Benefits of having a big civilization with lots of interactions, lots of people meeting people, doing business on the creating culture, all the things that make coronavirus really dangerous. Host salim furth on with us to talk about the effect of coronavirus on cities and urban areas across the country. A common headline we are seeing in fact, this morning in the hill, americans leave large cities for suburban areas and rural towns. It is early. Is data in to support that, and is there any idea on whether this will be a longterm trend after the pandemic . Guest we do not have enough data to really say that that is going on. You see some real estate is in is heavier in some places than others, and summer has its own patterns that go with the season. But i do not think we can say anything about the longterm trajectory of cities yet. Host the country got a good facing what challenges one of our largest cities, new york city as the lead point for the pandemic in this country. But what are some of those challenges that cities face, in particular, in responding to the pandemic . Guest i think it is first really important to recognize that cities are not uniquely dangerous in the coronavirus. So our densest and biggest city, new york, got hit really hard, but that is most because the virus showed up there very early and authorities were pretty slow to react. If you look at the other really big cities in the u. S. And the very dense ones like San Francisco and even los angeles, they handled things quite well early on. They have run into the same difficulties as every other place has with reopening. I think extremely rural areas where people do not have as many interactions, those are significantly safer. But suburbia does not appear to be safe. New york suburbs was hit harder than the city of new york. And lots of suburban and smalltown places have been hit really hard. Most of the variation so far comes with how early did the virus arrive and how well did your authorities respond to it and get people to wear masks, etc. Host the other another effect of the virus is the whole idea of remote working, working from home, working elsewhere that is not an office in a city or an urban area. Any idea yet on how that may play out in cities across the country . Up yeah, this is where we obviously do not yet have data, but i think we will see major changes in the future. I am speaking to you from my home, and i love working here. The desk where i am sitting is where i do my work every day. Believe, my daughters might tell you if this is correct, but i believe i am just as productive as i ever was in the office, and i get to save almost two hours a day in the time it would take to commute back and forth. And that time goes partly to more productivity, partly to more time spent with my family. And a lot of other people are in the same situation. And we are seeing this. Our bosses are are saying that we are just as productive. There is data to back that up, at least in the shortterm. I think a lot of people are going to want to continue to do this, even when it is not a necessity. Waysis going to change the that cities need to think about commuting and traffic and space the immediate coronavirus time we are living in right now. Host also playing that up a little bit, too, the cities need to think about, they do not have commercial space or office space being rented, there is no taxes being paid on that space. The retail space that may be associated with the business area also affected, not as many customers or perhaps the business not there at all, and that business not paying taxes. Guest that is right. And for a lot of cities, they are looking at a really big budget problem coming into the next year. What we recommend, my colleagues and i wrote a series of policy briefs, we recommend a radical level of flexibility with commercial spaces coming vacant. Sitting on empty restaurants, empty storefronts, and hoping and waiting that those businesses or ones that replace them will come back, that is not a winning proposition. And cities should really, really be radically flexible about if anybody wants to use those empty spaces for residential, for a different kind of business then the underlying zoning can contemplate, they should put those regulatory changes into effect to say anyone who can use this space productively is welcome here. And it if the upshot is somebody lives in a funny looking house with a great restaurant kitchen, you get a great dinner sometimes. Host our guest is salim furth with the urbanity project at George Mason Universitys mercatus center, talking about the effect of coronavirus on urban areas come on cities. If you live in an urban area, the line is 202 7488000. If you live in the suburbs, 202 7488001. And out farther than that, rural areas and such, that line is 202 7488002. As always, we welcome your comments on text at 202 7488003. An opinion piece with the headline, zoning adjustments could help cities rebound from how couldvirus zoning be used to help a city rebound, and how could it help provide Affordable Housing in those cities . Guest so there is a lot to criticize in zoning. I think it is fair to say that zoning is frequently used to micromanage space, to keep out the types of people that cities do not want, especially in the suburbs. But if we set that aside and look for the positive view of zoning, zoning helps to organize space in a sort of we have evolved to our city has a certain shape and things belong here, things belong there, and zoning helps with that. Suddenly coronavirus comes along and changes the way we commute, changes the way we