2. READ: Lost Children Archive. A novel by by Valeria Luiselli.
4. READ: There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. A book by Ali Noorani.
5. READ: What the first 24 hours on U.S. soil looks like for detained immigrants.
6.LOOK: Our 2018 photo essay in the midst of a rally outside the gates of Tornillo, Texas.
This interview with Dan Hopkins, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
What were the original assumptions in the Constitution about state-level loyalty versus national government loyalty?
It's a good question. The Constitution is now far enough back in our collective memories that I think it's really valuable to start by having some sense of what the U.S. was like at the time. There were some scholars who argued that the Constitution is well understood as a peace treaty between sovereign states about how they were going to govern their affairs.
In 1776 and even in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the U.S. was a collection of 13 quite different colonies. It took the Georgia delegation six weeks to travel to Philadelphia in order to participate in the Constitutional Convention. Different colonies had very different economies and different religious heritages. This was a quite diverse country and, thus, the Constitution was designed to protect substantial levels of state-level autonomy. I think it is really important to recognize that at the time, many of the people thought of themselves as Americans, but also to a certain extent, as New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians.
When do you start to see a shift towards politics in the U.S. becoming more nationalized?
To some degree, it's an ongoing process that has unfolded in fits and starts over our 200-plus year history. I do think that the Civil War is a critical turning point. In the run-up to the Civil War, you see many more implications of state-level identities. I'm a Georgian, I'm a Virginian. And obviously, the Civil War pitted state against state.
It's generally been the case that the Republican party has been more likely to invoke federalism. Of course, the exemplary issue is the issue of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in more recent times, the Republican party has advocated for there being less of a role in the federal government asserting itself to protect the rights of African-Americans, especially, but not only in the South. I think it's fair to say that if you've heard a state rights argument in the last 50 years, it's more likely to be coming from the Republican party.
There's also an element in which as power shifts, we see changes. When the Republicans control the federal office, sometimes it's Democrats who say, "Hey, it's important to let California write its own laws with respect to clean energy or car emissions standards." At the same time, the extent to which we see Republican states moving to block sanctuary cities, for instance, is surprising.
If you're a principled federalist, then presumably cities shouldn't be punished for diverging.
In general, I see very few principled federalists in American politics. I think that all too often in contemporary American politics, federalism is just the clothing we use to dress up certain arguments instead of being a principled approach to a range of policy problems.
What factors contribute to a nationalized political landscape?
I actually think there's a relationship between the transformation of campaign finance, the transformation of voting, and the transformation of what's getting covered in our newspapers. There's a unifying element to all of this.
Let's look at campaign finance first. In many of the most competitive 2020 Senate races, large majorities of money came from out-of-state donations. What does that do to the candidates, and how does that affect the way constituents perceive elections?
I think that the nationalization of the campaign finance structure is an example of our nationalized set of divisions. What we're trying to do is refract these highly nationalized divisions through our federalist system. And the result often distorts representation in critical ways. One of the key facts about campaign finance has been that as late as 1992, two-thirds of all donations to federal candidates, to members of Congress, were coming from within the state that they represent. 20 years later in 2012, only one-third of all dollars were coming from the states that people represented.
The danger is that the representatives and senators increasingly have one constituency where they get their votes, but a separate constituency from where they get their money.
That is not how our system was designed to work. It was not designed for members of Congress to spend four hours a day raising money from people who are not their constituents.
And simultaneously, there has been a collapse of local media. I wonder how the decline of local news plays into this landscape?
When the internet first became a sizable presence, there was a hope that it might actually lead to a proliferation of local news. With the internet there are very, very low production costs, so, theoretically, I could put up a newsletter about my neighborhood. But in fact, as you said, the rise of the internet and the rise of cable television led to this dramatic concentration of our attention on a very, very small number of nationalized news sources. Partly that's because the news media would target us based on where we lived. The Philadelphia Inquirer targeted a set of people who wanted to know about life in and around Philadelphia.
But more recently we instead see that the business model for many media companies is to compete based on who voters are and who readers are and who consumers are, rather than where they live.
Rather than providing me with information specific to Philadelphia, they will identify me as someone who likes the National Football League or cares about politics.
That has led to the fragmentation of our media environment. One of the real losers in this has been people's attention to state and local politics. State and local politics have never been on the top of people's priority lists. It used to be that if I were reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a by-product of learning what the Eagle's score was, I also learn a little bit about who my mayor was or who my governor was. And nowadays, since I can go right to ESPN or I can go right to Fox News, I can skip over all that state and local information.
In a world where state and local politicians want to be well-known, they're much more likely to attach themselves to a lightning rod federal issue than they are to actually dive into the challenging, complex issues that face their local community.
Which really allows issues to be manipulated. When we focused on immigration, something I found interesting was how much immigration was used as a campaign tool in Ohio or Maine. It’s easy to make a border terrifying when you don’t live near one. Do you feel like campaigning has changed based on the ability to take issues that don't have anything to do with your constituents, but are made to look like they have everything to do with constituents?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real challenges with a nationalized political environment is that it encourages attention to issues that are evocative and emotionally charged and often have to do with specific groups of people, but ultimately do not have clear policy effects. I think one prominent example of this is not long after President Trump was elected he attacked football players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. I think it's a very instructive case because he wasn't proposing any policy. This was purely about symbols.
