I've been chewing over the verbiage around SSB and her administration of the city. It didn't take place in a vacuum. Here were some of the factors which led up to SSB taking office.
1. Red lining of different neighborhoods in this city (and many other municipalities) by banks and insurance companies in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Getting a second mortgage for maintenance and revamping of homes in some aging Mpls. neighborhoods in this era was, people tell me, damned near impossible. At the same time insurance companies raised the rates for people living in the area. There was as much as 30 years of delayed maintenance issues in some areas (Phillips being one). This gave rise to the non-profit developers. 2. During the Regain administration tax laws changed life for people who owned rental property and it wasn't a positive change. More delayed maintenance and virtually no new construction efforts in the city during the 80s and most of the 90s. 3. City rules and regs that were/are so long-winded and aggravating that it becomes easier for construction people to go to the burbs and exurbs. 4. Onset of the crack revolution (1988?) and the Mpls. police caught flat-footed with few tools to contend with the phenomenon. 5. Passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (late 80s, early 90s) requiring banks to reinvest in communities where they do business. ACORN lobbied for this. 6. 80s recession, "mainstreaming" of the mentally ill, a huge surge in homelessness. 7. 1990s--Birth of NRP with a mandate to spend 52% of the money on housing and identifying 9 neighborhoods as "redirection" neighborhoods. (Phillips, Central, Eliot Park, Stevens Square, Beltrami, Near North, Sumner-Olson, Hawthorne and Jordan [?, Cooper, is that right?].) 8. By the mid-80s MCDA was already in its deconstruction mode. Big holes were appearing in the neighborhoods in #7. MCDAA was looking to have non-profit developers fill the holes and to subsidize each house by roughly $50,000. 9. Huge influx of people from other parts of the US and immigrants with a whole different set of habits concerning housing--and everything else. Minnesota no longer 99% homogeneous. (This last followed predictably by the usual death steps--denial, anger, bargaining, ??, and, finally, acceptance. I don't think we're there yet.) Concomitantly, city has the largest number of poor people in the metro region and loss of housing is lowering tax base. 10. Hollman decision on Glenwood projects. 1992--SSB takes office mayor. Her strategy for housing appears to have been two-fold: first, NRP's mandate on housing; while continuing tearing down houses with huge costs to rehab second, convince legislature, Metropolitan Council and whoever else, that the suburbs are not sharing the burden. Try to foist some of the poor off on the burbs. Our only possible complaint is that this strategy was not a good one. However, the strategy was so completely antithetical to the ones in usage at the time, that it could very well be too soon to evaluate the outcome. To a large extent, low-income housing in the burbs is not yet in place. SSB applied as much leverage as she could muster, at least moving the issue from stasis to some movement. It's a long way from changed at this point. Every time someone attempts a paradigm shift, there is a point where everything is a real mess and it looks like you've stepped in it big time. SSA applied the torque, it looks like she stepped in it at this point; however, we are far from having completed the consequences of SSB initiating a paradigm shift. WizardMarks, Central _______________________________________ 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
