TheNiche

Not necessarily. Do the total annual costs of your medical expenses exceed your total potential income (inclusive of the value of your benefits package, were it to be paid to you in cash)? Do you see yourself making significantly more income in the future? I'll bet that there'd be a way to finance your survival, but I'll bet that it'd make for a pretty miserable existence. I know that Obama got some undue flack over the "death panels" thing, but I don't mind the idea, honestly. If my 89-year-old grandmother got herself injured in such a way as she'd be recovering from a treatment for the remainder of her natural life and would never serve another productive purpose to society, then I think that the government ought to deny her treatment--although, obviously, if the family pays for it, then that's fine. ...well, as luck would have it, that's exactly the situation she's in, and Medicare will pay for a $60,000 surgery that will require years of government-paid therapy to heal from. That's wasteful, and we do need healthcare reform. I'm just not sure that that necessarily means that we need to be guaranteeing even more procedures (if that's what it calls for, which nobody is sure that it does or not because there isn't a bill). As for denying treatment to someone younger, like yourself, who may never be sufficiently productive to pay for their own survival...well that triggers a debate over the morality of evolution, survival of the fittest, reproductive rights, and essentially whether the treatment of unhealthy people today is worth having increasingly unhealthy people in future generations that have to be treated. (We've talked about the prospect of 'Idiocracy' before, now just consider how that translates to in terms of health. Scary. Sadly, I don't think people want to have that debate; both sides of it would have blood on their hands. Nobody walks away feeling good about the outcome, whatever it is.

I picked up the term from musicman and also from one of crunchtastic's stories and throw it around myself, mostly just to piss off the easily-offended...but also to poke fun at the snobby mentality of most racially/ethnically white gentrifiers. It's all in good humor. Still, the term as it is used by people who are serious about it has more to do with ethnicity than race. I bought a house in Eastwood with a friend a few years back, and the friend lives there. She's black-skinned, but is more white than I could ever hope to be. Likewise, one of my roommates is hispanic, but he's also 'showtunes' gay and is the whitest of all of us. Neither of these people could survive 2nd Ward or 3rd Ward, which are just a half-mile away from Eastwood to the north and south, respectively.

If you don't think that you're going to live in the same place for at least five years, then you should definitely rent. The up-front closing costs and amortization make it very difficult to break even otherwise.

If you feel bad for the poor, give them some money. This is the basis for my beliefs about federal funding to social services. Charitible giving ought to be offset by a tax credit up to a certain amount. The charitible giving could be allocated according to the moral compass of each individual taxpayer. If you consider poverty to be the paramount problem affecting society, give to a charity that you see as doing an effective job at combating the problem, whether that entails operating a soup kitchen or providing affordable housing or providing for necessary surgeries. And if your neighbor thinks that the money could best be spent on schools (which is a better way to attack the root of the problem, IMO), then let them do that. Maybe I don't give a crap about the poor or about children and want a new amenity in my neighborhood park. It's all good. This approach pretty much eliminates class warfare mentality. No congress elected in part by poor people ought to be authorized to tax the wealthy to their direct benefit. That's theft. You just illustrated the essential problem. They're allocating more resources to healthcare than we are, meaning that they have to sacrifice resources that could otherwise be used for other purposes, whether to grow their economy or to enjoy a higher level of consumption. We face the same choice. If we make healthcare a priority, then we have to sacrifice investments into our economy or other consumption options. My pointing out bankruptcy was to indicate that there's already a way for those afflicted with "crushing debts" to avoid indentured servitude or debtors' prison and bounce back as productive members of society...without losing their lives in the process. On the one hand, bankruptcy is an unpleasant enough experience to keep most people from using it willy nilly for non-critical health procedures, but on the other, it allows people the option of getting what they need to live their lives productively, even if they have to start from scratch. Yes, bankruptcy does feed back into society, but the threat of it acts as the rationing mechanism of last resort. If you modify rationing mechanisms such that we have a greater aggregate amount of healthcare being performed, the burden on society increases. There is the argument about preventative healthcare offsetting higher costs later on, and I'm sure that that holds true for some health issues, but not always. I suspect that the savings from preventative medicine will likely not be sufficient to have a significant effect if such programs are implemented competently. In fact, prevention can be excessive and wasteful if efforts expended to prevent a disease among many people can be more costly than just treating the disease for the few that develop it. These aren't issues that you or I can competently debate, however, because there isn't a workable healthcare bill in congress yet that would provide specificity.