I worry that in the nationalized political environment, it's very hard to put together a political coalition that speaks to auto workers and nurses in the suburbs of Detroit, and retirees in Maricopa County. This is a very diverse country. One of the easier ways to knit together a political coalition is to reach for these divisive, identity-oriented issues, even if that's not actually what's going to motivate the policies that you're proposing.
I do think that there's been a real connection between the way in which our politics has nationalized and the way in which our politics has become more identity oriented.
It's these kinds of identity charged issues that can have an intuitive meaning to people in places from Montana to North Carolina.
Has your work clarified your opinion about how national politics should work? What do you advocate for moving forward in terms of policy and campaigning?
I certainly think that voters do better when they have the information that they need, and I think that we are missing an opportunity to really use our federalist system, because there are so many different kinds of issues that face the different communities in our country.
If we are trying to force all of those issues onto a single divide between Democrats and Republicans, we're going to miss a lot of critical issues.
I think some of the disaffection with contemporary politics stems from the fact that many of us deal with problems in our day-to-day lives that are not represented by the Republican-Democrat divide.
I do want to be wary of nostalgia — or suggesting that some earlier period of history was markedly better. Yes. I worry a lot that today's voters just don't know much about state and local politics, but state and local politics wasn't always vibrant and democratic in previous generations, right? As a social scientist, I think part of my job is to lay out trends. I do think that nationalization is something that we should forecast as being a major part of our politics moving forward.
I also think that there are some policy changes on the edges that I would advocate for that I think would help reinforce the connections between places and voters, and to make better use of our current federalist system. For instance, I think campaign finance matching, so that every dollar you get locally is amplified, is a great idea. I think that could encourage politicians to lay down roots in the specific communities they represent and to spend less time trying to raise money from Manhattan or Dallas.
I think we should also do everything in our regulatory capacity to help promote, protect, and foster high-quality, non-partisan coverage of states and localities.
As a country that is hemorrhaging reporters who cover states and localities I do think that given how many important decisions are made at the state and local level, as a society, we have a real stake in the quality of local news media. There are fewer statehouse reporters, there are fewer city hall reporters, and there are fewer people who are tracking state and local politics to hold our politicians accountable. I think that has been underappreciated, and one of the real dangers in contemporary American democracy.
interviews
Uncertainty is the Universal Challenge
by Polina Bakhteirov
April 8, 2020
This interview with Polina Bakhteirov, a vice president of development with Omni New York, was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Will you tell me about your current work?
Omni is an exclusively affordable housing developer, established in 2004. Since then, we have acquired, developed, and managed over 17,000 affordable units across 11 states with an aggregate transaction value of around $3 billion. Omni has a reputation for acquiring very distressed properties and turning them around through extensive rehab and added security.
Prior to joining Omni, I spent about a decade in the public sector. Immediately before joining the firm, I was working in Newark, NJ on small business development with a focus on supporting and growing minority and woman owned business enterprises. Prior to that, I was the inaugural director of preservation for the New York City Housing Authority [NYCHA]. There, I built out the preservation team to implement NYCHA’s PACT plan, which stands for “Permanent Affordability Commitment Together.” I led the rollout of various federal subsidy conversion tools, such as the Rental Assistance Demonstration [RAD] and Section 18, to convert public housing units to project-based Section 8 funding.
These conversions require the housing authority to address the repair needs of each converted property, so we partnered with private and non-profit development teams to raise adequate financing to address the capital backlog and also to bring on new property management and increase on-site social services for residents.
What are your most pressing concerns right now?
I’m primarily concerned about our residents – their health, level of access to medically-accurate information, and ability to cover the costs of basic necessities. Many may be laid off or have hours cut back.
More broadly, low-income renters, especially those living in public housing, may not be receiving information on how to protect themselves from the virus and how to care for those in their homes who are, or may be, infected.
We know that across the board, public housing residents are predisposed to becoming sick with COVID-19 due to pre-existing conditions. Furthermore, 40% of NYCHA families are led by seniors who may contract the virus from their (sometimes asymptomatic) family members, while nearly one in four NYCHA residents are seniors who tend either not to have access to information virtually or are reluctant to trust it. What happens when these residents show up at their management office to pay rent and discover that they can only pay online, via phone, or by mail? Now this senior has unnecessarily left the safety of their home and potentially exposed themselves and others.
Another prominent issue is the lack of consistent government guidance for affordable housing operators. At this point, HUD has issued three consecutive sets of FAQs and more are expected. Sometimes, updated guidance rolls back provisions from previous iterations. For example, the agency changed its guidance on mark-up-to-market projects from what was originally a 5% rent increase allowance since rent comparability studies are suspended due to widespread stay-at-home orders, to now saying that they will issue additional guidance on the matter in the coming weeks. Any requirements for a second appraisal will be a practical challenge as appraisers are not consistently deemed essential workers from state to state.
