Here is the reason major Urban areas are failing...
Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 7:34 pm
look no further than the city of Houston. Sure they are much better off than places like Philly or Detroit, but give them another couple of decades of this and they will be right there.
In the city, minorities make up a majority of the residents. Just over 25% are black and another 39% are Hispanic. Just under 20% of families have no adult males present. This number does not include single women living alone, nor does it include single mothers living with their fathers or grandfathers. If you look at the greater Houston area by voting trends, you will see a bright blue core surrounded by a huge red ring.
This blue core elected the cities first "gay" mayor. She claims she has no "gay" agenda, but that turns out to be false. This spring she led the efforts to have the City Council pass what she called the "HERO" act, or Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance. Part of the original ordinance was a bathroom provision that upset the majority of people who read it. It would have allowed anyone to use any restroom, shower facility, changing room, dressing room, etc based on their choice of clothing not their actual sex. So, a guy could wear a dress to the gym and then be allowed to use the women's locker room. A HS kid could wear a blouse and the school would have to allow him access to the girls bathroom and locker room. Of course this got a ton of people upset.
So the mayor removed that provision from the ordinance, but then stated that while the ordinance didn't specifically mention bathrooms or locker rooms, the provision still applied in the larger general language.
Many residents were upset that this ordinance wasn't put to a city vote so they had a petition drive to collect the necessary signatures to put it on the ballot. The city secretary validated the correct number of signatures was met and the proposal would go to the voters. Then the city attorney stepped in and said no the number wasn't met and that many of the signatures were invalid and the petition didn't meet the required number. When pressed the city attorney stated that many of the signatures themselves might be valid but that they person soliciting the signatures either wasn't registered to vote in Houston or didn't sign the sheet themselves therefore invalidating all the signatures on that page. Later when pressed under open records requests, the attorney provided examples of pages that were invalid due to the collector not being registered to vote. Problem for him was some of his examples were signatures collected by a sitting City Council member who was a registered voter. When this was brought to light the city attorney said it was too bad because the clock had run out on the petition anyway.
This then led citizens to sue the city over the petition. Then shortly thereafter the mayor had subpenas sent to ministers and pastors in the city requesting their sermons, word for word. This of course led to another lawsuit and the mayor quickly withdrawing the subpenas.
At the end of the day this is a huge mess and expense for the city over nothing. The mayor wants to create additional sub sets of individuals who get special treatment. She also wants to ensure a portion of city business goes to these LGBT folks via city quotas. Never mind Federal laws already prohibit discrimination and that this ordinance is so poorly written that both sides agree there will be lawsuits for years to come.
The biggest issue though is this is just pushing more employers out into the suburbs. Back in the early days of "white flight" people just moved to the suburbs but still worked in the urban core. Today, they are living and working in the burbs. This handcuffs the urban cities. In Houston the occupancy is still high in the "sky scrappers" but the occupants are making far less. Chevron is a perfect example, they continue to have a large presence in downtown Houston, but their executives and degreed types are in two suburban campuses while the downtown space is call center and trades folks.
In the meantime the suburban cities are adding "traditional urban" amenities like professional sports, theater and concert venues, branches of museums, etc. At this point there is almost no reason for someone living in Katy or The Woodlands or Sugar Land to even venture into the city limits of Houston. This trend can't continue if Urban cities are going to survive.
In the city, minorities make up a majority of the residents. Just over 25% are black and another 39% are Hispanic. Just under 20% of families have no adult males present. This number does not include single women living alone, nor does it include single mothers living with their fathers or grandfathers. If you look at the greater Houston area by voting trends, you will see a bright blue core surrounded by a huge red ring.
This blue core elected the cities first "gay" mayor. She claims she has no "gay" agenda, but that turns out to be false. This spring she led the efforts to have the City Council pass what she called the "HERO" act, or Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance. Part of the original ordinance was a bathroom provision that upset the majority of people who read it. It would have allowed anyone to use any restroom, shower facility, changing room, dressing room, etc based on their choice of clothing not their actual sex. So, a guy could wear a dress to the gym and then be allowed to use the women's locker room. A HS kid could wear a blouse and the school would have to allow him access to the girls bathroom and locker room. Of course this got a ton of people upset.
So the mayor removed that provision from the ordinance, but then stated that while the ordinance didn't specifically mention bathrooms or locker rooms, the provision still applied in the larger general language.
Many residents were upset that this ordinance wasn't put to a city vote so they had a petition drive to collect the necessary signatures to put it on the ballot. The city secretary validated the correct number of signatures was met and the proposal would go to the voters. Then the city attorney stepped in and said no the number wasn't met and that many of the signatures were invalid and the petition didn't meet the required number. When pressed the city attorney stated that many of the signatures themselves might be valid but that they person soliciting the signatures either wasn't registered to vote in Houston or didn't sign the sheet themselves therefore invalidating all the signatures on that page. Later when pressed under open records requests, the attorney provided examples of pages that were invalid due to the collector not being registered to vote. Problem for him was some of his examples were signatures collected by a sitting City Council member who was a registered voter. When this was brought to light the city attorney said it was too bad because the clock had run out on the petition anyway.
This then led citizens to sue the city over the petition. Then shortly thereafter the mayor had subpenas sent to ministers and pastors in the city requesting their sermons, word for word. This of course led to another lawsuit and the mayor quickly withdrawing the subpenas.
At the end of the day this is a huge mess and expense for the city over nothing. The mayor wants to create additional sub sets of individuals who get special treatment. She also wants to ensure a portion of city business goes to these LGBT folks via city quotas. Never mind Federal laws already prohibit discrimination and that this ordinance is so poorly written that both sides agree there will be lawsuits for years to come.
The biggest issue though is this is just pushing more employers out into the suburbs. Back in the early days of "white flight" people just moved to the suburbs but still worked in the urban core. Today, they are living and working in the burbs. This handcuffs the urban cities. In Houston the occupancy is still high in the "sky scrappers" but the occupants are making far less. Chevron is a perfect example, they continue to have a large presence in downtown Houston, but their executives and degreed types are in two suburban campuses while the downtown space is call center and trades folks.
In the meantime the suburban cities are adding "traditional urban" amenities like professional sports, theater and concert venues, branches of museums, etc. At this point there is almost no reason for someone living in Katy or The Woodlands or Sugar Land to even venture into the city limits of Houston. This trend can't continue if Urban cities are going to survive.