Middle Class Loses Ground In Almost 90% Of Metro Areas




In this April 21, 2016 photo, affordable housing and homeless advocates rally outside the state capitol in Honolulu. Hawaii lawmakers set aside $12 million to tackle the highest rate of homelessness in the nation, a crisis that has left families with children living on sidewalks alongside the beaches of paradise. (AP Photo)


If you’re in the middle class and feel that things have become tighter, chances are that they have. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data, the percentage of adults living in middle income families dropped between 2000 and 2014. The number was down in 203 out of 229 — 89 percent — of the country’s metropolitan statistical areas studied.

There are 381 metro areas in total, but the data necessary for comparison was only available in 229 of them. Taken together, the 229 metro areas accounted for 76 percent of the national population.

The national drop in adults living in middle income families was 4 percent. In 53 of the studied metro areas, the drop was at least 6 percent. Middle income households included those with incomes at least two-thirds the national median annual income and no more than twice the median. The middle income range varies, depending on the number of people in the household. It was $42,000 to $125,000 for a family of 3 while a family of 4 would fall between $48,000 and $144,000. A middle income single person brought in $24,000 to $72,000.

That helps explain why the middle class is on the edge of becoming a minority group in the country. Of the 229 metro areas, 160 had an increase in lower income, while 172 had an increase in upper income. Both lower and upper increased in 108 metro regions.

Nationally, as the share of middle income adults went from 55 percent to 51 percent, the share of lower income grew from 28 percent to 29 percent. The share of upper income went from 17 percent to 20 percent.

Is all this good or bad? Presumably having more adults move into upper income is good because that expands economic opportunity. Having them fall into the lower income segment would then be bad. The balance of change varies by metro area. In some cases, more adults became wealthier than poorer. In other cases, the shift was toward a greater number moving into the lower income.

But in most, inequality is growing as income distribution becomes more polarized. And the implications of sustained and even growing inequality are significant, according to organizations like the International Monetary Fund. Rising inequality can bring large social costs, negatively affect growth, and fuel economic, financial, and political instability.

But in most, inequality is growing as income distribution becomes more polarized. And the implications of sustained and even growing inequality are significant, according to organizations like the International Monetary Fund. Rising inequality can bring large social costs, negatively affect growth, and fuel economic, financial, and political instability.

There may be positive aspects of having some degree of inequality, providing “the incentives for people to excel, compete, save, and invest to move ahead in life.” But the chance of economic mobility and seeing people shift out of the lowest wage category is more remote. There’s less “middle” for them to reach up toward, and a jump from low to high, while it does happen, isn’t the path most people can take.

As people drop down from middle income to low income, those already in the bottom section who see the downward shift because it occurs around them (rather than the, from their view, theoretical move upward) may become increasingly discouraging.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/05/12/middle-class-loses-ground-in-almost-90-percent-of-metro-areas/#24cf4f931190/

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Topic: Obama's last Act to punish suburbs
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http://nypost.com/2016/05/08/obamas-last-act-is-to-force-suburbs-to-be-less-white-and-less-wealthy/

Obama’s last act is to force suburbs to be less white and less wealthy

By Paul Sperry

Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy.

The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs.

Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.

It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.

Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records. And last year, he implemented a powerful new regulation — “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — that pressures all suburban counties taking federal grant money to change local zoning laws to build more low-income housing (landlords of such properties are required to accept Section 8 vouchers).

Castro is expected to finalize the new regulation, known as “Small-Area Fair Market Rents” (SAFMR), this October, in the last days of the Obama presidency.

It will set voucher rent limits by ZIP code rather than metro area, the current formula, which makes payments relatively small. For example, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom in New York City is about $1,250, which wouldn’t cover rentals in leafy areas of Westchester County, such as Mamaroneck, where Castro and his social engineers seek to aggressively resettle Section 8 tenants.

[The Section 8 reboot] is all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.

In expensive ZIP codes, Castro’s plan — which requires no congressional approval — would more than double the standard subsidy, while also covering utilities. At the same time, he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there.

“We want to use our housing-choice vouchers to ensure that we don’t have a concentration of poverty and the aggregation of racial minorities in one part of town, the poor part of town,” the HUD chief said recently, adding that he’s trying to undo the “result of discriminatory policies and practices in the past, and sometimes even now.”

A draft of the new HUD rule anticipates more than 350,000 Section 8 voucher holders will initially be resettled under the SAFMR program. Under Obama, the total number of voucher households has grown to more than 2.2 million.

The document argues that larger vouchers will allow poor urban families to “move into areas that potentially have better access to jobs, transportation, services and educational opportunities.” In other words, offering them more money to move to more expensive neighborhoods will improve their situation.

But HUD’s own studies show the theory doesn’t match reality.
President Bill Clinton in 1994Photo: Getty Images

President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher-quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country.

The 15-year experiment bombed.

A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools.

Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.

“Males … were arrested more often than those in the control group, primarily for property crimes,” the study found.

Dubuque, Iowa, for example, received an influx of voucher holders from projects in Chicago — and it’s had a problem with crime ever since. A recent study linked Dubuque’s crime wave directly to Section 8 housing.

Of course, even when reality mugs leftists, they never scrap their social theories. They just double down.

The problem, they rationalized, was that the relocation wasn’t aggressive enough. They concluded they could get the desired results if they placed urban poor in even more affluent areas.

HUD recently tested this new theory in Dallas with disastrous results.

Starting in 2012, the agency sweetened Section 8 voucher payments, and pointed inner-city recipients to the far-flung counties surrounding Dallas. As government-subsidized rentals spread in all areas of the Metroplex (163 ZIP codes vs. 129 ZIP codes), so did crime.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development used Dallas as a test — and the city is now experiencing much more violence.Photo: Getty Images

Now Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and recently had to call in state troopers to help police control it. For the first time, violent crime has shifted to the tony bedroom communities north of the city. Three suburbs that have seen the most Section 8 transfers — Frisco, Plano and McKinney — have suffered unprecedented spikes in rapes, assaults and break-ins, including home invasions.

Although HUD’s “demonstration project” may have improved the lives of some who moved, it’s ended up harming the lives of many of their new neighbors. And now Castro wants to roll it out nationwide. Soon he will give Section 8 recipients money to afford rent wherever they choose — and if they don’t want to move, he’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Ironically, Hillary’s own hometown of Chappaqua is fighting Section 8 housing because of links to drugs and crime and other problems.

This is a big policy shift that will have broad implications, affecting everything from crime to property values. And it could even impact the presidential election, especially if Castro joins Hillary on the Democratic ticket.



Paul Sperry is author of “The Great American Bank Robbery,” which exposes the racial politics behind the home mortgage crisis.

It hasn't been the Obama administration who has been steadily working to pressure wages for the middle class DOWNWARD for the last three decades or more. They haven't been around that long.

During the 1990's and the 2000's, my income fell, and my expenses rose, while Republicans ran everything. The democrats raised my taxes, while the Republicans lowered all government services to anyone making less than six figures.

You can pretend it was all this one guy's fault if you want, but you have to ignore everything that happened from 1980 on, to do so.

There is NO pretending. Facts are facts.


President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher-quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country.

The 15-year experiment bombed.

A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools.

Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.

“Males … were arrested more often than those in the control group, primarily for property crimes,” the study found.

If you want to destroy a Country,destroy its Middle-Class!


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