Podcasts about palo alto police department

Years of Service: 1999-2017  In part 1, Jess discusses her troubled family life and how that shaped the person she became. Jess used these experiences and adversity to help her become an effective police officer first with the Palo Alto Police Department and then later with the Hayward Police Department. While working for the Palo Alto Police Department, Jess realized she was not a “white suburban cop” and later transferred to the Hayward Police Department where she began to work “real crime”.  Throughout her career, Jess describes herself as a SAM (shit-attracting magnet), and during part 1 she talks about situations that she found herself in including a shooting at the beginning of her career. This episode probes the beginnings of a career in law enforcement with episode 2 detailing what happens when things start to go wrong within a police department.

Welcome everybody, today's show will be especially valuable for those of you who are first responders and maybe more important, for their families to listen to. Or, if you are curious about what goes on behind closed doors in a police family. There is so much good information here, I had to split this up into two episodes. My guest on today's show is known as the ‘Cop Doc', Dr. Ellen Kirschman. For over four decades, Dr. Ellen Kirschman's specialty has been treating first responders, cops, firefighters, and their families who are suffering from work-related traumatic stress. Today's episode is going to lean more on the cop side of the house but can be easily translated to other first responders.Dr. Kirschman is also an award-winning and best-selling author of fiction and non-fiction. She is best known for the gold standard book for cops and their families, “I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know” along with “Counseling Cops: What Clinicians Need to Know” and “I Love a Fire Fighter: What the Family Needs to Know.”Dr. Kirschman is also the author of her very successful crime series, The Dot Meyerhoff Mystery Series, where she blends her real-life stories with cops into fiction. In today's episode we discuss:·      Has Dr. Kirschman ever loved a cop? Her work as a police psychologist with the Palo Alto Police Department.·      My own, and other cop's recollections of her book, I Love a Cop.·      How Dr. Kirschman got into the business of helping cops through trauma.·      The divorce rate among cops, the numbers might surprise you.·      The different phases of a law enforcement career.·      When should a cop leave the job?·      When and how should a cop talk to their families about what they are going through at work?Visit Dr. Kirschman's website to learn more about her and her books!Check out Field Training (Brew City Blues Book 1)!!Enjoy the Cops and Writers book series.Please visit the Cops and Writers website. Only for Cops and Writers Podcast listeners! Get 50% off the audiobook version of the F.B.I. K-9 thriller, Avenging Adam by Jodi Burnett. Use code, https://jodi-burnett.com/copsandwriters/Support the show

Alana Forrest started her 29-year public service career in 1983 at the Palo Alto Police Department and rose through the ranks to Lieutenant. Forrest was promoted to the position of Captain by joining the Los Gatos/Monte Sereno Police Department in 2000 and retired in 2012. She has spent the last 11 years in corporate security and currently leads Global Safety and Security at Intuit. She is a proud co-founder of the California Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Symposium, which began as a local partnership in 2006 and is now endorsed by multiple law enforcement associations with a national following.Forrest joins host Dr. Marisa Randazzo to discuss:The impact of mentoring on her career and the motivation behind starting the Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Foundation.The role of storytelling and connecting on a personal level to demonstrate security's value to other areas of an organization.Advice for women/girls pursuing a career in protection.Key takeaways:[08:38] Marisa Randazzo: I just think it's so important — the value of mentorship. But it's often difficult to figure out how to get started, so the details that you're sharing here are very helpful. I want to ask a follow-up question about the California Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Symposium. Who is it open to? [09:14] Alana: It's open to anyone. It's not just women but anyone in active law enforcement and retirees can also attend. We're trying to just open up the floodgates and allow anybody who wants to come to join us in California every year. It's been one of the proudest accomplishments in my career — to establish this and have it still be so successful.