The Aussie Pushing for an Open Oakland
Spike (Steve Spiker)
Next City isn’t just a news website, we are a non-profit organization with a mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities. Part of how we do that is by connecting our readers to the interesting people who are part of our Next City Network and holding an annual Vanguard conference bringing together 40 top young urban leaders. This week’s profile is of Steve Spiker, a member of our 2012 Vanguard class.Apply today to be part of our 2015 Vanguard conference in Reno.
Name: Steve “Spike” Spiker
Current Occupation: Executive Director, OpenOakland
Hometown: Alice Springs, Australia
Current City: Oakland, CA
Twitter Tag: @spjika
Current Occupation: Executive Director, OpenOakland
Hometown: Alice Springs, Australia
Current City: Oakland, CA
Twitter Tag: @spjika
I drink: coffee, good coffee
I am an: extrovert who likes solace at times
The area I grew up is: crazy outback, way beyond rural
I am an: extrovert who likes solace at times
The area I grew up is: crazy outback, way beyond rural
What was your first job? Cowboy on a cattle ranch and slaughterhouse.
What is your favorite city and why? London, for the pace, the cultures, the food and the Metro.
Spike and Lucy
What do you do when you are not working? Love on my daughters and wife, run a landscape photography business.
What do you like most about your current job? Changing social conditions, making our city better.
What is the coolest project you worked on? Implementing a national early childhood survey to identify health and developmental needs in young children.
What are the hard parts about your job? People not wanting to share data. (For more on this topic, read this week’s feature, Welcome to the Open Data Movement’s Turbulent Teenage Years)
What is the biggest challenge facing cities today? Housing affordability and equity.
What makes a successful leader? A balanced ego and desire to support those working for you.
What’s your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)? Make Oakland a really open, data driven city.
What’s the best professional advice you have received? Listen more.
Who do you most admire? Gary Haugen, head of IJM, fighting modern day slavery.
What do you look for when hiring someone? Adaptability.
What career advice would you give an emerging urban leader? Find a way to work on things you are passionate about, but never fail to listen to those who want to critique you; They’re often right.
Conservative Green Energy Lovers Could Complicate Red State Fights
(Photo by Drenaline)
Last year’s election added five new Republican seats to Kansas’ already bright red house, leading some to predict that the state could finally trounce its renewable energy mandates in 2015.
Led by American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-drafted policy, conservative leaders in a number of states, including Kansas, tried to kill their clean-energy standards in 2013. Not a single attempt was successful.
“But in the wake of a Republican wave in several states in November, attacks on renewable energy standards may resurface,” Elizabeth Daigneau writes in January’sGoverning, listing Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio alongside the Sunflower state.
This year, however, they could face some surprising opposition.
From Barry Goldwater Jr.’s Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed (T.U.S.K) in Arizona to the Green Tea coalition emerging out of Georgia to pro-business, pro-wind advocates in Kansas, a number of well-organized, grassroots groups have begun championing alternative energy on free market values. Many of these organizations have, so far, rallied around rooftop solar and net metering, but their presence could be felt in the coming RPS battles — even though many of the Koch-funded groups pushing to end state mandates also claim free-market ideals.
Past fights haven’t exactly cut clear right-left battle lines either. Gabe Elsner is the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a clean energy think tank. Observing and advocating for state mandates throughout 2013, he says that, although leaders pushing to repeal renewable portfolio standards (RPS) were generally Republicans, those in favor of keeping them came from both parties.
“The energy policy battles in 2013 set up a lot of interesting dynamics,” he says. “You had fossil fuel-funded special interests and their front groups trying to protect their market dominance.”
However, he adds, “massive investment in clean energy was driving jobs and growth so over the last few years we’ve seen bipartisan support of the clean energy standards.”
He points to the failure of RPS repeals, even in deeply conservative states, as evidence of this support.
But since a 2013 report prepared for Edison Electric Institute predicted that “disruptive technologies” like solar, wind and geothermal could “directly threaten the centralized utility model,” net metering fights across the country have also pitted homeowners against the regulated monopolies controlling their grid, making unlikely allies of the Tea Party and Sierra Club. The website of Arizona-based T.U.S.K. describes the policy battles in language that could belong on conservative talk radio.
