I cannot speak to Steve Meldahl's remarks about occupancy rates at CCHT except for The Continental Hotel where I live.
When an occupancy occurs as they do infrequently, the rooms are turned very quickly. There is currently one vacant room. The only reason it remains so is it was eight days ago the resident died and some things need to be done before the room is again habitable. I don't know where Steve gets his information but I am always a bit skeptical of vague unnamed sources or in this cases "former residents we talked to". As to the larger question of non-profits I share some basic tenets of the philosophy I hear him, Keith Reitman, Craig Miller, etc espouse. In a perfect world the private sector ought to provide housing of all types for all socio-economic levels but this is hardly a perfect world. Keith eloquently speaks of the destruction of housing over the past decade and more. Much of that housing was affordable to lower income people and they are the ones struggling in the current market. The city of Minneapolis fought crime by criminalizing properties and tearing them down. I would love to see every vote on every deolition and every sale of vacant property with information on all the buyers and contractors. I expect it would be very revealing. Developers want to build units for people of greater means. They behave better. Maintenance and wear and tear is less. Profit is greater. It is understandable. When the Legislature passed tax incentives for real estate developers recently they did not provide any greater incentive for those who would build for lower income people which was foolish. This is why non-profits have moved in; to fill a gap. At least that is how I understand the situation. There is an enormous population of people working in the service sector who make sub-par wages. Even when there was a shortage of workers and wages increased the availability of reasonably priced housing was not as great as needed. This is also a city that has worked very hard to increase home ownership but that does not suit all people. That development has come at the cost of multi-unit housing that was rented. How many duplexes, fourplexes, were bulldozed and are now being replaced by single family dwellings. I am no expert by any means and I welcome comments. Tim Connolly 12th and LaSalle __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ 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
