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If it's Sunday, it is time to review news you may have missed. Plus our weekly fun video clip! Enjoy.
Minneapolis Takes on Housing Segregation
In 1934, the U.S. government made mortgage discrimination legal via the National Housing Act (PDF link), which allowed the Home Owners' Loan Corporation to establish "residential security maps" indicating the security levels for real estate investments in 239 cities. Areas deemed "high risk" were outlined in red and the term "redlining" was born.
(Check out this excellent interactive site with over 150 redlined maps from across the country.)
Three years later, the Housing Act of 1937 established the foundation for the public housing programs we know today. The goal was to provide units for poor and low income Americans. The result was an increase in housing segregation. This happened again after the GI Bill.
The Fair Housing Act (1968), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974), the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (1975) and the Community Reinvestment Act (1977) were all supposed to fix the country's housing-related racial segregation. They haven't.
As is the case for many policy issues, cities and states are picking up where Congress has fallen off. This week, the city of Minneapolis passed Minneapolis 2040, which takes aim at its long history of housing segregation.
Slate's Henry Grabar reported on the major move:
Minneapolis will become the first major U.S. city to end single-family home zoning, a policy that has done as much as any to entrench segregation, high housing costs, and sprawl as the American urban paradigm over the past century.
It's a bold move by half of the Twin Cities. One that other cities would be wise to examine and explore for the benefits of their own residents.
Abolishing restrictive zoning, the mayor said, was part of a general consensus that the city ought to begin to mend the damage wrought in pursuit of segregation. Human diversity — which nearly everyone in this staunchly liberal city would say is a good thing — only goes as far as the housing stock.
Striking Teachers Make History
This spring, teachers in multiple states took to the streets demanding an increase in salaries and better school funding for their students. These actions took place not in traditionally strong union regions like New York or Chicago, but in North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Jersey City. In all, five percent of K-12 school workers walked out.
Teachers in Washington state followed suit in September and there's talk of additional work stoppages in Louisiana, Los Angeles and Oakland. All of these teachers work in traditional public schools. This week, however, teachers at 15 Chicago charter schools went on strike, the first action of its kind.
As Chalkbeat's Yana Kunichoff reported:
After bargaining late into the night, teachers at schools in the Acero network decided early Tuesday morning to strike. They had authorized the strike in October over issues that include pay, teacher diversity, and class size.
The strike affects more than 7,000 children, whose parents were advised to keep their children home or find child care. The schools are also using non-union staff to watch children, network officials said.
If you were under the impression that most charter school teachers are non-union employees, you'd be correct. But in the Windy City, the Acero teachers are now part of the Chicago Teachers Union.
What happens during Acero’s strike could have implications beyond the network. The charter school bargaining unit is negotiating contracts with 11 operators this fall. Among them, teachers at Chicago International Charter Schools are negotiating contracts with two of the network’s management companies, and took a strike vote this fall. And the recent resignation of the founder of Noble, Chicago’s largest charter network, could open the door for its teachers to form the biggest charter union yet.
A Victory for Drivers
Thanks almost entirely to the explosion of ride share vehicles all over New York City, traffic here has never been worse. This rise has coincided with the decrease in dependability of our public transit system. Stand on any block and you'll see that at least half to two-thirds of the cars are ride shares. I've played this little game while fuming about being stuck in traffic trying to get someplace and inevitably being late.
In NYC, ride share companies, or "For-Hire Vehicles," are regulated by the TLC. No, not this one:
I mean the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is why all the for-hire vehicles have TLC plates the way the yellow and green taxis do. This week, the city agency that has seen more than its share of controversy, passed landmark Driver Income and Transparency Rules (PDF link), which will give more than 80,000 for-hire vehicle drivers a raise of, on average, $10,000 per year. Yellow taxi drivers will also get a reduction in credit card processing fees.
"New York City is the first city globally to recognize that the tens of thousands of men and women who are responsible for providing increasingly popular rides that begin with the touch of a screen deserve to make a livable wage and protection against companies from unilaterally reducing it,” said TLC Chair Meera Joshi in a release.
“Today’s rules will ... require companies to be completely transparent on how they calculate pay and car leasing costs. Companies are saying paying drivers fairly will cause longer wait times and higher prices. But I believe all New Yorkers are willing to pay a little more and wait a little longer so the people transporting them are able to provide for themselves and their families.”
Count me as one of those New Yorkers. The new rules will bring drivers in line with a $17.22 hourly wage after expenses, which is the independent contractor equivalent of the city's new $15 minimum wage. On average, drivers spend $425 per week operating their vehicles.
Crain's New York Business' Matthew Flamm has more:
Rival labor groups the Independent Drivers Guild and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance issued statements praising the move. They also pointed out that they had mounted campaigns in the past two years to counter the decline in pay that has accompanied the massive growth of app-based services ... A string of eight driver suicides also has put pressure on city officials and regulators to address the industry's economic troubles.
And Finally ...
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