timothy connolly wrote:
>
>
>
> NRP spent 48.5% of its funds, roughly $82 million on
> housing. The majority of that was spent for
> improvement and renovation of owner-occupied single
> family houses such as the Petersons.
But that was not the "fault" of the NRP. It was
neighborhoods that decided where to put their emphasis in
housing.
>
> Another decent portion of the $82 million went into
> "BLIGHT" removal and demolition. I don't have exact
> numbers but it would not surprise me if more was spent
> on demolition than on new multi-unit rental housing in
> the past decade.
My neighborhood went into the NRP with 83 vacant/boarded
houses. Since we didn't trust MCDA to judge them, we hired
or got to volunteer our own house judge, if you will. Maybe
structural engineer, I fairly foggy on the exact skills. He
looked at all 83 and roughly half had to come down. Of the
remainder, all of which we re-habbed, the greatest number
went into affordable home ownership. We didn't build
multi-unit housing because we only had one or two double lot
spaces to fill and the rules for even 4-plexes had changed
(square footage of the lots), so that most of our lots would
not qualify under the code for more than a triplex at the
outside.
Further, we went into the NRP with 70% rental property and
30% owner occupied property. What we wanted, ideally, was
for long-time renters in the neighborhood to have the
opportunity to buy the refurbished houses first, thus
stabilizing the housing of our neighbors. That only
partically worked. Some of the buyers came from as far away
as Lyndale, Bryant, Bancroft, etc. and some from even
further.
>
> So the money spent on home owners dried up money that
> could be leveraged to build more apartments.
Also, at the time, six or seven years ago now when the plan
was made, multi-unit buildings werre the most difficult to
control and the most vulnerable to problems, or so the
research said.
>
> It is a known fact that NRP favors homeowners over
> renters and relatively wealthier people.
I don't know that "known fact." I do know that different
neighborhoods had different solutions and that they
implemented the solutions they come up with. Remember, when
we started the NRP, there was no housing shortage. The NRP
was well on it's way when Becky Yanish took down all the
multi-unit housing and put up six or seven units (I
exagerate), but she sure didn't put up much new housing.
> Because nothing was being built shortages arose
> driving up housing prices, valuations and ultimately
> taxes, and so now we have pretty houses with house
> rich-cash poor people facing an economic recession and
> a worsened municipal financial situation that may put
> greater upward pressure on property taxes despite what
> the legislature may be doing.
I'm not sure anyone could have predicted the meteoric rise
in housing prices. We sure never did. We expected a
gradual rise after we had the work done throughout the
neighborhood.
>
>
> The irony and hypocrisy of all this is that in all
> likelihood the ones who screamed loudest about costly
> and wasteful downtown developments as corporate
> welfare and pushed for NRP from the neighborhood level
> sucked the breast of NRP for the past decade and would
> never think to call that welfare.
Actually, the NRP housing work and other public
infrastructure improvements were those things long neglected
by the city that neighborhoods were determined to change. I
don't remember calling downtown development "costly and
wasteful". I do remember saying that the neighborhoods were
falling apart and MCDA was shining it on.
>
> All in all, Tim, the NRP had all the flaws that humans are heir too, just like the
>city itself--and every other city around. It seems somewhat unfair to all us hard
>working neighborhood volunteers to call us hypocritical and screaming--I never
>scream, except at the cat when she has her claws in my flesh.
>
WizardMarks, Central
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