss “development” money all over Midtown than it is to actually solve the deep-rooted problems in Detroit.  So that’s what they’re doing.  Call it the, “we can’t really help the people who actually live here, so we’ll bribe new people to come here and call it a rebirth” approach. 

Anyway, it seems to be working to some degree – demand in Midtown is surging and far outpacing available supply.  So a new apartment complex – the Auburn – is set for development.  But…uh…this:

Midtown is the area north of downtown Detroit that features major employers including Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center. In the past few years, demand has outstripped supply for apartments near WSU and other anchors. Some rental buildings in the vicinity are fully booked.

"We really need these units," said Sue Mosey, president of the nonprofit group Midtown Detroit, one of the partners in the Auburn project.

…

Mosey and DiRita said such complex financing is still necessary even in Midtown because rents -- and therefore rates of return to investors -- remain low. Apartments in the Auburn will rent for about $1.25 per square foot, while a deal done strictly with market-rate capital might require rental rates of $2.25 per square foot or so.

Well yes, I see that a woman heavily (and laudably) invested in the revitalization of Midtown thinks tax dollars should be shoveled to Midtown, but that’s not terribly surprising.  Or convincing. 

I mean, why don’t you just rent the apartments for $2.25 a square foot (a number that makes DC residents vomit, btw)?  Would those apartments not rent?  If not, why don’t you just build more modest apartments?  Are the subsidies permanent?  If not, what happens when they run out?  Wouldn’t subsidizing one apartment building in the area disadvantage all the others?  Why are we subsidizing housing for “graduate students and young professionals” in a city with 30-50% unemployment and poverty rates?  Anybody?  Reporter?  Bueller? 

Nope.  Just the same story in a different newspaper four days later with the same BS about subsidies reported as fact:

The occupancy rate of residential rentals in the Detroit neighborhood is at 95 percent, according to study done earlier this year by Midtown Detroit. That's the highest level of occupancy in at least a decade, Mosey said. More than 200 additional housing units are planned this year in others projects in Midtown, she said.

Despite the growing popularity in Midtown, it still takes complex deals with multiple lenders, tax credits and foundation help to get major projects done.

That’s some fine detective work right there. 

How racist is it? (with special diverse guest)

Comedian Daniel Tosh has a segment on his show called “Is It Racist?”  That is exactly what it sounds like:  Tosh decides whether or not certain things are racist.  Like this. 

Meanwhile, I had a couple pieces floating around in the blog queue that weren’t quite full post-able, but deserved some sort of comment.  And they all had a unifying theme: they were all…arguably racist.  I have a real fascination with “code words” – certain words or phrases individuals use when they want to make a point that they really can’t make – especially since I moved to DC.  For example, you can’t say, “I don’t like those dirty (insert ethnic groups) here who run those (whatever…food trucks, taxis, restaurant).”  You have to say something like, “I am concerned with public safety, and that’s why we need to shut that place (frequented by people I don’t like) down.”  Or, “Now that we razed half this neighborhood, put up expensive new condos, and I’m living in one of them, we should designate the rest of the buildings here as ‘historic” to preserve the character of the neighborhood (and to make sure they are really expensive to renovate, and thus, keep out the people I don’t like who might open a barber shop or a liquor store).”  But don’t verbalize the parentheticals.

So I decided to run a little different version of “Is it racist?” with the bits I found in various articles.  But since I’m way too white to serve as supreme racial arbiter, I brought in my friend Jane.  Jane is probably the most “diverse” individual I know (based completely on my personal “diversity” matrix, developed after years of intense study in Ann Arbor).  We once discussed a potential career for her as “Diversity.”  Basically, she would show up at corporate “diversity days” looking like Mose with his fear shirt.  Except instead of “fear,” her shirt would say “DIVERSITY.”  Everything else would be the same as that scene from The Office though – there would be music, Jane would try to wrestle you (wrestle with your prejudices!), and then Carol from HR would ask you to get in a coffin.  You know the drill.  So here goes. 

