Barbara hits on an issue I gave up pushing 10 years ago.
Do you want to take an active part in providing quality affordable rental
housing in your neighborhood? Do wish to clean up your neighborhood in a
rock solid, hands on, long-term fashion? Do you want to contribute to
upgrading of your block, neighborhood, city and community as a whole? Then
buy a house, fix it up, rent it out for a decade or longer. If one thousand
so called concerned citizens did this, the tenor of my hometown of
Minneapolis would be markedly different.
Scapegoating of landlords would diminish. Tenant accountability
would come to the fore. It would stem the exodus of local hardware stores.
There are a so many positive things that would occur if we had an extra
1,000 landlords of one unit or two in town. The general acrimony that
exists between Landlords V Tenants, LandlordsV City Hall, Landlords V
Neighborhood, would all dissipate. Heavens sake we need that now!
And maybe, just maybe, Minnesota's opinion about landlording would change.
Then we would get more investors willing to invest in our fair city again.
All the talk about affordable housing has led to no viable solutions. A
forest of trees have been killed just to print the innovations to meetings.
A super tanker of ink has been wasted printing them. Still no real
solutions.
Craig Miller
Provider of 34 units of affordable housing in Camden (plus hundreds more
elsewhere)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Rich McMartin Rich McMartin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Minneapolis Issues
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 4:24 PM
Subject: Re: [Mpls] List members in the news (Affordable housing)
>Actually, this is what has happened in Seward. While researching an
article I
>wrote, I learned that many of the houses that go up for sale are bought by
>neighbors who consider them long-term investments, not cash flow
generators.
>They put the profit from renting (and in my case and most others, the
"profit"
>is small, less than $5,000/year) into upgrading and maintaining the
property
>because their main objective is to have more control over who is renting on
>their block and/or nearby. I got this info by speaking to several
realtors.
>
>In Seward, this has kept the population pretty stable, as we small-time
>landlords and ladies, when we find a good renter, we like to keep them, so
we
>don't raise rents exorbitantly. In fact, I like to give multi-year leases
(I
>let people out of them if they are buying their own house) because if I
have
>turnover every year, I barely break even.
>
>The increase in the valuation over here was pretty hard to take with
maximum
>increases over the last three years and a rental price locked in by the
lease,
>and I am forced to raise the rent by quite a jump when the lease comes up
for
>renewal.
>
>This is a h*ll of a way to run a railroad, if you ask me.
>Barbara Nelson
>Seward
>
>Rich McMartin Rich McMartin wrote:
>
>> And another thing... I remember some experimental tax program for
>> Phillips that was giving a break to people who live near thier rental
>> property. Maybe this could be expanded. It would enable rental property
>> owners to be closer to their properties and be more observant of problems
>> in and around their properties.
>>
>
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