“Monopoly utilities want to extinguish the intendment rooftop solar market in America to protect their socialist control of how we get electricity,” it states.
In Florida, meanwhile, a group called Conservatives for Energy Freedom is gathering signatures for a ballot amendment that would allow residents to produce and sell solar energy directly to other consumers. Its founder, Debbie Dooley, is also cofounder of the Atlanta Tea Party, and one of 22 people who helped jumpstart the movement nationally in 2009.
“I realized that I wanted to bring up a group that was strictly conservatives advocating for solar and other forms of clean energy,” she says of her decision to bring alternative energy and free market advocacy together under the heading “Green Tea.”
Too many conservatives, she adds, “have been brainwashed into thinking that only tree huggers and liberals care about the environment.”
Neither group has advocated heavily, so far, on the issue of state mandates — and they’re not exactly a natural fit. On an ideological level, Dooley explains, she believes in removing all mandates. But in the technical interest of allowing solar and wind to compete with coal and oil, she also reads between the lobbying lines.
“You have to look at it on a state-by-state basis,” she says, in response to my question on what she thinks of RPS. “The Koch Brothers are trying to throw back solar on a state-by-state level … They understand that solar is taking off, and they’re trying to stop competition.”
And while some of the players pushing hard against the mandates — Koch Industries in Wichita, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity — call attention to subsidies and “training wheels” as the root of their libertarian opposition, Dooley points out the double standard.
“It’s hard to see Republicans talking about energy subsidies and ignoring the subsidies going to coal and nuclear,” she says. “Conservatives should not cherry-pick their principles.”
Whether or not T.U.S.K., the Green Tea coalition and others like them will take on RPSbattles in 2015, Elsner says he anticipates fights in Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina and Maine this year — and he thinks conservatives will continue to play a big part in keeping them intact.
“There’s going to be a battle between free-market supporters who want a thriving clean energy economy that can compete and those who are working with special interests and fossil fuel groups,” he says.
The Works is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.
Rachel Dovey is an award-winning freelance writer and former USC Annenberg fellow living at the northern tip of California’s Bay Area. She writes about infrastructure, water and climate change and has been published by Bust, Wired, Paste, SF Weekly, the East Bay Express and the North Bay Bohemian.
What Does 21st-Century Public Housing Look Like?
New York City Housing Authority Chair Shola Olatoye presented a preview of “The NextGeneration NYCHAPlan” at a public forum last weekend. (Photo by Alexis Stephens)
Shola Olatoye thinks of the New York City Housing Authority as a “mighty beast.” Her goal is to subdue — and guide — the behemoth agency, and Olatoye, who was appointed NYCHA chair and CEO nearly a year ago by Mayor Bill de Blasio, has a plan to do just that.
On Saturday (where she made that “beast” comment), Olatoye got into the details of the simply named“NextGeneration NYCHA Plan” at a forum for housing advocates and resident leaders, giving a preview of her game plan for managing the housing authority under de Blasio. I was there, and I found Olatoye forthright. She’s clearly unconcerned about concealing NYCHA’s failings. Instead, she seems more focused on improving its reputation not just to the outside world, but the agency’s tenants and resident leadership — a hard sell based on the repair and safety concerns voiced by the forum’s attendees.
Here are some of the takeaways from Olatoye’s presentation.
GET NYCHA’S FINANCES IN ORDER
NYCHA is facing a capital shortfall of nearly $18 billion.
With Republican control of the N.Y. State Senate and the U.S. Congress putting public housing funding on shakier ground (more so than it already is), Olatoye is looking at alternative options for bringing in money and cutting costs.
For one, she wants to improve NYCHA’s 75 percent rent collection rate. Olatoye acknowledged that some tenants choose to withhold rent payments because of major repair needs in their apartments. NYCHA’s maintenance and upkeep issues are well documented. “But the connection between paying rent and the services we are able to provide are linked,” she said. “We have to operate as an efficient landlord. The notion thatNYCHA is different than any other landlord, I submit to you, is an excuse for poor and shoddy management practices.”
