Pick Up the Pen

Homelessness in LA County: a Look at Skid Row

2009-01-19T18:26:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday night the eighth of January, a group of students from UCLA Anderson, and the UCLA School of Urban Planning toured the Skid Row district of downtown Los Angeles with LA City Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district encompasses Skid Row. Also with us on the tour were Estella Lopez, Executive director of the Central City East Association, and Captain Rick Wall of the LAPD, who commands patrol officers in the area. About ten of Captain Wall’s officers accompanied the 30 person walking tour, in cars and on foot.

The first thing one notices about Skid Row is that there are A LOT of people sleeping on the street (which is legal, both in and out of tents, after 9pm). Many more people crowd the shelters and congregate around their entrances, jostling for access to some of the overstretched social services that are available. Walking around the corner from the Midnight Mission, one becomes viscerally grateful for the company of armed police officers and the few private security guards that the CCEA brings along. One is then struck by the fact that all of these veterans - the councilwoman, the cops, the aid workers that are with us – keep remarking on how much improved the situation is compared to the way it used to be. This is a little overwhelming while one walks through a situation that is an urgent humanitarian crisis unfolding on San Pedro street every night as the sun goes down and the flower shops and fabric outlets close up shop for the night.

The second thing one notices, walking these darkening streets in the company of the officials and volunteers who are trying to help, is their ability to treat the homeless as people. Councilwoman Perry speaks to a few of them as we queue up to begin the tour. They pepper her with questions and she responds (she is quite knowledgeable about the services available) to them as constituents. The social services workers and even some of the police officers spend time talking to the people who are settling in for another night on the sidewalks of Crocker Street, checking on them, taking the pulse of this community. That’s what Skid Row is, a community, with people and a social order like any other. The police try to make sure that those unfortunate enough to be living on Skid Row are not murdered or raped in their sleep, but they do seem a little cynical that such a situation persists in a place as wealthy as Los Angeles.

The shelters make a big difference, and there are many of them, but temporary shelter is not a long-term solution for homelessness. We visited the Skid Row Housing Trust’s Rainbow Apartments, where we met with Cristian Ahumada, housing director and Molly Rysman, PR Director. SRHT builds supportive housing – subsidized housing with mental, physical, and occupational health services bundled in, that aims to not only house but resocialize the chronically homeless. After prepping one of Professor Sussman’s real estate cases that afternoon it was a real eye-opener to listen to Cristian talk about how one finances a project that is designed to house people who have no money. It’s disheartening to realize the extent to which our political society has failed its poorest citizens, but quite inspiring to spend time with people who are expending their personal and professional energies to try to do something about it.

If you’d like to get involved, there will be ample opportunity this spring as The Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA, UCLA Anderson, the Urban Land Institute’s Los Angeles District Council, and the Westside Urban Forum embark on a three-phase program, called 1000 Homes, aimed at increasing the stock of supportive housing in Los Angeles County by 1000 units in five years. The first phase of 1000 Homes is a planning, design, and development competition among young professionals and graduate students from local universities to generate innovative ideas towards impacting this difficult issue.

In the meantime, check out the Skid Row Housing Trust at www.skidrow.org, or tour Skid Row yourself the first Wednesday of every month, through www.centralcityeast.org/SkidRow/walk.htm

About 80,000 people sleep in the streets of LA each night. 80,000 people.

Oceans Healing Group

2009-01-19T18:13:00.000-08:00

Over winter break I took a surf vacation with some friends. Three of them are in wheelchairs, two are quadriplegic. The trip was the inaugural event of The Oceans Healing Group, a new 501C3 organization of which I am a board member. The groups mission is to facilitate action-sports vacations for paraplegics and their families. This entails covering the costs of the vacations (these families are almost always crushed by medical expenses), and providing an expert volunteer force for each trip to facilitate travel and the adaptive sports.

