MesaZona > Table of Contents : Here's The Menu. Enjoy

Monday, June 12, 2017

HE LIED TO CONGRESS > Oliver North on Face the Nation in 1994

...Great

Published on Jun 7, 2017

CBS News' Bob Schieffer spoke with one of the main players in the Iran-Contra scandal in January 1994

Power Square Mall LIVE Dead Mall Tour | Retail Archaeology

Another "Dead Mall"???

Streamed live 1 hour ago

This is footage from a live dead mall tour of Power Square Mall in Mesa, AZ. I conducted this live tour on 6/12/2017 via YouTube Live stream.

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#deadmall #deadmalls #mall #RetailArchaeology #RetailApocalypse #powersquaremall

Sneak Preview > Community Development Partners Set For Move-Ins @ El Rancho Del Sol

Seems just like yesterday there was a new shovel-ready dig on ground here in The New Urban Downtown Mesa for Phase 2 of El Rancho del Arte.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on October 17, 2016 at 659 E Main Street. The keynote speaker was Arizona Department of Housing Director Michael Trailor, along with Kimber Lanning of Local First Arizona and Eric Paine, Community Development Partners and others

Nine months later it's almost ready for move-ins, with a vigorous response from the community to fulfill the need [and shortage] of affordable housing.
Celtic Property Management is now accepting applications on a waiting list.
Building out the core aspects of El Rancho del Arte, El Rancho del Sol represents a comprehensive approach to designing and developing affordable housing, where not only are residents’ basic housing needs met, but a community is energized and engaged.
Christian Hulme guided your MesaZona blogger around the work-in-progress today - it's very impressive. Both buildings setting new standards for the attainable and affordable housing market will be featured in a series of upcoming posts.

The new construction getting ready for tentative occupancy at the end of June and into July consists of 47 units serving low-income households earning between 40-60% of the Area Median Income, with a preference for families with children. The project will be comprised of 26 two-bed, 11 three-bed, and 10 four-bed units, with sizes ranging from 942 to 1,988 square feet.
A New Leaf will provide resident supportive services and Local First Arizona will provide an on-site micro enterprise accelerator program for enterprising residents. Similar to its predecessor El Rancho del Arte, the adjacent El Rancho del Sol will integrate the arts into its design through installations and ongoing programming. The new community—designed by Perlman Architects, constructed by Rytan Construction, and managed by Celtic Property Management— is working to achieve LEED Gold certification.

Eric Paine [seen to the right] Chief Executive Officer of Community Development Partners, says, “Our mission is to not only provide housing, but create healthy and engaged neighborhoods. We are pleased with how El Rancho del Arte is becoming a community hub and look forward to delivering a second phase that continues the mission.”
When yours truly emailed him about arranging the on-site walk through, he joked and said Be ready for a few surprises . . . gotta say I was knocked-out by the "surprises" - totally impressed [not that that means anything to industry professionals] but more about the surprises in other featured posts on the blog site and on social media.
The project was partially financed by the sale of 9% Low Income Housing Tax Credits awarded by Arizona Department of Housing (ADOH) in 2015. The tax credit investor is Alliant Capital. A construction and permanent loan from Chase bank, HOME and Housing Trust Funds from ADOH and a HOME Loan from the City of Mesa, along with an acquisition/pre-development loan from Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) financed the remaining project costs.
About Community Development Partners

Founded in 2011, Community Development Partners develops and operates sustainable, life-enhancing affordable housing with a focus on long term community engagement and innovative design. The company is based in Orange County and has developed or currently operates properties in Arizona, California, and Oregon.

Excerpts and details are taken from https://prismpub.com

For more information, visit: communitydevpartners.com.
____________________________________________________________
Related content

Assessing and Improving the Community Development Block Grant

by Brett Theodos and Christina Stacy
Source: https://howhousingmatters.org
As the federal budget tightens, major sources of federal support for US communities are in the spotlight, but the conversations are often short on evidence—especially for block grant programs. Block grants give states or localities formula-based funding and general guidelines for their use, allowing the exact uses to be determined by the grantees, a departure from the earlier model in which federal funding rules dictated how states and localities spent funds.