[15:53] Marisa Randazzo: It sounds like what your foundation now your symposium did was give people up a place for that colleagueship, especially from those smaller departments when they didn't have it in-house necessarily but they could still access. That same level of connection and advice and commiseration just from outside their department but still within the industry. That's phenomenal.[16:16] Alana: Yeah, absolutely and even now unfortunately in the 2000s and here we are in 2023 — we still hear similar stories of challenges that we heard in the 1980s and 90s. So it really does provide an opportunity and a forum for people who are really struggling to get some much needed support. It's kind of sad that we are still having some of these conversations. But at least there's support there.[17:53] Alana: One of the things that I've really tried to do when I first enter any organization is build those relationships and find the right people to talk to — who's in charge of what but also who are the team players that have leadership qualities that you can tell are the people that get things done or has the leadership's ear. Seek out those people to get by your side and have lunch or coffee and have a discussion — what are your pain points with global safety and security or at the security team? [20:51] Alana: I've been in where data really drives the conversation and so I think any sort of data points or storytelling [help in displaying value]. Tell the stories to let people know exactly what's going On. As people started to come back to work I would take people through our Global Security Operations Center and let them see what we do because people really don't have ah an understanding of how much work we do to keep them safe behind the scenes. So when they walk into that room and they see all the monitors and they see all the people and all the activity and I explain what we're doing and how we keep them safe, that is a huge win. [33:36] Alana: You know one of the things I'll emphasize is again — finding those mentors and those champions and building relationships is so important. I didn't get to any promotion or any position in my private sector career without the benefit of a relationship or a connection that I cultivated. And also just being willing to be helpful to anyone who reaches out for questions.

Today's policing is more dangerous than ever. Staying sharp and following proper professional and tactical procedures is the key to staying alive and I couldn't think of a better guest to talk to about this topic than Scott Savage.Scott Savage began his career in public safety at age 19, first as an E.M.T and then as a licensed paramedic working in a busy emergency medical system. In 1999, he became a police officer with the Palo Alto Police Department in California where he worked assignments including Patrol, Narcotics, and SWAT. Scott has spent the last seven years with Palo Alto PD as a Sergeant, where I served as the Incident Commander for critical incidents and regularly supervised the police response to in-progress situations. After a great career with Palo Alto PD, he joined the Santa Clara Police Department (CA) as an Officer and continues to serve there today.In 2019 Scott founded the Savage Training Group which provides high quality law enforcement training across the United States.

Tetris is one of the most popular video games of all time, but few people know that one of the developers of the global sensation met a very tragic, complex and deadly end. On September 22, 1998, Vladimir Pokhilko, was found dead alongside his wife and their young son in their Palo Alto, CA, home. Now, more than two decades later, the Palo Alto Police Department homicide investigators revisit the haunting crime in Investigation Discovery's The Tetris Murders. Throughout this gripping three-part docuseries, the investigators unearth new theories and evidence, further unraveling the mystery of this crime. What was once thought to be a murder-suicide, is now revealed to be something much more sinister and dark connections to Russia are suggested.

Tetris is one of the most popular video games of all time, but few people know that one of the developers of the global sensation met a very tragic, complex and deadly end. On September 22, 1998, Vladimir Pokhilko, was found dead alongside his wife and their young son in their Palo Alto, CA, home. Now, more than two decades later, the Palo Alto Police Department homicide investigators revisit the haunting crime in Investigation Discovery's The Tetris Murders. Throughout this gripping three-part docuseries, the investigators unearth new theories and evidence, further unraveling the mystery of this crime. What was once thought to be a murder-suicide, is now revealed to be something much more sinister and dark connections to Russia are suggested.