This first trip, we took Patrick, who is 14 and has been quadriplegic since a car ran him over at age 2, and Jake, 21, who has a rare form of ataxia (a nervous system dysfunction) that renders him quadriplegic. Christiaan Bailey, a professional parasurfer came along to oversee things and be a role model. We took the boys to Shaka Surf Camp on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula for a week. Shaka is a for-profit surf camp that regularly donates time and effort to nonprofit adaptive healing programs. (It’s also a great place to stay on vacation).

Patrick’s mother and sister came along, as did both of Jake’s parents. We had the opportunity to work on the boys’ surfboard control using custom-modified boards on a deserted beach. The length of the trip allowed us to work on their actual surfing skills rather than just push them into foamball-waves like a carnival ride (which is how they started). We were also able to supervise the boys and keep them busy enough that their parents got a little time off, which is a rarity with a quadriplegic child. We sent Jake’s folks out for a second honeymoon one night, and Patrick’s mom got a beach-day-and-shopping-with-the-girls break, plus ample opportunity to play with her son in the water.

It takes at least 8 volunteers to surf these guys. Functioning quadriplegics like these lie face down on a surfboard, propped up on their upper arms, with their elbows in custom foam cups or friction pads on the board. Typically two of us swim them out through the break and wait for a good wave (not too big, “peeling” from one direction). When one comes along, we push the surfer into the wave, trailing on the board’s tail for a moment to be sure the “take-off” is successful. From this point, the parasurfer is on his or her own, steering with whatever mobility they have in their shoulders and head. Three people work “mid,” in the impact zone. Their job is to be present in case of a wipeout as the wave breaks (quadriplegics do not swim well and can have difficulty turning over when facedown in the water). The remaining volunteers work the shallows and the beach to catch surfer and board in the case of a long ride (or a separate arrival). In the warm waters of Costa Rica, we were able to surf the boys at least once per day, for sessions lasting over an hour each. This is taxing work for the volunteers, particularly in large surf, but we got to watch Jake and Patrick learn to surf and to control the board on their own, carving, riding down the line, and getting a little face time. Added to the days in camp with them - napping, eating, playing monopoly, afternoon snorkeling, etc, - the trip was an uplifting experience. Spending a lot of time with quadriplegics makes one acutely grateful for the basics of life, and puts the rigors and stress of business school into a sane perspective.

There are opportunities to help with adaptive surfing events here in the US through an organization called Life Rolls On. My friends at school and I are organizing a West Coast MBA surf Competition through the UCLA Anderson Surf Club and Anderson NetImpact that will benefit adaptive surfing charities.

Oceans Healing Group is in its nascence, and could use your support through financial or in-kind contributions.

Check out:

www.myspace.com/oceanshealing ,

www.liferollson.org , and

www.shakacostarica.com for more information and ways to get involved.

Election History

2008-11-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

How Does Obama’s Election Color the Future

Tuesday, November 4 - I just went out for dinner after a long day working on a development proposal, and was treated to the finest acceptance speech I have ever heard. The speech had not-so-subtle echoes of President Reagan and Dr. King, among others. To be perfectly honest, I required the use of my handkerchief. I took in the happy, hopeful smiles on the faces of the onlookers - both in Chicago and at the restaurant – and I listened to the words of this confident and poised young man, our president elect. He delivered a message both grateful and admonitory, a message of triumph but also of need. His command of our language, his sense of his relation to history, and his devotion to the nation were moving. He moved me to tears, and I have been no great supporter of Barack Obama.

I am socially liberal to the point of libertarianism, and fiscally conservative nearly to the point of libertarianism as well, so I have always been a member of the unserved middle in American Politics. I have always had to choose between a party that believes that Government should intervene in citizens’ economic life, and a party that believes government should involve itself in their personal life. It’s never been a fulfilling choice. I’ve always felt screwed before the votes were even counted.

This historic moment, though, got me thinking about the significance of this election, about what it says about us as a county. We are a nation willing to give a man a chance – to elect a young man, a junior Senator, Commander-in-Chief. We elected our first black President, a man whose features and name are but a generation removed from Kenya, exactly forty years and seven months after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He is the fifth youngest president ever to serve, and the fourth youngest ever elected (Teddy Roosevelt got the job after McKinley’s assassination). He is the first to have used mass text messaging and Facebook as campaign tools.

Barack Obama is articulate in a way that, though it is polished, transcends polish and comes across as a gift, probably a calling. In a political system as unproductive and partisan-obfuscatory as ours, leadership through inspiring oratory and clear communication is probably the most important job our President has. If he succeeded only in being a superb opinion-leader and figurehead, he would probably rival the effectiveness of every President in the last 20 years. FDR’s New Deal and massive war effort could hardly have succeeded without his fireside chats.

The big payoff is that Barack Obama’s election, given his youth, his race, and his passion, provides a genuine, empirical renewal of the American Ideal. The measure of the health of that ideal will lie in Barack’s degree of success in steering our nation through its most turbulent test since WWII. His performance will be a measure of our collective commitment to being productive members of a representative democracy. He won’t do well if half of us fight him, nor if we accept the same right-and-left unreasonability and pork from Congress that they are used to providing. That means that this is a personal test for each of us.

Am I willing to set aside my personal opinions and support this President in his efforts to fix things his way? I’m a guy who has voted Republican more often than not, who owns guns and rides a Harley, says his prayers twice a day, and believes that freedom is worth fighting over. What do I do? I think the humble thing to do, the right thing to do, is to listen carefully to this new President, to lay aside my doubt about some of his political and economic convictions, and to lend him my support in his efforts to lead the country the way he sees fit.

Lisa's Pull

2008-11-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

Pulled the Hill out of Cheyenne over Wind River’s rise,

And Wyoming was sky, like a pretty girl’s eyes.

And I wondered aloud, by the Vedauvoo road

How the blood ran so hot ‘neath a shoulder so cold.

But I drove on in solitude, save for my truck,

Alone with my feelings and down on my luck.

Later on, at the truckstop, with my rig broken down,

I was glad that the Wyoming stars were around;

For they are the best companions I know

To a heartbroken trucker, so far from his home.

2001, Laramie, WY, by M.J. Brown.

Moving

2008-11-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

She came slashing down Hollywood with those green eyes through the grey grit dust that the tourists kick up and I was a mess immediately. Thinking about that girl on the Triumph that I met at the Arclight and the chances I’ve missed and the chances I’ve taken and the pain that I’ve caused and the hearts I’ve watched breaking as I stood there in silence on the shoulder or rode on through the night regardless of the rain. And I think now as the years add up of the women I’ve left waiting and the keepers in there and the way that that’s shaped me and the man that that’s made me and I’ve gotten older and I’ve had to make some changes and I’m spending more time living in the present and trying to get to heaven but it’s still all that I can do just to try to keep tomorrow from bleeding all over today.

-MJ Brown

(11/16/07)

The Felony Blues

2008-11-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

I just spent six days in the county slam

Because a cop had to ask me who the hell I am.

I gave him the “why” and “what for,”

And I woke up bleedin’ on the drunk tank floor.

I got the felony blues, and the bondsman’s on his way (2X).

I got out, after I posted bail,

And I sure don’t want to go back to that fuckin’ jail

Find me a girl that wants to squeeze me tight.

Six long, hard days – I’m gonna treat her right.

I got the felony blues, and the bondsman wants his pay (2X).

I went down to the courthouse high.

I took one last look up at the clear, blue sky.

I said “Your Honor, I swear, I thought this country was free,”

Man, and that judge really threw the book at me.

I got the felony blues, and the pen’s where I’m gonna stay (2X).

Lyrics by M.J. Brown. Winter 2003/4.

Life's Lessons

2008-11-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

V1) I could not recall all the women I've been with

If there was a prize paid in riches untold.

But those that I've loved, I could count on three fingers,

And I wouldn't trade them for Solomon's gold.

Though they are gone, their memories haunt me,

And I know they will 'til I lie in my grave.

They may never know all the lessons they taught me,

But they keep the parts of my heart that I gave.

Ch) The pain and the pleasure ride so close together

That Satan and Christ couldn't rend them in two.

Nymph, in thy orisons, bless me and curse me.

One day I'll be man enough to deserve you.

V2) I've spent my young life up on good times and whiskey.

And I've passed up on girls who were queens in disguise.

Others, I've left there to wonder and miss me,

With a wink, and some poems full of half-hearted lies.

Fear is the reason I've always kept drifting –

Fear if I stop I'll catch up with myself.

'Cuz all of my bridges are ash for the sifting,

Now I've left the bottle alone on the shelf.

(CHORUS)

V3) The things that we do when we don't know no better

Won't be held against us when judgement is nigh,

But those that we do knowing full well we shouldn't

Are what make us fear that we one day will die.

One day, I am sure, I must go meet my maker,

With my hat in my hand and my mouth full of fear.

So I'd better get busy living or dying,

So I can say I didn't waste my time here.

(Chorus)

Lyrics by M.J. Brown. Winter, 02/03, fall 2004.

Electraglide

2008-10-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

I lit out of Orchard City, Colorado, on a black Electraglide Harley. Orchard City isn’t really a town, much less a city. It’s the kind of place where you have to watch out for gravel on the blacktop because none of the side roads are paved. Anyway, Scotty and Becky live in Orchard City, so I stop by whenever I can, and we visit and work on motorcycles and share life, and I’ve been visiting long enough that I have a lot of friends in that part of the country.

I cut out of there about 9AM. I had a denim shirt on and my jeans. It was cool enough, because it was early, but not cold because I’d burned off a lot of altitude the day before coming across McClure Pass out of Aspen and Carbondale. There’s a curious pocket of sweet humidity, just a touch, right in that part of the Western Slope in the early autumn. It’s curious because the rest of Colorado doesn’t have any humidity, but the stretch there by Olathe, between Delta and Montrose, has just enough to grow that famous sweet corn that they do; and I looked out across the almost-dewy rows in the clear sunshine as the bike and I found our rhythm and the tires warmed up to the road.

I came out of Montrose there where the highway curves back to the East, and I’d put my coat on against the wind and the clouds building over the mountains. I screwed on the throttle a little bit and blasted through the welcoming, rolling flatness of the Uncompahgre River country near Ridgeway. It’s kind of a sweet, rolling little breaks country whose whole purpose seems to be to smooth the transition between the gently sloping farms of the Western Slope and the startling ruggedness of the Western San Juans, which rise like a battlement there, above Ouray sitting like a jewel in its jagged little slot of a box canyon. That little stretch of the Uncompahgre is almost mesmerizing the way it blends the welcoming gold of the winter wheat with the soft green of the cottonwood leaves. It’s the kind of place you get the feeling it’d just be great to be a deer - to be built for running and have time to forage.

Few things are built for running like a Harley, so I soon arrive in Ouray, and I stop to use the bathroom there in one of the prettiest public parks in the world, right between the hot springs complex and some newer condos, across Mineral Creek from an old trailer park, and looking North at a big mountain face that rises right from the road so steep that the trees grow sideways out of their roots just to stay upright.

I leather up and grab a handful, leaning the bike into the graceful switchbacks of Red Mountain Pass just hard enough to get a couple of sparks from the footboards every now and then. I blow by a slow armada of campers and pickups towing trailers – hunting season’s pilgrimage – staying in the left lane until I pass them all, and taking great satisfaction from rolling on the throttle to glue the rear end down as I accelerate out of the lower pass’s upper turns with no one ahead of me on the road.

Mineral Creek is yellow ochre the whole way up with God knows what in it, but Red Mountain is true to its name, looking down on me like a giant incarnation of Dr. King’s “red hills of Georgia” in the misty, windy distance. I run hard across the grassy stretch of river flat by the old miners’ cabins, fast - like 80 – in the top of fourth gear, and life, and my past, and my future seem to be in balance, as the country reminds me of where I’ve been and who, and who I am now and why.

The hunters mostly pass me in the upper switchbacks when I have to stop to put my rain pants on, but I’ve already got what I came for, and now I’m just travelling.

Carnage in the Markets

2008-10-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

Written October 12, 2008

Both Wall Street and Main Street are Bloody, and Probably Deserve It

Time for some hard truth, folks. We have been living in superheated markets, we tried to dodge a painful correction, and now we have a panic. After the 9/11 attacks, Rudy Giuliani said “come to New York and buy stuff.” Ed Leamer proposed the same tonic two weeks ago. Perhaps they both should have qualified the statements with “pay cash.” During my lifetime, we Americans have lived by the mantra “growth is good,” and we have led the rest of the world down this path with us.

According to the precept that “more is better,” we have encouraged as much growth as possible, and expected our political and fiscal leaders to support these demands. We have always seen a slow economy as a bad thing. Basically, we’re greedy. This demand for ever greater consumption for everyone (we’re a democracy) got us addicted to the “juiced” return that a heavy dose of leverage provides. We cheer when consumer spending is “strong,” and corporate profits are “record-breaking,” conveniently overlooking the fact that virtually all of our growth since 2001 has been the product of increased leverage.

The U.S. has become what economist Hyman Minsky calls a "Ponzi unit." This means that we are unable to repay principal or even to pay the interest due on outstanding debts by our own income. We depend on borrowing or on selling assets even to meet our interest bills. This is true of our government, our personal finances, and, it appears, our major financial institutions. U.S. consumers, long saving a mere 2% of their personal incomes, have engaged in net borrowing since Q3, 2005.

Meanwhile, our financial system has employed armies of slick MBA’s to invent new instruments to introduce liquidity into the market. The problem is that all of this liquidity is illusory because it is based on borrowing. The whole system works because house prices have been appreciating at an artificially high rate since the tech bubble burst in 2001. Prices have risen because there were lots of buyers, but they were all leveraged buyers – many of them had no business buying a home in the first place. In a market where there is no credit available in the U.S., there are no buyers in the U.S. This is why the government is frantically trying to resuscitate the credit markets – without borrowing, we are out of luck, because we have no savings. Corporations are going under because they cannot obtain overnight financing and do not have sufficient capital reserves. Consumers are cutting spending because they cannot spend their rapid-growing home equity because it’s gone, and that’s where the spending power that drove this last cycle came from. This crisis has been a long time coming, but the borrowing orgy that has spiraled out of control from its beginnings in the first credit cards of the late 1940s has come to an end.

We are scrambling for a bailout plan now because we don’t want to face the music. We are in a situation where arbitrage has been mistaken for value creation, liquidity has masqueraded as adequate capitalization, and diversification and insurance have been substituted in place of conservative underwriting. On the borrower’s side, homebuying has been seen as an investing activity, refinancing has been used as a cash machine, and credit has been mistaken for wealth. We will not see a return to strong and stable financial and housing markets until we accept and embrace the uncomfortable truth that we cannot live on credit alone. Years of failing to discipline ourselves into greater saving and less leverage have backfired. The result is the violent de-leveraging currently wrecking the global capital markets. My main hope is that a similar fate does not befall our ever-borrowing government as it continues to pour good money after bad. The question to MBA’s is “how are we going to rebuild the system in a more sustainable way?”

Let the Pain Do Its’ Work

2008-10-17T20:56:00.000-07:00

Written July 9, 2008

The United States has interfered with economic natural selection for too long, and we are beginning to pay the price. Rather than accepting the situation as a natural (and overdue) market correction, the Congress is furiously trying to pass a housing bail-out measure that would drag all U.S. taxpayers into the worsening cycle of mortgage-related losses to which only some voluntarily exposed themselves. Our politicians are delighted to have a giveaway in this election year. These politicians, abetted by the media, are only too eager to tar and feather the lenders, who are relatively few in number (of votes). Meanwhile, they pander to the larger numbers of borrowers by attempting to legislate them out of a financial mess which they brought upon themselves to begin with.

The push for a mortgage bail-out overlooks a fundamental reality of human life which is a key driver of natural selection: we only learn from our mistakes when we suffer their consequences. In order to have a healthy financial sector, those firms that originated, packaged, sold and bought loans that were insufficiently collateralized by the underlying assets and/or were made to unqualified borrowers should suffer the financial consequences of their lack of diligence in underwriting. The worst ones will, and should be, driven out of the market. Careers will be ruined, and rightly so.

The same reasoning holds true for the borrowers who entered into those loan agreements to begin with. “The man at the bank said it was okay” is not a valid excuse for not having exercised restraint, judiciousness and discipline in one’s financial affairs. The common argument made on behalf of borrowers who are underwater on aggressive home loans is that they were financial amateurs, and were taken advantage of by savvy loan officers who should have known better. While this was true in some instances, there are plenty of consequences to go around.

Few citizens are expert mechanics, but that generally does not cause us to accept used car salesmen’s word at face value. Careful people seek qualified third-party advice. Those who do not get expert advice get burned, causing them to stay out of the market in the future. If the government paid for repairs on secondhand cars, there would be no incentive for people to seek out the good deals. Home loans are no different, except that they are larger and more important. Predatory loan officers and the institutions that employed them are paying the piper now for their short-term focus on originations and fees, as are the institutions that bought those loans. The borrowers need to be held accountable for their own actions as well, otherwise we perpetuate a situation in which such large numbers of people make irresponsible financial decisions that the whole economy is destabilized.

If the Congress drags Fannie and Freddie further into danger by forcing them to assume or guarantee more risky mortgages and then the lenders fail, the U.S. taxpayers will likely have to assume their obligations. This would take the “selection” out of “natural selection” by making every taxpayer in the country responsible for a portion of the losses incurred only by those who took ill-considered financial risks. Since the borrowers who need rescuing would hardly have shared any upside gleaned from their risky loans, why should everyone share in the downside with them? There is no reason why a taxpayer who pays his mortgage faithfully, or one with no mortgage at all, should bear any of the burden caused by mortgage defaults and their related securities. An undeserved safety net would remove the incentive for borrowers to be careful about what they commit to. Moreover, by limiting or eliminating the consequences of the careless use of credit, we keep risky, careless players in the housing market. The market will never return to stability and strength if we do not allow it to make a genuine correction and drive the worst participants out.

Our housing and financial markets have been an easy place to make money lately, and as a result the markets have become bloated with unskilled players, so that the markets themselves have become inefficient and overburdened with poorly underwritten risk. On the lenders’ and investors’ side of the table arbitrage has been mistaken for value creation, liquidity has masqueraded as adequate capitalization, and diversification and insurance have been substituted in place of conservative underwriting. On the borrower’s side, homebuying has been seen as an investing activity, refinancing has been used as a cash machine, and credit has been mistaken for wealth. We will not see a return to strong and stable financial and housing markets until we accept and embrace the uncomfortable truth that lending, borrowing and investing are risky activities that require careful study, conservative judgment, and a high degree of discipline to be safely undertaken. Left unmolested, the market will dish out enough pain to the parties involved to return us to a healthy respect for risk. A genuine correction will occur, our collective memory will be refreshed, and the risk involved in real estate and its related instruments will be reincorporated into loan prices, underwriting policy, and security ratings. To the degree that we bail out borrowers or lenders who overextended themselves in the housing and debt markets, we prevent such a correction and assure ourselves a repeat of the present economic crisis.