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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DOWNLOAD CROSSTABS.

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

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

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

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

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