 

Well if the definition of “crime” is “standing there,” then yes, they are criminals

Our first candidate is a comment over at the Mt. Vernon Triangle Blog.  The post itself mentions a “voluntary agreement” with Chinatown Market, a liquor store here in Chinatown.  This apparently upsets one Mr. Mike Anderson:

Chinatown Market attracts and caters to a crowd of people (vagrants, alcoholics and the like) who bring crime (panhandling, loitering, public drinking, blocking the sidewalk, et cetera) to our neighborhood. I encourage everyone who is concerned with these issues to attend tonight’s meeting and to share their concerns with the Committee. Chinatown Market’s ABL comes up for renewal this fall.

Jane: I really enjoy how this commenter positions his/her opinion as verifiable fact. Chinatown Market attracts vagrants! They bring crime! And apparently, "blocking the sidewalk" constitutes crime! "Everyone who is concerned with these issues?" So....you?

Nick:  Here are the things that constitute “crime” in this gentleman’s world:  Standing and asking for money, standing, standing and drinking, standing on the sidewalk, and presumably, other forms of standing when done by “vagrants, alcoholics and the like.”  This might be my favorite bit, since I walk by Chinatown Market multiple times a day, every single day, and I have no clue what this guy is talking about.  I think I’ve been asked for money twice in my seven months here. 

On second thought, that’s not true.  I know exactly what this guy is talking about.  He just plain doesn’t like looking at…those people who hang out by that particular store.  That’s why you do things like prohibit stores that “they” frequent from selling single beers, while exempting stores that you frequent because they sell craft beers you like that come in larger bottles and might not be sold in a six-pack.  I’m not exactly living in a Tea Party stronghold here, but the people around me spend an awful lot of time on these little crusades to eradicate things they just plain don’t like looking at.

 

This should go about as well as previous attempts to keep out the Irish and Italians

Third candidate is a quote (into the ether, but cached) from Brendan Walsh, a Grosse Pointe Board of Education trustee, on Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to make every district accept out-of-district students.  This scares the bejeezus out of Grosse Pointe since they border a certain city that rhymes with Tree Joit:

"I think there are a lot of details to work out," said Van Beek, who also said he believes that the proposal could make schools better because they'll be forced to compete for students. "Anything that expands options is a good thing."

Walsh said he believes that open enrollment could hurt the district if it is forced to take students who are not committed to academic excellence.

Jane: My freshman year (white, cute) roommate was from Grosse Pointe. She got an MIP when she got drunk off Jack Daniels and Pepsi, believed she was Houdini and could escape from handcuffs, was chased around the Bursley Hall lobby by several police officers, wound up in AAPD lockup, believed she was Tupac and started doing pushups in her cell, and then passed out. I'm assuming that that is the kind of academic excellence that is threatened by roving gangs of out-of-district students. Just say "minorities," people. We know that's what you mean. You know we know that's what you mean. Just say it, and then I can move on.

Nick: Jane, who was your freshman year roommate?  Give her my number.

See, I actually think Walsh did say “minorities” during the interview, but the Free Press Diversity Editors went in and changed the phrase to something…well, just as racist.  Yikes. 

Seriously though.  If you caught of glimpse of me and my friends in high school back in Grosse Pointe, we weren’t so much “committed to academic excellence” as we were “committed to taking Wendy’s five-piece chicken nugget sauces and throwing them at each other.”  “Committed to academic excellence.”  I gotta start working that phrase into my daily lexicon.  “Sorry, I’m just not committed to doc review excellence today!” 

 

Won’t somebody think of the burritos!

Candidate four has been mentioned here before:  Chipolte’s uphill battle to open a restaurant in Capitol Hill:

The big issue raised was that fast food restaurants are a large contributor to the abundance of trash on that block of Barracks Row.  In addition, the existing national chains have rarely contributed to neighborhood events, joined neighborhood business associations, and have been fairly unresponsive to requests to help improve trash and loitering issues on the block.

Jane: Jesus, is opening a Chipotle in SE like joining a sorority or something? I get concerns about trash, but "fairly unresponsive"? Neighborhood associations here terrify me. I'm worried that at some point, the Shaw community association is going to send some Joe Pesci look-alike to my house to pistol whip me for incorrectly staking my tomatoes. It's a business that wants to open, and it's not even one of the "existing national chains" y'all have been having so much trouble with. And it's Chipotle, for god's sake. Get a burrito and shut the hell up.

