Recently, Wells Fargo Bank and various fair housing agencies announced a settlement designed to improve housing in minority neighborhoods hit hard with foreclosures. Atlanta is one of the cities that stands to benefit from the $27 million being provided by the banking giant. Today, an official with Metro Fair Housing Services writes about the potential local impact, while a real estate executive discusses the new boom in the housing market.

Pact can restore neighborhoods

By Gail Williams

Earlier this month, my Atlanta organization, Metro Fair Housing Services, announced that it will team up with Wells Fargo to make sure our communities have an equal chance at recovery from the housing crisis. With this agreement, Wells Fargo propelled itself as the industry leader committed to establishing quality standards for the way REO properties are maintained and marketed.

What are REO properties? They are “real estate owned” — homes that we see all too often around Atlanta, homes that were foreclosed upon, lay vacant and are bank-owned.

In 2012, the National Fair Housing Alliance, Metro Fair Housing Services and others published the results of our investigation into how REO properties are treated by banks. We wanted to see whether banks were treating properties differently because of a neighborhood’s racial makeup. Unfortunately, we found significant racial disparities in how banks were marketing and maintaining REO properties.

Some of the findings about Atlanta REO properties in communities of color:

* 70 percent had peeling or chipped paint; only 17 percent in white communities had the same problem.

* 40 percent had broken doors or locks; only 17 percent did in white communities.

* 42 percent had broken or hanging gutters; none in white communities did.

* 26 percent had pervasive mold on the structure, while none in white communities did.

Because of our investigation’s findings, we filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development against Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and Bank of America. Wells Fargo stepped up and will become the first bank to improve its REO practices.

We recently announced our settlement with Wells Fargo and the bank’s agreement to put $27 million toward programs in 19 cities nationwide. These funds will promote home ownership, neighborhood stabilization, property rehabilitation and development in neighborhoods of color.

Atlanta is receiving $1.4 million. No doubt, the money will help address the effects that maintenance and marketing deficiencies caused in our communities. This will help stop the bleeding of property values in some areas.

Other banks need to step up. Bank of America and U.S. Bank have done little to improve the maintenance and marketing deficiencies of homes they own.

When we conducted our investigation a year ago, 80 percent of the Bank of America REOs in Atlanta communities of color were missing a “for sale” sign. Without a sign, potential home buyers and neighbors simply don’t know the home is available. About three-quarters of U.S. Bank properties in Atlanta’s minority communities had substantial amounts of trash. This is an easy problem to fix and should be addressed immediately.

We applaud Wells Fargo for its leadership. We appreciate its commitment to our neighborhoods and look forward to working together to improve Atlanta.

Gail Williams is executive director of Metro Fair Housing Services.

Real estate boom’s different this time

By J.D. Crowe

Recently, an Atlanta couple became frustrated with their search to purchase a home. They made several offers on homes they liked but kept losing out to higher bidders. One day, they found a home that had hit the market that very day. They were so determined to win that bid, they immediately submitted an offer — and then asked if they could see the house for the first time the next day. They just wanted to jump in line and be considered as a buyer early.

That story and others like it illustrate what is happening in Atlanta’s residential real estate market today. It has become a sellers’ market. Due to the low inventory of homes available — coupled with a large wave of qualified buyers coming back who are now looking to buy — housing prices are on the rise again in almost every submarket.

We are witnessing the beginning of a new boom in real estate. Realtors and mortgage lenders have never been busier, but it is certainly different in a number of ways than the one we all witnessed in the middle of the last decade that triggered the Great Recession. The last time we had a run-up in housing prices, it was based on buyers who had access to credit that should not have been available to them in the first place.

The government was pushing mortgage companies to allow more people into home ownership, so there were many products that allowed buyers to obtain 100 percent-financed mortgages without having to put any money down. They were able to sign a document stating how much income they earned without any verification, even if they had low credit scores. My company didn’t engage in that type of lending.

In this market, we will have a boom, but it will not be an uncontrolled boom similar to the last one. During the last five years, even though homeowners suffered through periods of price depreciation, many still invested in their homes — doing renovations and creating value. Now, they are putting their properties on the market and getting the price at which they list it or a higher one.

Much of our economy is tied to residential real estate, whether it is on the financial side, construction, landscaping, carpet, granite — you name it. There is nothing you can do to untie this economic driver from our metro area.

Atlanta will always be tied to the housing industry, but we won’t be as dependent this time on the ability to cash out or flip homes for cash. In the past decade, there was such a rapid appreciation, people used their homes as piggy banks.

Nevertheless, home ownership is popular again, and I predict it will be for a long time. The couple who recently bid on the house before they ever saw it didn’t win the bidding; they are still out there looking. They are persistent, and they will eventually be the highest bidder and be back in the housing game.

J.D. Crowe is senior vice president for Southeast Mortgage of Georgia.

A mutual salute on Father’s Day

By Jim Frederick

As Father’s Day approaches, I am reminded of a question I have been asked many times over the past 16 years: “Aren’t you worried about your son serving in the Army during these times of world conflict?”

My answer is always the same: “No. I am concerned, but not worried.”

My son, you see, has wanted to be soldier since he was about seven years old.

As a child, when Adam was asked where he wanted to go to school and what he wanted to be when he grew up, his unhesitating reply was, “I am going to go to West Point and be a soldier.”

In 1993, my son graduated from Douglas County High School in Douglasville and he did, in fact, attend West Point. He graduated in 1997 and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant. These past 16 years have provided him the opportunity to do what he wants to do: be a soldier and fly helicopters. He serves in the best Army in the history of the world and works with the best soldiers ever.

During the past 16 years, Adam has deployed numerous times and has been in harm’s way more times than I care to think about.

But how do you worry about someone doing what he loves, what he has been trained to do, and something he is good at?

So again I say, I don’t worry, but I do have serious concerns.

My concerns are there because I, too, served in the Army for more than 27 years.

I entered service in 1966 during the midst of the Vietnam conflict and recall that serving one’s country was not a very popular profession at the time. I witnessed that change over the years, and during Operation Dessert Storm, the nation rallied behind the military and fully supported our troops.

My concern is that our nation not forget that those serving to protect our freedoms do so voluntarily and continue to need our full support and prayers.

“Are you worried?”

My parents were asked the very same question when I was serving, and I suppose every parent is asked how they feel about their child serving.

The truth is, I am sure each parent has the same mindset as me.

I am concerned, but not worried.