What happens when you get a call for a barricaded suspect? What's the first move, the 5th, the last? Join Adam as he has an open an important discussion with Scott Savage about Critical Incident Response and high-risk calls. EPISODE PAGE: https://thebreakdown.ca/026 Scott started his career in public safety at age 19, as an EMT and Paramedic. He spent 18 years with the Palo Alto Police Department in California, the last 7 of which were as a Sergeant. In 2007, Scott was awarded the Bronze Level Training Award by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security for my work in presenting terrorism response training. In 2017, he transferred to the Santa Clara Police Department in California where he continues to serve today. Scott’s previous assignments include Patrol Supervisor, Incident Commander, SWAT, Crisis Negotiator, and Training Officer. He is the founder of the Savage Training Group which provides advanced training to law enforcement officers to help them advance their careers, become experts and save lives.    Websites:  https://savagetraininggroup.com/  See more of Scott Savage on IRT Round 1: Use of Force and Defensive Tactics - CLICK HERE.

Police Officer Scott Savage talks about his career in law enforcement. Scott’s grandfather, Lemuel D. Savage was a Police Detective in the Amarillo Texas Police Department. He was shot and killed on March 15, 1945. One of his convicted killers later murdered  two Corrections Officers and was eventually executed in 1948. Scott talks about how the murder of his grandfather affected his family and the realities of Police Work today.  Background song Hurricane is used with permission from the band Dark Horse Flyer.

Episode 11 Maria Ann Hsiao This episode contains brief updates on upcoming shows, the Randy Leach case, and Chase Lackey before we move on to the main subject, Maria Ann Hsiao. Who killed Maria? Someone knows something. Can you help police solve this troubling mystery? Let us know what you think! Special thanks to the Palo Alto Police Department. Visit caseacquaint.com for more information and links to sites mentioned in this episode! or  riafoundation.org https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faP6-0NBNYM   We are working on uploading all episodes to youtube for your convenience, and we are now on most major podcast platforms. Look for us on your favorite! Music: Modum    by: Kai Engel    Album: Caeli Link to more music by Kai Engel Check out Kai's website  

What follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Emily Hamilton about land use regulations' effects on affordable housing. Petersen: My guest today is Emily Hamilton. She is a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Emily, thanks for being on Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me. Petersen: So, Emily recently wrote a paper titled "How Land Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing" along with her co-author Sanford Ikeda. The paper is a review of many studies looking at land use restrictions and it identifies four of the most common types of land use restrictions. Those are: minimum lots sizes, minimum parking requirements, inclusionary zoning, and urban growth boundaries. So Emily, could you tell us what each of those restrictions entail? Hamilton: Sure. So, starting off with the first, minimum lots sizes. This is probably what people most commonly associate with zoning. It's the type of Euclidian zoning that separates residential areas from businesses and then within residential areas limits the number of units that can be on any certain size of land. And this is the most common tool that makes up what is sometimes referred to as Snob Zoning, where residents lobby for larger minimum lots sizes and larger house sizes to ensure that their neighbors are people who can afford only that minimum size of housing. Petersen: So it keeps the poor away, effectively. Hamilton: Exactly. And then parking requirements are often used as a tool to ensure that street parking doesn't get too congested. So when cars first became common, parking was really crazy where people would just leave their car on the street, maybe double parked, or in an inconvenient situation near their destination. And obviously as driving became more and more common and that was just an untenable situation and there had to be some sort of order to where people were allowed to park. But street parking remained typically free or underpriced relative to demand. So, people began lobbying for a parking requirement that would require business owners and residential developers to provide parking that was off streets so that this underpriced street parking remained available. But that brought us to today where we often have just mass seas of parking in retail areas and residential areas, which are paper focuses on. Parking substantially contributes to the cost of housing, making it inaccessible in some neighborhoods for low income people and driving up the cost of housing for everyone who has been using the amount of parking that their developer was required to provide. Petersen: So that's one where you can really see the original justification. And it makes sense, if you have a business and a lot of people are parking and it spills over onto the street then maybe that's an externality. And it seems reasonable for you to have to provide parking for the people who come to your business, especially if a lot of them are driving there. But we push that too far, is what I'm hearing. Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah, it does seem reasonable but the argument in favor of parking requirements tends to ignore that business owners have every incentive to make it easy to get to their business. So, in many cases there's not necessarily an externality because the business owner providing the parking has the right incentive to provide enough to make it easy for their customers to get there. The externality really comes up when we think about street parking and Donald Shoup---probably the world's foremost expert on parking---has made the argument that pricing street parking according to demand is a real key in getting parking rules right. Petersen: So, on to the next one. What is inclusionary zoning? Hamilton: Inclusionary zoning is a rule that requires developers to make a certain number of units in a new development accessible to people at various income levels. Often inclusionary zoning is tied with density bonuses. So, a developer will have the choice to make a non-inclusionary project that is only allowed to have the regular amount of density that that lot is zoned for. Or, he can choose to take the inclusionary zoning density bonus which will allow him to build more units overall including the inclusionary unit and additional market-rate units. Typically, units are affordable to people who are making a certain percentage of the area median income, so people who might not have low income but who are making not enough to afford a market rate unit in their current neighborhood. Petersen: Okay, so that's sort of forcing developers to build affordable units that they then will probably lose money on, so that they can build the market rate units that they can make money on. Hamilton: Exactly. That's how cities make inclusionary zoning attractive to developers is by giving them that bonus that can allow them to build more market rate housing. In other cities, however, inclusionary zoning is required for all new developments so it really varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction how it's implemented. Petersen: So the fourth land use restriction you mention is urban growth boundaries. What are those? Hamilton: So Oregon is the most famous example in the US of implementing an urban growth boundary. And what it is, is basically a state law that requires each city to set up a boundary around its edges, where for a certain amount of time no housing can be built outside of that boundary. And the idea is to gradually expand the city's footprint over time to allow the suburbs to expand a little further, but to restrict that suburban development using the boundary for some time period. Other examples like London's urban growth boundary I believe are permanent, so there are certain areas that can never be developed. Petersen: So I believe we have something like this in Vancouver. We have farmland in the metro Vancouver area which---for context this area is one of the most overheated high-priced housing markets in the world---and we have this land that's just zoned for farms. And a lot of the time people don't even bother to plant crops, they're just holding the land for the day when eventually it can be rezoned into housing. So I looked it up before we went on and some of these plots are $350,000 an acre, which of course is not reflective of just how productive they are as farmland but of how productive they would be when they are eventually rezoned. Hamilton: Exactly. Yes, very similar to Oregon's program. And a lot of empirical studies have been done on Portland's growth boundary because researchers can easily look at the block that are selling on either side of the boundary to see whether or not it's affecting land prices and several studies have found a very clear effect of the boundary in driving up the price of the land. Petersen: And in Vancouver, the city is very reluctant to rezone. So, people are constantly applying and being denied but you know it's like winning the lottery having your bit of useless farmland rezoned to super high value housing. And people are just holding on to those dead lands in the hopes of winning that lottery which is kind of---it's a bizarre outcome. Hamilton: It is. And urban growth boundary supporters often frame it as environmental regulation that's going to protect this open space. While encouraging people to live in more dense and transit and walkable friendly neighborhoods, but it's not as if Portland is free of other types of zoning rules. So at the same time it has this urban growth boundary it also has a lot of traditional zoning rules that limit the potential to build up while the growth boundary is limiting the potential to grow out. So it's coming from both directions. Petersen: So, just how costly do economists think these regulations are? What kind of estimates do they have? Hamilton: So, I think some of the most compelling estimates look at the macroeconomic effect of these rules. Because typically the most binding zoning rules are also in the most productive cities, where there's the highest level of demand for people to live. Because these are where the best jobs are as well as the best urban amenities, a lot of people want to live here. One study looking at this macroeconomic effect found that the three most productive cities which are New York, San Francisco, and San Jose---I should clarify; this is just looking at the effective growth within US---if those three cities lowered the burden of their land use regulation to that of the median American city it could result in a 9% increase in the level of US GDP. So, these rules are having just an enormous effect on economic growth. Not to mention the very substantial effect they have for individuals and making it difficult or impossible for people to afford to live in their desired location. Petersen: So, you know, San Francisco that's where Silicon Valley is. And so we think of it as a place with super high productivity---tech workers working at Google---and yet with their housing market being one of the most restricted. So not only is there