In the US, we mix up terms all the time. It makes public debate and conversation about health, public health and healthcare difficult.

Public health is not the same as healthcare, or a public option, or clinical medicine.

Public health is the branch of medicine dealing with how one person’s health relates to another’s, including hygiene, epidemiology, and disease prevention. It is the science of organizing masses of people and entities to maintain our shared health as a nation or a species.

It mostly lays dormant until natural disasters or the spread of disease, like this one.

Healthcare is a broader, catch-all term, which can apply to a public option for healthcare or a private option.

I’ve been trying to stay out of the social media pile-on of the Arizona Governor’s handling of this crisis. The same with the President, although that has been much harder to do.

I will just make one point, for your consideration. Over the past decades, federal and state governments have been cutting the budgets that we need to maintain a strong public health response.

Do I have data on that? Nope. Not right now, and I’m not going bother my friends in government to get it. They are dealing with a pandemic. But, you can be certain I’ll be following up with this later.

My perspective is that some lawmakers have seen “public health” as something that they don’t use, or that is only for “those people who didn’t make good life decisions.”

It is a second thought. It has been something that some ideologues in government think we should not spend money on.

That’s the problem. Because we have not fully funded public health, we were caught off-guard.

We did not have systems in place to communicate accurate information, and push back against the false information out there –sometimes with a profit motive behind it.

We did not have the ability to roll out testing quickly. We did not have the stockpiles of masks that we needed. We were not able to have the extra beds ready for this –remember that the free market hospitals see extra beds as “waste.”

Look at how South Korea responded vs the US. They have a strong public health system and they were ready.

Also, when you think about it, doesn’t the term “public health” make you think of state-owned hospitals, all run-down and drab?

In our country, we have been told for so long that “public” things are somehow lesser than private things. Public buildings are not as good as private one. Public pools and parks gave way to private pools and parks.

So, the word “public”, placed in front of “health” takes on a lesser-than status.

Again, I have no data on this. I’m not a pollster or linguist. Just observation from years in public service.

So, rather than being part of the daily Twitter fight, I hope that we will all file this thought away and come back to it once we are through this crisis.

Then we can begin the long process of re-building our public health system.

Perhaps we need to re-name it something that is clearer and brings a more positive image of its purpose. Maybe societal health or shared health or ‘merica! health.

In light of the pandemic, and the lack of group activities or events, here are some links that we hope will be helpful to you as we fight this pandemic.

Stay safe. Stay healthy!

1) Bill Pay Help. Here are the links for help with utilities: SRP, APS. If you need help with eviction assistance, here’s a link. The most recent governor’s order put a temporary hold on evictions.

2) Quick Job Placement. Groups like Local First Arizona and Pipeline AZ moved quickly to re-tool their websites to help people who have lost jobs to find new work.

Websites are crucial now, since we can’t have in-person job fairs or events.

We know that areas like food delivery, health care and supply chain are hiring quickly to respond to the virus.

I’ve been in touch with people associated with these groups. I’m impressed and proud of them. I’m particularly proud of Local First Arizona.

Their many years on the ground advocating for local businesses gave them the tools to act quickly.

See also, this link for the CARES Act small business loans.

Please share the links, above, with your friends and loved-ones who need work right away.

3) Urban Gardening Knowledge. I’m benefiting right now from my garden. It means fewer trips to the store and a place to de-stress from the news.

While I’ve been learning (through lots of failure) for many years, I know many people want to start now. There is no better time.

In fact, if you get going right now, you can get a crop in before the heat sets in. If you plant in the shade, pick the right crops and water regularly, you will do well.

If you want to do even better, check out the webinars events at Urban Farm U. You can learn while you quarantine.

Also, here’s a quick article on how you can compost if you live in an apartment.

Since I’m a show-off, I’ve added a picture here of my compost bin, which I just opened up and found teeming with life and more perfect compost than I need right now.

It’s relatively easy to get started in composting. And, even if you don’t grow food, you can use it around your property. Maybe even give it away. But, I bet if you start doing it, you’ll find uses for it.

Here’s a video that I did last year about how easy it is to compost. Here’s a throw-back video I did over a decade ago, showing different types of compost bins I’ve built.