shop, changes our tolerance for being in restaurants and bars, so those patterns, the ones that may have worked four months ago, no longer work. So instead of codifying the old ofilibrium and a strict set zoning codes, we need to change it. We dont know what is going to work a year or two or five years from now, so we cannot just zone very specifically for, ok, this is post coronavirus. So what we need to do is, in the spaces that are really part of every part of commercial retail, restaurant, office, open up the zoning there and say if you want to break down a j. C. Penney into some funky new withpace, the way they did Old Industrial loss and big cities in the 1960s, go for it. If you want to tear down the defunct chain restaurant with a huge parking lot, jackhammer it and build three houses. Go for it. As long as what youre doing does not introduce pollution or some other serious nuisance, you can reuse these spaces in any way that is productive. Then over time, we will figure out what the new equilibrium is. Right . Manhattan used to have sweatshops essentially everywhere. They called them lofts. These were nasty little places. But over time they went out of business, and estate kind of turned a blind eye they did not actually legally allow this, but they turned a blind eye to residential conversions, and those turned out to be very productive, and we are so thankful they did not bulldoze all those buildings and build sovietstyles apartment blocks, which was the alternative, or surface parking lots. Instead, they allowed reuse. Maybe those stripmall buildings are not so youthful as a 100yearold loft, but who knows what they will look like 100 years from now, and we should allow change where it might materialize. Host that is another question in terms of the strip malls, the malls, ones in suburban, once in urban areas, you mentioned j. C. Penney a moment ago, a company that during this pandemic has declared bankruptcy. What is the future for those Shopping Centers . Hard togain, it is very say they might come back as strong as ever, in which case plex pump does not hurt and we just a with our original pattern of use and the original occupants. Ms. A few months on the lease, works with the landlord, and goes back to business, great. But if we do not get that, we need to be prepared for many scenarios that are much worse. Im not privy to what j. C. Penney or any other retailer is looking at in terms of their internal numbers, in terms of how they think it is going to play out. But i know that there is an enormous amount that we do not know about how long we will have the sickness among us and how people will adjust their lifestyles. Host you touched on this a moment ago in terms of the financial situation for cities and budgeting for next year. What are the cities, particularly like a new york city, facing . Guest again, i do not know the numbers off the top of my head, but even new york announced that they are looking at major staff cuts. Athink every city is looking substantial cuts in what is coming in and substantial need a substantial increase in need in what is going out. So all those Retail Businesses at one point early in the pandemic 40 were not making rents. If you cannot make rent, your landlord probably cannot make taxes. Again, it will be different place by place, but the math is really ugly, at least for 2020. Host lets go to boston and hear from ronald, our first caller. Caller good morning, sir. Can you tell your host is he a doctor . Host our guest is not a doctor. Go ahead. Caller ok, you know it has my name in it. [indiscernible] coronavirus. Can you tell me where the name came from . It got most my name in there. Host no, i am sorry about that. We will move on to laurel, maryland, just outside of washington. Go ahead. Caller good morning. About two years ago here in pb county, our representatives willynilly changed sony and said in late changed zoning and said in poor areas, you cannot have a business except for a daycare. I was forced to open up a brickandmortar two years ago, and now they change the rules. Democrats do not want you to prosper. Sorry to hearry that, and that is a great point to make in respect to coronavirus. There are a ton of people who work out of their homes now, right . I do it. I do not need the countys permission to work from my home. I do not live in pg. I live right across the line in montgomery county. But if i lived in pg, the county would not be bothered at all that im doing business, that i am doing an interview from my own house but you are right, if i was selling something on the internet and had customers coming in my door, if i was selling something and pack this were leaving my house as well as arriving from amazon, than i could get in trouble. Or if i had one customer day come over say i was a tax consultant, and you can come over one customer at a time and we sit down at the Kitchen Table and look at your taxes, yeah, i can get in trouble for that. In a time and we are allowing everyone else to work from home, it is really a mistake to say that homebased businesses or Business Owners cannot also work from their home. So youre absolutely right, and this is a change that, at a minimum, counties should suspend enforcement as long as it is dangerous, literally dangerous, for some people to go out and do business in their normal places. Theink Going Forward, difference between a commuter and a Business Owner is very, very small, and we should not be regulating what people do in ways that do not affect their neighbors in their own homes. Thank you for the call. Host steve in hugo, minnesota. Say, i hadd