A homeless organization says the federal government is breaking its own rules that it has to offer surplus federal property for homeless services before selling it. The group has filed a suit against OMB.

I've never heard of this rule. I'm curious: is this a general rule that applies to any government property anywhere in the country? Or is it just another lever to concentrate all the region's poverty and dysfunction within the borders of DC?

by oboe on Jun 25, 2012 9:15 am • link • report

Traffic noise can give you a heart attack

You oughtta know by now.

by Gavin on Jun 25, 2012 9:16 am • link • report

Why is O'Malley so intent on expanding gambling in Maryland? Why is this something that needs a special session and cannot wait for the normal legislative process? Can someone fill me in? None of the articles that I have read talk about the urgency.

by BethMon on Jun 25, 2012 9:24 am • link • report

@oboe It's nationwide, not just DC. Title V of the McKinney-Vento Act. GSA has information on the program here.

by Moose on Jun 25, 2012 9:33 am • link • report

Prince George's became majority-minority in the 1970s as black families moved from the city into the county. Now, that pattern is changing as many white families move into the county.

This isn't quite right. As late as the 1990 Census, African Americans were just barely a majority in the County. See this Census link from the State of Maryland. I am looking for a better one that has 1970 and 1980 data as well, but you can see both 1990 and 2000 data for Prince George's which show a pretty dramatic decline in whites in PG, from 43% in 1990 to 23% in 2000, and then slighly less in 1990. (you see a less dramatic movement in 2010). The black population grew and leveled off at about 63% or so by 2010. The real growth in the county over the last decade has been the growth in the Latino population.

It's also worth noting that the white population that's coming into PG County now is largely a middle/upper-middle class demographic. The white population that left Prince George's (and went to Anne Arundel, Calvert and Charles County usually) was working-class white. There are still a few places in PG County that still have the presence of this population (particularly Bowie), and if you're ever in those three counties above, you'll run into a lot of older people that grew up in PG. (incidentally, I hear from transplants all the time that there are and was no working class whites in the DC area. That is not true, and still isn't, although the working class white population is largely exurban DC by this point)

The area in which a lot of whites are moving is the historic streetcar corridor that starts at Mount Rainier and runs all the way up to Greenbelt hitting places like Berywn Heights, Hyattsville, College Park, University Park, Riverdale Park, and so on. This part of the county has very nice historic housing stock and has always been pretty diverse and heterogenous (indeed, this whole part of PG County is pretty ethnically mixed). There are actually several towns there that are majority white (University Park and Berywn Heights are 80% white or more). There also is white movement into places like Fort Washington and Accokeek, which are on the Potomac and offer the riverfront property of Mount Vernon at a fraction of the cost. But I wouldn't say that the county is experiecing a wholesale transformation.

by CD on Jun 25, 2012 9:46 am • link • report

I was looking over the surplus properties on the website and I wonder how GSA even cam to acquire them in the first place... like a 4-unit apartment building in the heart of San Francisco or a South Dakota summer house in the Black Hills. At first I thought tax sale or seized properties, but wouldn't the Treasury or the DOJ be responsible for that, not GSA?

by Adam L on Jun 25, 2012 9:48 am • link • report

@ Adam L: https://extportal.pbs.gsa.gov/ResourceCenter/PRHomePage/loadPRHomePage.do?type=full

That is an awesome site. You can buy and island next to Long Island. Or a bunch of lighthouses of the coast of MD, VA or NC.

Nice building in Georgetown too.
https://extportal.pbs.gsa.gov/ResourceCenter/PRHomePage/loadProperty.do?propId=17424

Cool time sink.

by Jasper on Jun 25, 2012 10:33 am • link • report

@ Adam L:I wonder how GSA even cam to acquire them in the first place...

Witness protection program?

by Jasper on Jun 25, 2012 10:35 am • link • report

I think Oboe is basically correct that this act ("Title V of the McKinney-Vento Act") sounds like a really bad idea.

I'm more than willing to be wrong here, but homeless seems mostly to be a remaining mental health issue, and less an economic one. That probably varies a lot based on jurisdictions and density, but I am hard pressed to find homeless people who aren't crazy and w/o a familly support net.

Is turning over surplus federal property going to solve that? even if was an economic problem -- and affordable housing is an issue -- I am not sure that this is the best way to address it.

by charlie on Jun 25, 2012 10:39 am • link • report

@Jasper

Bigger time sink: 2012 D.C. Tax Sale List

by Adam L on Jun 25, 2012 10:51 am • link • report

I do have to say, the prospect of the West Heating Plant being turned into a homeless services facility is pretty amusing, given the thermonuclear reaction that would set off from Georgetown residents. I get this hilarious mental image of Jack Evans and Jennifer Altemus chaining themselves to the building to prevent any renovations.

by Dizzy on Jun 25, 2012 11:03 am • link • report

@ Adam L:2012 D.C. Tax Sale List

Nah, no light houses and islands.

by Jasper on Jun 25, 2012 11:27 am • link • report

Why is O'Malley so intent on expanding gambling in Maryland?