the loss from the housing market itself, that you could sell a lot of housing there and that would increase GDP by itself, but also there are people living in less productive areas doing less productive jobs, who could come and work for Google. But they can't because they've been priced out of the market. Is that where most of the effect comes from? Hamilton: That's right. Yeah, I think the effect is also certainly at that top-end of the market where we're seeing all kinds of blog posts and articles about a person making six figures at Facebook who can't afford the Bay area. So those people might choose to go live in say Denver, or Austin, or a city that still has plenty of great jobs but isn't as productive as San Francisco or San Jose. But then we also see this down the income spectrum, where people who are in the service industry, say waiting tables, could make much more in San Francisco then they can in Houston, or wherever they happen to live. But their quality of life is much better in some of less productive cities because of the cost of housing and other areas of consumption that higher real estate costs drive up. Petersen: One thing I've heard about a lot of these Californian coastal cities---I think it was Palo Alto---where not a single member of the Palo Alto Police Department lives in Palo Alto because you just can't live there on a policeman's salary, so they all have to commute in every day and then commute out every night. Hamilton: Yeah, and for some of these hugely important needed services it just makes the quality of life of the people in those industries so much worse than it would be if they could afford to live closer to their job. Petersen: Right. So, to summarize the labor market mobility of the United States in general has been greatly restricted by these land use restrictions. Even though the land use restrictions are local, this has an effect on the national economy. Hamilton: Exactly right. And we can see this in the data where income convergence across areas of the country has greatly slowed down since the 1970's when these rules really started taking off. Petersen: You argue that the costs of these restrictions fall primarily on low-income households so can you talk through how that happens? Hamilton: Sure. It happens in two ways. First off, you have the low income people who are living in very expensive cities and these people might have to endure very long commutes---you talked about the police officer in Palo Alto who can't live anywhere near his job. Not that police officers are low income, but just as an example that illustrates the point. Or they have to live in very substandard housing, perhaps a group house that's just crammed with people maybe even illegally, in order to afford to live anywhere near where they're working. Petersen: Yeah, I was going to say I thought those group houses were illegal from these very same land use regulations, but I guess people get around it. Hamilton: Yeah, a lot of US cities have rules about the number of unrelated people who can live in a house. And certainly those rules are sometimes broken. That, I think, is clear to anyone who's spent time in an expensive city. You know, people have to live in these less than ideal conditions and waste too much of their time commuting in order to make that work. But the unseen version of it is the person who lives in a low-income part of the country and would like to improve their job opportunity and quality of life by moving to somewhere more productive, but they simply can't make it work so they stay in that low-income area without meeting their working potential. Petersen: There was a study by David Autor---I think I cited it in a previous episode and got the author name wrong but it's definitely David Autor---and it was looking at the shock, the trade shock that hit United States when it opened up trade with China in the early 2000's. And it basically showed that a lot of parts of the country just never recovered. So, if you worked in particular industries---I think the furniture industry was one that was basically wiped out---and if you worked in a town next to a furniture factory and that was your job, not only did you lose your job, you lost all the value in your home because the one industry in the town is gone. And you can't afford to move to one of the booming industries like Silicon Valley or in another part of the country because they've so greatly restricted the elasticity of their housing supply. And that's not all, Autor's paper basically just shows that it took a very long time to recover from the shock and a lot of places didn't recover at all. But I really think that housing is part of that picture if you're trying to figure out why the US economy can't respond to shocks like it used to in the 20th century. That has to be a big part of the picture. Hamilton: Definitely. And that trend, as far as people being able to leave these depressed or economically stagnant areas, this also comes out in the income's convergence as we talked about earlier. Petersen: So, the other part of that, I saw in your paper, was not only are poor people hurt but rich people who already own homes have seen those home prices rise. So it's affecting inequality at both ends of the spectrum, correct? Hamilton: Right, Bill Fischel at Dartmouth has done a lot of work on why it is that people lobby so hard in favor of rules that restrict development. And he terms it as the Homevoter Hypothesis, where people who own homes have a huge amount of their wealth tied up in their home and so they are in favor of rules that protect that asset and prevent any shocks such as a huge amount of new development that could result in a decline in their homes value. I think you talked about that in your episode with Nolan