morning. A question when you first started talking about taxes. , i guesserty owners any property, is foreclosed on or whatever, doesnt it just go back to the banks, and dont the banks pay the taxes . I was on city council for eight years and have asked this question numerous times. The banks paydo the taxes . I have always been told yes. So how come the banks are the banks paying the taxes or is it wrapped around on the bottom . I cannot get a clear answer on this. Host all right, steve. Salim furth . Guest great question the beginning of the process of foreclosure is the banks say, hey, youre behind on your lease and if you eventually do not pay up, we will take this property. A totally if happening,of this the bank takes it and miss forward. The bank does not want to take the property they want to use the foreclosure process to push the owner to make rent or adjust the tenant makes so that they thoseome in there and businesses can make rent and the owner can pay the lease. The banks do not want to end up with a ton of property. They learned this in the last crisis. Once they own a bunch of property, they cannot turn around and get rid of it all at once without flooding the market, and they really do not want any landlords. Sinceguess, especially this crisis is so clearly caused by outside factors, right, not a restaurants fault that people completely stopped going to restaurants, not that their food was bad, i think that the various people in the financial stacked are going to be very forbearance and are going to work with anyone who says, hey, i cannot pay you for 2020 because i got completely wiped out and the city would not even let me open or my customers completely stayed away, even after we reopened, i think people will understand that, and they are going to work with people who are willing to work in good faith Going Forward to try to make rent in the future. So i do not think you are going to see a lot of Bank Ownership unless it is a case where someone has been stumbling along for years, has been a terrible commercial tenant, and finally the bank is like, ill write, this is the last straw. They would have done that in normal times. Host we are talking about what the pandemic has done to cities and urban areas, but on twitter, another contributor pointed out, saying people are leaving the cities not because of a virus but because of the crime in the cities. After a weekend with a number of shootings and murders in cities across the country, a bigger issue than it used to be . Guest i actually have no idea whether crime is up or down this year, so i cannot speak to that. Int we will go to joe jennings, louisiana. Go ahead. Caller hi, thanks for taking my call. I am not a person that believes that there should be these conspiracy theories, but this is how it seems to us, we are working tough people in the my area, and my neighborhood has been a little bit lucky. Most people are still working. Where hospitality is bigger, we know their suffering a bunch. And in certain areas, the restaurants are. It is this crazy to believe all u. S. Was toohe strong financially, so they the virus here, and suspiciously at the same time we had to close down, so our economy went down, so you had millions of people with nothing to do, no jobs, and then why in the world is the Democrat Party not saying something about all the violence and civil unrest . I mean, i have been a democrat voter, but how can you support them with this going on . Do you think it is a conspiracy to really ruin our country . Because actually, i have a lot of black friends and not one of them ever told me that a statue bothered him. Host all right. Onim furth, you touched zoning about earlier. A question on twitter. Zoning and landuse have longterm effects. It has become fashionable to attack zoning regulations, but i bet all of those calling for open zoning would not want a meatpacking plant next door to them in their exclusive residential area spirit your thoughts . Guest before zoning, we had something called the law of nuisance. It is not perfect. Part of the reason we ended up in zoning is a lot of conditions did not protect meatpacking plants when somebody built a house next door. I am not saying we should go back to the law of nuisance as it was in 1916. But if a meatpacking plant open next to your house, you would not need to go to zoning, you would be able to to them with a nuisance violation if they were stinking up the air, making a ton of noise, having a huge number of trucks. I do not think the solution for america is to choose between what we have now and no zoning whatsoever. But i do think that we can look big public spaces, the strip malls, the office parks, and say, hey, if somebody wants to have an apartment at the back end of this office park, doesnt really hurt anybody else . We are not making anyone live there. But if someone says it is a great place to live, sure, why not . As long as it is safe and not going to fall down. If someone wants to switch a restaurant or retail store and ignore the kitchen in the back, do we really have a problem with that . Zoning does not allow even the sort of simple switches. I went to arlington, texass, commercial zoning code recently, and you can find all these examples where there are places where a restaurant is allowed but not a catering business. What if your restaurant cannot get customers through the door and you want to switch to catering longterm and say we want to throw plastic over the tables and just take food out . If you officially do that, then you are in violation of the zoning. That does not make sense. Arlington, texas, has places