Sunday, December 07, 2003

Pennsylvania, we have a problem. We're gobbling and paving record amounts of land but we're not growing. Nearly all our oldest, most established communities are losing population. About the only places in metro Pittsburgh that grew substantially in the '90s did so because of massive state and federal transportation investments, but we can't build a new airport or Parkway North every decade. We'd go broke.

The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy in Washington, D.C., took a long look at Pennsylvania and said essentially that. Wonk that I am, I read the entire 120-page report. It is substantially covered elsewhere on this page, but what intrigues me is its implication that a new coalition of interests should form.

"Neighborhood decline is weakening the cities, towns and older suburbs in which 58 percent of the state's residents live, and where many of its critical intellectual, health and business assets cluster."

In a region that has long played a strict city-vs.-suburb political game, can we even see common interests across boundary lines?

The true percentage of people in "older Pennsylvania" may be a bit slippery. Plum, Franklin Park, Robinson and South Fayette met the Brookings criteria for "older," though these suburbs grew in the '90s. But that's a small quibble. Three-quarters of Pennsylvania homes built in the last decade went up in suburbs that are generally farther from cities and less dense than inner suburbs. You don't need a Ph.D. to see that Pennsylvania is hollowing out.

"There's tremendous value in having vital older communities," said Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings urban center. "They provide firms and people with more options as to where to live and where to locate, and that's a huge competitive selling point.

"That's what Pennsylvania has and that's what Pennsylvania is squandering."

How might that change? Well, among the big suggestions is a tiny one buried deep in the report. It's something Minnesota had for the past 10 years, something a few legislators there are seeking to re-establish. It's called the "This Old House" program. It allowed homeowners to renovate old homes and defer payment of property taxes on the increased value for up to 10 years.

Naturally, that caught my eye. I live in a neighborhood that boomed in the '70s -- the 1870s. Our house once was owned by a guy whose little brother led the regiment that tracked down and killed John Wilkes Booth, but history never paid a heating bill.

A This Old House program might arrive too late for us, but more than half the housing units in Pennsylvania's older municipalities went up before 1950, and 40 percent before 1940. A law that allowed tax breaks for these homes could get fresh blood in communities that need it, and make homeowners out of some who otherwise wouldn't risk it.

In Minnesota, properties at least 45 years old could make up to $25,000 in tax-exempt home improvements. The cap rose to $50,000 for houses more than 70 years old. Assessors in Minnesota don't like the program because it got confusing, but who likes them? Last year, more than 55,000 homeowners in that state got a little break for fixing up old houses.

It seems worth a look here. If it's not worth pursuing, Pennsylvania had better come up with something else. Places long part of the poetry of Pennsylvania --Beaver Falls, Washington, Butler, Wilkinsburg, Crafton -- have a common need: people.

We spend hundreds of millions in state and federal highway dollars encouraging the choice to move out. A modest local tax break to encourage the choice to move in or stay in seems a small enough risk.

"What do you want?" Katz asked. "Better paying jobs and properties that appreciate in value? If you want that, you better have reinvestment be a priority. If cities and boroughs collapse you're not going to build a healthy competitive region. It's just not going to happen."

That's what the man said. He sounds a lot like me, but I didn't make his lips move.

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