For community development and housing activities, the Community Development Block Grant program (CDBG) has been a substantial source of flexible funds for more than 40 years. The program’s creation reflected a bipartisan compromise between those who wanted to devolve decisionmaking power to state and local governments and those who wanted to create a national program benefiting low-income communities. As a block grant, it could do both.
Community Development Block Grants continue to play an important role as a unique community development resource.
According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), between 2005 and 2013,

CDBG created or retained 330,546 jobs,
assisted over 1.1 million people with homeownership and improvements,
benefited over 33 million people nationwide through public improvements, and
provided public services to over 105 million people.

Furthermore, practitioners report that the program is used as the “first capital in” to a project, which is critical in attracting other capital sources.
But CDBG funding may be eliminated, and the program has faced criticism for the lack of evidence on its benefits. This lack of evidence may be more related to evaluation capacity or factors that could be addressed with different implementation guidance rather than a lack of true impacts.

To read the entire article, please go > https://howhousingmatters.org/articles/assessing-improving-community-development-block-grant/

Is There an Alternative to Political Correctness?

Aware of privilege?

Published on Jun 12, 2017

Political correctness aims for some very nice results, but its means have a habit of upsetting a lot of people. Might there be an alternative to it? We think there is, and it’s called Politeness. If you like our films, take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): https://goo.gl/iVqWJ1
Join our mailing list: http://bit.ly/2e0TQNJ
Or visit us in person at our London HQ https://goo.gl/6YnJ6i

FURTHER READING

“Political Correctness is, in many ways, an extraordinary and admirable achievement of our age. It involves an acute sensitivity to the suffering of minority groups traditionally overlooked by the dominant forces in society – and a commitment to teasing out examples of adversity in the large but also the small moments of daily life. Its aim is to spread empathy, justice and fairness...”

WE BELIEVE IN Orienting Around Outcomes We Want-To-See In Our Communities

Reorienting Success Around Outcomes

Source: http://investinresults.org/

The greatest hope of people working in the social sector is to make a positive, long-term impact on their communities. But, too often, the funding systems that support service providers incentivize a short-term approach, focused on “outputs.”

For example, a homeless shelter's funding is typically contingent on the number of beds it fills each night—rather than an “outcome” like the number of individuals who transition to permanent housing.
Can we imagine a new way forward? What Matters: Investing in Results to Build Strong, Vibrant Communities, a project of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Nonprofit Finance Fund, is a collection of essays that explores what it takes to reorient our social programs and funding to achieve outcomes. The collection features leaders from government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and finance, offering diverse perspectives for both experienced practitioners and newcomers to the field.

Learn More

Outputs vs. Outcomes

What's the difference between "outputs" and "outcomes"? And how does our funding system affect the ability of service providers to focus on long-term results?

Check out this video and explore this site to learn more.

June 20, 2017

9:00AM ET • NEW YORK, NY

Nonprofit Workshop on Outcomes (sold out!)

CERN Plasma Running Hot/Earth's Shields Collapse

Un-Natural Bending

Published on Jun 11, 2017

When these events happen you will notice the increase in penetrating gamma radiation on you skin. Our Website, http://www.BPEarthWatch.Com

Startling Stats: "Quality Jobs" In The WorkPlace > Volatility, Instability and Insecurity

Almost every single time there's the usual hyped-up press releases from different cities or economic development offices they always mention "quality-jobs" or "high-paying jobs". Even for those fortunate to have any kind of job or any kind of income it's a mixed bag for everyone making less than $105,000 per year - rich or poor.

Steady Jobs, With Pay and Hours That Are Anything But

By PATRICIA COHENMAY 31, 2017

Blogger's Note: Hundreds of jobs created at two recent company re-locations in District 3 - Dexcom and Santander Consumer Finance are either manufacturing jobs or call-center jobs with average wages $10-12 per hour.

"Up to 50 jobs' at the most recent news about the highly-automated Niagara water-bottling facility are manufacturing jobs with a $3,500 tax-credit for each job created for even part-time work.