Because he thinks it will create jobs and tax revenue. Two things MD needs more of.

Why is this something that needs a special session and cannot wait for the normal legislative process?

Possibly because the jobs/tax revenue is needed sooner. Possibly because MGM (the proposed casino operator) needs to make a decision sooner. Possibly for political reasons.

by Falls Church on Jun 25, 2012 11:34 am • link • report

@charlie is right about the homeless. Broadly speaking, there are two categories of homeless: the chronic homeless and the temporary homeless. Mental illness is almost always at the root of chronic homelessness, and opening up more property isn't going to solve the problem. For the temporary homeless, the system more or less works: a few years back Malcolm Gladwell cited the Ph.D. work of social psychologist Dennis Culhane, who was trying to better understand homelessness by tracking shelter residents in a database. But he found that the most common duration for a stay in a shelter was one day, and the second-most-common duration was two days. That is, most shelter residents came there in a time of need but managed to get themselves together with other arrangements in short order, the way it's supposed to work. (Although things are certainly generally more dire in the current recession.)

Chronic homelessness and temporary homelessness have very different causes and need very different responses, and lumping them together impedes a solution to either.

(n.b. Don't pay too much attention to the bit about power-law distributions in Gladwell's article. Gladwell doesn't understand math well enough to research the topic critically, and the supposed ubiquitous appearance of power laws is more than a bit overblown.)

by thm on Jun 25, 2012 11:41 am • link • report

Rush-Minus update. Last Friday, pm rush-hour, Rosslyn: 5 Orange Line in a row, then two blues, then a bunch of oranges again. So much for the 6-6-12 minute intervals.

by Jasper on Jun 25, 2012 12:02 pm • link • report

@Gavin-
That's what it's all about.

by Kolohe on Jun 25, 2012 12:16 pm • link • report

young adults are more likely to embrace diversity, opt for public transportation over private automobiles and seek out urban environments where they can walk to downtowns instead of driving to malls

So then why would they go to PG County where these characteristics are least developed?

by Marian Berry on Jun 25, 2012 1:04 pm • link • report

So then why would they go to PG County where these characteristics are least developed?

Because the places in question (that should have been explicitly mentioned in the WaPo article) are full of walkable historic streetcar suburbs (Mount Rainier, Hyattsville, built 1890s-1930s) and other developments (like Greenbelt (built 1930-1950)) like that. All with dense street grids, historic housing built around small commercial corridors. We are not talking about Mitchellville and Suitland here, but the historic inner core which was built at the same time as many of DC's streetcar 'suburbs' like Cleveland Park and Brookland.

by CD on Jun 25, 2012 1:12 pm • link • report

Regarding the traffic noise and heart attack correlation story, I wonder if there's a more direct correlation between traffic noise and poverty. There have been plenty of studies regarding health issues among people living next to freeways major freeways in southern California, and the sample of those living next to the freeways is often minority and predominantly low income.

In the Danish study, the risk factors sound familiar. "Cases had higher BMI and lower education, smoked more, drank more alcohol, ate less fruit and vegetables, were less physically active, had higher blood pressure and total cholesterol, had higher prevalence of diabetes and were exposed to more traffic noise and air pollution as compared to the whole cohort."

Sounds like all the health issues associated with urban poverty in the USA. And blaming it on traffic noise may be politically appealing or satisfying. But it's a stretch at best, and probably a classic example of junk science. That is, unless someone can prove that traffic noise causes people to eat less fruits and vegetables.

Traffic noise in this study appears to be an annoyance among people already sporting numerous major risk factors for heart attacks. If you smoke, drink, eat junk food, have a high BMI and hypertension, and don't exercise, it ain't the sound of that 18-wheeler that's gonna give you the big one.

by Mike S. on Jun 25, 2012 8:06 pm • link • report

From the article--

The authors note that the study adjusted for potential confounding conditions, including age, sex, education, lifestyle, railway and airport noise. The association between road noise and heart attack was still present after these adjustments.

by Jazzy on Jun 25, 2012 10:11 pm • link • report

One irony about the PG Co article is that the family pictured in the photo, and profiled in the article, lives in GHI (Greenbelt Homes Inc, a housing cooperative) - which was a racially segregated (whites only) community when it was established in the 1930s. Though now quite diverse and inclusive, I am certain its always been majority white.

by John on Jun 25, 2012 11:16 pm • link • report

One of the most interesting observations from the Post article is that DC's black population has actually been growing for the first time in decades. (Contra all the noise about The Plan forcing blacks out of DC).

[T]he District, which has been losing African Americans to the suburbs for decades, the census estimated the black population rose by 2,100 people last year. The biggest gains for blacks were in people ages 20 to 34 and older than 55. But the city gained so many whites, Asians and Hispanics in the same time frame — mostly in the same age groups — that African Americans slipped below the 50 percent mark in the District.

http://wapo.st/MY2p3R

The newcomers to the city are much more diverse than the US population at large...just not 50%+ african american.

by oboe on Jun 26, 2012 1:11 pm • link • report