Nick:  Unless they strip the burritos down and circle the parts of them that need a little “work,” no, opening a Chipotle in SE is not like joining a sorority.  Although I think fully 60% of the world’s problems could be solved by the phrase, “get a burrito and shut the hell up.” 

I’m with you on the neighborhood associations though.  I never really got to experience the full brunt of these things until I moved to DC, but they’re like giant homeowners associations or condo boards, only slightly more fascist with much less of a mandate.  I guess it’s nice that people take pride in and care about their neighborhoods, but so much of what I see entails eradicating or prohibiting anything and everything that people just plain don’t like. 

The last line gets me every time though.  These people are fighting like hell to prevent other people from purchasing burritos because the restaurant won’t join in your crusade to eradicate the people standing on the street that you don’t want to look at. 

In any event, it appears these folks have lost the fight.  But the funniest part: the “exemption” is limited to Chipotle.  Perhaps the neighborhood association determined the people who “loiter” outside Chipotle are less offensive than the people who loiter outside Chinatown Market.  Who knows.

 

Three-stereotype crash leaves chicken wings in a coma

The New York Times recently ran a piece on gentrification in DC.  It’s a pretty interesting read, and the intracity racial tension around here reminds me of the intercity racial tension back home.  But this paragraph might take the cake:

Similar anxieties sprung up on H Street last fall, during a failed attempt by the area’s majority-white neighborhood council to ban the sale of chicken wings in a newly opened 7-Eleven (the bones attract rats and choke dogs, they argued). Other restrictions, like leaving hair salons off the list of businesses eligible for future development assistance, strike Ms. Johnson as attempts to erase the traditional character of the neighborhood.

Jane:  You know what attracts rats? Everything. You know what dogs will try to eat? Everything (here's a tip: watch your dog.) It's 7-Eleven. None of their food is fit for consumption by anyone ever. Their chicken wings are the least of anyone's problems. It's tremendously stupid to try to "ban" a food offering at a 7-Eleven, almost as stupid as having a neighborhood council with that kind of power. The old alcoholics who buy coffee at 6:45AM on Wednesdays at the 7-Eleven on 12th and U bother me on the way to yoga, but I'm not leading the charge to ban coffee from 7-Eleven, because I'm not a moron. Again, if you don't want minorities, just say so.

Nick:  I think they pretty much just said it, Jane.  Anyway, that’s gotta be some type of record for racial stereotypes in one paragraph.  It’s like the neighborhood association said, “Your stereotype (chicken wings) is interfering with our stereotype (every single one of us owns a dog).  So we’ll ban yours.”  I’m really fixated on the dog thing because I just received an e-mail from my apartment management company that began like this:

We love our four leg residents but recently some of their owners have been behaving very badly.  Incidents of pet mess in the lobby’s, elevators, and building entrances are occurring frequently.

Two thoughts:  1) White people love dogs so much that we can’t even blame the dogs for pooping in the elevator.  2)  We need somebody to beg us to stop letting animals piss all over the building.  Could you imagine if a homeless guy took a leak in the general vicinity of our entryway?  I just hope the 48 cops that would show after the 196 calls to 911 got there before everybody in the building grabbed their torch and pitchfork.  But we need stern reminders to clean up animal poop in the hallway.  I hate white people.

Cancer patients free to shoot up treatment rooms with silencers and machine guns. But don’t bring pot.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, last seen round these parts sending me pictures of a murder victim in an attempt to buy my vote, is quickly ascending the list of my least-favorite politicians.  His most recent crusade is against medical marijuana, approved by Michigan voters in 2008:

Michigan's medical marijuana law has been abused, exploited and hijacked by pot profiteers and needs fixing, Attorney General Bill Schuette said Wednesday.

Flanked by a dozen legislators, police officers, prosecutors and doctors Wednesday, Schuette announced several bills that will be introduced in the Legislature this fall to close loopholes in a law he says was intended to provide marijuana as pain relief to people with terminal, debilitating and chronic diseases.

