The Forum

As our Village government searches for cost savings in these difficult economic times, residents are open to sharing services with surrounding municipalities. Top targets for sharing include Health Services (77% favor sharing), Building Inspection (73%), Municipal Court (69%), Public Works (66%), and Senior Services (65%).  

As residents stay in Shorewood longer, they become more and more open to sharing services.  Eight in ten (81%) of residents who have lived in Shorewood 16 or more years favor sharing Health Services, and 74% favor sharing Municipal Court Services.  Among newer residents (5 years or less in Shorewood), these numbers are 72% and 60%, respectively.  In many cases, newer residents and renters have no opinion on sharing services, since a renter is unlike to interact with Building Inspection or the DPW, for instance. 

Grabbing the third rail of Shorewood politics, Library Services, 58% favor a sharing arrangement, including 64% of homeowners.   Interest in sharing library services increases among longer term residents, from 56% of newer residents (< 5 yrs) in favor of sharing, to 62% among long term residents (16 yrs+).   While these numbers are lower than those who favor sharing Health Services and Municipal Court, they are still surprisingly high, given the battles we went through to get our current Library built.

Efforts to attract new families to our Village should be focused half and half on renters and homeowners, according to new data from the 2008 Community Survey.  According to the survey, about half (49%) of all families with children who have lived in Shorewood for 5 years or less rent rather than own their home.  In total, 52% of this group live in single family homes, 34% in duplexes, 12% in apartment buildings, and 2% in condos.  As residents stay in Shorewood for longer periods of time, they are more likely to become homeowners.  By the time families with children have been in Shorewood for 16 years, nearly 9 in 10 (87%) are homeowners. 

I bring this up because the Village Board tends to focus on policies to promote homeownership for young families as a way to boost the number of school-age children.  Think Marketing Shorewood (focused on real estate agents and homebuyers) and the Neighborhood Initiative for the most recent examples. It must be mentioned here that school enrollment has increased recently, according the Village Board, so some part of the Board's policies are working.  I also need to emphasize that I am not implying there is anything wrong with the goal of bringing new homeowners with children to the Village.  However, if our overarching goal is to boost enrollment, there is more that can be done by expanding our efforts to include renter families.

After posting the dataset last week, I started looking at the data to see what it can tell us beyond what has already been reported.  I started looking at our housing options and who lives there, and here is what I found.  There are distinct demographic groups living in our four housing options: single family homes, condos, duplexes, and apartment buildings. 

1. Apartments. This group tends to be newer and lower income residents.  Almost half (46%) have been in Shorewood less than 5 years, 76% make less than $50,000 a year.  Apartment dwellers are less likely to be families; 65% are single-adult households, and only 9% have children in the household. 
2. Duplexes.  This appears to be the next step after apartment living in Shorewood.  Duplex dwellers are less likely to live alone (39%), more likely to have children (29%), and have a higher income profile (40% make under $50K) than is the case for apartment households.
3. Single Family Homes.  This group has been here the longest, with 55% living in Shorewood 16 or more years.  Eight in ten (82%) of these households have two or more adults, 50% have children, and 30% have 2 or more children.  Their income profile is much higher than the renter groups, with 60% making $100,000 or more.
4. Condominiums.  With people at both ends of the spectrum on income and length of residency, this group appears to be a mix of young people and retirees.  Nearly six in ten (57%) Shorewood condo households contain at least one retiree.  This number surprised me, so if you have a thought on why it is, please post a comment.  Could it be the Eastwood condos? 
   

I have created a set of crosstabs that show the effect of re-weighting the data with renters represented in their proper proportion of households (just over half the sample). 

DOWNLOAD CROSSTABS.

This reweighting by own vs. rent also brings down overall income levels, since Shorewood renters have a lower income profile than homeowners.   I created these crosstabs relatively quickly (yes, I have a day job), and it is possible I made an error or two, so let me know if you see anything that does not seem right.  I see this as a completely "open source" project (the data is a public record), so let me know if you want to the SPSS files, or the Excel version of the crosstabs.  I am open to suggestions, revisions, criticism, and personal insults, if you would like to participate in this.

Why, Steve?  Is this some sort of methodological crusade you are on?  Some nutty academic exercise?

Not at all.  There is nothing wrong with using unweighted data, especially since part of the intent of the 2008 Community Survey was to track the changes in opinions over time.  However, in this case, using raw responses has the additional effect of discounting the importance of renter households.  I believe it is important to look at Village opinion with renters' opinions given its proper value, proportional to their share of the households in our Village.

There is a lot of interesting data in here, which could make for a great deal of interesting discussion.

As a side note, I weighted to a count of 600, which means renters are weighted at about 1.  Homeowners are weighted down to the proper proportion within a weighted sample of 600.  There is a lot of missing data in individual surveys, so you will notice that the weighted counts bounce around, and never quite reach 600.

Press Release – Sunrise Development

November 14, 2008 - Sunrise Senior Living is not exercising their option to proceed with their planned assisted living development in Shorewood. 

They were to have constructed and operated an 83-unit facility at the Capitol Drive site previously occupied by the Riverbrook Restaurant and Sherburn Place Apartments.

A company official cited current economic conditions – specifically, the inability to obtain capital -  as the reason for their decision.  They indicated that they have canceled other similar projects.

Sunrise had previously acquired the land and associated zoning needed for this development, and indicated that they are currently attempting to find a purchaser. 

I received the raw data from CUIR, and reweighted it to account for renters (52%) vs homeowners (48%).  This also brought income statistics closer to what is likely the real breakdown, since renters tend to be much lower income (61% under $50K) than homeowners (12% under $50K).  I am going to create and post a set of crosstabs, so any of you can look at whatever statistics interest you.

There are a lot of interesting numbers to look at, many of which could be valuable to those shaping policy initiatives in the years ahead.  Some confirm what you would expect, others are more surprising.  Here are a few examples.

• Those who live on an alley are less satisfied with the DPW (40% satisfied) than those who do not live on an alley (54%).
• Higher income residents are more likely than lower income residents to favor maintaining services with tax increases.
• Among single family home dwellers, 7 in 10 (70%) are satisfied with the parking situations, compared to just 33% of apartment dwellers.
• Garbage can flyers do not reach apartment or condo dwellers (reach 1 in 4), but are among the most effective ways of communicating to single family home dwellers (reach 9 of 10).
• One in three households with children in Shorewood are renters.  Keep this in mind next time the debate comes up about maintaining and increasing school enrollment.
  

If you are a stats geek like me and would like the raw SPSS data file or syntax files, let me know, and I will send them to you.  Unfortunately, the blogging engine appears to prevent posting SPSS files, or I would just put them here.

"Almost half (49%) have lived in Shorewood for 16 years or more. The average household size is 2.33 people per household. Nineteen percent of all households were retired. Over 80% own their own home, and the majority (64%) lives in single-family homes. Compared with Census 2000 findings – and similar to 2003 results – the respondents tended to have higher household incomes than the average Shorewood."

The home ownership statistics jump out immediately as being skewed.  The 2000 Census said about 52% of the units in the Village are rental units. This undercounting of renters also skews the average household size, which is larger for homeowners (2.51) than for renters (1.69).  

Ways for adjusting for data bias include data weighting, or oversampling populations who have lower response rates.  These methods can ensure the respondent pool makes up an accurate snapshot of the Village Population, and can accurately inform decision makers on the opinions of Village residents.  When I inquired into why this was done, the representative from the UWM Center for Urban Initiatives and Research (CUIR), who conducted the survey, said the intent was to mirror the 2003 Village survey, where data was also not weighted, and where results also skewed toward higher income residents.

There is value in tracking opinions over time, as was done here.  However, this methodological choice makes it difficult or impossible to draw conclusions about Village-wide opinions on any item where opinions differ between income levels or home ownership status.  You can still look at opinions within subgroups, but statements that begin with "residents believe..." or "overall, Shorewood residents rated..." should be taken with a grain of salt.  CUIR notes this limitation within the body of the report.

"...The survey respondents should not be construed as a representative sample of Shorewood’s population. In particular, homeowners and higher income households are over-represented among survey respondents than the households found in the Village of Shorewood. However, it may be interesting to note that income measures are not standardized, so it is entirely possible that both survey respondent and Shorewood resident populations are becoming increasingly wealthier, especially compared with 2000 Census figures."

I have requested the raw data, and will look at a few re-weighting options when I receive it.

I will be up to my usual tricks again shortly!

For now, Happy Veterans Day to all.