Gray on trailer parks. Petersen: Yeah, we talked about William Fischel's Homevoter Hypothesis. So the essence of that is that people vote in local elections, and they lobby to restrict the supply of housing in their neighborhood, and that increases their wealth by, you know, increasing the land values in that area. How do you deal with that when there's such an entrenched special interest everywhere to push up land prices? Hamilton: I think that's the hugely difficult problem. And at the same time as we have the challenges with the Homevoter system that Fischel plays out, we have a lot of federal policies that encourage homeownership as not just a good community-building tool but also as an investment. So people are programmed by the federal government to see their house as an investment in spite of economic challenges that it presents. David [Schleicher]---a law professor at Yale---has done some really interesting work on ways that institutional changes could limit the activity of homeowners and lobbying against new development. One of his proposals is called a Zoning Budget. And under a zoning budget, municipalities would have to allow a certain amount of population growth each year. So, they could designate areas of a city that are going to only be home to single family homes, but within some parts of the city, they would have to allow building growth to accommodate a growing population. Petersen: How would that be enforced, though? Hamilton: It would have to be a state law, or perhaps a federal law, but I think much more likely a state law that would mandate that localities do that. Massachusetts recently passed a law that requires all jurisdictions within the state to allow at least some multifamily housing. So it's kind of a similar idea. The state government can set a floor on how much local government can restrict development. Petersen: So, what I'm hearing is that different levels of government have different incentives with respect to restrictions. So, at the lowest level if I'm just in a small district or municipal area and I can restrict what my neighbors build on their property, that really affects my home price and that's the main thing that I'm going to lobby for at that level of government. But if I had to go all the way to the state government to try to push up house prices in my neighborhood, it wouldn't go so well. The state government has incentives to allow more people to live within their boundaries. Is that the gist of it? Hamilton: Yeah, that's right. It's easy to imagine a mayor of a fancy suburban community who simply represents his constituents' views that the community already has enough people, you know, life there is good and so nothing needs to change. But, I don't think that you'd find a Governor that would say "Our state doesn't need any more people or economic growth." So the incentives are less in favor of homeowners, local homeowners, the further up you go from the local to state jurisdiction. Petersen: Right. I guess a big issue is that the people who would like to move somewhere but live somewhere else don't get to vote in that place's elections or in their ballot measures. And so there's this group that has an interest in lower housing costs because they might move to your city or your town, if they could afford it, but they're not represented politically in that city or town and so they can't vote for more housing and lower prices. But then when you go to the whole state level and people are mobile within a state, those people do have a say or they are represented and pricing them out of the places they'd like to live really is bad for politics, bad for getting their votes. Hamilton: Right. So the Palo Alto police officer can't vote to change Palo Alto's policies but he can vote to change California policy. Petersen: Right, because he still lives within California. So one of the other policy recommendations I saw in your paper is tax increment local transfers or TILTs. What are they and how can they impact land use restrictions? Hamilton: That's another idea that comes from David Schleicher and I think it's another really interesting concept. The idea behind TILT is that a new development increases the property tax base within a jurisdiction. So, if you have a neighborhood, say a block full of single family homes that is allowed to be sold to a developer in order to build a couple of large apartment buildings, each apartment is going to be less expensive than the previous single family homes, but overall the apartment buildings will contribute more to property tax. And the idea behind a TILT is that part of this tax increment---which is the difference between the new tax base and the previous smaller tax base---could be shared with neighbors to the new development to kind of buy off their support for the development. So, those people who are in some sense harmed by the new buildings, whether in terms of more traffic or a change in their neighborhood's character, also benefit from the new building financially. So they're more likely to support it. Petersen: So economists talk about Potential Pareto Improvements, where you have a situation where some people are made better off while other people are worse off, but you could have a transfer to make everyone better off. And what I'm hearing with TILTs is you actually do that transfer, you actually pay off the losers with some of the surplus you get from the winners. So everyone can be better off when you make this overall beneficial change. Hamilton: Exactly. And sometimes communities do use community benefit as a tool to try to get developers to share their windfall and build a new project with the neighborhood. So they might say, "you can build an apartment building here, but you also have to build a swimming pool