On The Great Lie of Florida's Growth Machine and the Free Market... by gimleteye

"It is what the market wants" was the great lie of Florida's growth machine; the rationale consuming numberless platted subdivisions in wetlands and farmland and condo canyons springing up on Florida's coasts.

The lie glides past protections for the public commons, the environment, sound transportation planning, not to mention how to account for infrastructure deficits caused when growth does not pay its own way.

In this weekend's St. Pete Times, columnist Robert Trigaux comments on a new book by Don Peck that features Tampa Bay, "Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It." "Peck argues that Tampa Bay — which just as easily could be Phoenix, Las Vegas or dozens of other Sun Belt metro areas — attracted blue-collar workers and families by the droves when home prices were appreciating quickly. They came here and to similar areas, Peck says, because they wanted in on a boomtown but were already priced out of more expensive housing areas like Washington, D.C., Boston and many cities in California. The trick, Peck says, is that when the housing bubble burst, this region lacked the depth and range of decent-paying jobs to sustain thousands of families armed with only high school educations or perhaps a few community college courses. They came here expecting housing appreciation to serve as their piggy bank."

The point is well made: that the construction and development sector cannot sustain the economy. This will come as a surprise to county commissioners across the state of Florida or to Gov. Rick Scott and his pledge to speed "jobs" by eviscerating growth management.

It is hard setting aside the memories of Miami-Dade's county commissioners, like Natacha Seijas or Joe Martinez or Pepe Diaz, puffed up by lobbyists as they sped through zoning decisions: the same lobbyists who huddle and chomp cigars in the hallway today outside the County Chamber, dapper in their generously sized suits.

Housing is a component but not the foundation of economic growth. Period. What attracts higher paying jobs to a region is quality of life. (Ask Jon Huntsman to explain 1) how that is true in Utah whose national parks and public lands attracted employers from Silicon Valley and 2) why Utah tolerates suburban sprawl and pollution.) In Miami and so much of South Florida, we sacrificed our quality of life for the platted subdivision and condo farm. It was a terrible, horrendous exchange to make because jobs may come and go but once a region sacrifices the attributes of place that attracted employers in the first place, growth will leap-frog to the next green field or unspoiled region or state.

That pretty much describes the impoverishment of the Everglades and reckless development of hundreds of thousands of homes at the edges, built in "cheap" farmland and wetlands and elsewhere. Today they are called ghost suburbs and the houses can no longer serve as piggy banks or personal ATM's because the financial system is awash in mortgage debt.

Scanning the landscape for villains, if there are "liberals" to blame, they bear the disguises of conservative right-wing Republicans who turned the values of conservatism and the GOP inside-out through the housing bubble. They elected Jeb Bush, governor, and George W. Bush, president. It is all history, now.

Today's rush to condemn environmental protections is the latest mania to infect the so-called right: it certainly wasn't environmentalists who destroyed the economy.

By deliberately suppressing the costs of growth, Florida's political interests walked hand-in-hand with the Growth Machine; providing for new arrivals to lend their tax dollars to the unabsorbed costs of growth. During the decades leading up to the housing bubble, anyone challenging "jobs" by blocking projects in wetlands -- like environmentalists-- were ridiculed or set aside.

Today, Florida lost the jobs and the wetlands, water quality, and quality of life. Has there been any effort to hold the Ponzi schemers accountable, in the mainstream media or otherwise? Nope.

These days, in Miami-Dade, the same lobbyists who shilled for the development industry when there was money being printed to gin up the housing bubble are now working to pass casino licenses. At least with gambling casinos there is no 'fig leaf' that was attached to homebuilders and condo kings who used zoning decisions and permits as exchangeable currency like real or simulated casino chips, to be cashed at another time and place than County Hall or city offices or at election time.

That's why, any glorification of the "free market" related to housing, construction and rock mining ought to be accompanied by a blinking red light. (click 'read more' for Trigaux's editorial)


Can Tampa Bay's middle class be saved?

By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist
In Print: Sunday, September 11, 2011

Is the intensity of this recession putting Tampa Bay's middle class at risk? Is it, as author Don Peck suggests in a new book, "a mirage"?

"Part of what the recession has illustrated is that a very large class of people in the United States is falling behind," Peck warns in Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures & What We Can Do About It.

An editor at Atlantic magazine in Washington, D.C., Peck explores possible solutions to what the country slowly is realizing will be a nation-changing economic downturn. Among those changes:

• There will be no quick rebound. We can no longer just wait for a recovery in economic activity just so we can "get back to normal."