I’m not going to get into a long-winded defense of medical marijuana here.  Except to say that, having experienced both cancer and very significant pain, I cannot support any measures that hinder individuals from acquiring and using a drug that alleviates their pain.*  Like, say, a patient who is suffering from a) intense pain, b) horrific nausea, and c) losing weight because a) and b) make eating damn near impossible.  In that case, it might be pretty awesome if there was some sort of drug that could relieve all those symptoms and kick-start your appetite and didn’t have to be ingested orally because you’ll probably just throw that up anyway.  But in that case, Schuette recommends a trip to the ER to get synthetic heroin pumped into your veins and a bottle Oxycontin.  Much safer. 

Oh sorry…that was more winded than I would have liked.  I’ll just say this.

1)  I have sat in an oncologist’s office waiting to hear the results of my PET scan and biopsy to figure out what type of cancer I have and how far it has spread.  And yet nothing terrifies me quite like a Republican Attorney General flanked by a dozen legislators, police officers, and prosecutors. 

2)  As a lawyer, I am unaware of any situation in which “several bills” have served to make anything on earth less confusing. 

Maybe I’m too hard on Schuette since he’s just your typical, cliché, “tough-on-crime!” AG who babbles on about “public safety” when discussing people who choose to light a dead, dried plant on fire and inhale the fumes…

Schuette has argued marijuana is authorized in only very limited circumstances, and medical use doesn't include sales of marijuana. He's called the appeals court ruling a "huge victory for public safety and Michigan communities struggling with an invasion of pot shops near their schools, homes and churches."

As if the link between smoking a joint and randomly murdering everybody is just so damn obvious that it needs no further explanation.  The potheads are gonna get you in your homes! And schools! And churches!  CHILDREN!!!!!  Or something.

Although that doesn’t even hold up empirically – a recent study showed that the surrounding area of a recently closed dispensary actually sees an increase in crime.  Which is counterintuitive if you think about it for two seconds, but reasonable if you think about it for three or more: Why would a business ostensibly full of sick, pacifist hippies make an area more violent?

Anyway, this is just another example of Republicans’ longstanding commitment to “public safety.”  Example, from the Free Press earlier this month:

Michigan law permits gun owners to obtain and use noise suppressors or silencers as long as they first go through a federal permitting process, according to a formal opinion released today by Attorney General Bill Schuette.

…

The attorney general's opinion parallels one issued four years ago regarding the possession of automatic weapons in Michigan. Then-Attorney General Mike Cox found that machine guns could be legally possessed by Michigan citizens who obtained authorization from the U.S. Department of Justice

Safety first!

Are you saying society should just let me die?

[Unfortunately, the GOP went and had another debate where they booed kittens or something in between the time I wrote this and got around to posting it, so I’m referring to old faux-outrage now.  But it’s relevant to my situation, so up it goes]

So, I’ll bite. 

I don’t watch political debates.  I don’t like them.  I don’t really care for politicians in general and I don’t really care to hear anybody's views on anything condensed into 30 second soundbytes.  And I figure I’ll catch anything meaningful in my RSS feed or through Twitter or Facebook.  So this exchange made it to me in about 20 different ways the other week:

BLITZER: Thank you, Governor. Before I get to Michele Bachmann, I want to just -- you're a physician, Ron Paul, so you're a doctor. You know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question.

A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it.

Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?

PAUL: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.

BLITZER: Well, what do you want?

PAUL: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not be forced --

BLITZER: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

PAUL: That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody --

BLITZER: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

Well I’m not quite 30, and fortunately, I do have health insurance.  But I guess you could say that things were going along swimmingly until “something terrible” happened, and then I started racking up the medical bills.  So this exchange got me thinking. 

First, the primary reason I even heard about this exchange was because the Tea Party audience allegedly cheered when Wolf Blitzer asked if society should just let him die.  That…didn’t happen. 

Seriously.  Like two people yelled "yeah.”  Just stop with the whole cheer thing.  It’s silly.