where you can sell guns but not have a Farmers Market and vice versa. I really do not know what is going on there. Host at the urbanity project, are you folks checking these changes during the pandemic of the exceptions that some cities are making to this and the changes that cities are making to accommodate for the pandemic . Guest cities have been focused on the short term which is appropriate for the 3, 4 months that we have been in the situation. So cities are doing some really laudable things like allowing restaurants to spread into their own parking lots. That makes perfect sense but it would not have been allowed without a special exception. They are allowing restaurants to use parts of wide sidewalks to allow more sidewalk dining. And in some places, they are expanding the street space for pedestrians and bicycles, which need to be more distant. People want to be six feet away but on a five foot sidewalk, you cannot do that, so taking a side lane of the road which is no longer congested because nobody is going anywhere and turning that into a bicyclepedestrian space. Does a great changes. I applaud the cities that are doing that. The same spirit that theyre applying now, flexibility is the ones they need to transfer to some of these longerterm thelems of, all right, when ppp loans expire, when the Business Owners finally say we are not coming back from this and put up the shutters, then you need to move that flexible attitude to your zoning, your permits process, and all the other things that slow down change in your city because right now or Going Forward the next year or two, we need rapid change we need to be able to evolve from the previous equilibrium to a new equilibrium. Not spent 10 years figuring out that were not going back. Host leroy in georgia, good morning. Impact here of the is the confusion of the mask situation. We are slowly starting to see businesses require that you wear a mask, but they are not saying what type of masks are required or even in some cases saying you do not have to have it on, you just have to have it hanging from your ear. Different things like that. So im wondering, where do you see that trend going in the future when it comes to mask requirements and enforcing the mask requirement . I was in alabama last weekend and they were attributing fines to not requiring a mask, but there is no guidance on what type of mask and what to cover, etc. Guest it is tricky. I do not think we should put businesses in a position of having to be the front line of making decisions. Going to have to enforce. But it is actually really helpful if the state or the city come in and say, hey, were dealing with a pandemic, we are requiring all businesses to make you wear a mask if you are indoors. Then the business can just say, hey, we have to follow the law here. It is no fun to be a Business Owner and have to tell a longtime customer, hey, bob, you cannot come in because you did not bring your mask. They can get some of those cheap surgical masks and hang them by the doors and say, hey, you forgot your mask today, i got one for you. Then you can say that the city makes me do it. I am not being mean. I really hate the way that masks have become political. Dumb. S coronavirus will affect you no matter what your Political Party is, and the purpose of a mask is not you, if you already had it or if you think that you are young and strong, like, hey, i dont mind if i get it and i would rather get it and get it over with so i can go see my grandma again. But there is somebody else next door who does not want to get it or has a preexisting condition or is really old to wear a mask, be polite. Easier on make it Business Owners. The lack of clarity coming from some of the highest sources of power really leaves it on cities and localities to step up and clarify the messaging. I think that cities can be really creative about how they communicate that they are not trying to create a culture of fear, that masks help businesses reopen. That is the big. People think masks and lockdown go together. No, when youre locked down, you do not need a mask in your own house. Masks are necessary for businesses. Host let me get your thoughts on an opinion piece in the wall street journal about how the workforce might evolve or change because of the pandemic, how covid19 might transform urban life. They write that knowledgeintensive industries have long been centered in cities and surrounding metropolitan areas where they have had the most access to a collegeeducated and high skilled workforce, but from milan to new york, high density, york, high density urban areas have been ground zero for the spread of covid19. Our cities losing the superstar status they have enjoyed for the last several decades . In the mid1990s, some predicted the internet would lead to the decline of cities because it would enable people to work and shop from home and get access to news and entertainment online. Instead of declining, cities have continued to generate the biggest levels of innovation and good jobs and a disproportionate share of the worlds talent. What do you think the pandemic desds for the growth of bo for the growth of cities . Milan was not the epicenter in italy, it was small where theref milan happened to be Chinese Workers that came over and brought the virus with them. It was not new york that was the hardest hit. It was the suburbs. I want to counter the narrative that cities are uniquely hardhit. If we are going to be speculating, i would say that the superstar aspects are going to continue to require facetoface interaction. People who are doing the very cutting