Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Sprawl subsidies disguised as "job-creation"

At the same time, there is evidence that job subsidies encourage companies to move to areas that are inaccessible for many urban working families. In our study, Another Way Sprawl Happens, Good Jobs First examined the movement of companies to Anoka (an outer suburb of Minneapolis), which had offered them free land valued at more than $7.5 million. This resulted in the movement of 29 companies with 1,600 jobs to a 300-acre industrial park. The net result of the subsidized relocations was to move the jobs away from the region's largest concentrations of people of color, away from pockets of poverty and away from households receiving public assistance. Read more at: GoodJobsFirst