"Monthly expenses can pendulum as much as income, but the two do not necessarily move in tandem. An analysis of 250,000 bank accounts by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a nonprofit research arm of the bank, found that roughly 80 percent of households had an insufficient cash buffer to manage the mismatch between income and expenses in a given month.

Few people can comfortably ride out the inevitable financial bronco ride. “Only households that earn $105,000 or more a year are secure against the volatility they are exposed to,” said Diana Farrell, the institute’s president and chief executive. “It’s not just about the unemployed or the poor.”

instability and insecurity are increasingly a part of middle-class life, too.

. . . Monthly expenses can pendulum as much as income, but the two do not necessarily move in tandem. An analysis of 250,000 bank accounts by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a nonprofit research arm of the bank, found that roughly 80 percent of households had an insufficient cash buffer to manage the mismatch between income and expenses in a given month.

In another study from this article: "To Mr. Morduch and his co-author, Rachel Schneider, the rise in income volatility is an indication of how businesses in an era of advancing technology and global competition have shifted risk onto employees."

Read more > New York Times 31 May 2017

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN DREAM?

First Question: How do you measure it?

Top 1 Percent of Americans Reaped Two-Thirds of Income Gains in Last Economic Expansion

Income Concentration in 2007 Was at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows

Source: http://www.cbpp.org/research

"Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.[1]During those years, the Piketty-Saez data also show, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households."
Piketty and Saez’s unique data series on income inequality, based on IRS files, is particularly valuable because it provides detailed information on income gains at the top of the income scale and extends back to 1913.

2007 marked the fifth straight year in which income gains at the top outpaced those among the rest of the population.
From 2002 to 2007, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households rose 62 percent, compared to 4 percent for the bottom 90 percent of households
(see Table 1).

The Piketty-Saez data has been updated. An analysis of the new data as of March 7, 2012 can be found here: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3697.

How America’s big cities are becoming more unequal: Income gap between wealthy and poor is still growing five years after end of the recession [2015]

The analysis compared 2013 census data for the top five per cent of earners with the bottom 20 per cent to work out the difference in wages.

The Mesa gap was -7.5 where the rich only took home 7.5 times more than poor.

The gap between the rich and poor in big cities in the United States is still widening. The map to the right shows the most equal and unequal cities, according to the 2015 report by the Brookings Institution
Read more: here

The American Dream Index: Behind The Numbers Source: Forbes 29 May 2017

Is the economy strong enough to deliver the American dream? Middle-class prosperity, that is?

The states highlighted in green are off to a good start in the Trump era, according to the American Dream Index.

We address that question with a new index that blends seven economic factors into a single number for each state. Employment growth, layoffs, construction activity and entrepreneurship are among the components in our formula.

The American Dream Index aims to capture a middle-class zeitgeist. Our jobs number focuses on goods-producing employment—in manufacturing, mining, construction and agriculture, that is—because that's where America is supposed to get great again.

We downplay the service sector, even though service keeps more people busy than production does. Why? Because the service sector too rarely offers the middle-class jobs that used to be the heart of the economy. Neither $150-an-hour doctors nor $9-an-hour retail clerks are part of the middle class.
The American Dream Index will be, by design, a lot more volatile than gross domestic product, the usual thermometer for economic progress. It is sensitive to recent layoff announcements and to short-term trends in job creation and in unemployment claims. It varies considerably from state to state and from month to month. Forbes compiles an annual look at the Best States for Business, which measures the strength of the local economy. The ADI is focused on the trendline.

Mass layoffs figure into our index, since those affect the animal spirits of middle America more than the small job gains and losses that drive the unemployment rate. We incorporate a measure of entrepreneurial verve from the Kauffman Foundation. We have labor force participation in the mix; some states are doing better than others at bucking the discouraging downward trend in this number.

Some words of advice from the authors of the Inequality study:

". . local policy-makers should not ignore other tools they have at hand - from education to economic development to housing and zoning policies - that are essential for improving social mobility and sustaining income diversity in big cities today.'