edge of finance or fashion or computer programming, they are going to want that kind of personal touch that has been so important, and we really underestimated in the 1990s and have since realized information actually helps spread the best ideas faster. There is more payoff to generating the very best ideas. The places that generate the very best ideas facilitate interaction. The people that might leave cities are those that are not part of the innovation process. Those that are doing a routine an important job, but one that does not require coming up with new ideas. One that requires diligently following through on established procedures. Those kinds of jobs where you can be trusted to know the process well, come in for a week of training at the office, and then go back to your Hunting Lodge where you have always wanted to live in vermont and do your job from their. There. We could see a lot of middle and upper middle wage jobs get moved to remote status. I dont think we will see that innovation superstar aspect leave cities. Host lets go to this call from missouri. Good morning. Caller how are you all doing this morning . Host fine, thank you. Caller i live in missouri. Im in a world area. Rural area. None of the employees in any of nge stores i go into weari masks or gloves. That is a concern for me. Statesnoticed how many. Oronavirus is rising nobody is wearing masks. These are employees. There is no social distancing and walmart. That bothers me. Gloves. Y mask and i dont want to get it. That is my thought when i leave the house. Furth, any further thoughts . Guest talk to management. Send them a note. Let them know their practices are making you feel unsafe. Privatet part about the sector is a response to customers, and it does not have to go through a democratic process. Only 23 of our customers care about this, but they care enough to go somewhere else. I think that is important. Oris going to be 10 percent 20 of america that is going to be susceptible and at high risk of this. It is not going to vanish all at once. In ae going to be situation where for some people it is pretty scary. There are important customers and stakeholders and employees who really want to be able to participate in life and be safe. Getting back to these important connections that let us work ,ogether and support each other and masks are part of that. I validate your concerns. Host lets go to bill in texas. Good morning. Caller i live in a suburb of houston. My comment would be that i dont think this virus is going to go away. Businesses,ols and at school they have more frequent and Shorter Breaks throughout the year rather than the traditional holiday breaks they have now, we can spread the crowds throughout the year, and businesses and families. If businesses got away from the traditional lunch break and allowed employees to go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we could spread out the crowds at lessurants and allow for seating but more consistent patrons throughout the day. Guest those are great ideas. The spirit is flexibility. I am annot an area that expert in. All of those things seem logical. It is the land use, same attitude. We need to try new things. You should not just try to get back to what it was before. Lets allow evolution and the way we use private spaces and see what works. I think that is right. I hope you can share those thoughts with people who are in a position to experiment. Lets support our restaurants 11 00 a. M. Lunches. Host you mentioned this earlier, stew says this, i have seen proposals turning abandoned shopping malls into communities. Im aware of one in providence, rhode island. It is not typical. It is an almost 200yearold shopping center. It is this gorgeous vintage center. You can dig up photos of that. It is gorgeous. That is not what your typical indoor mall is going to be like. I think there is room for innovation. Of about a whole generation those places that are getting old and ready to be converted to something new. A lot of that was built cheaply. You might not actually enjoy living in a place that is built to those kinds of standards. It might be time to tear it down and build something new. We should be forcible about what we allowed to be built. Allowing someone to take out a strip center and put in town houses or manufactured homes, whatever works in your area. Find let that happen and the equilibrium that is going to work for us. Hello. You are on with salim furth. Caller thank you for taking my call. Im with a nonprofit that fights global poverty. Im concerned about the Coronavirus Response abroad, especially since coronavirus has caused an uptick in global poverty worldwide. How relevant to you think an increase in International Funding to fight covid19 is . Good, that sounds really but i dont have the expertise to weigh in on that. Together globally. Timesthe new york forline, chilling words that whenhey write the nations economy ground to a halt this spring, economists warned an avalanche of evictions was looming. The federal government and many states rushed to ban them temporarily. ,0 states including louisiana texas, colorado, and wisconsin have lifted their restrictions, and researchers have tracked thousands of conviction filings. Are set to expire at the end of the month. Anticipates the nearly 28 million households are at risk of being turned out on the streets because of job losses tied to the pandemic. I think of action is really difficult. It is painful to go through. We have a lot of elections in a normal year. There is no evidence so far that we are actually having an avalanche of evictions. Those