Paul gave a characteristically rambling response, but I think the Congressman believes this: if somebody is uninsured by choice, the government should not force others to pay for his care should something catastrophic happen.  I think that’s at least a defensible, not insane position.

But the reaction has been a little nuts.  Paul Krugman, who seems to be approaching parody status these days:

So would people on the right be willing to let those who are uninsured through no fault of their own die from lack of care? The answer, based on recent history, is a resounding “Yeah!”

Think, in particular, of the children.

Cue Simpsons clip.  And how did we get from an explicit question about an individual with a job who makes a deliberate choice not to obtain health insurance to “those who are uninsured through no fault of their own”?

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told the Pharisees that God commands us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” There is no asterisk making this obligation null and void if circumstances require its fulfillment via government.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mr. Robinson – and those who share his political leanings – doesn’t really support government enforcement of cherry-picked bits of scripture. 

Both men play up compassion.  Robinson’s column is titled, “Where are the compassionate conservatives?”  Krugman writes, “Now, however, compassion is out of fashion — indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the G.O.P.’s base.”

But let me be clear about this: Coerced compassion is not compassion.  Forcing others to pay for something your moral obligations is exactly the same as prohibiting others from violating your moral sensibilities.  If you want to contribute to makes sure “society” doesn’t “let him die,” that’s fantastic. And worthy of moral praise.  But if you want to employ force and violence to make others contribute, you do not get to hop up on the moral high ground and sneer at the rest of us. 

I know compassion because I experienced incredible amounts of it over the past year.  The cards, the gifts, the religious tokens, the work of the doctors and nurses and administrators at various hospitals, the phone calls and the e-mails and the letters and the postcards and on and on…all of that was voluntary human compassion expressed to me by society. 

But my illness is not yours.  My medical bills are not yours.  My student loans are not yours.  It really sucks that I got cancer and now have to pay off a bunch of stuff – to be clear, much, much less than I otherwise would have – and have to deal with all sorts of problems and concerns.  And if you choose – as many, many people have – to help me out any way you can, from reviewing my case and rendering an opinion without charge, as Dr. Zelenetz of Sloan-Kettering and Dr. Advani of Stanford did, to writing me a short e-mail, you have my respect and appreciation.  And you have shown exponentially more compassion than the hack who tries to claim some sort of moral superiority over people who do not feel the need to enshrine “society’s compassion” in law. 

I don’t know what to do about health care and I don’t want to debate that here.  I’ve had enough experience with the system to know that it is very, very messed up.  But I’m not God.  I had a hard enough time figuring out how to manage my own care.  This pretty much precludes me from offering up a credible plan to manage the care of a couple hundred million folks.

But I do know that it is wrong, given the exchange that prompted this whole game of moral football, to equate “society” to “the federal government.”  And it is wrong to equate government coercion with “compassion.”  I’m very, very thankful for the compassion society has shown me.  But those who would force society to show me compassion or pay my bills do not get to look down on others with condescension. 

Plus, given the outrage in the aftermath of this ordeal, I would think this is a pretty self-remedying problem.  Let’s say we accept both general premises here: that the federal government should not force one party to pay for the care of another party who fails to obtain medical insurance by choice, and that a significant chunk of the country – say, 40%, although I’m probably low-balling – finds this position abhorrent. 

Well, there you go:  That’s about 120 million Americans who think it’s horrible, terrible, and unthinkable to “let him die.”  That’s 120 million people who presumably feel some strong moral obligation to help out.  To show compassion through financial means.  That is a significant chunk of the US population that will help a brother out.  That will chip in to cover that 30-year-olds care.  That will not, to put it bluntly, “let him die.”  

So while I don’t really know what I would have done without health insurance, I feel pretty confident with hundreds of millions of my fellow Americans apparently willing to chip in for my care.  Unless, of course, these people aren’t exactly putting their money where their mouths are, and are instead using this incident to take another childish swipe at a group of people they just don’t like. 

But I’m willing to give these people the benefit of the doubt.  In the meantime, though, I’m choosing to cancel my health insurance.  I trust society will pick up the tab.