Furthermore, HUD’s guidance on interim recertification of income for residents differs from that of some public housing authorities, including NYCHA. Even New York State has contributed to the litany of guidance discrepancies, reversing their previous stop on in-person real estate showings, inspections, and appraisals. Another confusing inconsistency that I’m experiencing on my portfolio at Omni is how various states are defining essential workers. For example, New York has carved out the construction of affordable housing as essential, but Philadelphia has shut down such development. My hope is that Phase 4 of the federal legislation will provide more guidance on infrastructure and specifically housing.
HUD wants to keep RAD transactions going, but some documents cannot be recorded. Numerous public land disposition processes are on hold, while others are moving forward but without defined timelines. That makes responding to certain Requests for Proposals [RFPs] more difficult. Should we proceed with architectural design or pause it? Will the changing needs of the community call for a different development program in 3-6 months? Furthermore, the halt of land use review processes may have a multi-year stalling effect on construction. We as developers are obsessed with predictability, so you can imagine our current state of mind. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that the market will eventually recover, especially given its strength coming into the current crisis and what we anticipate to be even stronger demand for the affordable asset class coming out of the pandemic.
As the federal government contemplates all of its economic triggers, the LIHTC rate [Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Rates] is at a ten-year low of 3.12% for the month of April, and is expected to be even lower in May. This is actually an opportunity to push Congress to permanently set the rate at 4%, similar to how it has done so for 9% credits. Adding this additional layer of predictability to affordable housing finance will definitely be welcomed in this time of great economic uncertainty where underwriting of LIHTC deals - and in general - will most certainly become more stringent.
I believe our biggest areas of opportunity moving forward are in the urban multifamily market. Residential occupancy levels are typically 5% higher for the affordable asset class vs. market-rate units during economic recessions, so the next 12 months may be a greater opportunity to build more new affordable units. And as the federal government is determining the best way to support American renters, I think they should take heed of former HUD Secretary Castro’s proposal to make Section 8 - Housing Choice Vouchers - a federal entitlement for every eligible adult, just like Social Security and Medicare. Or enact a monthly renter’s tax credit for government unassisted households.
At Omni, we have discussed property management logistics, how we're going to continue to operate our sites at this time. It's everything from how are we going to collect rent, to who is on the properties cleaning, and how is garbage being collected.
What are you doing to enhance the safety of residents and employees alike?
In terms of property management, we're looking to stagger shifts. We're looking at reducing the onsite presence of employees to the extent possible, while still maintaining high-quality service. And then obviously examining various cleaning mechanisms and, and ensuring that those deep cleaning sessions are being implemented on a more aggressive schedule. We are also looking to see what work needs to be done immediately and what work is going to have to be delayed. And that's obviously challenging. We have to be able to communicate that to our residents. Other considerations are the policy on visitors to the properties, communications delivered in the languages spoken there, and supporting residents with alternative methods of paying rent and completing interim income recertifications. I’ve found guidance from the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities quite helpful when it comes to property management.
People already living in poverty are losing work – how do you protect your most vulnerable tenants?
There are various eviction moratoria coming from different state governors. It's an effective measure in terms of protecting folks from eviction for a period of time, but that doesn't solve our revenue and debt service issues. We still need a residential income coming in order to continue to run the buildings and to run the business. We are also of course worried about having to do layoffs internally.
A lot of our developments have Section 8 contracts on them. And so we hope that the additional infusion of funds from the federal stimulus will fill the gap when it comes to federally assisted households.
We also have properties that are strictly LIHTC (Low-Income Housing Tax Credits) where residents don't have a federal subsidy. We're still thinking through how we can support those folks and how long our reserves will last because of course, all these properties have reserves for emergencies. The biggest challenges that we are facing now, similar to the federal shutdowns we encounter from time to time, is that we just don't know how long this will last. That is really what we are grappling with now.
What do you think about a rent freeze?
That is tough, right? We are not in the business of evicting our residents. In the entirety of our existence over the past 16 years, we have come in and turned around properties that no one in the private sector wanted to touch. We don't want senior residents to lose their homes. At this point, we're trying to figure out how much leeway we can give on rent collection, while also ensuring that we have enough income to continue to operate. We don't want folks that have to choose between rent and other necessities.
I don’t believe that a full-on rent freeze or strike without support for property operators is the best economic solution, since many affordable housing owners have mortgages out on their developments that are securitized, and the investors in these mortgage-backed securities are often pension funds for public workers. Their inability to collect on those investments will have a negative economic impact on working and middle-class families. It’s very circular.
I think the new forebearance allowance for affordable housing owners is a stop gap measure, but there are a few issues. First, the time period (90 days) does not sync up with the “parallel” eviction moratorium of 150 days (120 days plus 30 days’ notice). Second, forbearance is reserved for federally-backed multifamily mortgage borrowers who were current on their loan payments as of February 1st. But we closed on a 2,600-unit property in mid-February with over 6,000 vulnerable residents – where does that leave us?
My top questions as of today are: