I have a few comments, ideas, questions about the Land
Trust idea.
The way the land trusts are structured (at least as I
understand it) seems to deny people the opportunity to
accumulate much wealth through homeownership. A
non-profit owns most of the equity in the property and
the homeowner gets a little bit on their way out. For
many people, the only way they accumulate any wealth
at all is through their property values.
Could we accomplish homeownership for low income
people by simply buying down mortgages? A direct one
time pay-out to bring the mortgage down to what the
family could reasonably afford. The family then owns
the home and gets to keep the wealth they accumulate
over the course of time. I am not sure what the rules
are with the Habitat for Humanity houses. If the
person who gets one of their houses sells it, do they
get to keep all the equity? Does someone out there
know?
The cost to administer mortgage subsidies would be far
less than establishing some non-profit to own all this
land, suck out a big fee to manage it all and leave
the low income homeowners barely better off than when
they moved in.
The other option is to buy these houses, and make them
the property of the Minneapolis Public Housing
Authority. They already manage lots of scattered site
housing throughout the city and have the mechanism in
place to do it without creating yet another
bureaucratic structure to manage what appear to be a
parallel type of housing.
What about the low income people who don't want to own
a house? I met many of them when I was working to
stabilize the Whittier coops. They just don't want
the responsibility of owning a home. How does this
plan address more affordable rental units? With
15,000 homeless people, I think we might be able to
provide the increased housing quicker by concentrating
on construction of more high density-mixed use
developments than trying to buy up 15,000 city lots.
Not sure. Just throwing it out there for discussion.
Barb Lickness
Whittier
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