in the summer of '98 the city council woke up to the fact that we had a full blown affordable housing crisis on our hands after nearly a decade of avoidance. they promptly passed a resolution adopting an affordable housing policy. one aspect of the resolution was a call to establish, what else, a task force. i know i skate close to the edge with my sarcasm but i become so angry i can barely write. bear with me please. task force members were chosen by the mayor and the c.c. mayor got the chair and seven members, c.c. got 13 members. they were charged to study the problem and report back with their results and recommendations. they submitted their report to the mayor on july 15, 1999. they had determined that the total public investment over the previous five years in the city of mpls had been $80 million or $16 million/year. with that degree of investment and the city's penchant for boarding and tearing down, our metro area faced a shortage of nearly 15,000 units of affordable housing, much of that in mpls. we also faced a large increase in the homeless population. the task force presented seven recommendations, none of which i can discern the city heeded. only one of those recommendation addressed funding. one recommendation even encompassed ideas to fund increased appropriations to affordable housing. one recommendation addressed the nature of the problem being national, state, regional, as well as local in scope and suggested increased lobbying at all levels. the numbers and ideas in Jim niland's proposal came directly from the affordable housing task force. the council led by ms cherryhomes chose to ignore those recommendations and proposed instead that we stick a finger in a dyke bursting at the seams. the mayor agreed. i do not have time to detail every fact in order to defuse the comments of ms becker. i suggest that those of you interested in the full report of the affordable housing task force and confirming city council debates and resolutions may access them at the municipal library in city hall or if you take my word for it and just want to read the report you can get that at the central library. i am returning my copy tomorrow. respectfully tim connolly ward 7 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/