Olatoye said they are also looking to decrease or eliminate what the authority pays to the city: “I ordered a review of every single agreement that we have with various city agencies. It’s fascinating what you can learn when you actually read the documents.”
In 2014, de Blasio redirected money to NYCHA, which had been earmarked to pay theNYPD for “above baseline” policing services. The housing authority also pays $29 million in PILOT payments, which Olatoye alluded to trying to cut or eliminate.
At Saturday’s forum and in other discussions of the NextGeneration plan, Olatoye has mentioned her aim to create a 501c3 nonprofit to raise money for social services, like workforce development programs, corporate sponsorships and energy retrofits. “This is a way for us to leverage and take advantage of other people’s money,” she said. Similar to the Central Park Conservancy or the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, there are already such models at work at housing authorities in Philadelphia, San Francisco and St. Louis.
TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY GO HAND-IN-HAND
Olatoye was frank about how NYCHA doesn’t always meet the needs of its tenants, or follow its own rules. Optimal Property Management Operating Model, a pilot program that kicked off January 1st, attempts to improve resident engagement by decentralizing management. Participating property managers will be held accountable for standardized performance metrics and regularly meet with resident leadership.
Acknowledging NYCHA’s “culture is difficult to change,” Olatoye said that the pilot’s outcomes would be measured and guide how it is expanded.
On the theme of transparency, many in the crowd called for NYCHA to release its data sets related to things like complaints, salaries and procurement. As a public-benefit corporation, the housing authority is treated differently than other city agencies. It seems to be murky whether they have to comply with the city’s 2012 Open Data Law. (As the Next City feature“Welcome to the Open Data Movement’s Turbulent Teenage Years” details, New York isn’t the only place grappling with the transparent government trend.)
MORE PRIVATIZATION DEALS ON THE TABLE?
When NYCHA sold half its stake in 900 apartments to private developers in December, many were surprised by the swiftness of the deal and the lack of community input about the terms of the sale. Olatoye said that the sale was the primary reason the housing authority was able to balance its budget for 2014. Whether NYCHA plans to pursue similar partnerships and how this might affect New York’s public housing stock moving forward remains an open question.
U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez was also on hand Saturday, and she warned that while creative financing through sales or partnerships with private developers is well-intentioned, it is the “privatization of an asset that should be publicly owned.”
Velázquez noted that HUD’s Moving to Work and RAD projects are being actively pursued at other housing authorities across the country. She does not want NYCHA to follow suit.
Olatoye said there were “no immediate plans” for NYCHA to pursue the Moving to Work program, and it was unclear whether there might be other plans to sell stakes in some developments or convert more housing to Section 8 (which is more attractive to developers).
CALCULATED PLANNING, NOT TRIAGE
Olatoye emphasized that unlike his predecessor, de Blasio is committed to public housing and its critical role in providing affordable housing for New Yorkers. In May, de Blasio unveiled his plan to address New York’s affordable housing crisis, Housing New York. Olatoye noted that NYCHA is expected to contribute 12 percent of the 200,000 units that the Mayor has committed to building or preserving to reach his affordable housing goals.
NYCHA has already begun to make strides to house homeless families, as directed by de Blasio (although the implementation has been controversial itself).
The Mayor was opposed to the private development infill plan proposed under Mayor Bloomberg, but has left open the possibility of an amended solution. Olatoye says that NextGeneration NYCHA will include plans to leverage its real estate assets in the form of a land lease initiative.
Above all, Olatoye framed a future of NYCHA that’s less based on triage and more on calculated planning. “Our capital planning process is one that’s driven by the most need,” she said. “The challenge is that everyone is in need. Where we want to get to is a place in the process where we are actually being much more strategic about how we plan. And do that in a way that not only takes into account where a roof is caving in tomorrow, but about what the operating issues are happening at the development.”
The Equity Factor is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.
Alexis Stephens is Next City’s urban economics fellow. She’s written about housing, pop culture, global music subcultures, and more for publications like Shelterforce,Rolling Stone, SPIN, and MTV Iggy. She has a B.A. in urban studies from Barnard College and an M.S. in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania.
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