[Mpls] Public housing production

[Fredric H. Markus]

The Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) is contemplating the production of new public housing using newly minted understandings with the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA). This is a good thing. MPHA is contemplating using the ground it owns just to the south of our parking lot at Horn Terrace/Tower for an eight-unit building. This is not a good thing. Lyndale Youth Farm and highrise resident garden plots occupy this ground as does the first phase of our more formal Peace Garden. Horn recently received a community-building grant from the Lyndale Neighborhood Association that will further these opportunities for positive interaction between the highrise towers and their surrounding neighborhood – especially important given the large immigrant presence in these populations and the proven success of intergenerational activities working in our natural environment. These are hands-on experiences involving a variety of people of all ages, not plant and forget cosmetic landscape features.   “So find me another site!” said a well-meaning member of the management team at MPHA. Ok. Does MCDA have any inventory that will accept an eight-unit building? How about contributing the Horn “back forty” to a municipal land trust umbrella covering interactive community gardens city-wide and doing a systematic look at the spread of community garden sites around town. There might be some economies of scale around composting, trash pick-up, and programs for school kids – I’d love to see a greenhouse operation emerge. I maintained a small greenhouse on Nicollet Island for several years as a backstop to our various pubic planting areas and the Island kids learned a lot just by being underfoot. How about planning to have interactive gardening features as a regular adjunct to new public housing – we are a city of gardeners, after all, especially including those of us who have come to live here from other lands and cultures.   How about using the land trust/land cost write-down model, a public/private partnership with PPL or somebody that really knows their way around affordable housing production AND management, alternate energy production features – remember, the Green Institute has no furnace – financing backed by the enormous equity already in place in Minneapolis public housing structures, the bundling of Section 8 dollars, inclusionary income structuring so the operation is self-sustaining, and placement in the city’s many neighborhoods as a deliberate and frequent expression of the will of the citizenry – no more ad hoc clustering, which is what placement of eight additional units on the already crowded Horn site would be, and maybe some teeth in the city-wide planning intention around this related to zoning and neighborhood use of public dollars. A Minnesota Land Use Planning Act (LUPA) lawsuit would really sting and Minneapolis has some serious baggage!   We are about to experience the expiration of the five-year welfare limits. There are thousands of names on MPHA’s waiting lists. There are thousands of near-seniors in the general population that the two agencies already know are a proven market niche. We have a deepening recession at the national level and a federal administration that seems determined to undo the public housing successes of the last three decades with short-sighted funding cuts and punitive tenant management. How about some new blood in our municipal planning veins and a vigorous Minneapolis response to the challenge of the NIMBY voices, including, apparently, my own!   I can’t find that single alternate location by myself, but I can surely hope that R.T., David Fey and the other transition team members, and the new council leadership will help encourage the agencies to try a little harder to use affordable housing production tools on an appropriate scale – and not one location, many locations. Variety is the spice of life and that is as true for our neighborhoods as it is for our city, our region and our state. Public housing production will play an important role these next few years and it won’t be with federal dollars. It’ll happen because the light that now shines on the core cities and much of Greater Minnesota will also come to illuminate the imaginations of the newer suburbs as they begin to experience what passes for middle age in these parts. Get a grip! Beat the rush!   There will surely be more good suggestions at ISAIAH’s Inclusionary Housing program at St. Mary’s Basilica, Tuesday, November 27, 7:00-8:30 pm.   Fred Markus Horn Terrace Ward Ten