My son is doing what he wants to do and has been trained to do. He is good at what he does and, as a father, I’m damned proud of him for doing it — just as I am sure my father was proud of me.

So this Father’s Day, I look forward to getting the call that I always get from him.

Whether he was in school or deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he’d call and say, “Hi Pop, I just wanted to say Happy Father’s Day and to let you know that I love you and I’m thinking about you.”

After 27 years in the U.S. Army, Jim Frederick retired in 1993 with the rank of colonel. He lives in Douglasville.

On May 21, U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten ruled in favor of establishing district voting in Fayette County, where countywide at-large voting has been the norm. The national NAACP had sued the county to change its system to give black candidates a chance in local elections. The county voted to appeal that decision. Today, the NAACP says the time has come for district voting, while the Fayette County Commission chairman says the issue should not be forced.

Commenting is open below.

Fayette mutes black voters

By John Jones

As a child of the Jim Crow era South in Americus, I marched to protest inequality. A lot has changed since then, but not in Fayette County.

Because of great schools and increasing property values, my wife and I thought Fayette had the best quality of life in metro Atlanta. Being near the Atlanta airport was important, since I am a commercial airline pilot.

The black population was about 13 percent when we relocated in 1997, so I instinctively knew the NAACP was needed in Fayette. We became charter members of the Fayette County branch.

Soon, we encountered an all-white power structure that expected black folks to keep their grass cut, pay their taxes and stay in their place. Little did we know we had stepped back in time because, in essence, the civil rights movement had simply bypassed our county.

As the African-American population increased toward the current level of over 20 percent, several well-qualified black political candidates from both major parties ran for various countywide offices and failed. It’s unnecessarily costly to run a countywide campaign to serve a single district, and they simply couldn’t get enough white votes to win.

The only black candidate who ever held countywide elected office in Fayette was now-deceased Magistrate Judge Chuck Floyd. Ironically, he was chosen to replace a white judge who resigned in 2002 under pressure from the NAACP.

I moved up through the ranks to become Fayette NAACP Branch president in 2008, continually advocating for a change to district voting.

Georgia NAACP President Ed Dubose helped get the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to file a federal lawsuit in August 2011. U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten rightfully ruled in favor of the NAACP and ordered Fayette to adopt district voting. County commissioners are pursuing an appeal of the judge’s decision.

Close to $300,000 has already been wasted trying to keep Jim Crow Era at-large voting alive in Fayette, and the meter is still running. Those in the majority say that with district voting, they will be disenfranchised because they will no longer be able to vote for candidates that represent other districts outside of the one in which they live. How selfish is that?

In the 1960s, the majority didn’t want blacks to have an equal opportunity to vote or get elected to political office. The Voting Rights Act was enacted to prevent voter suppression and give minorities residing within a geographically compact area the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.

Subconsciously, most blacks in Fayette know that we are still not considered equal in the eyes of many white people, and it’s up to white people in Fayette to help change that.

My ultimate goal is to make Fayette a model of diversity and inclusion and a place where African-Americans and people of all races feel welcome. Every surrounding county has district voting, so I appeal to fair-minded whites in Fayette to press county leaders to accept district voting.

I also appeal to my Fayette leaders to comply with Judge Batten’s order and advance us into the 21st century, or risk exposing the county to serious unwanted consequences.

Resisting change will just draw more attention to this place, where the heirs of Jim Crow are trying to cling to absolute power. But the Fayette County civil rights movement is gathering momentum. One day soon, we too shall overcome.

John Jones is president of the Fayette County NAACP.

Gerrymandering is not the answer

By Steve Brown

We definitely need election systems that prohibit racially discriminatory practices. In 1965, it was not difficult to identify the discriminatory practices creating the need for the Voting Rights Act: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and voter intimidation. However, the modern era is anything but crystal clear on recent claims before the courts on Section 2 cases.

A review of U.S. Supreme Court rulings shows it is obvious the justices over the years have had a difficult time distinguishing what is and is not constitutional. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in the plurality opinion for Bush v. Vera, stated that “the application of the principles that I have outlined” in determining compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “sometimes requires difficult exercises of judgment.” She added, “That difficulty is inevitable.”

It is difficult to determine just how far the law allows a jurisdiction to manipulate voting districts to justify what some deem as extreme measures to gain a majority-minority district.

In Georgia State Conference NAACP v. Fayette County Board of Commissioners, a majority-minority district can be achieved only through excessive gerrymandering, and even then, a “majority” is achieved by a mere 35 voters.

The judicial rule of thumb is the Gingles tripartite test (from Thornburg v. Gingles, 1985), stating the minority group must show “that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact” to “constitute a majority in a single-member district.” Consequently, the district snaking down a road and picking up an African-American household here, excluding adjacent property, snaking down another road and picking up another African-American household there, is not geographically compact and demonstrates the population is not sufficiently large.

Nonetheless, the day is coming when Fayette will meet the genuine criteria for creating a majority-minority district as the African-American population grows, readily accepted by our Board of Commissioners. It is a shame we cannot wait to reach that point in time, creating a Gingles minority district, one that is a tribute to our integrity and our respect for the law.

On the other hand, please know that a majority of our commissioners last year offered a full district voting settlement to the NAACP very similar to a plan they previously accepted from our Board of Education, and it was rejected.

So now we end up with an obnoxious gerrymandered plan forced upon us through the federal court.

With the permission of my board, I offered to meet with the plaintiffs without our attorneys prior to the judge’s ruling, to see if we could work to an end. That offer was also rejected.

To be perfectly honest, I weep for both sides. My wife is black, and so are my children. I pity our national culture where we first seek to divide to get our way.

I am also a former Fayette NAACP member, leaving the organization in 2005 after some of the membership began writing what I considered race-baiting letters on the need for district voting at a time it was impossible to create a majority-minority district, even with gerrymandering.

Perhaps our mostly segregated churches have forgotten Mark 12:31: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Likewise, I get angry when some of our whites use racial slurs, and I get depressed when our affluent blacks move to all-black neighborhoods, telling me they only want to live around people like them. This is not only Fayette County; this is metro Atlanta.

Our Voting Rights Act, Section 2 lawsuit is a small question, but it is part of a much larger problem.

Steve Brown is chairman of the Fayette County Commission.

The push for a comprehensive immigration law continues in our nation’s capital. The goal: Adopt a credible, bipartisan plan. Today, the president of the Georgia Farm Bureau calls Senate Bill 744 imperfect but necessary so crops won’t rot in the fields. A  Tea Party Patriot raises numerous concerns about the proposed legislation and two other authors write about the “essential economy.”

Georgia farmers need immigration bill

By Zippy Duvall

While most Americans agree the current immigration system is a mess, nobody advocates doing nothing. But nothing is exactly what we’ll get if the U.S. Senate fails to pass its immigration reform bill, SB 744. Without Senate action, America will be stuck with its broken immigration system for the next several years.

The Farm Bureau supports passage of the bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act. Our country cannot afford to continue with an immigration system that requires employers to assume the role of government in trying to determine the birthplace of their employees.

Securing a reliable and skilled workforce is essential for agriculture and for all the U.S. jobs that depend on farm production. Jobs associated with handling and distributing agricultural commodities depend on workers planting and harvesting crops in the field.

For years, farmers have had difficulty finding workers. Farm jobs are physically demanding and often conducted in extreme weather, but many foreign workers see these jobs as opportunities.

Most Americans do not seek farm employment, but money is not the issue. The main factor is the seasonal and transitory nature of farm work. Most people do not want a job that lasts only six weeks. Even fewer people want to travel across the country picking fruits and vegetables in the hot sun all day. Ask yourself how much money it would take for you to enter such a career.

Current law provides a guest worker program, known as H-2A, which allows foreign workers to legally enter the U.S. to do farm work. Most Georgia H-2A users are larger farms. For a small farmer needing 50 workers for about a month, the H-2A program is too cumbersome and costly to be feasible.

A study released by the University of Georgia Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development showed that Georgia growers of seven major fruit and vegetable crops lost an estimated $140 million due to the labor shortage in the spring and summer of 2011. These crops represented nearly half the acreage available for harvest that spring, and had a total farm gate value of more than $670 million.

SB 744 will meet the labor needs of farmers through a “blue card” proposal. Farm workers can apply for the card if they pay a fine, undergo background checks and prove they have farm work experience. A blue card does not grant citizenship. It only allows the person to legally remain in the country to do farm work.

The Senate proposal creates a guest worker program to take the place of the current H-2A program. The new program is more streamlined so that more farmers can use it.

SB 744 is not perfect, but it is progress. America needs the Senate to pass this bill. The House of Representatives needs to pass a bill. Then, the two versions can go to conference in hopes of achieving actual reform.

Without Senate leadership, the process for reform in the near term will be stymied, no matter what happens in the House. If the Senate fails to act, the American people will keep the same flawed immigration policy we have right now. Nobody will be happy with that.

Zippy Duvall is president of the Georgia Farm Bureau.

Enforce laws and secure the borders

By Debbie Dooley

Our nation desperately needs immigration reform, but Senate Bill 744 will not correct the issue. We need to streamline the immigration process so people who can contribute to society and not be a burden on the taxpayer can come here in an orderly, legal process. We need to increase quotas for migrant farm workers so farmers can have the necessary workers to pick their crops, but not the 50 percent increase SB 744 does.

Farmers also need to be responsible for health care costs of the migrant workers and their families. Taxpayers should not be burdened with these costs.

We are a nation of laws. Granting amnesty to those who have broken our immigration laws sets a bad precedent and discriminates against legal immigrants who follow our immigration laws. If we grant amnesty, this is a slap in the face to those who have followed our laws.

In 1986, we were promised that, if we supported amnesty for those in this country illegally, our borders would be secured. We trusted our elected officials to secure our borders and supported amnesty. Our government broke its promise; our borders still are not secured 27 years later.

Many of our elected officials, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, are not being honest with Americans about the immigration bill. There are many waivers in the bill that undo provisions in other sections. I have listed a small portion of these waivers below. For a complete list, please go to: http://bit.ly/13Kf9G0.

SB 744 would:

* Grant amnesty to farm workers illegally in our country after only five years, and waive the 10-year waiting period.

* Void state and local E-Verify laws. The federal E-Verify would not be required for all employers until four years after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issues regulations implementing the mandatory program, which could take a few years.

* Require that DHS waive the public charge law that prohibits that agency from admitting illegal immigrants likely to receive public assistance.

* Provide that when an illegal immigrant applies for legal permanent resident status — at this point, qualifying for federal assistance programs — the applicant need only demonstrate income or resources equal to 125 percent of the federal poverty level.

* Allow DHS to waive multiple misdemeanor convictions when granting amnesty, so an illegal immigrant with three or more misdemeanors still may be eligible for legal status.

SB 744 also does not prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving public assistance from state or local governments. Our nation cannot afford to add this many new people to our assistance programs.

We need to enforce the immigration laws we have now and secure our borders before we pass new laws.

Debbie Dooley is Georgia coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.

The essential economy

By Sam Zamarripa and Todd Stein

Immigration reform is vital to America’s economy. That simple reality is driving four Republican senators, some of whom are the most conservative members of Congress, to champion the immigration reform bill now being debated on the floor of the US Senate.

Sen. Marco Rubio recently wrote that an immigration reform bill that includes bringing millions of undocumented aliens out of the underground economy “will improve the labor market, increase entrepreneurship and create jobs, leading to a net increase in economic growth.”

For Georgia, the economic stakes are high because of what immigration reform could do to sustain and boost Georgia’s “Essential Economy,” defined by a recent report by Georgia Tech’s Innovation Services Group as the goods and services that are essential to our way of life and that have to be produced right here in Georgia.

A significant percentage of the approximately 440,000 people in the state illegally makeup the workforce that drives Georgia’s essential economy.

That workforce includes the men and women on the frontlines of Georgia’s agriculture industry, harvesting crops, picking produce, and staffing the state’s many poultry plants. It also includes the hotel maids and restaurant workers, the backbone of the hospitality sector that makes Georgia an attractive place to visit or to start or relocate a business.

The essential economy workforce is made up of truck drivers, warehouse personnel and construction workers who have turned manufacturing, logistics, and trade into three of Georgia’s most promising prospects for long-term economic growth. And it includes landscapers as well as nursing home attendants and personal care assistants who are in increasing demand as the state’s population ages.

According to the Georgia Tech report, the essential economy contributed $49 billion in 2010 to Georgia’s gross domestic product and its workforce contributed more than $110 million in sales tax revenue through purchases of goods and services in 2011. Despite the national recession that began in 2008, the essential economy has remained a steady and often times growing part of the economies in Georgia’s 159 counties for the past nine years.

These numbers illustrate that the future of Georgia’s economy depends on sustaining and growing the essential economy, which in turn, creates the foundation for all the jobs in the aspirational economy – the high-skilled, high-wage jobs that Georgia continuously tries to create and attract.

The alternatives to immigration reform – maintaining the status quo or trying to deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally – are both impractical and potentially disastrous for the state’s economy.

The status quo does not work in part because Georgia’s population, like the rest of the country is aging. More than 60 percent of the state’s population will be more than 60 years old by 2030, according to the Department of Human Services.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican pushing immigration reform, recently explained, “Unless there is another baby boom in America, the only way to bring new workers into the country is through legal immigration – hi-tech, low-tech, and everything in between. We will be cutting our throat economically if we don’t improve our immigration system to have more legal immigration.”

As for deportation, which Sen. Rubio explains is not a practical solution, many of Georgia’s business leaders can tell you that it is the worst thing we do could to the essential economy. Georgia learned that lesson with House Bill 87, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011. After the state legislature passed that law, approximately 40 percent of the state’s agriculture labor needs went unmet as unpicked crops rotted in the field, costing Georgia businesses more than $140 million.

Republicans championing immigration reform in the Senate have been instrumental in identifying bipartisan solutions to challenging issues like improving border security and addressing the inadequacies and dysfunction of our current immigration system. But they have also kept their focus on the issue Americans say they care the most about – improving the nation’s economy.

One of the best ways we can achieve a stronger economy in Georgia is to support bi-partisan immigration reform in Washington that gives business owners and their employees certainty about their futures, and ensures that our essential economy has what it needs most to thrive – a robust and vibrant workforce.

Sam Zamarripa, a former Georgia state senator, is founder and co-president of  The Essential Economy Council.  Todd Stein, who served as majority counsel on the  U.S . Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs, is a lawyer with Kitchens New Cleghorn LLC and a lecturer at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.

Atlanta has a reputation for rebuilding and reinventing itself. Today’s guest writers explore what steps builders, lenders and developers must take regarding the region’s real estate market now that the housing industry is showing some signs of recovery.

No. 1 industry is growth

By Frank K. Norton Jr.

Atlanta is all about growth.

Since its founding as Terminus, growth has been Atlanta’s No. 1 industry. Boom or bust, up or down, Atlanta has stretched its arms around its unlimited geographic boundaries and embraced relocating businesses, expansive retail centers and swaths of new neighborhoods. We have either been chastised as the poster child for unrestrained growth or heralded as the champion of progressive economies. Atlanta has had no middle ground.

The powers of Atlanta’s housing industry grasped the opportunities of growth by the tail and for the most part held tight to this serpent through countless cycles, only to rebound time and time again.

Atlanta attracts people — migratory people. That is what it does best, and that fuels housing. Whether the newcomers rent or buy condos, apartments, affordable homes or Buckhead estates, 100 percent of this population needs a roof over its head. That spells an ever-sustainable need for housing products in all price points and in all directions.

Atlanta is a jobs and opportunity mecca for the best and brightest college graduates. We are an affordable migratory point for corporate and midlevel businesses. Our moderate four-season climate, low tax rates and outstanding health care delivery system drive all housing sectors. You have never heard anyone say that they can’t wait to retire to Milwaukee or Buffalo.

We are much more than water towers emblazoned with mantras like “Success Lives Here.” Atlanta has the frontier spirit of entrepreneurship. We have a boundless, optimistic, energetic vision and a Southern progressiveness that is woven into the fabric of every neighborhood, school district and township.

Quality housing stock creates jobs. Our housing affordability attracts a quality workforce, and a quality workforce attracts new business — the cycle of a sustainable and quality lifestyle.

We saw more than 425,000 single-family homes built between 2000 and 2009. Before that, 359,000 were built in the 1990s. Today, First Metro Listing Service data points to fewer than 16,000 homes available, a 3 1/2-month supply. Single-family inventory hovers at zero, with no uptick in sight.

In the Great Recession, our once-vibrant builder sector evaporated with a loss of 80 percent to 85 percent of the workforce, creating cracks in our sustainable housing formula. The Atlanta housing industry has cleaned itself up and then some, but without an influx of capital, the redevelopment of our labor base and a more relaxed lending climate, the industry will remain largely stagnant.

In 2013, a scant 14,000 new homes will be built versus a demand of at least double that. Thankfully, the national guys — Pulte, D.R. Horton and others — are building product with their Wall Street capital. But it is the Atlanta builder entrepreneurship that needs a reincarnation to sustain the region’s voracious housing appetite.

It is time to dust off our pants, refresh our game plans, create a financial builder/developer support system and start the construction engines. Full throttle.

Frank K. Norton Jr. is president of the Norton Agency,  a Gainesville-based real estate company.

An unmet housing need

By Jonathan Blackwell

Real estate has caused two of the last three recessions, including the Great Recession from which we are emerging. That’s because real estate, and the infrastructure that supports it, represents more than 35 percent of America’s economic assets. Engaging one of our biggest assets, and the private capital that goes with it, has continually proven to create sustainable economic growth. However, the Great Recession has highlighted a fundamental change in what consumers want from their real estate.

Instead of expanding suburban sprawl, the new boom in cities like Atlanta will address a different demand than its predecessors. It will come with the creation of new walkable, transit-oriented urban communities, and it has the potential to reshape the American landscape and rejuvenate its economy as profoundly as the wave of suburbanization after World War II.

There are some obvious reasons for the growing demand for walkable neighborhoods: ever-worsening traffic congestion, gas prices and the fact many cities have become more attractive places to live thanks to falling crime and the migration of industry away from city centers. But the biggest factor is demographic.

More than half of America’s population consists of two demographic groups: Baby boomers and Generation Y. Gen Y is leaving the nest for high-tech urban jobs at the same time many boomers no longer need large suburban homes. The demographic convergence is pushing construction inward, accelerating the rehabilitation of cities and forcing existing car-dependent suburbs to develop more compact, walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods.

This rebuilding will spur millions of new construction jobs and, if energy efficiency is encouraged, create new markets for sustainable materials produced by American manufacturers.

Outside of sustainable economic growth, there are other benefits to the redevelopment of America. Sedentary lifestyles in a car-dependant age have led to the expansion of chronic illnesses like obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The strain on the health care system can be mitigated with healthier Americans who get out of their cars as they go about the day.

Imagine taking millions of cars (and their emissions) off the road. Let’s also think about the effect of replacing aged housing with clean, green, energy-efficient housing. The U.S. Green Building Council estimates new, sustainable developments could reduce water consumption by 40 percent, energy use by 50 percent and waste by 70 percent.

Meanwhile, walkable communities do not exist in sufficient quantity. Lack of supply has created one of the biggest hurdles to living in a walkable community — affordability. Because real estate absorbs so much of our wealth, it is essential that we focus on pushing on the door unlocked by our demographics. The two largest population groups, half of our population, want communities the market is not delivering.

Ultimately, the market cannot act in a vacuum if we truly want to redevelop America. Federal transportation policy must continue to be reformed, and metropolitan regions must continue to work together to chart a common vision, if we want to fully capitalize on the next real estate boom.

Jonathan Blackwell is a senior mortgage banker and renovation loan specialist for PrimeLending.

Freight rail companies say there’s no room on their tracks for commuter rail within Atlanta’s Perimeter. Today, a rail advocate writes about the shortsightedness of not improving passenger service as an expanded Port of Savannah increases truck traffic and adds to highway maintenance bills. In our second column, a transportation analyst criticizes high-speed rail as unnecessary and too expensive.

Commenting is open below.

More rail needed for Georgia’s future

By Gordon Kenna

Atlanta was settled along the creeks, ridges and hills mostly in the Chattahoochee River basin. First came the crooked winding paths that became roads, followed by railroads from every direction. During the Civil War, Georgia’s rail infrastructure made Atlanta the most strategic location in the South. Our continued investments in highways, airports and ports leveraged rail’s early success.

But now our legacy rail infrastructure is the weak link to modern Georgia’s transportation trifecta.

Our roads, airport and world-class port are the envy of our neighbors. Transportation infrastructure is the largest capital expense of government, and Georgia has invested heavily in roads, airports and ports.

But Georgia stopped investing in rail more than 50 years ago, when our interstate highways were being built. We allowed our rail network to operate largely without a public partner. The track bed that was first laid out, literally in the horse-and-buggy era, never moved to a modernized practical and efficient setting.

Largely because of the success of rail, the city created congestion in the form of higher and mixed-use that makes rail movements difficult and slow. Far too much of our rail infrastructure still goes through the center of the region instead of bypassing to facilities away from the congestion. This old track network for freight limits — and could eliminate — future options for commuter rail service.

There is another even more serious consequence of our inadequate rail infrastructure.

When the enlarged Port of Savannah receives larger ships, the increase in highway freight traffic will put our road infrastructure at serious risk. This has serious consequences for drivers and the DOT budget. Heavy vehicles have a far greater impact on road and bridge maintenance than automobiles. The $652 million harbor project will add billions to Georgia’s highway maintenance costs in urbanized areas — unless we have rail infrastructure to handle some of the heavier freight. Drivers will also pay for the port’s success in the form of more truck traffic congestion on our highways.

Unfortunately, Georgia’s transportation funding is limited to supporting roads and bridges. For three generations, the gas tax was fine for highways, but now even that mechanism is inadequate. Today, legislative approval is necessary for virtually every other transportation expenditure — and the Legislature isn’t a body with long-range vision or the DNA for ambitious projects.

We had that vision in our youth. Today, we are more cautious, conservative and constrained by our self-imposed limits. While we search for more user-pay options, we still need resources for capital funding. We need leadership and planning more than ever. We must address the reality of operations and maintenance funding for all our investments. Most of all, we need to stop pretending that transportation is strictly a private market paid for only by users.

A recognition that transportation is most efficient when it is multi-modal is a good place to start our rethinking process.

Gordon Kenna is CEO of Georgians For Passenger Rail.

High speed rail is too costly

By Baruch Feigenbaum

Discussions are resuming in the Southeast about a high-speed rail corridor. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that high-speed rail’s limited success in Europe and Asia is not transferable to the U.S.

From a financial standpoint, things don’t look good. The majority of high-speed rail lines require large government subsidies from both general taxpayers and drivers. Even with generous subsidies, traveling by high-speed rail is still more expensive than flying for 12 of the 23 most popular high-speed rail routes in the world. Evidence suggests it can only be competitive on routes that are 200 to 500 miles in length.

High-speed rail is also very expensive to build. Most new routes cost at least $10 million per mile to construct. The cheapest European rail line costs more than $50,000 per seat to operate annually. A U.S. high-speed rail line would need ridership of 6 million to 9 million people per year to break even. The high-speed Acela service, despite operating in the busy Northeast Corridor, averages only 3.4 million passengers per year.

Advocates cite other advantages for high-speed rail, but most fall apart under close examination:

Environment: High-speed rail creates more pollution than it prevents because building a high-speed rail line is very energy-intensive.

Economic development: High-speed rail does not create much new development; it merely redirects development from one area to another.

Mobility: High-speed rail is unlikely to improve mobility since most of its potential passengers already travel by air.

Choice: Customers can already choose between a low-cost bus, a fast plane or a personalized car trip.

Most countries have built high-speed rail to relieve passenger overcrowding on their existing lines. The U.S. lacks this overcrowding, which suggests consumer demand for high-speed rail may not be there. Furthermore, freight rail dominates track usage, and railroad companies are reluctant to relinquish capacity, as is evident in the discussions surrounding the proposed multimodal passenger terminal in downtown Atlanta.

Any U.S. rail operator will have to compete on the same terms that cause Amtrak to lose large amounts of money each year. Railways are subject to outdated labor laws that were enacted when railroads did not face competition. Operating a passenger railroad in the existing regulatory environment is not a profitable proposition.

Our core cities, where people are most likely to board high-speed trains, are much less dense than European or Asian cities, which also limits the potential market.

The U.S. has far higher rates of car ownership than most other countries. Gas taxes are lower, road tolls are less common, and many cities — especially in the South and West — have grown up around the automobile.

As a result, high-speed rail is best regarded as a luxury this country cannot afford. For far less money, we could create a world-class highway and aviation system with first-rate bus and airplane service and far more flexibility.

Baruch Feigenbaum is transportation policy adviser at the Reason Foundation and a senior fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.

Support families – all of them

By Joanna Adams

How about a shout-out for the month of June?

Named for the Roman goddess of marriage, June has been the go-to month for weddings since ancient times. For centuries, the reasons for the popularity of June nuptials were more practical than romantic. For example, babies conceived after a June wedding would be born in the spring and thus would have a better chance for survival.

Traditionally, the groom has stood to the right of the bride during the wedding ceremony. In the olden days, if someone were to swoop in to kidnap the bride (and steal her dowry), the groom would have quick access to his sword to defend her.

These days, marriage itself could use a defender or two. Troubling trends are afoot.

While marriage statistics remain relatively stable for college graduates, the marriage rate is sharply plummeting for those with a high school education or less. The divorce rate hovers around 50 percent. Forty-one percent of new marriages end in divorce, as do 60 percent of second marriages and 73 percent of third marriages.

The “partnering and repartnering” syndrome has become more the norm than the exception. As a consequence, children who grow up in intact families are becoming the exception rather than the rule.

The new norm in America is to have your first child before you marry — if, indeed, you marry at all. According to the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly, 58 percent of first-time mothers are unmarried.

Our nation is in the midst of an important conversation about same-gender marriage. My hope is that we will, in addition, have a long overdue conversation about marriage, period. As we talk, let us also begin to act. Here are a few suggestions:

• Support public policies that encourage two-parent families. Far too frequently, tax and welfare systems penalize couples of low income who choose to marry.

• Remember the children! They need the assurance of sustained support and safety, whether they live with one parent or two, with a grandmother or an aunt or an uncle. Just one adult who loves and cares for a child can make all the difference.

• Support families, whatever their shape or form. It is the family that transmits or does not transmit values and life skills. At home, kids learn to trust and love, to be accountable and practice self-restraint. Or not.

• Never stigmatize single parents. Remember that marriage is not for everybody, and that most marriages that end in divorce do so for good reason.

• If you are married, try to forgive more and judge less. It’s better to be connected than right.

Marriage and family are the two basic structures that have undergirded human society since the beginning of time.

For the ordering of life, the well-being of the community and the birth and nurture of children, there is nothing better.

Joanna Adams, senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, writes for the Higher Ground blog at Highergroundgroup.org, where this column originally appeared.

Workforce diversity is an issue in Fulton County, where the population is 48 percent white and 45 percent black, but where 83 percent of the county government’s 5,500 employees are black. The Fulton County chairman addresses the imbalance, and a lawyer with experience in employment cases outlines what county — and state legislators — can do to remedy it.

Commenting is open below.

How to fix Fulton, balance work force

By A. Lee Parks

Fulton is our state’s keystone county. It has been a pivotal player in achieving many of the milestones that put metro Atlanta on the map — the Olympics, the stadium that made the Braves and Falcons a reality, MARTA, and the essential work done at Grady Memorial Hospital. So why have so many of its citizens abandoned it to start new cities that hold the promise of delivering more efficient governance? And why does Fulton face extinction at the hands of its own state legislative delegation?

The answer is complicated, but race, as is often the case in the South, is front and center in the conversation. Despite the exodus of its citizens through the cityhood movement, the county work force has not shrunk proportionally. It is also disturbing that a county that is majority white maintains a work force that is 83 percent black.

In response, the county points to a largely black applicant pool. It throws up its hands and says it can only hire those who apply. But when you peel back that onion, you find an affirmative action program that remains in force long after it makes no sense other than as a political sop to Southside voters. There is no meaningful anti-nepotism policy to prevent black managers from hiring and promoting family members, exacerbating the racial imbalance. A river of litigation is driven by claims of reverse discrimination and unlawful retaliation against those who complain about the race-based decision making.

To save itself, the county must develop a smaller, more diverse work force with skills tailored to its more limited role by doing the following: End affirmative action in hiring, promotions and public contracting; pass a rigorous anti-nepotism policy; mandate arbitration of all claims related to discrimination and get out of the litigation business; and solicit the advice of resident corporations regarding how they maintain productive, globally diverse work forces.

It will not be enough to simply hire more white workers; the county must retain them. Workers stay because they are valued, fairly compensated, and have a fair opportunity for promotion in a work place that is reasonably close to home. Fulton needs to weed out incompetents to create opportunities for advancement, and decentralize its workforce by adding work venues that are more accessible to its constituents and closer to the North Fulton homes of the white workers it needs to attract.

What won’t work is the cannibalistic approach taken by the Fulton County delegation in the last state legislative session. The thinly veiled attempt to re-animate the ghost of Milton County so whites and blacks can have their “own” counties was racist and short sighted. Some of those bills won’t pass legal muster, like the gerrymandered alteration of commission district lines to get more whites elected. But others will survive and deprive the county of the tools it needs to remake itself.

The state delegation needs to work cooperatively with Fulton’s leaders. In turn, the county should acknowledge past sins and make peace with its state delegation. A new day can be had only if our leaders have the vision to see it.

A. Lee Parks, a senior partner at Parks, Chesin & Walbert, is a lawyer specializing in employment, constitutional and voting rights law.

Reaching a broader pool of applicants

By John Eaves

In 1880, Fulton County’s first commissioners took office — a group of five white males — and began the business of establishing laws for this great county. Ninety-five years later, in 1975, J.O. Wyatt and Henry D. Dodson became the first African-American men to serve on the Board of Commissioners. Fourteen years later, Nancy A. Boxill became the first woman to serve on the board.

Our expectations about diversity have changed since the early days, and even since these color and gender barriers were broken. Across the nation, we see changes in the diversity of our communities, among our elected officials and in our workforce.

In my own career, I have been fortunate to work with people around the globe. As a regional administrator with the Peace Corps and as a liaison to South Africa on behalf of Morehouse College, I have collaborated with people from many nations and recognized the synergy our different ideas created.

That same diversity and synergy are mirrored in Fulton County.

Like any employer, Fulton must seek the best candidate with every hiring decision. According to a Forbes Insights’ 2011 study, 85 percent of top global companies value diversity as a driver for innovation, creativity and strategy. Fulton is no different. The need for innovation has never been greater, as dollars become more limited and challenges grow more complex.

I am fully committed to reaching a broader pool of potential applicant to bring together individuals of broad backgrounds to work collaboratively to deliver excellent services at an excellent value to taxpayers.

Fulton has a strong history of diversity and inclusion. It was among the first in the nation to establish a Disability Affairs Office to ensure access for employees with disabilities. Our internationally recognized Gender Equality Program ensures opportunities for men, women, boys and girls. The county has also been supportive of gay and lesbian employees and residents; it began offering benefits to same-sex partners in 2003.

Public administration professionals have long recognized the need for governments to attract talented professionals who might earn more in the private sector. By casting our net broadly and always hiring the best candidates, diversity becomes a natural byproduct. Recently, Fulton began implementing plans to ensure thoughtful outreach efforts that will reach a diverse group of professionals in any given field.

I am especially interested in ensuring that our recruitment includes recent graduates and young professionals with fresh ideas and new solutions. Analysis by the Partnership for Public Service showed that in 2011, less than 6 percent of college graduates considered government careers.

We have an opportunity to reach out to our many colleges, technical schools and graduate programs in and around Fulton County to usher in a group of future leaders with an eye on innovation.

John Eaves is chairman of the Fulton County Commission.

Today we explore the South in the second decade of the 21st century. A cultural historian discusses “Dixie”; the word stirs emotions from nostalgia and pride to anger and bitterness, yet few agree what it really means. A geographer tells why the South’s economic prospects are brighter than in other areas of the country. And a social observer lists trends in race, ethnicity and attitudes that are dramatically reshaping the region.

Dixie: What’s in a name?

By Coleman Hutchison

In the recent dust-up over country singer Brad Paisley’s song “Accidental Racist,” most of the attention has fallen on the song’s description of a Confederate flag on a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. The song’s reference to “Dixieland” has drawn far less comment and ire.

Why? After all, Paisley’s protagonist — “just a white man comin’ to you from the Southland/Tryin’ to understand what it’s like not to be” — seems to think that the flag and the nickname are simple signs of Southern pride and little more. But the song’s emphatic, perhaps ironic, use of “Dixie” raises questions about what is at stake in this name.

Put simply, “Dixie” is a word that is widely read and little understood. It evokes strong associations and engenders even stronger feelings, despite the fact that there is little agreement on what, exactly, it means. People often use Dixie as if it were a mere synonym for the South. Such usage whitewashes the word’s origins and obscures the South’s complex cultural histories.

While there is no definitive etymological source for the word, scholars trace its use as a nickname for the South to the minstrel song “Dixie”: “I wish I was in the land of cotton/Old times there are not forgotten …” In the weeks after its first performance on Broadway in 1859, “Dixie,” with its problematic image of African-Americans longing for the plantation South, became a stand-in for the region as a whole.

Originally performed in blackface and published in dialect, the song was popular in the North and the South in the lead-up to the Civil War. During the war, “Dixie” became the de facto Confederate national anthem, which caused some Southern nationalists to worry the song would “impose its very name on our country.” Needless to say, those worries were well founded.

The song and its nickname continue to shape how people think about the South. Among many other things, Dixie functions as shorthand for regional pride and racism; tradition and backwardness; a sense of place, and a sense of outrage. Dixie has been used both by and against Southerners, with varying degrees of affection and disgust.

In the 21st century, the word helps to sell everything from beer to botanicals. Even products that have an ambiguous relationship to the South — for instance, Dixie Cups, or the Dixie Chicks — become Southern by association.

We cannot assume Dixie names the same thing in the same way each time it is used. The South has always been a difficult region to define. Moreover, the South’s increasing diversity runs counter to the word’s sectional associations.

Many contemporary Southerners want nothing to do with Dixie as a nickname or a cultural identity. Yet writers, artists and critics persist in using the word to tell about the South. Paisley is far from alone. (Although he does seem enamored of the word; three songs on his new album, “Wheelhouse,” name-check “Dixie.”) As a result, we can be sure that Dixie won’t be soon forgotten. We would do well, then, to think carefully about the power of this five-letter word.

Coleman Hutchison is an associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

The South will rise again

By Joel Kotkin

The common media view of the South is as a regressive region, full of overweight, prejudiced, exploited and undereducated people. Yet even as the old Confederacy’s political banner fades, its long-term economic prospects shine bright.

For one thing, Americans continue to head south; it’s attracting the most domestic migrants of any U.S. region. Last year, six of the top eight states in terms of net domestic migration were from the old Confederacy — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. The top four losers were deep blue New York, Illinois, New Jersey and California.

In the 1950s, the South, the Northeast and the Midwest had about the same number of people. Today, the South is almost as populous as the Northeast and the Midwest combined. This dominance will be further assured because Southerners are nurturing families, in contrast with residents of the Great Lakes, the Northeast and California. Greater Atlanta’s child population, for example, rose by at least twice the 10 percent rate of the rest of the country over the past decade, while the New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago areas experienced declines.

Why are people moving to, and breeding in, what the media tend to see as a backwater? The South’s economic growth has outpaced the rest of the country for a generation. With their history of poverty and underdevelopment, Southern states generally have lower taxes, and less stringent regulations, than competitors in the Northeast or on the West Coast.

A portent of the future can be seen in new investment from U.S.-based and foreign companies. Last year, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina were four of the six leading sites for new corporate facilities.

In the long run, some critics suggest, the region’s historically lower education levels limit its ascendancy. Every state in the Southeast falls below the national average of the percentage of residents aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree.

Yet this education gap is shrinking, particularly in the South’s growing metropolitan areas. Over the past decade, the number of college graduates in Austin and Charlotte easily eclipsed the performance of New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Greater Atlanta alone added more than 300,000 residents with bachelor’s degrees over the past decade, more than Philadelphia and Miami and almost 70,000 more than Boston.

Over time, these trends will have consequences. More Americans than ever will be brought up Southern. The drawls may be softer, and the social values hopefully less constricted, but the regional loyalties are likely to persist. Rather than fade away, Southern influence will grow over time. It’s the culture of the increasingly child-free northern tier and the slow-growth coasts that will, to evoke the past, be gone with the wind.

A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeorgraphy.com and teaches at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

A place tested by change

By Tracy Thompson

Tracy Thompson is a native of metro Atlanta and author of the new book, “The New Mind of the South.” The following is adapted from a talk she gave in March at the Atlanta History Center.

Wrenching change: Ours is the story of one huge wrenching social change after another. Race is the fundamental reason the South is of such enduring importance in American history. This is where the ideals of American democracy were first tested against the realities of different skin colors.

Immigration: The amount of change in the past 45 years is mind blowing. The biggest change, of course, is immigration. Today, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee lead the nation in births to Hispanic mothers. The first generation of those babies are now teenagers, and in a year or so, they will begin to vote and are quite aware of the fact the Republican Party in the South has not been very friendly to them. Today, 10 percent of Gwinnett County’s population is Asian, 21 percent is Latino. There is a Hindu temple in Riverdale in Clayton County, and in Fayette County, there’s a mosque down the street from the courthouse. So is this the end of the South as we once knew it? Well, of course it is. But that’s not to be confused with the end of the South.

African-Americans: The other piece of the immigration picture is the black re-migration into the South. For most of the 20th century, Chicago and New York were the two metropolitan areas with the biggest black populations. For the last few years, Atlanta has overtaken Chicago. The affluent young black professionals you see today working in these downtown high rises are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of people who left Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia in 1935 or so with nearly nothing.

Religion: Religion in the South has become a lot more politicized, and politics in the South are starting to sound a whole lot more like religion. At a Baptist church in Clarksdale, Miss., I had expected to encounter familiar hymns and a familiar order of service. Instead, the sermon that day was about the story of the wheat and the tares, and how real Christians need to make sure that they’re not pulled into a consortium of cultural Christians who look like Christians, but aren’t really. Religion used to be something that bound Southerners together. Today, it’s divisive.

Racial reconciliation: It’s a spontaneous grassroots kind of thing. When I left Georgia in 1989, people had just begun to talk about commemorating the 1946 lynching of two black couples at Moore’s Ford in Walton County. Today, there are several kinds of movements happening all over the South. The chapters of the past that they’re dealing with are incredibly painful, but it’s vitally important that they be remembered, not as a way of picking at old wounds, but as a way of teaching us where we’ve come from and who we say we are.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, roughly $15,000 for a full-time year-round worker. Today’s guest writers offer opposing views on whether raising the minimum wage to an hourly rate of $10.10 an hour — as proposed by President Barack Obama — would help or hinder the rebounding economy.

Wage hikes kill teen jobs

By Michael Saltsman

Georgia parents, prepare yourselves: With a 30.6 percent teen unemployment rate heading into the summer, your jobless kids might be making withdrawals from the Bank of Mom & Dad for their cash.

There are a number of factors at work: More competition from older job seekers, for instance, has put young and inexperienced applicants at a disadvantage. But also at fault are a series of ill-conceived minimum wage mandates at the state and federal level, which raised the cost to hire and train teens who fill those jobs.

Those teens can only hope that President Barack Obama and Congress won’t make it worse with another proposed wage increase.

Nationally, teen unemployment has been above 20 percent every summer since 2009. That’s four straight summers — soon to be five — of record teen unemployment. They’ve all occurred during or since the 40 percent hike in the federal minimum wage between 2007 and 2009.

Writing in 2010, economists at Miami and Trinity universities estimated that, even accounting for the effects of the recession, at least 114,000 young adults lost job opportunities as a result of the federal wage hike. (Other economists have put that figure above 300,000.)

Percentage-wise, this came out to a 6.9 percent drop in teen employment in the states affected by all three stages of the federal wage hike. For teens with less than 12 years of schooling, the relative drop in employment was even higher, 12.4 percent.

One need only look at the businesses that employ teens to understand why. Nearly 40 percent of the nation’s employed teens work in the leisure and hospitality industry — restaurants, movie theaters, hotels and the like — while another 25 percent work in retail jobs at grocery stores, service stations and such.

These types of businesses aren’t exactly rolling in dough. Their profit margins are generally 2 or 3 cents on every sales dollar. Sudden spikes in labor costs leave these businesses with two options: Raise prices or reduce costs.

When raising prices isn’t an option, the only other is to provide the same product with less service. This might mean having waiters or waitresses bus their own tables or opting for a self-service alternative to young grocery baggers.

The data bear this trend out: Teens’ share of employment in the leisure and hospitality industry dropped by more than 20 percent between 2007 and 2011. In retail, it’s fallen by nearly 30 percent over that period.

This makes it all the more baffling that wage-hike advocates in Congress would raise the minimum wage by another 40 percent, to $10.10.

This may be good politics, but it’s certainly not good policy. Teens, whether in Georgia or anywhere else, start climbing the employment ladder through their first summer jobs. Further minimum-wage hikes only postpone their ability to get these jobs, which research shows hurts future earnings, employability and professional development.

That might not seem pressing to the teens who will just lie on the beach or lounge on the couch for the next three months. But it is much more concerning for their parents, who want nothing more than a good future for their kids and, maybe, some peace and quiet between now and September.

Michael Saltsman is research director at the Employment Policies Institute.

Wage hike offers relief

By Michael Reich

More than four years have passed since the official end of the Great Recession. Throughout the recovery, the costs of food, utilities and gasoline have continued to increase, but the minimum wage has not kept up with the rising cost of living. The minimum wage in Georgia and much of the U.S. has been stuck since 2009 at the federal rate of $7.25 per hour, which translates to just $15,000 per year for a full-time worker, nearly $4,000 below the poverty line for a family of four.

Lawmakers in Congress have proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2015 — giving a raise to roughly 944,000 low-paid workers in Georgia — and indexing it thereafter to inflation. Some will continue to insist that companies that pay low wages cannot afford to give their workers a raise, and that the minimum wage destroys jobs for workers who need them the most.

What do real-world data say?

In a recent study, I compared employment levels in all pairs of cross-state border counties that had differing minimum wage rates at any point over the last 20 years, more than 250 pairs. This study found that higher minimum wages did not reduce employment or encourage business to relocate to areas with lower minimum wages.

Indeed, two-thirds of all low-wage workers are employed by large companies with more than 100 employees, not small mom-and-pop shops. The largest employers of low-wage workers, such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, are earning strong profits today and can afford higher wages.

Let’s not overlook the savings that result from higher wages. When pay is higher, workers do not need to balance multiple jobs to make ends meet. They are more likely to stay with their current employers. Employers can benefit from reduced employee turnover and higher worker productivity. Major companies such as Costco are able to offer low-priced products while paying their workers high wages precisely because of these kinds of savings.

Some businesses prefer to boost profits by paying very low wages and pushing their workers on to public assistance to pay their bills. However, the best economic research shows that businesses can afford to pay a higher minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage has lagged behind the cost of living for the past several decades. If it had kept pace with inflation since the late 1960s, it would be more than $10.55 today. Ten U.S. states already tie their minimum wages to changes in the state’s cost of living. States that index do not experience job losses compared to states that do not.

A higher minimum wage will offer some relief to the nation’s lowest-paid workers and help protect the promise of upward economic mobility for hard-working Americans.

Michael Reich is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he directs the Institute for Research  on Labor and Employment.