fears are reasonable. Labou look at the eviction at princeton university, they started tracking data on convictions. They do a fantastic job. There are two interesting stats that make me down this tsunami story. If you go to the 2008 recession, there was no increase in evictions at that time despite unemployment more than doubling iod of peopler having no income. There was less federal support for people at that time. There was no increase in evictions. Why . From alook at it landlord perspective, all the sudden you cannot get good renters. You have no one who will show up who says i have a good income and a steady job. The landlords are worried just as much as the tenants are. They have their mortgage to pay. They would rather stay with a good tenant who has temporarily lost income but has been reliable, a good neighbor, and wait for that person to get back on their feet than go through the process of evicting, emptying the unit, repainting, and then roll the dice on finding one of the very few people who are looking for a new place to live and have tremendously stable employment right now. That is why we did not see one in the last crisis. So far in this crisis, there has not been an increase in legal evictions. Cincinnati, ohio, the county had its own moratorium. That expired june 1. If you look at the data, it is 2019 way below june of even though they had two months where evictions were filed. You would expect some pentup demand. There was not much pentup demand. There is not increasing demand now. They could always change. It could be that landlords are waiting and out, and they are going to lose patience in july, august, or september. Right now, the evictions have been below normal levels, not above normal levels. We have been cautious about predicting what is going to happen when the data are going against our priors. Host we will go to ned in idaho. Caller good morning. The weekend did not work out too well here in idaho. By such anrwhelmed influx coming out to the forests have three forest fires burning now. I heard they are shutting down all the parks in Washington State as well and across the border in oregon. Ofs is not going to work just leaving the cities. You are going to have to stay there and figure out the problems. Salem. Y appreciate we need guys like you with more nuanced thinking. Thanks for that call. We will go to roger in florida. Caller good morning. Thank you. Is core of everything that being spoken about is air quality or indoor air quality. Im not an expert. Becauseind of study did i have had a lot of dead time being off. The indoor air quality, it seems to me the way to address it is you cannot do much air improvement within the existing system of a building because thent have it set up contaminated air is traveling too far. You have to have systems that would be in the building to pu rify. I use hospital systems. Filters to control the air quality in their hospital. You can create a hepa filter by filter, hepa furnace duct taping it to a standard box fan is rated at 2000 cubic feet per minute of air exchange. If you deducted it down to 1000 due to resistance from the filter, you are still moving 10,000 cubic feet of air. Thoughts . Final we are hearing lots of good ideas from around the country. I think we are seeing this at the business level, at the city level. We are in a different time. Obviously, we all know this. Policymakers want to go back to what is safe and what they know. There is a certainty in the world. I think we need to face up to that. That world is probably not coming back. There is a good chance it is not coming back. Building and flexibility, changing the way we do homebased business, the way we think about commuting, the way we think about how you are space and use commercial development, changing the rules about whether you can build an apartment for a Single Person in your backyard, those are the kinds of changes we need our leaders to be thinking about. To ourzens, we can talk Civic Leaders and say dont try to keep us back in 2019. It is not coming back. Let me do something differently. Lets change the rules and find an equilibrium where we can Work Together safely and prosper. Host salim fur cspans washington journal. Every day, we take your calls live on the air on the news of the day and discuss policy issues that impact you. Marie up tuesday, trammell freeman, ceo of the National Association of county, city, and Health Officials discusses rising coronavirus in several states. And the gao talks about the agencys recent report examining how covid19 relief appropriated by congress are being spent. Live washington journal, at 7 00 eastern tuesday morning. Join the discussions with your comments, phone calls, facebook messages, and tweets. Live tuesday on cspan, fbi director Christopher Wray discusses how his agency is responding to chinas influence in the united states. This is 10 30 a. M. On cspan. Then a hearing on protecting workers pay during the coronavirus. We will join a House Financial Services subcommittee at noon eastern. At 2 30 p. M. From the atlantic council, a look at Global Cooperation in shaping the post covid world with White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator dr. Deborah birx. Then on cspan two, a House Appropriations subcommittee goes over Homeland Security 42021. Impact on covid19 higher education. Thursday, the House Armed Services Committee Hears from defense secretary mark esper and general mark milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on the defense departments role in civilian law enforcement
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