The list may recall that in mid-November I urged MPHA to reconsider its thoughts about putting additional housing immediately to the south of our parking lot here at Charles Horn Terrace/Tower. This is the location of our Peace Garden - under construction as a reflective area where residents and others can walk or sit quietly by a small pool, the youth farm and market garden, where residents and neighborhood youth under supervision share small garden plots, and the MPHA employee parking lot and storage building for outdoor maintenance equipment.
We are understandably protective of our gardens. They provide an important psychological benefit for the 500-600 souls who live in our complex. They promote wholesome interactions with our surrounding neighborhood and provide "eyes on the street". They also produce fresh flowers and vegetables that are much appreciated by our seniors in particular. We will be celebrating the gardens this coming Tuesday evening (Jan. 22 , 7-9 pm) at Charles Horn Terrace in company with neighborhood homeowners and tenants, parents and their children, gardening friends from around town, and green-friendly folks from other highrises. This is about community-building and a sense of stewardship - terrific remedies to the sense of isolation that often plagues public housing and a proven impediment to street crime. MPHA will also be a participant Tuesday evening, making the equally valid point that affordable housing is a critical need in our town. I am given to understand from the Director of the Youth Farm and Market Project, Susan Doherty, that Emilio Battaglio of MPHA has indicated to her that the agency has decided against building on the 2/3 of the back parcel given over to gardening but reserves interest in building something like three detached units or a single 4plex on the site of the employee parking lot on the Pillsbury end of the parcel and that the agency will work with the Lyndale neighborhood to find additional sites for housing elsewhere in the vicinity. Apart from the obvious questions about what happens to functions now serviced by the employee lot - also used by workcrews who come in to do painting, plumbing, and other heavy maintenance in the three 22-story towers - one wonders what keeps MPHA from looking beyond this very densely settled part of town. We have Finley Place apartments to our north and two facing blocks of apartments to our west. There are already as many people living on our block as on five or six typical residential blocks. It doesn't pass the smell test for deconcentration to add more density to this mix. There are good reasons to encourage MPHA to enter into new housing production. No one knows better than we how long the waiting lists and how inadequate the supply of housing for people with annual incomes below, say, $10,000 - 30% of MMI is laughably distant to our target market. There are also good reasons to disperse this housing throughout the city and the region, provided access to jobs, schools, transportation, and needed services are factored in. What's lacking is the political will to accomplish this deconcentration and that's the challenge a big, robust agency like MPHA should accept - not ducking the issue by the timid expropriation of already committed uses but rather working with the new mayor and council to move beyond shrill resistance to "affordable housing" into a more responsible civic approach to stable housing and safe green-friendly environments for all our citizens. Fred Markus Horn Terrace (115 W. 31st St.) Ward Ten _______________________________________ 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