• Chronic, high unemployment is going to be a major challenge for this country long after the 2012 elections. It may well remain a key issue even beyond the 2016 political campaigns.

• Without greater urgency to better educate Americans — and that does not mean sending everybody to college even if we could — many in the coming generation of young adults will find themselves struggling to carve out a sustainable, middle-class lifestyle.

Peck's book is lean, just 188 pages, yet offers a surprising sweep of this and past U.S. recessions. But it is his reporting from the Tampa Bay area — from an embattled Bridgewater planned community in eastern Pasco County to the struggling Carriage Pointe development in Gibsonton — that raises broader questions about the vulnerabilities of our own metro area.

In Pinched, Peck's Bridgewater tales look at a community built largely during the 2005-2006 boom times, near the peak of housing prices. The author, a graduate of Dartmouth College with a master's from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, describes what recently has become a norm here: a development contending with empty houses, with many remaining homeowners stuck with mortgages exceeding the value of their homes.

Peck writes of a Miami gang that set up shop in Bridgewater briefly and the resulting gunfire. But Bridgewater fights back even as the community becomes more transitory. It survives, Peck writes, with the "cudgel" of a homeowners association that uses its legal authority of fines and liens to try to keep what's left of the community in decent shape.

Peck's description of Gibsonton's Carriage Pointe development, awash in "short sale" signs and junk-strewn, overgrown yards, is less encouraging.

Why are these stories in this book? Because Peck, 42, argues that Tampa Bay — which just as easily could be Phoenix, Las Vegas or dozens of other Sun Belt metro areas — attracted blue-collar workers and families by the droves when home prices were appreciating quickly. They came here and to similar areas, Peck says, because they wanted in on a boomtown but were already priced out of more expensive housing areas like Washington, D.C., Boston and many cities in California.

The trick, Peck says, is that when the housing bubble burst, this region lacked the depth and range of decent-paying jobs to sustain thousands of families armed with only high school educations or perhaps a few community college courses. They came here expecting housing appreciation to serve as their piggy bank.

That's a key point. Tampa Bay — all of Florida — obsesses on sheer growth. If we're attracting a thousand people a day (as we once did 25 years or so ago), then all is well and construction of the next strip shopping mall can begin.

There must be something here, the old logic goes, that's got folks flocking. Sun! Fun! Cheap(er) living! Low(er) taxes!

Peck's point is just the opposite. If a place like Tampa Bay can't deepen its bench of jobs that pay middle-class wages — we're talking $15 an hour at least, with benefits and full-time status — then we have no business building piles of cheap housing with low-interest mortgages and encouraging a local economy far too dependent on construction jobs.

That's how we got in this pickle from the start.

Writes Peck in Pinched: "Former oases for aspiring middle-class Americans — Phoenix, Tampa, Las Vegas — have been exposed as mirages."

That's harsh, even if it has a ring of truth. When I first asked Peck for an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, he quickly volunteered in an e-mail: "Please know that I wish nothing but the best for Tampa."

To Peck, Tampa Bay is emblematic of many U.S. cities that seemed to provide "great opportunity and a middle-class lifestyle to people who could not find it elsewhere."

Our area, Peck argues, faces a dilemma. The construction industry has shrunk dramatically and is unlikely to grow back to the behemoth it once was.

But there are still a lot of people in the Tampa Bay area who were drawn by the housing boom and now are stuck in homes they can't sell or with jobs that went away. That helps explain the metro's 11.1 percent jobless rate.

"So," Peck asks, "what do you do? Where does the cash come from?

"When you look at those cities that are recovering, many have a very highly educated work force." He cites Manhattan, San Jose, Calif., Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., as examples.

"They have very strong local universities" he said. "They often have lots of tech companies that are within the city or close by. And they are recovering."

So how do we get out of this mess? Slowly. If Peck's scenario is on target, and I think much of it is, then all we can do is pick ourselves up and start fixing things.

For one thing, streamline education. Improve high school graduation rates. Push those with college potential to go and actually get a degree. Identify those unlikely to make it in college and direct them to quality training opportunities or even apprenticeships — in manufacturing, in auto mechanics, in health care technologies — that at least offer middle-class opportunities.

We must rally the Tampa Bay community as a whole to make this a priority.

What we don't do is allow ourselves to fall back on old habits. Stop giving lip service to raising the education bar. And stop relying so much on construction and new housing to refloat our economy.

Otherwise, we're just heading back into the bubble.

Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com.