The Patchwork Nation team has been traveling around the country, looking at different types of communities and how they are coping with the economic crisis. This week, they were in Eagle, Colorado, an area that has seen high highs and low lows throughout history.
Last night on the NewsHour, Dante Chinni of Patchwork Nation explained the thinking behind mapping different types of communities and how looking at location and context together create a deeper picture of what the American economy looks like.
“But it’s more than that, because, when you break the counties out into these types, as we do, we’re able to get a feel for — in each one of these 12 communities, we have identified who’s getting the most, not even in per capita terms, but in just real raw numbers terms,” Chinni said.
Check out the full interview:
A new map from National Journal takes a look at where the uninsured in America are living, broken down by Congressional district. South Florida, Central California, and South Texas appear particularly hard hit.
How about posing a question to lawmakers in those districts (or your own) about health care reform?
While only tangentially related to the economy, it’s interesting to take a look at this new mapping project on the flu from the Center for Disease Control as an example of how government agencies are starting to think about maps that can be shared online to spread information. For more flu updates, visit Fluportal.org.
For Sale sign/ Credit: Flickr user Casey Serin
While there have been fewer layoffs and other positive signs in the overall economy, economists are still waiting on a change in the real estate market. Only a few areas in the U.S. saw an uptick in new home sales in August and lower housing prices haven’t instilled confidence in some of the hardest-hit areas of the country.
This week’s audio Q&A with Patchwork Nation Director Dante Chinni discusses the downside of lower home prices, and in turn, slower consumer spending in these types of areas.
“A lot of people have been counting on their homes as their nest egg, their retirement plan and they’ve been using it to finance a lot of things,” Chinni said. “And unless those prices start coming up, it’s hard to imagine how those places are going to be willing or able to spend a lot to get us out of the recession.”
Play audio: Patchwork Nation Q&A
In Columbus, Ohio, WOSU reported that home sales in the area rose one percent compared to July. Columbus is in Franklin County, one of Patchwork Nation’s Industrial Metropolis communities. But that change is so slight compared with how much prices have dropped that it’s unclear what the long-term impact will be.
On EconomyBeat.org, blogger Jon Brooks finds a real estate predictor blog that shows even less optimism for a real estate comeback, specifically for California, which was slammed by the mortgage crisis.
In May, KCET program SoCalConnected looked at communities in Southern California where housing prices have dropped significantly to help determine whether it is the right time to buy.
Despite the economic downturn, sales of guns and ammunition are growing in various parts of the country. This is the topic of the latest post on Patchwork Nation, a survey of how different types of communities are coping with the economic downturn. This morning, I chatted online with Dante Chinni, director of the Patchwork Nation project, about his findings:
Laura Hertzfeld: What made you think to look at weapons as an area that might be booming?
Dante Chinni: Well, I’d been looking at these stories about gun makers recently. I knew from my travels to some of my communities that the gun run was a real story. People were telling me they couldn’t find ammo. So I thought, let’s see where the gun stores are located. Sure enough we found an interesting correlation.
LH: Are those communities also places where other types of manufacturing have suffered recently? Are people who’ve been displaced from other jobs getting jobs in the weapons industry?
DC: The question I was wondering was who’s driving the gun boom. You can’t get numbers from the FBI on applications, but you can see where the stores are located. That’s what we have here, a look at who has the most gun stores nearby.
LH: Are there any areas of the country that surprised you — opening gun stores where there weren’t as many before?
DC: It reveals culture I think. It’s about the economy and politics. Well, to be clear, these aren’t openings, these are locations. It wasn’t completely shocking to me that there are more guns stores in places where you can go hunting in some field 10 minutes away than there are in, say, the West Village [in New York City]. There are just so many more stores per capita in rural agricultural locales. It’s 10 to 1.
LH: Well, of course, but do you think there’s a fear that didn’t exist before? Both a fear — needing to protect and a fear that gun laws will be tightened.
DC: The fear is real. And the fear is way more about the worries that the feds are coming to tighten the gun and ammo supply. I don’t think these are people preparing for Armageddon. But they are preparing for new controls on the weapons and ammo they can own.
LH: Has there been any backlash on this from the antigun lobby? Are they noticing this trend, too? When you started talking to people in the patchwork communities about this, how did they respond?
DC: Well, first let’s note that there have been no signs a tightening is coming from the government. But I have not looked closely at the anti-gun lobby yet. I would assume that like many camps in the Obama fold they may think the president is moving too slowly.
LH: It seems like there are so many other pressing things economy-wise on the president’s agenda — not so surprising that guns haven’t come up.
DC: True on that point. In the communities, they mention the gun sales as validation: “See I told you people are scared.” But they actually take comfort in it. I guess the idea that others feel as they do.
LH: At the end of your post you say this is more of a local than national phenomenon — but are the gun-friendly areas growing?
DC: That we will have to see with time. I think we want to look at some survey data on that and see how it falls into our 12 community types. But, my gut reaction is no. This is more about the amount of anger and fear about the Obama Administration than it is a select group of communities in the United States.
The healthcare crisis is reaching a fever pitch, as more and more Americans find themselves without coverage, Patchwork Nation reported today:
“When Patchwork Nation analyzed the numbers, we found that the percentage of uninsured people grew across 11 of our 12 community types in that year. And between 2000 and 2006, all 12 types saw larger increases.”
Patchwork Nation director Dante Chinni spoke with Online NewsHour’s Anna Shoup about how these figures relate to other trends in the economy, and what these new numbers say about the debate over healthcare reform legislation.