that the whole neighborhood can use at this other location," and in a way that achieves the end goal of buying off community support for new development. But it also drives up the cost of the new housing that the developer can provide. So TILTs have the advantage of keeping the cost of building the same for the developer, but still sharing that financial windfall of the new development with a broader group of people. Petersen: Yeah, I really like these policy recommendations. It would be so easy to just say "land use restrictions are bad, let's not have those anymore." But these really have an eye to the political structures that we currently have and towards making progress within the structure we have. So I like that approach to policy or to policy recommendations. I think economists should maybe do that more often. Hamilton: Yeah, looking for a win-win outcome. Petersen: The one other one that I don't think we've talked about is home equity insurance, which sounds like a business plan more than a policy proposal. But how can home equity insurance help to reduce the costs of land use restrictions? Hamilton: That proposal also came from Bill Fischel a couple of decades ago following on his work of the Homevoters theory. He proposed the idea that the reason home owners are so opposed to new development is often because they have so much of their financial wealth tied up in this house that they're not just opposed to a loss in their investment, but even more so, opposed to risk. So they want the policies that they see will limit the variance in their home equity and he proposed home equity insurance as a financial goal that could lower this threat and provide homeowners with a minimum amount of equity that they would have regardless to the new development. I think it's a really interesting concept but it's unclear, would this be a private financial product? Obviously the market isn't currently providing it, or would it be some kind of government policy? And while I do think it's very interesting, I think that we should be somewhat leery of new government policies that promote homeownership as a financial wealth building tool. Petersen: Well, the funny thing is that usually with insurance, if you have fire insurance you want to minimize the moral hazard of that, you don't want people to say: "Well I've got fire insurance so I don't have to worry about fires anymore." But with this, you sort of want that, you have insurance on the value of your home and then actually your goal is to make people less worried about the value of their home so that they will be okay with policies that reduce it. It's almost the opposite of what you want with insurance most of the time. In this case you want to maximize moral hazard. Hamilton: Yeah that's a great point and I think that's why it could only be a government product. Petersen: Right. Because if the private sector was providing home price insurance to homeowners then the company that provided the insurance would now have an incentive to lobby against upzoning the neighborhood. Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah it would create a new a new group of NIMBYs. Petersen: Yeah, at first I thought 'Oh great!', well this is something that we can just do, without the government. You can just get a bunch of people together, who have an interest in making cities more livable and they can provide this financial asset. But that seems like there are problems with it that are hard to overcome within the private sector. So overall do you think the tide might be turning on the NIMBYs? Are people becoming more aware of this issue and of land use restrictions and their effects on housing prices? Hamilton: I do think awareness is growing. There's a group popping up called YIMBY which stands for "Yes In My Backyard" as opposed to the suburban NIMBY to say "Not In My Backyard" to any sort of new development. And these YIMBY groups are gaining some traction in cities like San Francisco and lobbying in favor of new development to counter the voices that oppose new development. I am somewhat pessimistic, I have to say, just because from a public choice standpoint the forces in favor of land use regulations that limit housing are so powerful. But in spite of my pessimism, I'm seeing since the time that I started working on this issue several years ago, much more coverage of the issue from all kinds of media outlets, as well as much more interest in on-the-ground politics from people who aren't in the typical homeowner category. Petersen: Yeah, and I am hopeful too. But I often see people blame other factors for high home prices. They blame the speculators. The speculators are always the ones that are pushing up home prices. And rarely, I think, do people blame restrictions, although the YIMBY movement is a happy exception to that. Hamilton: Yeah, I think way too often real estate developers are framed as the enemy in these debates because they're the ones who make money off building new housing. But it's really the regulations that are to blame both for the inordinate profits that developers can make in expensive cities, and for the high costs of housing. Petersen: Do you have any closing thoughts about land use restrictions? Hamilton: I think that it's just really important to try to spread the message about the costs that these regulations have. Not just for low-income people but for the whole country and world economic growth. That's obviously a cause that I would think everyone would be behind: creating opportunity for people to live in the most productive cities where they can contribute the most to society and to the economy. Petersen: My guest today has been Emily Hamilton. Emily, thanks for being part of Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me.  

