I agree with Robert about growth planning and equal distribution. I am concerned that the first order of business with the new council and Mayor seems to be rewriting the zoning and regulatory code. We just re-wrote the zoning code a couple of years ago. How can we rewrite the codes without knowing what we are going to build? It seems like zeroing in on that area jumps over a couple very important steps.
Do we know how much housing we need? Using regional indicators and current homeless numbers and other stats should help us arrive at an estimated number. Do we know what type of housing we need? Single Room Occupancy? Efficiencies? 1-2-3-4 bedrooms? Single family homes? duplexes? condos? townhouses? homeownership? rental? Do we know what we have? As a person who has worked with groups attempting to get that information I can tell you it isn't readily available in nice little binders. In terms of supportive housing and all the other narrow categorizations of housing, getting exact numbers and locations from the planning department is currently difficult. That is not meant as a criticism of the planning department, it is just a fact. What housing development plans are currently out there and ready to go? I know there are several planned developments along Lake Street, Nicollet, Central, etc. that neighborhoods spent NRP money developing with significant citizen input. I hope we don't ignore those plans and reinvent the wheel here. Once we know what we need, what we have, and what is planned, then we develop plans for the additional numbers and look at equitable placement for these developments. We can do zoning overlays for the areas we intend to put housing where the current zoning is not supportive. I also think we can challenge each neighborhood in Mpls. to get creative about adding additional housing to their area by giving each neighborhood a goal to shoot for and let them do the brainstorming. I do believe we need to look at the regulatory code, but, it will take time and input from a number of groups (all of which are necessary to a good end product) and should be done with a well defined development plan in place. Relaxing regulatory codes should not be done as a knee jerk reaction to the lack of affordable housing. We can't ignore the financial picture here. The government can't pay for constructing all the new units of housing so we need a way to attract private investment in these projects. There has to be some incentives to develop in the city. We will have to get creative. Just my two cents worth. Barb Lickness Whittier __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
