Need Nonprofits Fret About the President’s Budget?

| Posted: February 22nd, 2012

The federal budget President Obama sent to Congress last week has some in the nonprofit sector worried, but are they fretting about the right stuff?

The president’s $3.8 trillion proposal for fiscal year 2013 includes increased revenues and spending cuts. Revenues in the order of $1.5 trillion will be raised over a decade by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for high-income taxpayers and putting a cap on their itemized deductions; by raising taxes on the top 1 percent (the “Buffet Rule”); and by reinstating the estate tax at higher levels. Savings include non-health mandatory spending and entitlement cuts and the elimination of hundreds of programs.

Nonprofit leaders and advocates have expressed concern over the suggested limitations on charitable deductions, tax increases for millionaires, and higher estate taxes.

Sue Santa, senior vice president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, told the NonProfit Times, “The president is sending mixed messages to the charitable community. On one hand, he wants to limit the charitable deduction. On the other, he wants millionaires to continue to give to charity while also paying higher taxes.”

“We thought we had turned the corner of the issue, that we had made progress with the administration, only to learn that we are back to square one,” Diana Aviv, chief executive of Independent Sector, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Her coalition of nonprofits and foundations opposes policies that discourage private giving and has advocated for preserving the status quo.

The fear is that higher taxes on the wealthy would result in less giving.

The president’s budget is a request that will not be enacted in its entirety. Congress will have its own ideas about what to keep and what to toss out. It is highly unlikely under a Republican-controlled House that the wealthy will suffer higher taxes anytime soon. It is almost guaranteed however, in today’s economic and political climate, that funding of programs will suffer.

And this is where nonprofits should be concerned.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy points out that “the $3.8-trillion blueprint proposes no drastic cuts to social programs. But it proposes few big increases either, despite what nonprofit leaders say is a growing need for services to help people recover from the economic downturn.”

The demand for human services remains strong while funding, from government and private sources, has not kept up with the cost of providing these services. Entitlement and programmatic cuts will further strain human service nonprofits that can barely keep up with the needs of their clients.

Nonprofits should fret, not much about the remote possibility of lost largesse, but about the real threat faced by programs that prop up those at the bottom, the most vulnerable among us.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: February 18th, 2012

Retiree 'migration patterns' and racial opportunity gaps in Washington, D.C., shared the spotlight this week on MetroTrends.

• Richard Johnson notes that retirees are now relocating around the country, redistributing metro-boosting spending, tax revenue, volunteer hours, and more.
• Margery Turner localizes her national racial opportunity gap report card with a closer look at the District of Columbia—the metro scores a C in African American and Latino equity, compared with whites.

Share this:

Opportunity Gaps in the DC Region

| Posted: February 15th, 2012

At the time of Martin Luther King's death, most American urban areas, in the North as well as the South, were highly segregated, and African Americans were denied equal access to good schools, well-paying jobs, and homeownership—all essential pathways to economic success. Today, more than four decades later, the disparities have narrowed considerably, and growing numbers of black Americans have succeeded in climbing the ladder of social and economic opportunity. But African Americans (on average) still don’t enjoy the same school quality, job opportunities, or homeownership access as whites.

To complicate matters further, immigration has made our population dramatically more diverse. So the picture of racial inequity in urban America is no longer so stark—or so clearly evident. Some metros perform a lot better than others for their minority residents. And some serve members of one minority well but not others.

To explore this complex picture, the Urban Institute developed a "report card" that ranks the nation's 100 biggest metro areas on five factors: residential segregation, neighborhood affluence (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white), public school quality (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white student), employment (among working-age adults), and homeownership.

How does the DC region score? Not as well as you might think. For African Americans, it ranks 50th of 100 big metro areas (a C if we're grading on a curve). Residential segregation is high by national standards (although it has declined substantially over recent decades). The average African American in the DC region lives in a much lower-income neighborhood than the average white, and the average African American child attends a lower-performing school than the average white child. The DC region appears to be performing better for African Americans with respect to employment and homeownership opportunities. Although blacks are less likely than whites to have jobs or to own their own homes, these gaps are narrow by national standards.

Opportunity Gaps Among Whites, Blacks, and Latinos in the Washington, DC Metro Area

Source: Urban Institute analysis of Brown University US 2010 and 2010 Census data

Now let’s look at Latino-white equity. The DC region scores a C again—45th among the nation's 100 biggest metros. Latinos are less segregated from non-Hispanic whites than are blacks, but the DC region's Latino-white segregation levels are high by national standards, and they've been climbing for the last several decades at the same time the Latino population has been growing. The average Latino lives in a neighborhood that's higher income than the average African American's, but still lower than the average white's. And the average Latino child attends a school that performs better than the average African American child's but, again, not on par with the average white child's. Employment is high among working-age Latinos, and—as for African Americans—homeownership rates are high by national standards.