4) Teaching at Home. I know so many parents are now finding themselves teaching at home. So, I reached out to my friend and teacher, Chico Robinson.

He shared this valuable FREE resource from the Kahn Academy. He says this is particularly good for math and science, with videos and interactive lessons.

He suggests this PBS Kids website for resources for younger kids. If you are teaching music, you can get this website free for 30 days.

He also sent me this site, as a standards-aligned resource for many grade levels, as well as Infercabulary, which is giving 2 months free on their service.

If you want access to coloring activities from all over the county, try out this site from the New York Academy of Medicine.

5) Abatement for Small Businesses. Small businesses, like restaurants and bars, still have to pay sales taxes and liquor license payments (often paid monthly, like a loan).

There is precedence in other states to defer penalties if businesses can’t pay taxes. The group of small businesses we are talking with are hoping for an abatement on liquor licenses and late tax fines, too.

For now, the most recent Executive Order just prohibits evictions for residences and businesses. (Look to the bottom of the page for a link to the actual EO language.)

These same businesses are concerned about whether they can or should use the SBA Loans and how to understand the guidelines, since they have already closed their businesses or events. For instance, do they need to open up and re-hire in order to get a grant or a loan? If they do, aren’t they endangering the public when people are working in close proximity?

Things are moving quickly. But, I hope these links help.

Donna Reiner, a local historian and a good friend of Get Your PHX, has written many articles over the years for the Arizona Republic and others about Phoenix history and memorials. We use her services when we list properties of historic significance to help us tell the stories behind the homes.

We are happy that Donna is allowing us to re-publish some of her articles on a monthly basis. If you or your business ever needs a historian, let Donna know at laydeescholar “at” hotmail.com.

The design and placement of memorials and monuments is fundamentally about choices – choices about what gets remembered, how it gets remembered, what stories are told, who is perceived as the primary audience, and whether the memorial’s story confirms existing beliefs about an event or person or challenges the public about what they think that they know.

Conflicts can arise when the monument or memorial contradicts public memory or is viewed as no longer relevant or appropriate. Indeed, is there more value in remembering a horrific event or a notable person?  Ultimately, it becomes an issue of whether and/or how these edifices help people interact with the past and reinforce our vision of what it means to live in America.

Is there a difference between a monument and a memorial? A memorial may be a day or space, but it need not be a monument. A monument on the other hand is always a type of memorial. A memorial is often erected to honor those who have died including spontaneous memorials we see created in the immediate aftermath of tragedy and may only have a temporary life.

Few Phoenicians may be aware of the vast number of memorials and monuments found along Washington and Jefferson Streets from Central Avenue to 17^th Avenue.

But they are there. And the style of these memorials and monuments varies from a simple plaque to a mammoth gun. Now that the weather is more ideal to be outdoors, it’s time for you to discover these little recognized places.

Start with the plaques from the former Patriots Square now on a wall in CityScape which are easy to miss. These are Arizona patriots. Head down Washington Street to the Historic City/County Building and look for the plaque dedicated to Jack Swilling on the fountain.

Cesar Chavez Plaza by the Calvin Goode Building and a time capsule on the south side of the Goode Building are next. Head to Phoenix City Hall and check out the plaza area or go to the Maricopa County Building to see the Pillars of Honor. Did you know about these?

Keep heading west until you reach the Pioneer and Military Cemetery on Jefferson. That has a number of gems besides the gravestones for some very interesting people.

When you reach Wesley Bolin Park and the capitol grounds across the street, you will have reached the greatest cluster of monuments and memorials in downtown Phoenix.

Over 25 in Wesley Bolin and four in front of the capitol. Each have a reason for its existence and all have a connection to our Arizona history: a person and/or event not forgotten.

When we meet a new client, especially a first time home buyer, we grab a cup of coffee and preview the home buying process.

Nobody explained the process for me when I bought my first house and I paid for it. It makes a huge difference to know what to expect next in the process; what to be ready for.

You deserve better, and we deliver.

So, it’s high time that I put the home buying process in writing so you can read about it in the comfort of your home, in your jammies with a cup of your favorite beverage.

If you want to see the previous installment in this series, see Part 2 at this link.

Part 3: Prequalification

First, we don’t prequalify you. Your mortgage broker does. So, let’s start with them.

