The City Council and Mayor need to realize that the "Rental Housing Shortage" is over. The "Affordable Housing Shortage" is NOT. The rental vacancy rate is presently 6.7 % and expected to reach 10% this year. Giving $60,000 subsidies to build an affordable rental unit is not meant to help the poor. It is meant to help large developers and profiteering non-profits. The very best way to help the poor is to make them un-poor. The easiest way to do that is to stabilize their housing needs and give them a means to acquire some capital. I know no better way than to own your own home.
I wish neighborhood people would post on this issue. It would help to make the program a reality. Politicians need to know there are more than a few people who support them when they do good things, and know that people see when they attempt to not do good thoughtful work. The County people did good work on this. The City elected officials, from their strident opposition, had clearly made commitments of those funds that had nothing to do with what was good for poor people needing affordable housing. The City officials and Gretchen Nichols made it sound like it was a sudden action and not supported by the "Neighborhoods". This idea is not new; the NRP neighborhoods have been working on it for several years. It was an essential part of planning in Ventura Village and other neighborhoods. It was brought forward by the neighborhood representatives and then supported by the County representatives. The idea is over 50 years old and the original idea, after WWII, created more housing and brought more poor people into the middle-class than anything in the history of the United States. Richfield, St. Louis Park, Columbia Heights, Robinsdale and the other first ring suburbs were built by and for that very purpose. Half the houses in those suburbs were built with the GI Bill loan program. South Minneapolis, out towards the Airport and Richfield was also filled with modest houses built or acquired using that same GI Bill. They supplied affordable housing to a population that had never been able to own their own home. Sure it benefited some who came from families of means, but the people who really took advantage were the returning GI's whose families had never had the opportunity before. I came from a sharecropper's tarpaper shack, but bought my duplex using the program after being in the service. That duplex and the income from it allowed me to go to college and then to Graduate School. It gave me a stable place to live and the income from the other unit paid for the bills. That is probably why I get a little passionate about the idea. It is not social theory for me, it is observed and experienced reality. Cam is wrong about the process followed. The set aside program was created by that same NRP Policy Board. It was absolutely proper for that same Policy Board to decide how the second year of the fund would be applied to, as Cam says, "fund neighborhood-based affordable housing proposals in 2003." Cam this was a "Neighborhood" based housing proposal. Cam you were the only neighborhood person voting against it. I agree you should have been brought up to speed on it before the vote, but it certainly has been out in the neighborhoods for some time. The north side neighborhoods of Jordan, Hawthorne, and others had a large meeting about the disposition of their lots; this is a logical extension of that effort as well as other neighborhood initiatives. I had absolutely nothing to do with bringing this proposal to the Policy Board, but I can assure you I have been having discussions with Mortgage Bankers about setting up such a fund with NRP dollars for some time. Others have also. It is not something new; it is an idea whose time has come. The neighborhoods have worked hard to create affordable rental housing. The short-term solution is being addressed. Now it is time to address the other part of the equation. Affordable home ownership. Cam you are correct about the divisiveness that has been interjected into th e process of NRP and housing. NRP is being attacked for doing the very thing it was originally created to do. It was created to allow for neighborhood control of redevelopment efforts in that neighborhood. It was created to empower neighborhoods to use neighborhood-based solutions to neighborhood-defined problems. The divisiveness has come because it began to work too well. Politicians and developers saw NRP as a pot of money they could play with for their own benefit. Now they resent that neighborhoods have been empowered enough to make decisions that might not agree with the politician's "Plans". It will be interesting to see how the City Council addresses this important issue in the next few weeks. Just as it will be interesting to see who and what lines up to oppose the "Affordable Home Ownership" program. I predict that the hypocrisy will be absolutely dripping as a few politicians and non-"profiteers" line up to oppose poor people being able to buy their own home. It is no accident that minorities make up 30% of the population and only 10% of the homeownership. It is because they are poor. The excuses for opposing the "Affordable Homeownership" will be that people are being given the "opportunity" to rent an affordable apartment. The plantation owners use to say that about the tarpaper shacks and the "opportunities" they provided us. It was all about profit then, and it is all about profit now. The profits of the Politicians and the Developers. If a poor person can buy a house for less than the rent on a small apartment, that person profits, but where is the profit for the politician and developer? If $50,000 or $60,000 thousand dollars subsidy goes into the pockets of a developer, (who then gets "the opportunity" to reap rental profits for the next 30 years), who profits? It sure isn't the poor renter! Good politicians, like Peter McLaughlin and Mark Stenglein and several Council Members, will fight for poor people. It will be interesting to see who fights to continue to keep people poor. Some advice for them and Cam, "Do not so firmly follow a belief that it blinds you to justice." Everyone keep watching, Jim Graham, Ventura Village >The rarest of gems, with the greatest clarity, and with the >greatest brilliance, is not the diamond. >The rarest of all gems is the truth. >Yet as scarce as truth is, the supply has always far >exceeded any demand for it. In fact it may well be the >lest desirable commodity in the Universe. >Ask any politician." - Toe TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