So when it comes to opportunities for its growing minority population, our region's performance is respectable but by no means laudable. Closing the remaining opportunity gaps is no simple matter. Historically, public policies played a central role in establishing and enforcing patterns of racial segregation and inequality, alongside discriminatory practices by private-sector institutions and individuals. But no single causal process explains the persistence of these opportunity gaps in the Washington region—or other American metros—and no single policy initiative can eradicate them.  Instead, the evidence argues for combination strategies to address interconnected barriers like unaffordable mortgages, neighborhood distress, failing schools, and weak job markets.

I hope policymakers and civic leaders in metropolitan Washington will use our report card to start a constructive metro-wide conversation, asking “What can we do to narrow the opportunity gaps in our region?”

Share this:

The Shifting Retiree Migration

| Posted: February 13th, 2012

My mailbox this past holiday season included greetings from several well-wishers describing their future retirement plans. These notes startled me because my friends—still nearly two decades from traditional retirement age—seem to be bucking the trend of working longer. But I wasn’t surprised about where they’re planning to spend their golden years. Like the latest wave of retirees, they’re forsaking Florida, the traditional retirement haven, and scouting locations elsewhere, including the Georgia coast and the Tennessee hills. These shifting retiree migration patterns matter a lot to local communities.

Back in 1990, more than one in four retirees age 55 to 65 who relocated across state lines moved to Florida. More than 1 in 20 moved to Tampa, about twice as many as relocated to Phoenix, the second most popular destination. Seven of the top 10 cities for migrating retirees were located in Florida.

Fast forward to today, and the patterns are quite different. Florida is still the most popular destination for relocating retirees, but it attracted only one in seven of those age 55 to 65 who crossed state lines between 2005 and 2010. Only three metros in the state now rank among the nation’s top 10 magnets for retirees. These days Americans are moving to cities around the country when they retire. The most popular destinations now include Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Dallas, fast-growing metros in the Sunbelt. But older, colder cities like New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago also attract many retirees.

Top Metros For Retirees Age 55 To 65 Who Relocated Across State Lines, 2005-2010

Source: Author’s calculations from the American Community Survey

Shifting mobility patterns matter because retirees help magnet cities prosper. Americans who relocate when their careers end are generally wealthier and healthier than those who stay put. Their home purchases and other spending invigorate the local housing market and broader economy. They pay local property and sales taxes but don’t use many government services, at least in the short-run before they need long-term care. Many retirees serve their communities by volunteering at local nonprofits.

As my colleague Howard Gleckman points out, many states try to woo wealthy seniors with tax breaks, such as by exempting pension income from taxes. It’s not clear that this strategy works, but it seems likely that the competition will heat up as the wave of retiring boomers intensifies.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: February 11th, 2012

Last week MetroTrends delivered new data on two stubborn challenges – poverty and jobs:

• Graham MacDonald and Margery Turner map trends since 1990 in where poor people live in the Washington, DC region.
• Margaret Simms and Erika Meade check the facts behind Clint Eastwood’s claim that manufacturing is making a come-back in the Motor City.

Share this:

Halftime in America: Will Manufacturing Jobs Make a Comeback?

| Posted: February 10th, 2012

In the Super Bowl halftime ad that ran on February 5, Clint Eastwood compares the current state of the U.S. economy to halftime in a football game. It’s a comparison the ad uses to describe Detroit’s economic comeback: “Motor City,” Eastwood said, “is fighting again.” While it is early in the second half, it might be worth seeing if Detroit and other hard-hit manufacturing centers are making much headway toward the distant goal line.

An examination of job growth in metropolitan areas with large minority and immigrant populations shows that many of these communities suffered from a loss of manufacturing jobs that was not offset by job growth in other sectors between 2000 and 2009. What has happened to the 15 metros that were labeled “high-manufacturing areas”?