We recommend to our clients that you don’t go with the big national banks as a lender, if you can help it. We have had better experiences with independent mortgage brokers and locally-owned credit unions.

The big banks are massive bureaucracies and we have found that our clients can feel that in how they must inter-act with them. Expect phone trees and wait times.

We find that independent brokers often have more latitude to help you and more time to spend with you.

Regardless, we recommend that you compare. We typically share a list of several lenders with our clients. You will find that interest rates are often time very much the same between lenders. Naturally, you should compare that.

But, what varies quite a lot is how the lenders relates to you. We suggest that you call several lenders. Ask them about their process, how much they charge for you to get a loan, etc.

See this handy document for some good questions to ask. Here’s a handy HUD document on FHA lenders.

As you are doing this, especially if you are a first time home buyer, ask yourself, “Is this a person I connect with?” Are they brushing you off to an assistant? Do they return your calls? Are they patient with your questions?

Only then should you give them your social security number to run a credit check. If they all run your credit, it can drop your credit score, and that could affect the loan you get.

We are just suggesting that you make certain you are ready to work closely with a person for a month before you make a decision.

Next, we like to tell our clients “Let there Be No Surprises.” In other words, tell your chosen lender everything they need to know about your income and your savings.

We had one client years ago who’s deal fell apart because he failed to disclose that he was still co-signed on a car with his ex-girlfriend, and she would not let him off the loan.

This is important. If you get to three days before close of escrow and only then find out that you can’t get the loan, you may lose your earnest money deposit.

Finally, as a practice, we don’t go out looking at homes until your prequalification is done.

It is the worst feeling in the world for you if you get excited about a house after looking at many homes, only to find that you were never prequalified to buy it.

Sometimes clients want us to get out there with them while they wait for “a last few documents that I have to get out of storage for my lender.”

Sorry. We just can’t. We know how that often goes.

We believe that it is better to be prepared before you start. That is why we are sharing this home-buying process with you and why we recommend you have all your ducks in a row before you set foot in a home.

Next up: The search process using the Multi-Listing Service.

The real estate market will react to the coronavirus, but it is really important to understand that it will not react quickly. The real estate market is more like an aircraft carrier, than a schooner.

See the three short videos that I did on our Facebook page. You don’t need an account to view these. In just a few minutes, you’ll get all you need to know.

In short: don’t panic.

It can take months for the real estate market to shift. The Cromford Index is very high right now. Even the last time there was a shift in market conditions in 2013, according to Tina Tamboer of the Cromford Report, it took a few months for that to reflect in the housing market.

Still, if you have been looking for a home, expect more properties to come on the market, as investors (many backed by Wall Street money), hold off purchasing.

Have a look at this chart. Since we’ve gotten serious about the coronavirus, you can see a small up-tick in active listings. That may be the beginnings of buyers reacting to the news. But, as with many things in the real estate market, we may not know until we look back later.

That may not mean that prices will drop. In fact, probably not. There are two reasons for this. First, there is still a scarcity in the market, due to years of companies and individuals purchasing homes that are then used as rentals or AirBnBs, thus taken out of the regular buy/sell circulation.

So, if there is a “flood” of short term rental properties coming on the market, it will likely only increase choices for buyers, but not really push prices down.

Second, there are still a huge number of people out there who need a home –many of them have not shown up in home buyer stats recently because they have decided to sit out the market for a while.

So, if you are a buyer and you’ve been frustrated by the multiple offers, we suggest you circle back to the homes you missed. Maybe even put in a back-up offer if the buyer is a cash buyer. That home may come back on the market because the cash buyer’s situation may have changed.

If you are a seller, don’t fret –especially if you are selling above $400k. First, we will see more change in the sub $400k market before we see changes in the higher prices, for the reasons above.

Second, as also said above, there will be a scarcity for a while.

Unless the virus knocks out our economy for many months, don’t expect major changes.

If you need help planning your strategy to sell or buy, please call us at 602-456-9388.

The weather is perfect in Phoenix in March. This is when we all make outdoors a priority. So, here are some things to consider for your month.

I’m also throwing in a curated list of articles that I think you will find particularly interesting –well, at least I did. I always appreciate your suggestions!

1) A Month of Stuff. The fine folks at Old Republic Title help me put together a list every month of things all over the valley. So, click on this image and scan around for all the things. This is valley-wide, so I have some more Central Phoenix-specific things for you, as well.

2) How to Register to Voter, for Spanish-only Speakers. If you know of a Spanish speaker with limited English skills, please share this video with them. It is too late to register for the Presidential Preference Primary (don’t get me started on that), but this is a big election year and every citizen should feel comfortable with the process.

3) Dig in at Dig It Gardens. Our friends at Dig It Gardens are hosting an event with Local First Arizona on March 18th to talk about how collaboration with other local businesses can help your business grow.

“Collaborating with your fellow local businesses can give you that extra boost to take your business to the next level. Learn how Dig It Gardens is making that happen! Join us and other Local First Arizona business members at our monthly event to build relationships. Open to all active members and businesses interested in joining Local First Arizona.”

4) 2020 Edible Backyard Summit. The guys at Urban Farm U are hosting their annual summit, with 5 days of expert-led presentations revealing the BEST strategies for growing food at home. Free online event March 23-27.

Get a comprehensive understanding of exactly what you need to do to start your garden (or maintain a garden you already have). Feel confident that you have the tools you need to grow successfully and become more self-reliant. Share the bounty with your friends, family, and neighbors… and WOW them with just how delicious homegrown food can be.

5) Name Change, Same Great Experience. The Open Air Market has changed its name to Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market. They are celebrating 15 years of service to the community.

Personally, you could call it Winnie the Pooh’s Broken Unicycle Emporium, and I’d still go there all the time for the amazing food and wonderful community connections. For sure, it would be confusing when you get there and don’t find any broken unicycles, but you get my point.

6) A Simple Equation to Make Phoenix Sustainable. This article is an amazing account of how South Korea went from having trash in their streets to composting and recycling a majority of all of their waste. (For comparison, the world average of waste recycling is about 8% and the US average is less than 20%. Composting is even less.)

This is huge, folks. Compostable materials in a landfill create methane gas, which contributes 50 times more to global warming than does CO2. When composted, the methane from food waste stays in the ground as part of the circle of life.

But the most amazing thing is how a simple pricing structure for how residents pay for trash pick-up made a huge difference in how much the country recycles.

Ah, the humble pool cover.

Worth writing a blog post about? Really?

Yes! Clients ask us about them all the time. Are they worth it?

Yes. In fact, you spend more money by not having one!

Did you get that?

So, check this out. Pool covers cost about $3,000 to install. That can be a lot for many people, but if you finance it, you can get that for about $40 per month.

Consider, if you will, that the services of a “pool guy” can run between $75 and $100 per month for labor and chemicals. Plus, you spend about $30 more per month on electricity to keep that pump running. (That can be less with newer pumps, but it is still money that you don’t need to spend.)

In other words, the cover can pay for itself in about three years: $1,000 per year in maintenance without it vs. total cost of about $3,000 to install.

See? It costs you less to have a pool cover than not to have it.

Having a pool cover also means a fraction of water evaporates off of your pool. The average pool evaporates something like 30,000+ gallons of water per year. Plus, you will use a fraction of the pool chemicals because the sun is not causing them to burn off as quickly.

Further, you can use your pool longer in to the winter, even if you don’t have a pool heater. With a pool cover, more heat is trapped in the water.

If you do have pool heater, you will use it less because the pool stays warmer under the cover.

A good pool cover can also save lives.

Will it add value on an appraisal on your house? Probably not. But it is a great selling point, especially if you explain the value to a buyer.

Not sold? Consider our serious water issues in Arizona. We have a huge number of pools per capita. I’ve heard that we have the most per capita, but I’ve not been able to verify that.

So, if you get a pool cover, you can actually save money and lord over your friends at the next barbecue or cocktail party.

I mean, if that’s your thing.

If you want more info and leads, hit us up at 602-456-9388.

Donna Reiner, a local historian and a good friend of Get Your PHX, has written many articles over the years for the Arizona Republic and others about Phoenix history. We use her services when we list properties of historic significance to help us tell the stories behind the homes.

We are happy that Donna is allowing us to re-publish some of her articles on a monthly basis. If you or your business ever needs a historian, let Donna know at laydeescholar “at” hotmail.com.

Phoenicians are in love with their cars until……they have to find a parking spot. Is there a free place? Do I have enough coins for the meter or will it take a credit card? Where’s the nearest parking garage or lot and will I have to walk far to my destination? And during the hot summer months, if I have to use a lot or street, is there any shade? All of these questions take serious consideration when Phoenicians begin the parking spot patrol.

While these are modern day “worries,” what was it like back in the day?  First there were not as many cars, and many people went downtown by trolley and later by bus. Believe it or not, parking meters “sprouted” along Phoenix downtown streets as early as September 1937 with a one-hour limit (for a nickel). And yes, Phoenicians were not too happy about this new fangled device. It certainly spoiled the pleasure of parking downtown all day for free.

But after the end of World War II, things began to change. More families had cars and disposable money. Women liked to browse and shop. And kids wanted to go to the movies or hang out at one of the many places that had soda fountains. And eventually we had shopping centers.

A few old buildings had rather small parking areas in their basements, but they simply could not meet the new demands of the car driving public. And then, one business owner stepped up.

George Luhrs decided to build a garage on 1^st Avenue and Madison to accommodate the tenants in his various buildings, but also to provide some public parking. Opening in late November 1957, the Luhrs Parking Center provided space for over 400 cars PLUS a two-pump Texaco Gas Station. Several other small lots opened around the same time and the downtown merchants touted the simplicity to find a parking spot during their January Park and Shop Plan. This turned out to be only a small relief to growing parking issues.

Most people have driven in downtown Phoenix today. The streets are still narrow and have limited parking. And not much has changed over the years. Much of the parking before was parallel. Now it’s a mix of parallel and diagonal, but still not much to go around (and trying to figure out the number of allowable hours one can use on the meter is another issue). Parking at a mall especially during seasonal shopping days can be more of a question as to “Where did I park?” after you complete your spending spree. An app to show available spots can be helpful, but will it save that spot before you get there?

If you follow me in my political and even real estate posts, you know that I am ardent in my belief that realtors need to be aggressive advocates for water conservation, groundwater reform and sustainability.

We have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients. How responsible is it to put a home owner in to a 30-year mortgage on a home in a state that may have economy-destroying water issues in the next 15 years if we don’t institute reforms today?

Hyperbole? I think not.

This study from the US Geological Survey is alarming and our legislature and governor need to take the science seriously. We need at least the following changes:

1. Our state government needs to work with our congressional delegation to change incentives in the US Farm Bill so that Arizona farmers can switch to lower water use crops. Have a look at this fascinating article from a few years ago, which details how cotton farmers –even if they wanted to– would find it nearly impossible to stop growing high water-use crops. You should know that cotton and alfalfa use many times more water to grow than Arizona gets naturally from rainfall. As such, farmers are draining aquifers rapidly to keep up with demand.

2. Less than 40% of the state of Arizona is covered by an Active Management Area (meaning required sustainable use of water). We need to re-visit the Groundwater Management Act of 1980 so that the entire state is covered by Active Management Areas, or similar truly-sustainable requirements.

3. The Corporation Commission should encourage more distributed energy sources, such as solar energy on homes, which don’t require the pumping of billions of gallons of water to cool power plants.

Farming is the number one user of water in the state, power production is number two. These are the low-hanging fruits. If we can deploy more solar panels on homes and businesses, and conserve more water in agriculture, then we can continue to live in the desert with no problems.

4. We need to close the loopholes in the Ground Water Act, which allow developers to pretend that we have more water available for new developments than we actually do, as outlined in this great story from the Arizona Republic.

In short, it happened like this: We created the Groundwater Management Act in 1980, which said that a housing development had to demonstrate a 100-year ground water supply in order to build. If you don’t have the water, you can’t build there.

However, within a number of years, home builders (with the help of realtors) carved a massive loophole in the Act.

It said you don’t need the 100-year supply if you can get water from the Central Arizona Project canal (ie., Lake Mead water). Well, we know what’s happening to Lake Mead. It is dangerously low.

So, they built homes in the desert, telling us that the CAP was endless. They were wrong or wreckless.

This endangers those older homes, as well as any that new developers are irresponsibly planning today.

5. My fellow realtors in the Arizona Association of Realtors should be on the forefront of educating and advocating for water conservation, as well as distributed energy on homes.

As I said at the top of this article, we owe it to our clients.

Look, we are not going to “run out of water.” Under the Groundwater Act, if we have shortages, human consumption takes priority. That means that we will restrict agricultural before we restrict human consumption.

But, what would our economy look like if the news is that we are shutting down agriculture because we don’t have the water for our current populations? Who will move here? Who will start a business here?

There are, of course, other things we can do as well to solve the problem. (Oh, and desalination is NOT one of them.)

That is another post for another day.

Most people’s eyes glaze over at the sound of the word “redistricting.”

If you are one of those people, please grab a cup of coffee and power through it. This is important, whether you are a home owner or not.

For a humorous primer, check out this episode of Last Week Tonight. (Caution: strong language)

For a much dryer take on redistricting, listen to my interview on the Figure It Out Podcast from last month. (Yeah, I really know how to sell myself, huh?)

I’ll try not to go too much in to the weeds on redistricting. I am apt to do so, since I’ve been working on it for two decades now.

But, it is fundamental to a working democracy that we have fair and competitive districts –and crucial that you know the basics of the redistricting game.

Further, this is a “pox on both your houses” kind of issue when it comes to political parties. Just so you know where I’m coming from.

I’m throwing this redistricting issue up on the blog this month because there is yet another bill at the legislature –a proposed referendum on the 2020 ballot– that would deeply undermine fair redistricting.

It is called SCR1018, and it takes a little background to understand. This bill would ask the public to require that the largest district in Arizona cannot have more than 5,000 more voters than the smallest district.

Sounds fair, right? “One person, one vote”, right?

But it is not fair.

Like many things in redistricting, and most relationship statuses on Facebook, “it’s complicated.”

Not complicated like, “I’m gonna complicate the issue until you fall asleep and go away,” kind of complicated.

But complicated because our country has a long history of racism and voter suppression, which required the Voting Rights Act in the first place in order to protect people’s basic voting rights.

The core of the Voting Rights Act says that we must create districts that minority voters (African Americans, Latinos or Native Americans) have a chance to win in.

Why was this necessary? Well, because historically racist map drawers would crack or pack minority groups in to districts that made it impossible for their voices to be heard.

The solution is to allow a certain number of over-all districts in a state to be dedicated to a significant minority group.

So, for instance, if there are not enough Asian Americans in a state to create any districts in a reasonably compact area, then you don’t need to.

However, if there is a large Latino population in the state, you need to account for that by drawing districts that they have a chance to win in.

The complexity comes when you need to vary the size of legislative or congressional districts in order to make this happen.

Based on recent supreme court rulings (as recent at 2015), we can vary the population of congressional districts by a couple precent, and we can vary the population of legislative districts by as much as 10%.

That’s where the backers of SCR1018 come in. They say they believe such population variations mean some districts have more power than others –the districts don’t comply, they say, with the principle of “one person, one vote”.

I would be concerned about that argument if the difference were really that large. In a district of about 220,000 residents, the most a district will vary is 22,000 residents (and about 20% of those are not old enough or are ineligible to vote.)

While that is not ideal, it is nothing like the way the state operated up until 1964, where each county was a legislative district.

Think about that. La Paz county had the same number of representatives and senators as Maricopa County.

Most notably, in order to draw legislative districts for Native American populations, you need to vary the population of a couple districts.

(By the way, there are not enough Native American residents in a compact area to draw one congressional district, even if you could include all 22 tribes.)

Furthermore, these are the steps we have to take to defend the rights of large minority populations in Arizona.

I suppose, if the senator who is running this bill really wanted to not have to worry about the Voting Rights Act, he could stop supporting laws that suppress the votes of minority groups.

So, yeah. It’s messy. It’s not ideal. But until we stop seeing voter suppression bills out of this state government, or even the federal government, we need the Voting Rights Act and we need to protect minority populations.

Oh, and one more thing. Even if voters amended the state constitution in this way, it would be in violation of the Voting Rights Act and would likely be overturned, meaning we waste all that time and money doing something that is unconstitutional.

This opinion piece does a good job of explaining why this is a bad referendum.