Last month the MPHA Board voted to authorize their staff to explore the notion of having that agency be a full-boat developer of affordable housing, not just a caretaker agency for the - ballpark figure - $500 million public housing stock extant and wholly owned in Minneapolis. New federal rules also permit MPHA to undertake substantial partnerships with private entities. Both MPHA and MCDA have looked closely at what turns out to be a promising market potential for senior housing in particular and MPHA is meeting with housing advocates June 1 to go over the agency's current one-year and five-year draft plans prior to the MPHA Board's public hearing on June 27. The Minneapolis High Rise Representative Council (MHRC) will have some heavy-duty comment finalized for inclusion in MPHA's annual message to its federal overseers and other interested parties. Stephen Seidel, the Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity, an agency participant in the Consortium of Nonprofit Developers, argues that economies of scale will once again have their day in the production of affordable housing stock. Warning against unthinking reliance on the current "mixed-income" formulation he says: "In mixed-income developments, the standard approach is to reserve 20% of the units for households with very low incomes (i.e. incomes below 50% of area median). This means that in order to produce 20 units of affordable housing a development needs to produce a total of 100 units. Based on this 20% formula (and using the figures produced by the Minneapolis Affordable Housing Task Force which in 1999 determined that the city of Minneapolis alone needed 14,000 additional units of affordable housing), relying entirely on the mixed-income development approach would mean 70,000 total units of housing would need to be produced in order to create the 14,000 units of affordable housing needed just in the city of Minneapolis. Seventy thousand units of housing equals approximately one-third of all the housing units that currently exist in the city of Minneapolis. Clearly, producing 70,000 of units of housing in Minneapolis is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, tens of thousands of households are living in sub-standard housing -- housing that is overcrowded or housing that consumes too large a share of their modest incomes." Cradle to grave collateral costs of inadequate housing on a massive scale are there to be noted. Ask the service professionals who deal with family crises. Ask the law enforcement community. Ask the families and individuals themselves, especially renters. Ask the neighborhood associations across the city. Ask small businesses about the destabilizing effects of too little housing for too many people. Ask our tourist and convention visitors and our suburban commuters about their personal comfort levels once the sun goes down. Large businesses and relatively advantaged homeowners might well consider the cost of the "pounds of cure" required when our elected officials and public agencies duck "ounces of prevention" strategies - specifically the vote in Minneapolis to move the definition of "affordable" from 30% to 50% of metro median income. Such a patent avoidance strategy deserves the attention of all the city's voters because more of the same will mean sharply increased public costs in the years ahead. One may hope that a more resolute mayor and city council (aka the MCDA Board) - will abandon economic handwringing and get on with some major housing production for the gazillion Minneapolis households who bring in less than $20,000 annually. This is a large city and we don't - we can't - all live in $150,000 to $200,000 bungalows with little lawns out front. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