Average Job Growth in High Manufacturing Metro Areas, 2009-2011

Source: Urban Institute analysis of BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES) Data

The MetroTrends interactive map on job growth shows that overall job growth in these communities between 2009 and 2011 ranged from -1.5 percent (in Stockton, CA) to 5.3 percent (in Nashville, TN). Job growth in the 15 high-manufacturing areas reflects patterns in other metros, which generally saw private job gains or losses between zero and 4 percent. In the manufacturing sector, some metros did better and some did worse, with job growth ranging from -5.4 percent (in Augusta, GA) to 18.6 percent (in Detroit, MI). Eight of the 15 metros experienced net losses of manufacturing jobs between 2009 and 2011:  Augusta, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Stockton, Chicago, Oxnard, and Minneapolis.

Of the seven metro areas where manufacturing jobs grew, five had gains above the national average of 1.3 percent: San Jose, Houston, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Detroit. The Midwest region had some of the highest rates of growth in manufacturing jobs between 2009 and 2011, but also some of the lowest rates. In the South and West, manufacturing jobs shrank or grew minimally between 2009 or 2011, with the exception of Houston and San Jose. But win or lose, these 15 metros were all in the top half of the 100 largest metros in terms of manufacturing job growth.

So it looks like the Motor City and some older industrial centers are gaining yardage early in the second half of the recovery, but the goal of robust employment growth is still a long way away for many of them.

Share this:

Mapping Where Poor Washingtonians Live

| Posted: February 7th, 2012

Although the Washington, DC, region has weathered the Great Recession and its aftermath relatively well, at latest count, the region’s poverty rate stood at 8 percent. A new MetroTrends spotlight focuses on where the region’s poor people live.

Like most big cities, DC has a higher rate of poverty than its surrounding suburbs. But the total number of poor people living in the region’s suburbs (370,000) far exceeds the number living in the District (102,000).

Poor blacks are much more likely to live in DC than either poor whites or poor Latinos. As the right-hand panel of the map below shows, poor blacks are clustered in DC neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, while poor whites and Latinos are widely scattered across the region as a whole.

Source: Urban Institute analysis of 1990 and 2000 Decennial Census data and 2005-2009 5-Year American Community Survey data

Our map also illustrates changes in where poor Washingtonians lived over the past two decades. Slide the bar to compare the region in 1990, 2000, and the 2005-09 period (the most current data).

Tackling poverty in the Washington region poses multiple challenges for area policymakers. It’s not just a city problem; suburban communities need to deliver support and opportunity too. It’s not just a neighborhood revitalization problem, although overcoming the legacy of segregation in the District’s poorest neighborhoods is critical. It’s not just an English-speaking problem; communities across the region have to reach out to a growing population of immigrants, many of whom speak little English. And it’s not somebody else’s problem; explore our map and you’ll likely see that poor people are among your neighbors. Helping these families overcome poverty is not just a matter of providing aid so they can get by day to day, it’s also about providing opportunities for them to escape poverty in the long run through education, work, and savings.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: February 4th, 2012

Last week’s MetroTrends bloggers delivered provocative commentary on three hot topics for metropolitan America:

• Microsoft’s new “avoid the ghetto” app – John Roman maps crime patterns in the District of Columbia.

• Claims that residential segregation is behind us – Rolf Pendall argues that racial exclusion and isolation can’t be consigned to the history books yet.

• Barriers to equal opportunity for African Americans and Latinos – Margery Turner ranks the nation’s 100 biggest metros on their racial opportunity gaps.

Share this:

How Wide Are the Racial Opportunity Gaps in Your Metro?

| Posted: February 2nd, 2012

In December, MetroTrends graded America’s 100 biggest metros on measures of economic security. Today we offer a new report card, with grades reflecting the opportunity gaps facing African Americans and Latinos.

We’re all well aware of the national story. Despite the huge achievements of the civil rights era, neither African Americans nor Latinos (on average) enjoy the same school quality, job opportunities, or homeownership access as whites. But the picture isn’t the same in every metro area. So our report card scores metros on five factors: residential segregation, neighborhood affluence (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white), public school quality (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white student), employment (among working-age adults), and homeownership.

Let’s start by looking at the grades for black-white equity.

Surprised? The top scorers are mostly small- to medium-sized metros in the south and west (Charleston, SC, and Riverside, CA, for example), while the worst performers are big metros in the midwest and northeast (including New York, Boston, and Chicago).

When I first saw these results, I thought perhaps that so few African Americans live in the high-scoring metros that their high performance is irrelevant. For some top scorers (like Albuquerque and San Jose), that’s definitely the case. But lots of other metros scoring As and Bs on this report card have substantial African American populations.