I mostly agree with your rebuttal, but these are datapoints of convenience which do not relay the whole story. RE: the so-called socialist countries, you should've cited Norway. It is the only country that can be said is a darker shade of socialist than the United States AND that has higher per capita income. Of course...its economy is Alaskan in scope, pretty small and very dependent on its natural resources. The other countries you mentioned are all obviously going to have lower poverty rates; that's the whole point of socialist policies. That does not mean that the whole of those countries are better off in aggregate. RE: the folks without healthcare, people who have lost their homes and life savings due to our excellent (and indeed expensive) healthcare could still file for bankruptcy and get bailed out without living out many years of their natural lives (which they retained from the bankruptcy, in addition to a bunch of other personal property) as indentured servants. Seems like a bargain to me.

The Washington Avenue Corridor has one set of tracks going through it. Eastwood is surrounded by an inescapable trianglular network of tracks, and any time that any one of the three tracks is in use, every part of the neighborhood can hear it. Sometimes multiple tracks are used at the same time. I hear one right now. To be clear, I don't mind the trains. I actually like their aesthetic and think that it would be really neat to live in a townhouse overlooking a rail yard. To me, this is a plus. But I'm very abnormal. Most homebuyers are sensitive to them and will avoid houses that are perceived to be too close to the tracks. This is why discounts can be had. I hear another one, this time more distant. The conductor seems to be romantically involved with his horn. To my knowledge, quiet zones are under study for some (but by no means all) of the East End. I know that Eastwood would benefit from them, but having said that Eastwood doesn't have the same level of clout as the River Oaks crowd. And 2nd Ward has basically no clout at all. There's another one. Five short taps on the horn, then a long one, then a pause, then another long one, then a pause, then a tap, then several long ones.

If you can achieve a >$100k discount on a house in a neighborhood that is <10 minutes away from good grocery stores and retail, and especially if you work in a neighborhood that already has those amenities, then take advantage of it and just drive a little bit more. Seriously, if your mortgage is $1,000 less per month what does that translate to in terms of time saved? Quiet neighborhood through-traffic is acheivable in most parts of town; its the trains that make people give Eastwood a second-thought. Montrose has an especially high incidence of reported rapes, probably more per capita than anywhere else in the City. They have lower-crime in other ways, such as theft and murder, but still... Gunfire happens. I've heard it in Eastwood with greater frequency than where I've lived previously (aside from McAllen, where I had a corrupt cop next door that let me--a high schooler--construct and use an operational firing range in my back yard), but fortunately I haven't seen any adverse effects. Should you get to know the 'indiginous' neighbors, it could make for great entertainment on New Year's Eve. I concur about schools, but if you don't have kids, it doesn't matter. In fact, if you don't have kids, then there is absolutely no justification at all to pay a school premium. If you buy a house and live in the transitioning neighborhood for five or ten years before having to send kids to school, then the stored (and hopefully appreciating) equity allows you to gain access to better neighborhoods when it comes time to bug out. The decision on whether to live in a transitioning neighborhood has to do with the rent/own calculus and personal factors; there's no doubt about that...but it doesn't mean that the neighborhood cannot successfully transition over time by virtue of that it is highly attractive to one or more niche markets that are stable or growing in aggregate. ...BUT, in Atticus' case, I think you're right to raise doubts. I would advise him to let his kid(s) worry about becoming well-adjusted in high school, once they've already developed basic social skills.

Gentrification starts with people who aren't professionals at all, typically students, artists, and the bohemian sort. They can't afford much, have few assets to put at risk, aren't responsible to anyone but themselves, and seem to have a knack for convincing themselves (and others) that a slum is awesome. ...this last bit is akin to me going on and on about half-finished parks, the variety and awesomeness of taco stands, or fantasizing about raising chickens in a back yard. These people do not have to be especially numerous, but they represent white faces in a sea of brown--and lets be honest--it makes a difference. These folks prime a neighborhood for transition but cannot complete it alone. The young-ish professionals come into play when other similar inner-city neighborhoods price them out and they start looking for alternatives. All it takes as a signal that a neighborhood is transitioning is a few white faces on the street and perhaps one or two hipster retailers. Once a justifiable trend begins, it snowballs. If you want to gauge which inner-city neighborhoods are passe (for price-related reasons) among edgy youth, the quick test goes like this: "would mom want to live there?"

It has to do with that elementary schools serve neighborhoods, whereas high schools serve communities. The whole of the area zoned to Lantrip could have the demographics of Bellaire and it wouldn't make much of a dent on Austin HS because Austin HS serves such a large area, including large slummy apartment complexes and many neighborhoods where large households are the norm.

I was raised through most of my childhood in the poorest county in the United States and graduated from a high school of about the same size and socioeconomic composition as Austin HS. I even attended an elementary school where I was the only kid from a white family; there was one other white kid, but he was adopted by Mexicans. So to be clear, I do understand what you're getting at. What I got was a crappy education and the experience of feeling like a poorly-socialized misfit, no matter what I do in life. Kids are not in my plans, but neither is winning the lottery, having a car accident, or even something as mundane as what what's for dinner. Life happens as it will. At such time as the education of children becomes a concern, I will assess the situation and make an appropriate decision. It could be many years and I may not end up living in Houston, much less the East End. For the sake of argument, I'd probably try to get them into a decent elementary and middle school somehow, in order for them to be socialized within a socioeconomic peer group that matches their own, and then transition them into a high school similar to Austin HS so that they stand a better chance at ranking well. HISD is pretty easy to work with as far as out-of-district transfers are concerned, so long as the parent can provide transportation, so I could probably find a workable solution. Crappy schools do hold Eastwood back, but that's true of other transitioning places as well. I'd expect that Lantrip and Cage will in time transition to the point that they're acceptable for white yuppies, but the high school is going to be problematic for decades to come.

Eastwood also has easy access to two of the biggest parks projects currently under development in Houston. The banks of Brays Bayou are all getting torn up and landscaped with new trails, so that the linear corridor will extend from the Ship Channel to Spur 5, where it hooks into the existing trails that pass through or by UH, Riverside, Hermann Park, the TMC, and Meyerland. The sections at Mason Park are already done, and IMO, Mason Park is one of the great undiscovered inner city parks in Houston. The other big project is the east section of Buffalo Bayou; more accurately, it is a number of projects all strung together. Slowly but surely, the trail network is coming together, and will extend from downtown to Lockwood. Tony Marron Park along the east side of York was completed only a couple years ago, and preparations are being made to enlarge it to the east. A boathouse for dragon boats, rowboats, canoes, kayaks, outriggers is planned across York from Tony Marron Park. And further down the bayou, at Wayside, Buffalo Bend Nature Park is under development. There are lots more plans, some of them actionable, but most of them unrealistic visions...still, there is progress. All this, yet Eastwood itself sits on high ground, outside of any floodplain. Come to think of it, the high-banked bayous don't flood quite as easily, either, and don't leave silt all over the trails. That's a big plus as compared to the trails from downtown towards Memorial Park.

