WaPo IS AGAIN WASTEING OPPORTUNITY AND EFFORT
As some of you may have noted the ‘A’ section, page 14 on Thursday, 30 July had an impressive looking graphic on house foreclosures titled “Geography of Distress.”
Lets start with the big problem: The graphic is based on Zip Codes. EMR has pointed out the problems with Zip Code maps on a number of prior discussions.
This map is worse that usual. WaPo scales the grpahic to number of foreclosures per Zip Code. Almost everyone knows that the number of Households varies greatly from one Zip to another. For this reason a Zip Code with 70,000 dwellings and 1,001 foreclosures would be ‘in greater distress’ than a Zip Code with 11,000 dwellings and 999 foreclosures.
Second the mapped area does not correspond to any known geography except the advertising focus of WaPo. Howard and Anne Arundel Counties are included but they are not in the Washington DC MSA.
Howare and Anne Arundel Counties are in the Washington Baltimore CMSA but St. Mary’s county is on the map but it is not even in the CMSA – it is a new Micropolitan Area. What is worse is that Fauquier, Stafford, Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg are in the Washington MSA but are not on the map.
For this reason the map does not relate to the very good data that Brookings is now distributing in its Metro Monitor. It also does not relate to the Case / Shiller data upon which Richard Florida relies to support his views of the reshaping of America.
In addition there is no radial scaling so one cannot compare apples with apples without drawing lines themselves.
In spite of all this the map does show – if one understands and compensates for the errors and omissions – the impact of Wrong Size House in Wrong Location.
It also supports the observations of Richard Florida in “How the Crash Will Reshape America” in the March Atlantic for those not afflicted with Geographic Illiteracy.
Speaking of WaPo and the foreclosure impact on the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, the 28 July coverage (“Foreclosures Are Often In Lenders’ Best Interest”) only focuses on Households that cannot pay the mortgage and not on mortgages that have gone underwater and the Households that do not want to pay the mortgage. That is a growing problem because while monthly unit sales are up in some areas from the lows of a few months ago, the prices are still going down.
Yes, EMR will get to the Elephant Clan Transport ‘plan’ soon.
EMR