So my second thought was this: maybe outcomes for African Americans are better in big, prosperous metros like New York, Boston, and Chicago, even though the gaps between African Americans and whites are wider there. Not true. Average outcomes for African Americans (on all five factors) are best among metros scoring As and worst among those scoring Fs. African Americans in Charleston, SC, and Oklahoma City are more likely to be employed, own their homes, live in prosperous neighborhoods, and attend high-performing schools than their counterparts in Milwaukee or Boston.

I should note that we’re grading on a curve here. Even in metros scoring As, the average African American lives in a lower-income neighborhood, attends lower-performing schools, is less likely to find a job, and is less likely to own a home than the average white. But these gaps are two to three times wider in the metros scoring Fs.

Now let’s look at the grades for Latino-white equity.

Equity for Latinos (click image below for interactive map)

Source: Urban Institute analysis of Brown University US2010 and 2010 Census data

The overall picture looks pretty similar. And indeed, many metros either score well for both African Americans and Latinos (like Palm Bay, FL, Colorado Springs, and Raleigh, NC) or score poorly for both (like New York, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia). But a few metros—like San Jose, CA—stand out for scoring high on equity for their (small) African American population but low for their (much larger) Latino population. And the reverse is true in metros like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, which perform poorly for African Americans but quite well for Latinos.

You can find any metro’s score (and all the underlying factors) on our map by mousing over and clicking on it. But you can also modify our scoring system. Maybe employment matters more to you than homeownership, or you don’t care about residential segregation at all. Change the relative importance of the five factors in the box, and MetroTrends will recompute the scores and display your new rankings.

Closing these opportunity gaps is no simple matter. And the solutions—such as targeted school investments, fair housing enforcement, and job training—have to be crafted locally to tackle fundamental sources of inequality. So policymakers and civic leaders in metros across the country should be using our report card to challenge themselves, asking “How does our region perform?” and “What can we do to narrow the opportunity gaps in our region?”

Share this:

Racial Segregation: It’s Not History

| Posted: February 1st, 2012

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research’s website made a triumphal proclamation this week that we have reached “the end of the segregated century.” The New York Times dutifully spread the news, leading with the headline “Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds.” The story beneath the spin, however, shows that segregation isn’t just a phenomenon to look back on regretfully during African American History Month (which begins today). Segregation lives on in far too many American cities.

In 1970, two years had elapsed since Congress enacted the end of private-sector apartheid with the Fair Housing Act; only a few years before that, President Kennedy had ordered the desegregation of public housing. Why should we wonder that segregation levels have declined since then? Shouldn’t the real story be that in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area, Chicago, over 70 percent of African Americans would have to move to a predominantly non-black neighborhood (or the same proportion of whites would have to move to mostly non-white areas) to achieve an even racial distribution? Chicago isn’t the only metropolitan area in this position: Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis also surpass 70 on this segregation index. New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia—that is, a continuous band of urbanization stretching from just north of Washington, DC, to the middle of Connecticut with well over 25 million inhabitants—stand between 60 and 65. The heart of the northeast corridor still lives in a segregated century, as does the fringe of the Great Lakes. Even “less segregated” metropolitan areas still have levels of racial segregation far higher than the Fair Housing Act promised.

Beyond racial segregation, the Urban Institute’s own research for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies shows that concentrated poverty has spiked since 2000 and that African Americans and Latinos have borne the brunt of that increase. A quarter of African Americans in U.S. metros live in census tracts with poverty rates above 30 percent, as do about one in six Latinos. Only one out of every 25 non-Hispanic whites lives in a high-poverty tract. Startlingly, a non-poor African American is more likely to live in a high-poverty tract than a white American with a family income below poverty.

The conclusion of the Manhattan Institute report is worth repeating for its insidious misdirection: “During [the 1960s], the fight against housing segregation seemed to offer the possibility that once the races mixed more readily, all would be well....Yet we now know that eliminating segregation was not a magic bullet.” The report suggests that, having won the fight, we can now shift our attention to “closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.”

But we haven’t won the fight against racial residential segregation and we’ve scarcely begun a serious fight against the concentrated poverty that remains the most toxic legacy of American apartheid. Racially exclusionary zoning practices persist. Public housing authorities perpetuated segregation well into the 1990s; such practices have not ended just because they are illegal. Illegal discrimination against black and Hispanic renters and owners goes on, as ample Urban Institute research has shown. And whites still seek out and are steered to predominantly white neighborhoods.

Addressing racial segregation in the nation’s most populous metropolitan areas isn’t a historic victory yet. Residential segregation continues, and discrimination and exclusionary practices still must be countered, so that someday it can honestly be American history.

Share this: