Are the home values and property tax burdens of permanent homeowners affected by growth in housing rentals and second homes: Evidence based on big data from Florida

Homeowners who make their homes their primary residence have resisted the entry of rentals into their neighborhoods and cities. Possible reasons underlying this resistance are that rentals reduce the property values, increase the property tax burdens, and raise the price of public services for these homeowners. We relate the market values of single-family homes occupied by permanent homeowners, the effective property tax rate of these homeowners, and the tax price they pay for public services to shifts in their city's housing units toward a variety of different types of rentals and second homes. Our analysis is based on large panels of Florida homes containing hundreds of thousands and millions of observations. Our results show that increases in the share of a city's housing units used as rentals or second homes reduce the home values, increase the property tax burdens, and raise the public services prices of homeowners who permanently reside in single-family homes. Impacts vary in magnitude among single-family, condominium, and mobile homes used as rentals and second homes. Estimated impacts are the strongest for share increases in single-family rentals and second homes.     

A note on the care and handling of triremes

The authors of'Effects of shipworm on the performance of ancient Mediterranean warships'(Steinmayer & Turfa, 1996) theorise that extensive shipworm damage to warships of the ancient Mediterranean was unavoidable and would have affected naval operations and the outcome of naval battles. However, there is a significant amount of literary evidence for the care and handling of warships and for the battles in which they engaged that they have not taken into account. The purpose of this note is to bring the missing evidence into the discussion and to suggest that ancient seafarers were better able to protect their ships than Steinmayer and Turfa have allowed.     

This is where we live: queering poor urban spaces in literature of black gay men

This article critiques the exclusion of working-class and impoverished gays and lesbians of color by drawing on popular and academic theories of the development of gay and queer urban spaces. Through an analysis of black gay men's literature of the 1980s and 1990s, it explores the factors that tie black gay men to and ostracize them from their home neighborhoods. It is argued that black gay writers use textual strategies to question their invisibility in their communities of origin and in white gay neighborhoods, show their positions and roles in the home and neighborhood, and queer these spaces.     

A history of transboundary storm water flows: flooding,tunnels, and the spatial incongruity of the U.S.–Mexico border

The benefits of transnational flows and the concern for national security have framed development in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands since the formative beginnings of both nations. As national discourses, trade and security work against each other in borderland spaces, the former requiring openings in the border, the later seeking to control it. This paper considers the material implications of these discourses on the border landscape with particular attention to historical boundary development, urbanization, and impacts of chronic flooding. It argues that material discursive dynamics not only constitute the contemporary landscape, but create spatial incongruities that influence the impacts of natural processes, such as storm water flow. Using the southern Arizona border as a case study, the paper uses archival research to explore the historical geography of chronic flooding in the twentieth century and the shift in dynamics of flooding due to border boundary build up.