Monthly Archives: August 2014

The RAD-ical Shifts to Public Housing

 Originally published in The American Prospect on August 28th, 2014. 
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Traditional public housing is out of favor and substantially out of funds. It’s bureaucratic, concentrates the very poor, and is literally crumbling due to a huge backlog of deferred maintenance. Yet despite real catastrophes—such as Chicago’s bleak, crime-ridden Robert Taylor Homes, dynamited over a decade ago—public housing provides low-rent apartments to some 2.2 million people, and much of it is reasonably well run by local authorities.

For half a century, presidents, legislators and housing developers have sought alternatives, involving supposedly more efficient private market incentives. However, these alternatives, too, have been far from scandal-free. The Johnson-era Section 236 program (named for part of the housing code) gave private developers tax benefits and direct payments to build low-rent housing, underwritten by subsidized thirty-year mortgages. But then, as the mortgages started being paid off in the 1990s, many developers kicked out poor tenants and converted the buildings to middle-class and even luxury apartments—taking low-rent units that had been built and maintained with taxpayer money and removing them from the pool of affordable housing.

Attempts to de-concentrate big public housing projects, such as the Clinton-era “HOPE VI” program (Home Opportunities for People Everywhere), ended up evicting thousands. The Robert Taylor site, which at its peak housed 27,000 low-income Chicagoans, was replaced, using over $500 million in HOPE VI funds, with a low-rise mixed-income development of just 2,300 units.

Now comes the latest attempt to save public housing by injecting private capital. The idea is to bring in private developers—drawn by tax breaks and subsidies—and have them refurbish and manage the buildings. The end result is to be some kind of hybrid, where rents will stay low (at least for a time), tenants may have more mobility but fewer rights, and the total stock of affordable housing could shrink yet again. The approach is not cheap, and it may be more cost-effective to just appropriate more direct funds to the program and thereby keep it in the public sector—but Congress is not about to do so.

The new plan, promoted by HUD, developers and some city governments with few alternatives, is known as the Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD. It is set to transfer 60,000 public housing units across the country to the control of private developers. While billed as a limited test program, many participating cities are taking far-reaching gambles on their city’s affordable housing stock. In Baltimore, 43 percent of all public housing units will be converted through RAD, and in San Francisco, roughly 75 percent.

RAD is a second cousin to everything from privatized highways to the Affordable Care Act, which keeps the public provision and modest expansion of health insurance mostly private.

RAD is an emblematic case of this era’s intensified push to use privatization in the pursuit of social goals—not because that approach is necessarily better policy, but because it is politically possible. In that respect, RAD is a second cousin to everything from privatized highways to the Affordable Care Act, which keeps the public provision and modest expansion of health insurance mostly private.

Public housing—a program financed through direct government subsidies since its inception in the late 1930s—has been severely underfunded by Congress for decades. The dearth of funds has translated into a housing stock decline: Since the mid-1990s, more than 260,000 dilapidated units have been demolished or removed from the program. And despite long waiting lists around the country, agencies have only built new units to replace about one-sixth of those that were removed. HUD estimates that nearly $30 billion is needed to repair and restore the nation’s 1.2 million remaining public housing units.

“Primarily because of Congress’s failure to fund public housing, and so many long-term repairs and rehabilitation needs going unmet, RAD was an idea to get a new flow of capital and funds into the program,” says Megan Haberle, policy counsel at the Poverty Race and Research Action Council (PRRAC).

In effect, RAD turns public housing into something like the Section 8 program: low-rent housing that is privately managed or owned, and publicly subsidized.

RAD alters public housing’s funding and ownership structure to one that experts hope will be more politically sustainable over time. For example, a local housing authority could either sell or lease a public housing building to a private developer; the developer in turn would agree to make certain renovations, and to respect tenants’ rights. The traditional funding mechanism—direct subsidies to local housing authorities—would be replaced by tax credits and housing vouchers under the program known as Section 8. The total subsidy would be lucrative enough to entice the developer yet still maintain low rents for tenants. In effect, RAD turns public housing into something like the Section 8 program: low-rent housing that is privately managed or owned, and publicly subsidized.

Some cities, like Chicago, Philadelphia, Tampa and Charlotte, applied to convert thousands of their public housing units through RAD, but given the program’s demonstration cap, they’re stuck, for now, on a waitlist. (Chicago had the largest RAD application in the country, with nearly 11,000 units.) Other cities that were approved for conversion have taken a more cautious approach: Omaha will convert only 306 units, and Houston just eighty-nine.

Tenants and housing rights activists share deep concerns about RAD. These include the risk of increased rent costs, the fate of tenant legal rights, and the need to ensure affordable housing for generations to come. In addition, building trade unions see the potential for eliminating unionized middle-class jobs under these new private deals. Yet no formal national coalition has formed to address all these fears, in part because of the highly localized nature of the program. Since the RAD legislation was designed for regional flexibility, the risks and stakes for tenants and workers can vary considerably from city to city. The strength of local housing activist networks, civil rights lawyers and unions will ultimately shape RAD’s impact.

“Everyone is working on their own programs. Some of them are doing things this way or that way, some are a little bit more transparent, others are not,” says David Prater, an attorney at the Maryland Disability Law Center. Prater has been involved with the RAD program in Baltimore, fighting to ensure that protections for disabled tenants are preserved under the new regime.

 

RAD has garnered great controversy in Baltimore—the largest East Coast city to participate—due to its cagey rollout. While Baltimore Housing Commissioner Paul T. Granziano has pitched RAD as the only feasible way to salvage the old units, advocates are left with many questions and few details. In mid–June, some sixty Baltimore tenants and union workers organized a protest against RAD outside the Housing Authority of Baltimore County (HABC). Demonstrators raised concerns of resident displacement, middle-class job cuts and public housing loss.

“We’ve been at a number of residential information meetings that [the Housing Authority] organized, and they’ve yelled at residents who have tried to ask questions about long-term affordability and said it was inappropriate for them to even ask those questions,” said Jessica Lewis, an organizer at the Right to Housing Alliance, an advocacy group led by low-income Baltimore residents. At another public meeting, residents invited Karen Wabeke, a lawyer working for the Homeless Persons Representation Project, to ask legal questions on their behalf, but the housing commissioner refused to even take her questions.

Cheron Porter, director of communications for HABC, says that they are proud of the efforts they have made to engage residents and housing advocates throughout the RAD process. Porter adds that Baltimore’s version of RAD “goes far beyond the requirements under the federal law and is much closer to public housing than programs in other parts of the country.”

In other cities such as San Francisco, RAD has met less opposition. The San Francisco Housing Authority, with a $270 million backlog in deferred maintenance costs, has been in a state of organizational tumult for years. Its last director was fired in 2013 after alleged involvement in a host of corruption and discrimination scandals. While some activists and union workers have raised questions, ultimately the Bay Area pushback has been mild in comparison to Baltimore. Many residents eagerly welcome the promise of improved physical conditions.

Deborah Thrope, a lawyer with the National Housing Law Project, a policy organization concerned with preserving affordable housing and tenant rights, says the response was tamer in part because everyone agreed the status quo was untenable. While Thrope hopes to safeguard tenant rights in San Francisco then disseminate those principles nationally, she acknowledges that San Francisco is different than the rest of the country because of its well-mobilized advocacy organizations that collaborate with the city in ways unique to the northern California progressive scene.

Despite significant concerns, many housing policy experts remain cautiously optimistic. One promising feature of the program is a “mobility” option not currently permitted for tenants in traditional public housing. For example, some families that want to move and switch school districts could do so using a voucher obtained through RAD. “We see [RAD] as an opportunity not only to inject capital,” says Phil Tegeler, executive director of PRRAC, “but as a break with that whole history of residential segregation and concentrated poverty.”

Given the funding crisis, the large public housing authorities are among RAD’s most enthusiastic boosters. “This was not something that was a brainchild of a developer,” stressed Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA). “This is very intentional in its approach as a preservation and reinvestment strategy.” 

Nonetheless, critics’ concerns about tenant displacement appear justified, given the government’s track record with privatizing public housing. HOPE VI projects deliberately decreased the number of public housing units. Many tenants lost their homes through rescreening and thousands were permanently displaced during the rehab process.

“The housing authorities just didn’t try hard enough to keep in touch with many residents during that year or two that units were getting fixed up, and people were just lost and never had an opportunity to return,” says Ed Gramlich of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

In an effort to avoid the pitfalls of Hope VI, policymakers have tried to design RAD in a way that would prevent some of the worst possible outcomes. For example, unlike in HOPE VI conversions, no tenant will have to be re-screened to establish eligibility to live in RAD properties.

And under RAD, an implicit commitment exists to have a “one-to-one replacement policy,” meaning that any demolished units must be replaced with the same number of units as was originally there. But advocates such as Gramlich worry that developers and local authorities could exploit loopholes in the statute. Exceptions to the one-to-one rule include allowing public housing authorities to reduce the number of assisted units by up to 5 percent without HUD approval, consolidate units (such as converting efficiencies to one-bedroom apartments), and remove units that have been vacant for at least twenty-four months. This last exception is particularly troubling, as housing authorities sometimes intentionally leave units empty in an effort to lessen their administrative fees or anticipate eventual demolition.

Erosion of tenant legal protections also worries advocates. For example, under current public housing law, if a landlord or housing authority mistreats a tenant, the tenant may pursue redress without resorting to expensive and lengthy lawsuits. But under RAD, the contracts will be between private developers and housing authorities, which could make it much more difficult for tenants to hold landlords accountable. Some, like David Prater of the Maryland Disability Law Center, want housing authorities to formally add tenants to the housing contracts as “third party beneficiaries.” This change would strengthen tenants’ ability to pursue grievances.

Prater sees potential for an unholy alliance between housing authorities that want to save money by limiting tenant appeals and private developers who seek to avoid liability. Cheron Porter, speaking for the Baltimore housing authority, says, “While we certainly understand the residents’ point of view,” giving tenants third party status “could potentially lead to unduly lengthened processes and less certainty among the parties’ roles.”

As long as these developers receive HUD subsidies, the units will be subjected to federal audits and monitoring. Still, the regulations leave room for legal sidestepping. “I think legal advocates rightly see that the RAD notice HUD drafted did not completely replicate the protections that people already have under the public housing regulations and handbooks,” says Gramlich.

A further concern is possible changes to RAD under future administrations. For now, the Obama administration has sought to balance developer incentives with tenant protections. But future administrations, facing different political considerations, might opt to shift this balance.

Although this housing experiment was to be tried first on only 5 percent of the nation’s public housing stock, HUD is now pushing to eliminate the program’s cap entirely. (In other words, gut the “demonstration” part of “Rental Assistance Demonstration.”) Zaterman of CLPHA argues that RAD’s long waitlist “demonstrates its demand and feasibility.” Other affordable housing advocates, however, urge for a more gradual approach in case there are unforeseen ruinous consequences.

With cash-strapped cities lacking the dollars needed to renovate, repair and maintain their public housing, many more are likely to apply for RAD conversions in the future.

If implemented carefully with robust federal oversight, RAD may actually advance the goal of more affordable housing. Decrepit and dangerous buildings could be upgraded and more families may have the opportunity to move into the areas they want. However, if the public looks away or if crafty private developers evade government supervision, the state of affordable housing could look even worse than it does today.

“All of these deals between housing authorities and developers are made behind closed doors,” says Gramlich. “That’s how deals are done in the private marketplace, and that runs against the whole notion of public assets. It’s hard to assess what might happen, and by the time the negotiations are settled, residents might be stuck with a done deal. And the done deal might be great, or it might not be. The people who have the biggest stake in it are left out.”

How to Find a Career With Uncle Sam

Originally published in The Washington Monthly for their September/October 2014 issue
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Juny Canenguez was just beginning her junior year at Virginia’s George Mason University in 2012 when she heard that the Obama administration was offering paid internships in the federal government through a new initiative called the Pathways Programs. Eager for what she calls “real-life experience” and interested in foreign affairs, she went to the State Department’s career website and applied for a Pathways internship. She was accepted, and for the next two years she worked two days a week at State while finishing her degree in business management. One of the highlights of her internship, Canenguez says, was getting to meet foreign and civil service officers, hear about their experiences, and take in their advice. Now out of college, she’s in the process of being converted to a formal federal employee, thanks to her time as an intern. “It was amazing,” says Canenguez. “I’m now being recruited to Civil Service, and my long-term plan will be to join the Foreign Service,” which, if she succeeds, will allow her to be posted as a diplomat overseas.

Working for the government can be a great career choice—maybe not as remunerative as a job on Wall Street, but potentially far more rewarding and socially useful. There are federal jobs available for almost every interest and skill, whether that’s politics, physics, art, or even event planning. And, contrary to popular conception, 84 percent of federal government jobs are outside of the Washington, D.C., area, so you can tailor your employment opportunities around where you most want to live. (Fifty thousand federal government employees work abroad, in more than 140 foreign countries.)

President Obama signed an executive order in 2010 creating the Pathways Programs with the expressed aim of attracting greater numbers of talented and diverse young adults into government work. The Pathways Programs are comprised of three divisions.

The Internship Program, designed for current students, provides paid work opportunities in federal agencies for a limited period of time. Interns can work either on a part-time or full-time basis.

Next there is the Recent Graduates Program, which is open to individuals who have completed, within the previous two years, an associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, professional, doctorate, vocational, or technical degree or certificate from a qualifying educational institution. These recent graduates can work in federal agencies while also taking advantage of substantial career training and mentorship opportunities.

Lastly, the Presidential Management Fellows Program is a leadership and career-development program for those with newly minted graduate degrees.

In all three divisions of the Pathways Programs, if you successfully complete the term of service you can receive what is known as “noncompetitive eligibility” when applying for federal jobs. This means that your employer can convert you straight from a Pathways participant into a permanent employee or you can apply for other federal positions without having to go through the standard, and highly competitive, USAJOBS application process.

Channing Martin, a former Pathways intern in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), was hired immediately after her internship ended into a permanent, full-time position at the OPM; she now works as a program and management analyst. “As a high schooler I was always really interested in diversity and inclusion issues,” Channing said, “and when I realized this intern program existed, I was really attracted to that.” Channing spent her yearlong internship on a rotation between different departments within the OPM, having the chance to get her feet wet in a broad range of governmental duties and responsibilities, experimenting with tasks ranging from understanding the role of performance management to supporting efforts to expand equal pay to learning how to write requirements for database systems. Channing did all this while balancing her time as a full-time student; she spent her second year at Carnegie Mellon’s public policy graduate school living in D.C., interning during the day and taking classes by night.

“Interning for the federal government allows you to check out exactly what kind of work they do and decide if it resonates with you,” said Tim McManus, vice president for education and outreach at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that advocates for the reinvigoration of the civil service workforce. “If you go and do an internship at the EPA or the Department of Energy, you’ll be exposed to not just the mission but the way the agency works. Is the culture one that is good for you? Is it fast-paced? Is it too slow? You have the ability to see for yourself.”

Can Big Pot and Big Alcohol Get Along?

Originally published in Talking Points Memo on August 15, 2014.
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On a chilly Sunday evening in early February, as tens of thousands of fans converged on the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, America’s first “Bong Bowl” began. The Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos—teams representing the only two states in the nation to have legalized recreational marijuana—were facing off to determine who would take home the coveted national football title. As they played, a static spectacle at the edge of the field raised eyebrows: massive advertisements slyly championing the merits of cannabis. Two billboards, one in the blue and green color scheme of the Seahawks, the other cloaked in Broncos’ orange and blue, read, “Marijuana is less harmful to our bodies than alcohol. Why does the league punish us for making the safer choice?”

Five months later the New York Times editorial board is asking the same question: why do we still prohibit marijuana? And the grey lady’s decision – to pit weed against alcohol – fits right up with some of the most vociferous advocates of repealing marijuana prohibition in America.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), the country’s largest national advocacy organization solely committed to ending marijuana prohibition, purchased five billboard advertisements to surround the stadium for America’s most-watched football game. The organization’s goal was to challenge the NFL’s anti-pot policy and provoke a national conversation about the health benefits of marijuana—long-stigmatized and barely legal—compared to that of legal and relatively celebrated alcohol. One advert argued that marijuana is safer than both alcohol and football. Yet another demonstrated that the number of attendees to the last ten Super Bowls was roughly equal to the number of marijuana related arrests in 2012.

Celebrating smoking might have ruffled a few feathers, but the choice that caused the most consternation was to denigrate alcohol in favor of weed. “Marijuana is less toxic, less addictive, and less harmful to the body than alcohol,” said MPP Director of Communications Mason Tvert in a press release just days before the Super Bowl. “Why would the NFL want to steer its players toward drinking and away from making the safer choice to use marijuana instead?”

Once the pipe dream of Deadheads and aging hippies, marijuana is having a moment in State Houses – and editorial boardrooms – across the country. As marijuana goes mainstream, the alcohol industry is guardedly watching to see whether Team Pot can play nice. While not all cannabis advocates push for weed over beer, the voices who do claim weed is, indeed ‘better for you’ are loud, provocative and well-funded. And should it get ugly? The alcohol industry is preparing to fight back and challenge pot’s increasingly anodyne image.

A Growing Movement

Marijuana’s reputation – especially in comparison to alcohol – has undergone a radical change in a very short amount of time.

Nothing better exemplifies the public’s perception of pot during the early and mid-twentieth century than the now infamous 1930s propaganda film, Reefer Madness, where marijuana smokers actually lose their minds. Basically illegal beginning in 1937—when the federal government began taxing cannabis sales—by 1970, the federal government had passed the Controlled Substances Act which officially designated marijuana as illegal, and classified it as a Schedule I drug.

Beer, wine, and liquor reps, on the other hand, benefitted from the sheer American-ness of a good drink at the end of a hard day—a beer at the game, a cocktail at the bar, a glass of wine on a date. What could be more normal? Alcohol was everything, and weed was the margin.

But a lot can happen in forty-five years.

After so long in the shadows, the speed at which legalization is suddenly capturing the support of the American public is impressive; a recent Pew research poll found that 54% of Americans think that the drug should be legalized, up 2% from last year, and up 13 percentage points since 2010. When Gallup first began polling the public on this question in 1969, an era when marijuana had come to represent counter-culture, just 12% of Americans backed legalization.

It’s not just polling data. In July, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation which made New York the 23rd U.S. state to legalize medical marijuana, following Missouri, which passed its own version in May. Over the last eighteen months, 36 states and Washington, D.C. have considered bills that would create new medical marijuana laws, lessen the penalty for possessing marijuana, or regulate marijuana more comparably to alcohol. Come this November, Alaskan voters will decide whether or not to join Washington and Colorado in legalizing recreational adult-use marijuana, with Oregon likely to follow suit.

And then, of course, there’s the New York Times editorial board, which just called for federal legalization, a move that delights marijuana advocates, and lobbyists.

But while for many of us the idea of legalized marijuana falls somewhere between inevitable and fairly distant as a political reality—the alcohol industry is way, way past that. Beer, wine and liquor do not care that legalization isn’t technically on the books. For them, it’s already a foregone conclusion. And that means that weed is already a real competitor.

 

PASS THE DUTCHIE ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE

If alcohol ignored marijuana as a real player in the world of party politics – small p – it’s no surprise. The world of pot smokers has been, for decades, a rag tag assemblage of Americans who smoke on the sly. But all of them shared one thing in common – they were toking up illegally and very few of them were lobbying to change their habit into something that could run as an advert on TV.

Even now, political momentum towards legalization aside, there is no such thing, really, as a “marijuana movement.” Instead, there are movements, and factions. And those divisions – to the degree they are really fissures – will not only determine the future availability of weed, but also how marijuana positions itself vis-à-vis the alcohol industry – both in terms of advertising, but also as a means of what helps this country loosen up.

“There are really two different sets of players on the cannabis side,” said Mark Kleiman, a professor at UCLA and leading marijuana policy expert. “There’s the weed movement and there’s the weed lobby.” Camps that are, themselves, internally divided.

For a long time, the pro-marijuana scene was part of the US counter-culture movement. The first campus legalization group began in 1967 at SUNY-Buffalo college: LEMAR, short for LEgalize MARijuana, was comprised of, as The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher puts it, “15 longhaired hippies who thought they could change the world.”

The “movement” to legalize really got its start though with the founding of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in 1970. But at that time, no one would touch their cause, monetarily or otherwise. Indeed, the organization’s financial hurdles were almost its undoing. It was Hugh Hefner, a former alcohol-drinker-turned-pot-smoker, who decided to take a risk and offer NORML a small $5000 investment through the Playboy Foundation. Today NORML functions as a grassroots network with over 150 chapters across the country, promoting marijuana legalization with an emphasis on consumer needs.

In 1995, after months of infighting over strategy and tactics at NORML, some employees left the organization to found the Marijuana Policy Project. The new millennium brought still more players. Americans for Safe Access (ASA) founded in 2002, specifically advocates for medical marijuana on K Street. In 2010, came the baby – the National Cannabis Industry Association, (NCIA) – which promotes the trade interests of the burgeoning ‘cannabusiness’ sector- the likes of which would blow your Woodstock-era parents’ minds. NCIA represents more than 400 companies—like vaporizer sellers and automated rolling machine makers—in 20 states, a number that is projected to rise quickly.

This past June, 1,200 entrepreneurs, consultants, investors, accountants, attorneys and more came out to Denver, Colorado for NCIA’s first ever marijuana business summit.

Jazmin Hupp, a business and marketing specialist from New York City who grew up with a father who used medical marijuana for pain relief and “artistic mind expansion,” was there. Determined to challenge misconceptions around marijuana and those who use it, Hupp gives talks and workshops about marijuana myths; she’s also writing a book about effective branding strategies for cannabis companies. “One of the greatest parts of the conference for me was just the show of professionalism,” said Hupp who is weary of seeing marijuana users portrayed as dudes in dreadlocks smoking weed in dark basements. “I felt really inspired. This is a real industry.”

Cooperation and Conflict

A real industry, maybe, but one that hadn’t, until very, very recently had any perch on Capitol Hill, or anywhere near mainstream America.

That’s changing. In May, all the cannabis organizations lobbied to help pass an appropriations amendment in the House, offered by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.). The amendment, which barred the DEA from spending funds to arrest state-licensed medical marijuana patients, was tacked on to the Commerce, Science and Justice Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2015. It passed 219-189. ASA issued a statement calling the House amendment “arguably the biggest victory yet in the contemporary fight for medical cannabis rights.”

“Rohrabacher was a real landmark, nobody had expected that quite yet,” said Dale Gieringer, state coordinator of California NORML. “We’ve been working on that bill for years.” Indeed: the first version of the Rohrabacher amendment was introduced in 2003, defeated in a vote 273-152. Five years before that a House Joint Resolution passed explicitly opposing statewide efforts to legalize medical marijuana under a doctor’s supervision. That 1998 resolution marked the first time in recent history that Congress formally took on medical marijuana as an issue.

But looking at the recent Rohrabacher win as proof that the marijuana organizations speak as a united front would be a mistake; some significant differences have emerged between the groups, and more seem likely to materialize in the future.

Marijuana organizations also anticipate fights with the other party drug – alcohol. In part that’s because even as marijuana begins to make positive inroads in public opinion, it can’t touch the role of alcohol in Western society, or Judeo-Christian culture writ large. MPP’s decision to bash alcohol was a gamble; poking the bear.

The Super Bowl was not the first time MPP attacked alcohol in such a high-profile way, and it likely won’t be the last. As an organization whose stated mission is to end marijuana prohibition and replace it with a system that is regulated like alcohol, MPP sees the comparison between the two substances as necessary and strategic.

Last summer, outside the NASCAR Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, MPP purchased airtime to show an advertisement on the racetrack’s Jumbotron, touting marijuana’s safety compared to alcohol. It was no secret that two major sponsors of the race were Crown Royal Whiskey and Miller Lite. “Our goal is to make this weekend’s event as educational as it will be enjoyable,” said Tvert, of MPP, in a press release. “We simply want those adults who will be enjoying a beer or two at the race this weekend to think about the fact that marijuana is an objectively less harmful product.” The video ad presented marijuana as the “New Beer” –a substance “without all the calories or serious health problems”, that doesn’t contribute to hangovers, and is “not linked to violence or reckless behavior.” While the ad had the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the weekend, the Drug Free America Foundation, a group opposed to marijuana legalization, convinced the owners of the Jumbotron to pull it shortly after it first went up. No matter, its work was done: MPP’s advert racked up more than a million views on YouTube.

MPP has also been leading major state-level efforts to push for marijuana reform. In 2012, they funded the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which was the historic Colorado grassroots effort to legalize recreational marijuana through a ballot initiative. Provocative billboards cropped up throughout the state, like one across from the Sports Authority Field at Mile High featuring a happy woman stating, “For many reasons, I prefer marijuana over alcohol. Does that make me a bad person?” The ad was positioned above a liquor store.

“The Colorado campaign was not run by us at all,” said Gieringer, who stressed that NORML prefers to maintain neutral relations with the alcohol industry. “They took swipes at the alcohol industry and tried to antagonize governors who took money from beer manufacturers.” The campaign took shots at Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper who opposed the amendment to legalize marijuana, arguing that as a former microbrewery owner, he was a hypocrite.

I ONLY SMOKE WHEN I DRINK.

Unlike the squabbling factions of the marijuana world, the alcohol industry long ago learned to speak with a unified voice in Washington D.C. “A lot of the policy vision and positions of all the groups are pretty much the same,” said Mike Kaiser, of Wine America, the trade association representing American wineries. On most regulatory issues, the alcohol industry tends to work together, bringing together brewers and oenologists to file joint comments to the Food and Drug Administration and to the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade Bureau.

Big alcohol, officially, is neutral on cannabis legalization. This hasn’t always been true: back in 2010, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors donated $10,000 towards an effort to defeat a marijuana legalization proposition on the ballot.

Yet, sanguinity on legalization doesn’t mean they will remain neutral on MPP’s rhetoric, or even with the idea of being grouped in the same category as marijuana.

Each industry has a slightly different way of framing the reputational risk to their product. Here the friendly kumbaya bits of the alcohol lobby starts to fall apart. The wine industry for example, feels that cannabis advocates are more focused on marketing weed as an alternative to other forms of alcohol, but not necessarily wine. “I think it’s more of an issue for beer,” said Kaiser of Wine America. “We’re monitoring the situation, but wine is generally considered to be more like a food than a beverage.”

Craft brewers, too, claim marijuana doesn’t scare them. “Craft brewers themselves are generally trying to change the paradigm of what beer looks like in this country, so the marijuana movement is not seen as a competitive thing for us, as it might be with larger brewers,” said Paul Gatza, Director of the Brewers Association, the trade group representing small independent American brewers. (He pointed out that there is often overlap between the populations who drink craft beer and those who blaze.)

Big beer, too, wants to draw a bright line between marijuana and beer. Beer, the implication, is wholesome – it reminds us of picnics, and parades, and baseball. It’s a socially acceptable way to unwind. Indeed the Beer Institute of America’s spokesman, Chris Thorne goes so far as to say it is “misleading to compare marijuana to beer, because beer is distinctly different as a product and industry.” Thorne doesn’t much like to see the two words – beer and marijuana – in the same sentence.

Robert Dupont, a long-time drug policy researcher and founding president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, says he regularly finds the alcohol industry to be quite unhappy when lumped together with marijuana. “They are very upset,” said Dupont, of those comparisons which equate alcohol and marijuana. “It’s really a problem for them, it’s tarring their product with the bad image. I see it all the time in my work with drunk driving, [alcohol folks] don’t like it when I say ‘alcohol and other drugs’ they wish I’d just say ‘alcohol and drugs.’”

And yet, of course, phrasing isn’t really the issue.

According to Pew research released this past April, about seven in ten Americans already believe alcohol is more harmful to a person’s health than marijuana. Moreover, 63% believe alcohol would still be more harmful to society, even if marijuana were as widely available.

DIME BAG BLUES

The billion-dollar question for the alcohol industry is literally that: cash. Will legal weed cut a deep hole into their bottom line? And if weed pushes the point – and wins it – that it’s a cleaner, safer high, what will that do to alcohol sales?

In 2012, the U.S. alcohol industry brought in $197.8 billion in retail sales dollars. If even a small percentage of Americans changed their substance-intake habits, the result would mean billions of dollars lost for the alcohol industry.

Problem is: no one knows what will happen if weed is legal. There is no historical data – even the Netherlands doesn’t have full legalization– so there is no way to judge, exactly how – or really, if – drinking habits will change with marijuana legalization. Are marijuana and alcohol substitutes rather than complementary substances as some studies suggest? Or will – as some researchers maintain – drinking actually increase as marijuana becomes more available? It’s impossible to know what the impact on alcohol use will be, if weed is sold similarly – available, controlled, but accessible, at every bodega.

The only thing researchers do know for sure is that marijuana, if legal, will be cheap. Given the low production costs associated with marijuana—(it’s basically just growing a plant)—experts like Beau Kilmer, Co-Director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, estimate that marijuana intoxication could, in a legalized world, cost pocket change. While we’re years away from this reality, you can just picture your high school brother making those economic tradeoffs in his head; weighing which controlled substance he and his friends should try and get next time your parents go out of town.

BREWSKIES AT THE GAME

Beer and wine may be as American as a baseball game, but Big Alcohol doesn’t feel at all relaxed about this debate. At alcohol trade association meetings, pot is already spoken of as a key competitor. A vigorous internal discussion has been taking place within the industry to figure out how they can establish working relationships with the marijuana world, and what to do if they can’t.

“I don’t think there’s necessarily any working together, but there’s certainly been some communication,” said Tvert, of MPP, who has spoken at several alcohol events, like the annual Wine and Spirits Daily Summit, which draws top executives in the wine and spirits industry. “But it’s generally been a matter of curiosity.”

Curiosity is a bit of a euphemism.

At the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association’s annual legal symposium, which draws state regulatory agency officials, corporate counsel, industry policymakers and private attorneys, a representative from the Marijuana Policy Project spoke. Attendees said that during the Q&A, “a couple people stood up and kind of attacked her” about MPP’s alcohol-bashing tactics.

“[T]he marijuana advocates are very unapologetic,” said William Earle, president of the National Association of Beverage Importers, (NABI), the trade association representing U.S. alcoholic beverage importers. “They are basically saying we’re going to continue to demonize alcohol because we think that’s a way to advance our message.”

Indeed, cannabis advocates feel very little pressure. “I’m not really too concerned about the alcohol industry,” said Tvert in an interview. “We are ending marijuana prohibition and it really has nothing to do with them.”

Since alcohol has been such a highly regulated industry ever since the end of prohibition in 1933, alcohol executives wonder, and worry, whether legal marijuana would be subjected to similar oversight. In the mean time, some are quietly reviewing and collecting all the available scientific literature, many of which challenge what they feel to be the public’s one-sided impression of marijuana’s health and safety effects.

For example, in July, Kane’s Beverage News Daily, an influential trade publication, published a piece entitled, “Why Does Marijuana Get a Pass on Pitching to Youth?” It argued that despite research suggesting young people are especially susceptible to social media influence, public health authorities go mum on things like Weed Tweets™, (@stillblazingtho), an unabashed pro-marijuana twitter account with over a million followers, 73% of whom are under 19. A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, led by principal investigator Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg, has been leading the social media research.

“I think there’s a concern that we’ve gotten our regulatory act together but would we be competing against an entity that does not,” said Earle of NABI. While groups like NORML welcome tight regulations for safe and consumer-friendly marijuana, other groups are interested more by the prospect of self-regulating their industry.

“We’re looking for regulation that’s fair,” said Taylor West, deputy director of NCIA, the marijuana trade association. West insists her organization understands the fragile nature of public opinion, the high level of scrutiny they’re all under, and the need to build a mature industry. “We are encouraging our members to adopt responsible practices from the outset, I think it’s more sustainable.”

With concerns over potential regulatory double standards, hesitant alcohol folks note that it’s much more difficult to monitor and punish drivers who are high than drivers who are drunk, which could hinder law enforcement’s ability to regulate it. It may already be happening: a National Institute on Drug Abuse study released in July showed high school seniors were more likely to drive high than drunk – but what that meant – in terms of affect on drivers, let alone penalty for the crime – was uncertain.

While Big Alcohol has expressed that they would prefer to co-exist amicably in the marketplace, in their minds, the marijuana industry has to make a choice: pot can choose to be their friend, or to be their enemy. And if Big Pot decides they want to continue to launch regular attacks on alcohol, then alcohol will ultimately fight back.

Earle says he finds marijuana’s attitude towards alcohol neither wise nor strategic. “It’s like you have the new kid on the block who thinks they can gain traction by just besmirching everyone else’s reputation.”

And perhaps they can. Or, another likely scenario is that MPP’s strategy could backfire. While there is no known fatal dose for marijuana, the drug is substantially more potent than it used to be. The University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring program found that the average THC level of all seized cannabis increased from 3.4% in 1993 to 8.8% in 2010. Researchers expect it will be only get easier to create and market highly potent marijuana, especially to teenagers, as legalization advances.

Everyone in the party biz knows one dirty little secret: A legal for-profit marijuana industry would, likely, be built around catering to the heaviest users. That’s how the alcohol industry works too: the top 20 percent of drinkers consume four out of five of total drinks sold.

Although the industry’s marketing efforts might feature a successful business executive who smokes occasionally on the weekends with her colleagues, and indeed, most users in a legalized world would only be casual users, the volume of drug consumption doesn’t depend very much on the total number of users. As writers of the book, Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know, put it, “One eight-joint-a-day smoker is more important to the marijuana industry—legal or illegal—than fifty people who smoke a joint a week…if we create a licit market, we should expect the industry’s product design, pricing, and marketing to be devoted to creating as much addiction as possible.”

“The minute you unleash the opportunity to make millions and millions of dollars, no matter how dangerous that is, people are going to try to do it,” said Alex Wagenaar, an alcohol policy researcher at the University of Florida. “Our capitalist system is great for a lot of things, but it’s not a great thing for drugs that are habit-forming, addictive, and have huge health care and social costs attached.”

And once you have more heavy users, you run the risk of greater problems. People who toke up, obviously, like the feeling: the relaxation, the blurring of lines, the mellowing out. Because, let’s face it, we’re not talking about sodas; this is not sobriety. A member of the alcohol industry who asked to speak on background put it like this: “Marijuana is still a drug. Something will inevitably happen, and they have made a huge misjudgment. No industry with any sense of the tort system, or how civil court damages work in this country would be making the health claims they’re making.” Whether that’s a car accident, injury or death—the potential for drug-related accidents certainly looms large.

In other words, while tobacco is, in many ways, far less risky than alcohol, these days, at least, you don’t see tobacco manufacturers putting up billboards calling it safe.

“I kind of view it as naïve,” added Earle, of NABI. “If [marijuana advocates] were good stewards of their lobbying efforts you’d think they’d realize that we’re both in the same regulatory wheelhouse.”

The marijuana lobby, though, is still in its infancy. NCIA hired its first full time industry lobbyist just in the past year. Compare that to the over 200 lobbyists in DC who lobby on behalf of wine, beer and liquor.

“The alcohol industry is massive and dwarfs us,” said West of NCIA, who thinks they are a long way off from the point where they might need to start worrying about their relationship to alcohol. “We’re also just in a completely different place right now in terms of still teaching people about why it makes sense to end prohibition.”

To some extent it’s true that the conflicts have not yet bubbled to the surface, but given the political momentum around legalization the country has seen recently, conflict might not be as far off as perhaps NCIA would like to suggest. The Arcview Group, a San Francisco investment and research firm that focuses on cannabis, valued the national legal market this year at $2.57 billion. They project that number to rise to $10.2 billion in the next 5 years.

That’s the kind of money that will buy a lot more billboards in years to come.

Julian Castro Should Visit Baltimore on the Way to His New HUD Secretary Desk

Originally published in Next City on July 11, 2014. 
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“It’s not just about housing,” said Michelle Green. “They try to help low-income people branch out and do their best.” Green, who had moved to Columbia, Maryland from one of Baltimore’s most crime-ridden public housing projects in order to enroll her four sons in better public schools, was talking about Baltimore’s Housing Mobility Program.

After following 110 Baltimore Mobility participants since 2003, sociologist Stefanie DeLuca concluded that when housing choice vouchers are combined with sustained counseling, training and support, families will be more likely to move away from poor residential areas and not return. (DeLuca’s report on the program was published in theJournal of Public Policy Analysis and Management.)

Previous studies suggested that even with substantial subsidies, poor families would not leave their impoverished communities. Yet with the Baltimore approach, more than two-thirds of the families that moved from the city to the suburbs remained there one to eight years later, and many mothers who previously expressed no interest in leaving the city later declared they’d changed their minds. The increased support helped individuals change their expectations of what different environments could provide for their children and themselves.

Unlike other housing experiments, Baltimore’s program is more than just a rent subsidy; it has provided more than 2,400 families with extensive support before, during and after their moves. (The program was created as part of a remedy for a lawsuit filed in 1995 by the ACLU in which the court ruled that HUD failed to provide housing residents equal access to integrated, low-poverty neighborhoods across Baltimore.) Accepted applicants who pass background checks and meet other eligibility criteria are given intensive counseling, financial literacy and credit repair training, and housing search assistance.

“I take my hat off to MBQ. [Metropolitan Baltimore Quadel is the company that oversees the program.] They let you know everything you need to know before they even let you sign on the dotted line of the lease. They’re helping a lot of lives,” said one participant.

Another key difference between Baltimore Mobility and traditional housing choice vouchers is that the Baltimore vouchers are regionally administered and therefore connect city residents to suburban housing options. If a Baltimore resident wants to move to the adjacent Anne Arundel County, she doesn’t need to apply to the suburban housing authority. This coordination between housing authorities offers significant bureaucratic relief.

Erika Poethig, a housing policy expert at the Urban Institute, says that regionally administered vouchers like those in Baltimore are rare but may become more prevalent in the future as policymakers search for ways to conserve a declining pool of financial resources. A 2013 Brookings report on the housing choice/housing voucher program argues that the current “balkanized system” of disparate housing authorities “creates duplication, overlap and inefficiency” while also “raising administrative costs.”

Of course, politics can get in the way. The creation of regionally administered programs would inevitably take some power away from local authorities. The shift would require that local agencies — with their separate boards and separate staffs — cooperate with neighboring towns and counties and have less control within their own communities. Phil Tegeler, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, believes such a change would require some serious incentives at the federal level. But moving in this direction “would also impact the idea of local housing authorities acting as a community gatekeeper,” said Tegeler. “If you had a much more fluid system regionally, I think it could overcome a lot of the segregation problems that we see now.”

Indeed, Baltimore’s encouraging results have the potential to change the way policymakers think about traditional housing choice vouchers. Tegeler says his organization regularly cites the success in Baltimore in its advocacy efforts with HUD.

Other cities are modeling elements of Baltimore’s success, too. In Philadelphia, HUDrecently pledged $500,000 to develop a new mobility program, with goals to increase housing search assistance and to provide low-income families the chance to rent in higher-opportunity areas. In Seattle, the King County Housing Authority has launched a new mobility program aimed at providing families with more information about neighborhood and school quality as they move. Quadel played a direct role in helping programs get off the ground in other cities too.

DeLuca’s study suggests that with certain policy revisions, the housing choice voucher program could do more to overcome economic and racial segregation in U.S. cities and better assist the more than two million households that use the program. Moreover, it’s within HUD’s jurisdiction — Julian Castro take note — to make many of these policy changes independent of Congressional approval.

This wouldn’t come without a financial cost. Currently, a housing authority might have to choose between allocating resources to help fewer families move to low-poverty neighborhoods or helping more families move in general. Joel Johnson, executive director of the Montgomery County Housing Authority in Southeastern Pennsylvania explains that, “we receive a fixed dollar amount from HUD to support voucher participants, so that money can only go so far. If everyone moved to the [finest neighborhoods], we’d serve fewer people.”

The majority of housing authorities across the country already have long waiting lists, and money for low-income housing and voucher programs has been increasingly tight in recent years. Between 2005 and 2011, the average cost per voucher went up less than rents, and the sequestration cuts of 2013 were particularly detrimental.

Poethig notes that “unless the resource outlet changes, it will be really difficult to figure out how to get the significant investment.”

DeLuca doesn’t dispute the heft of the investment, but after her study, she’s a believer in Baltimore’s results. “If you want to have a housing voucher program that works,” she says, “this is what it takes.”