Me too. I forgot about Mandola's, but they aren't open except during lunch hours. The last time I went was a couple years ago, and I recall that the bug-eyed midget on staff kept kicking another staff member in the shins for unclear reasons. Similarly, I love Champ Burger. Try the double bacon cheeseburger with a side of onion rings. It's a heart-stopper. It isn't within walking distance but is plenty close enough for a burger run.

Even though Woodland Heights and Eastwood were developed around the same time by the same folks, I see more parallels between the housing stock in Eastwood and greater Montrose than with Woodland Heights. And in no small part this has to do with the larger number of small multifamily complexes, garage apartments, duplexes (like the one I'm living in), fourplexes, etc. But the similarities are reflected in building materials, as well. For instance, as you pointed out, wood siding is more typical of Woodland Heights than Eastwood, which features more brick facades; I guess it's a matter of taste as to which is superior, but brick is traditionally seen as the preferred material. Greater Eastwood is definitely in demographic transition, and some parts are further along than others. But within Eastwood proper, which is perhaps only one third of the area you defined, students are very common. An "indiginous population" remains, but the rents have risen in recent years and I have yet to encounter any riff raff more serious than bored teenagers from the high school. As someone else pointed out, the only thing that really holds Eastwood back is the dearth of retail offerings. 'Battle Kroger' at least provides an option, but it is generally not a pleasant one. Bohemeo's is always nice and seems to be taking on an 'institution' status on this side of town, but the hours of Kanomawan and the East End Urban Market make them inconvenient. I'm sure that retail offerings will expand over the coming years, but it is a slow process. One thing that Woodland Heights has had going for it is an association with the greater Heights. A rising tide lifts all boats. But with entry-level housing in the greater Heights no longer affordable to most yuppies, they are looking elsewhere. Back around 2004, when I first started scoping out the East End, my manager (in a real estate job) said I was crazy, that the East End was simply on the wrong side of I-45 or 288. As of last year, he was touring homes in Eastwood and Idylwood (for him and the Mrs.) and quizzing me on the neighborhoods. Attitudes change, and can change fast...but results on the ground are limited by the rate of occupant turnover, which in a predominantly single-family neighborhood tends to take a while.

For post #98, I was referring to your statement about complaints from earlier in the thread (regarding traffic snarls at Fannin/Greenbriar) notwithstanding. I can personally vouch for those issues, as well as other LRT-induced hot spots at Fannin/Braeswood and especially at Fannin/610. This is especially important to bear in mind because you'll notice that traffic snarls are not issues north of the TMC, where the downtown grid kicks in and provides numerous high-capacity alternatives that parallel Main Street...but most of the new routes will not have such easy or free-flowing alternatives.

In post #107, you argued that METRO's goal ought to be making it so that people can be carless even though such lifestyles are already achievable with or without extensive financial resources, as your own case illustrates. Now you're saying that it's in order to make it easier, even though you'd already acquiesced in posts #98 and #103 to the facts that there are numerous cases where poor implementation of light rail has in fact made it more difficult for both transit and auto users.

I should hope not! He's got WAY more important things to do than concern himself with me. I could be a cancerous 9-year-old, and he shouldn't give a crap. The message will resonate with the brown-nosers and preppies, but they were going to stay in school anyway because they see authority figures as their path to self-actualization. My view is that we should not reinforce their behaviors. I am that cynical. Why aren't you?

Dickinson ISD has a disproportionately large population of autistic children. The fact is, most autistic children cannot be educated and have nothing to offer. Also, I'd wager that a significant number of the functional kids in Dickinson are more interested in what society can offer them than the other way around. I'm glad they banned it. It's fluff. There are more important things to do with our childrens' time.

