Thanks to Craig Miller for once again giving us the very simple, but apparently much needed, lesson on the law of supply and demand.
If you can't afford a particular place to live it must be due to the fact that other people willing and/or able to spend more money also would like to live there. Should we take all the rental properties in the highest demand neighborhoods and award them to people by way of a lottery drawing charging them whatever amount they happen to be able to afford? While it is surprising that Chicago metropolitan areas rents are similar to those in the Twin Cities, it would appear that their region also has an "affordable" housing crisis. From Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council website: "Rents in the 1990s have continued to outpace the overall rate of inflation." Question: why? Apparent answer: "Overall, the region�s population has grown by close to eight percent since 1990 to an estimated 7,829,870 people... in 1999, an increase of 568,694 people. In 1999, there are 1,066,800 rental units in the region... This is a net region-wide decrease of approximately 52,000 rental units since 1990, a 4.6 percent loss." http://www.metroplanning.org/resources/61section3.asp?objectID=61 Thus, the supply of rental units decreased almost 5% while one can assume that there was a supply in the demand for rental units due to an 8% increase in population. Sounds like a supply and demand issue to me. The Chicago Metropolitan Planning Council's conclusion: "Currently, there is little incentive for developers to build rental housing given zoning policies, the cost of land, high property tax rates, and a general preference among local jurisdictions for owner- over renter-occupied properties." This last paragraph is the important one in my opinion. Does anyone see any similarities to Minneapolis here? The April 29th edition of the Southwest Journal has an article featuring an interview with new councilmember Dan Niziolek about the effects of zoning on housing supply in Minneapolis. (Unfortunately, the SW Journal's website did not have the story posted online yet. check www.swjournal.com) It would seem to me that anyone truly concerned about the availability of "affordable" housing in this city should be in favor of "upzoning" to allow more intensive land use in residential areas. Just to be clear, by more intensive, I mean more density. If this city and its citizens honestly desired to lower the cost of housing they would support upzoning ALL of the city's residential areas or (I know this is going to sound drastic) scrapping the zoning restrictions on residential property period. Of course, this isn't going to happen because it would necessitate taking power away from neighbors, not to mention elected officials who must react to negative neighborhood opposition to development proposals such as the one at 53/Lyndale Av S, as well as those neighborhood organizations that we all just couldn't live without. Paul Lambie Lowry Hill __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.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