Today's point to ponder is brought to you by... So many of us started out our working life by sitting at the side of a road, at the end of our driveway with a sign that read, "Lemonade." It's almost a childhood rite of passage to try and earn some extra money by selling lemonade, kool-aid or cold water on a hot day. I can't tell you how many times while riding my police motor or driving the squad that I would stop at a lemonade stand and buy a glass and talk with kids and parents alike...brings back sweet memories of happy kids, appreciative parents and a kind of interaction that went unnoticed but never unappreciated.  Sgt. Ben Becchetti + Officer Dave Pecoraro of the Palo Alto Police Department know that exact feeling and they shared their love of community building through taking the time to chug back some lemonade, sharing a laugh with kids, letting them see the inside of a police car and learning more about serving and protecting with Lieutenant Zach Perron.  Lt Perron got to thinking and saw a great opportunity to get more of the Palo Alto Police involved with this form of community outreach and invited the public to let them know where road side stands were so that officers could indulge on a hot summer day. The feedback from the community has been amazing and the initiative is spreading across the country. This once unseen form of community building now can now be seen through the use of social media.  #CopsLoveLemonadeStands is being embraced by police officers and agencies because of how simple it is to take part in and how much of a positive impact it has in their communities.  How much good will is being created with communities by a simple act like this? What kind of price tag can you put on leaving a lasting, good and positive memory in the mind of our youth?  Get out there and join this movement...who knows, in the winter we can swing back for a visit becasue, #CopsLoveHotCocoa Lt. Perron also wrote an excellent piece about this for the International Association Of Chiefs of Police: http://blog.iacpsocialmedia.org/Home/tabid/142/entryid/423/Default.aspx Take a look on Twitter at the hashtag #CopsLoveLemonadeStands to see how great this is. Thanks to Lt Perron for joining on The Police Podcast today. You can follow along with the Palo Alto Police on social media:Twitter https://twitter.com/PaloAltoPoliceFacebook https://www.facebook.com/PaloAltoPoliceNextdoor https://nextdoor.com/YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/PaloAltoPoliceFlickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/paloaltopoliceLt Perron on Twitter https://twitter.com/zpPAPD  

Lieutenant Zach Perron is the Public Affairs Manager for the Palo Alto (CA) Police Department.He is an advocate for law enforcement's use of social media who enjoys studying how law enforcement can best leverage social media for general public outreach and for emergency communications. Zach is a former visiting fellow at the International Association of Chiefs of Police's Center for Social Media. Zach can be found on Twitter as @zpPAPD and LinkedIN.You can follow the Palo Alto Police Department on: FacebookTwitterNextdoorYouTubeFlickrNixle Palo Alto is one of the leaders in the use of social media and media realtions whose community and beyond can count on them for news, crime prevention tips, human interest stories, and more! They even have their own mobile app that you can download for free:"Palo Alto Police Department Mobile" on the App Store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/palo-alto-police-department/id841181859?ls=1&mt=8 and Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ezaxess.icampus.android.cityofpaloaltopd