You might take notice of those red, white, and blue striped rectangular prisms on wheels from time to time. They're magical daemons summoned by brown- and black-colored carbon sacks of mostly water, or so the tribal elders say. I know you doubt me. Your kind always does. But I seen em' with my very own eyes. As the story goes, they do it by standing in a special location, a mystical altar known as a "bus stop", and the daemons can be entered into and will take you lots and lots of places--even some places so far out in the suburbs where you'd never really want to go anyways. ------- Seriously dude, I've got two employees that live within about a mile or two of where you do. They do not own cars or have drivers' licenses (and in that respect could be mistaken for Manhattanites), they walk to work, they walk to the mom & pop supermarket, and they ride the bus a few minutes to patronize bars or if they need to go downtown for some reason. It isn't as though I pay them especially well or keep regular hours. They probably subsist on a fraction of what you do, and yet they can afford an idealized urbane lifestyle. You could do it too.

The purpose of METRO is not to provide options, it is to enhance mobility. With respect to transportation policy, a mixed strategy is preferred to a singular one. There is only one P&R lot along the route, however nearly all of the region's P&R lots have routes that terminate along the Red Line. Also, the apartments along the south end of Fannin represent one of the densest concentrations of housing anywhere in the city. It's the perfect place to run transit, but abysmal ridership figures from the Astrodome station would seem to indicate that LRT might be overkill for nearly any kind of purely-residential destination (that isn't 'ethnic' enough). You've been reading too many of the Chron.com forums. The construction schedule for the Red Line was expedited in order to ensure that it was operational for the Super Bowl, but the decision to build only the Red Line by itself was one made out of political convenience and financial necessity. In terms of ridership, it was already understood to be low-hanging fruit because it not only allowed for bus routes to create a north-south funnel into it, but because it replaced most of the shuttle services from the Smithlands TMC lot, to the point that capacity gets maxed out and they still have to run shuttles parallel to the LRT. By implementing such a high-ridership route and using it as a proof of concept to the FTA (which only cares about ridership), METRO was able to convince them to massively fund lines that do not and can never have ridership even remotely close to what occurs on the Red Line. METRO was also able to generate sufficient good PR from the ridership numbers to counteract much of the negative publicity.

Concrete floors are not always smooth underneath a flooring material. In my condo, the slab was uneven, with noticable dips in some places. There were significant trowel marks. There was even a spot where a bit of the wire mesh stuck up from out of the concrete. Additionally, since a moisture barrier was not installed underneath the concrete, there were significant problems with concrete stain and (easily solved) complications with wood/laminate flooring options. I tried using the stain/sealing approach several years ago, but it peeled up significantly, especially along the ridges of the trowel marks where the effects of foot traffic were amplified. Also, I vomited on it once and the acid disolved the stain and discolored the concrete. I would definitely use concrete stain in a new building, where I could verify that it was built properly. Otherwise, I'd stick with traditional flooring options.

If the number of users is the sole criteria used to determine whether a mode of transportation "works", then freeways such as the North, Gulf, and Southwest Freeways must "work" really really well. One of the inherent problems with transportation funding, IMO, is that they so often base a definition of success on the number of users rather than the amount of users' time is saved or other measures of holistic impact. For instance, if light rail causes traffic snarls along a corridor, that doesn't count against it. Likewise, if it causes a transit agency to reroute buses in such a way as to feed the beast, in so doing increasing the number of transfers for bus riders, that is also not a consideration.

It only shows the Mexican embassy in Washington D.C. and a consulate in Phoenix, but I know that there's a Mexican consulate in Houston located adjacent to US 59 in the Museum District. Perhaps it isn't a complete list.

The Methodist Inpatient Building is short and stubby, with huge floorplates, but it is already about 1.5 million square feet, making it larger in those terms than all but a handful of buildings in Houston. By comparison, the 75-story Chase and 71-story Wells Fargo buildings downtown are each in the vicinity of two million square feet.

Don't forget about the former Weingarten store on Telephone Rd., presently an HISD building if I'm not mistaken.

Very well put. A sculptor once told me something similar, that a masterpeice begins by evaluating the site so as that the end product is entirely dependent upon its site and that when it is out of place, it is only a tangle of steel, worth only so much as the scrap yard will give for it.