A better form of organization is the low equity cooperative. Old Town In Town at 16th and Chicago is an excellent example of this- they have renovated 5 lovely brownstone apartment buildings and have been providing affordable housing for 20 years now.Praise be! Vanessa, we agree on something. I would add to your list of excellent options, condominiums. Not every one has the desire, need or talent to keep up a home. Some of those boarded buildings appear to be multi-unit dwellings. If they were rehab and sold for condos at a reasonable price, people could share the expenses of upkeep, get the tax benefits of home ownership and govern their own buildings in owner associations. This has been tried in Chicago and apparently been quite successful. We have to get away from the one solution fits all.
It's supposed to be, but sadly a few folks like Martha played the system. Horn Towers isn't exactly luxury condos, so I can't make sense of why Martha would live their when she could afford fancier digs. Martha'a income from renting her house and her business would be difficult to trace, so if she didn't state it on her application it would be hard to catch Martha'a income which would probably disqualify her from public housing.As far as Public Housing goes, I wonder what qualifies a person for public housing and if the most deserving are first in line. When Martha Donald was shot, it came out that although she lived in Horne Towers, she owned a house in Apple Valley or Eagan and ran her own business. I never heard how she still qualified for public housing. Anyone else know? Maybe I'm mistaken thinking that public housing is based on financial need.
BTW, this type of "cash economy" scam is not uncommon, although the most common practitioners seem to be white guys. Typically they run a small business (landscaping, construction, slumlording, etc.) and live off the cash proceeds. They earn little or no reported income, thusly evading payment of taxes, child support, etc.
Also, as some of the other posters have noted we have a lot of older abandoned homes that need rehabbing. I own a home that was all but boarded up in 1994 when my grandmother died. This 1887 house sat empty while the county decided not to exercise their lien on it and my family decided what to do with it. I moved in during 1996 and have started rehabbing it. With the county's help I bought the two adjoining non buildable lots, and Hawthorne Area Community Council (HACC) helped fund a new garage.
In 2000 I was approved for a home renovation deferred load by HACC. I attempted to obtain several estimates from contractors to do the work, but found few that were interested in working on old houses like this that are so common in Minneapolis. I came to the conclusion that I would have to do most of the work myself, and submitted estimates for materials as required by HACC's program administrator. The administrator, Center for Energy and the Environment (CEE), seemed to be anything but- I submitted a plan to superinsulate my home, heat with renewables, etc. and pretty much got shot down. Worse yet, CEE has since then added more conditions that are impossible to fulfill, like completing all work ($30,000 worth on a variety of systems) in 6 months. This means even if I had a contractor do the work in 6 months, I could lose the entire deferred loan if Inspections didn't sign off on the work within 6 months. So to use the deferred loan, I first have to come up with my match ($15,000), plus have another $15,000 on hand in case the contractor or inspections missed the six month deadline. If I had $30,000 laying around I wouldn't need a deferred loan... I had planned to break the work down into projects of a few thousand dollars each, using my income and the loan payment from the last project to fund the next.
But with a six month window to complete $30,000 in rehab and little contractor interest the deal is on life support. The reality is that older homes are largely going to be rehabbed by sweat equity, and CEE's attempt to funnel Neighborhood groups rehab funds to contractors is not a viable way to rehab century old homes. So I'll just patch things together and keep my home's assessed value down, and the city and greedy contractors will lose my business and taxes in the end.
hangin' on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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