Re: The NRP affordable Housing Home Ownership
Assistance Proposal
Sorry for the long post�I almost never write so I took
the liberty.
I am speaking as the Redirection Neighborhoods Rep, a
position I take seriously as do the others who worked
on this proposal. We have tried hard to talk to folks
and to know what the issues are for the people and the
setting we were elected to represent. These are my
reflections alone. We reps don�t get paid for our work
and have little political power. Perhaps that gives at
least some moral weight to our perspectives when
voiced. We gain nothing for ourselves.
Re: The NRP affordable Housing Home Ownership
Assistance Proposal presented to the NRP policy board
Monday of last week: I think this may be the first
proposal ever presented to the policy board by the
group of Neighborhood NRP reps. This may be the first
group of neighborhood reps who tried to craft a
proposal themselves so directly attentive to the needs
they hear in the neighborhoods. To be greeted for this
with misrepresentation, claims of �rule violation� and
lack of accountability, and beyond this, threats to
the organization�s very existence is cause for alarm
regarding the attitude or agenda of those making these
remarks. We have tried to be accountable and give
priority to the needs and hopes of those we represent.
It is puzzling who those who have rallied against
this proposal in this way are accountable to.
Apologies if the proposal presentation was abrupt, but
it would not be the first time timing was compelled by
other things, foremost was that the NRP Affordable
Housing RFP needed to go out very soon and this
required immediate presentation if guidelines were to
be drawn and appropriate review and assessment were to
occur to see if the proposal should be a part of that
and in what way.
Many have no idea why this draft proposal which was
not final and was clearly presented as a work in
progress should have been misrepresented and attacked
as a final document and money grab. Money grab for
whom? Power for whom? Its just an effort to help some
people efficiently and at low cost. Furthermore, it is
well within the parameters of the policy board to come
up with new and cost-saving strategies. Many very
level-headed policy board members voted for it. Peter
McLaughlin and Mark Stenglein are not inconsiderable
intelligences or �nose snubbers�. In addition, the
original NRP Affordable Housing Reserve Fund was just
such an proposal itself. I believe some of our recent
and loudest critics even voted on it.
Also, lest anyone completely miss it, a mortgage
guarantee program for low income home buyers frees up
an affordable apartment for every �buy�. It does so at
a tenth the price of new construction and much more
quickly. For every one unit of new construction we can
obtain 10 units of home ownership, making available 10
existing affordable rental units. Instead of 100 units
of new construction we could substitute 1000 units of
home ownership freeing up 1000 affordable apartments.
In case anyone failed to notice, this is one kind of
affordable housing program and one that gets a major
bang for the buck. In addition, it responds to a
justice issue, namely the lack of home ownership among
many persons of color who have been among the loudest
voices for this sort of program. For sure no one wants
to completely replace new construction, but we would
still have 12 million for that (including the trust
fund money), as well as much that is just being built
and about to come on line.
It has been really disconcerting to experience
seasoned political people and public officials fall
into near hysteria over a simple offer by well-meaning
and intelligent neighborhood residents to answer the
mayor�s and the governor�s call for creativity and
out-of-the-box thinking to save money. Equally
disturbing is that misinformation should be coming
from people who were actually at this meeting and
heard the long intelligent discussion that proceeded
the passage of this proposal and so should know
better. Words like �disbelief�, �thumbing their nose�
and �firestorm� contribute lots of heat and very
little light. Threats about �what will happen to the
NRP policy board� are certainly uncalled for regarding
a well-discussed and earnestly reflected upon vote by
the board members, all of whom are individuals who
care deeply for their city and their neighbors. (Since
when does following democratic procedures suggest we
should get rid of the organization, the NRP Policy
Board, which followed them because we disagree with
the vote? In what countries do things like that
happen? Many of us have lost votes on the policy
board. We never suggested that this justifies throwing
out the organization.) This kind of shrill response
helps nothing. I think we all long for and the people
of Minneapolis are entitled to a public dialogue of
civility, respect, generosity, honesty and
open-mindedness such as the one that, contrary to some
recent commentary, took place at the last Monday night
NRP policy board meeting.
We might start by thanking Ron Ravensborg, who did
most of the hard work on this proposal, for his
efforts and thoughtfulness. He must be saddened by
this nightmare response to and interpretation of his
work. Incidentally, he is not a mortgage banker as was
misleadingly stated at yesterday�s CDC meeting. Rather
he consulted mortgage bankers, especially those at
Franklin Bank, all of whom encouraged him to go
forward with the proposal.
Thanks Ron, at least from many of us who have been
hearing of requests for a program to facilitate home
ownership for years. It is heart-wrenching for some of
us who work so hard to rebuild the inner-core
neighborhoods when our own neighbors who have held
steady jobs for years cannot buy the very homes we
work to build because of some credit lapse when they
had just got on their own or some such thing. These
people are unnecessarily taking up an affordable
housing unit and paying the same amount in rent as
they could be paying on a mortgage. Stories like
these orchestrated the emergence of this proposal. To
suggest that it came from an effort at a power grab or
whatever, reveals more about the mentality of those
who would suggest this than anyone who worked on or
voted for the proposal.
We all need some good information about what went on.
There is an old saying: You have the right to remain
silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used
against you�This seems close to the current
climate�but I will proceed�First, I was there and took
part in the meeting. I also took part in thoughtful
discussion with the other neighborhood reps at
previous rep meetings. I do not believe we should miss
these meetings and I have to note that the only rep.
to vote against this proposal has missed all the
meetings where we worked on this. That this was a
surprise to him was not our fault. He could have
requested information about the work of these
meetings, commented on it, and kept up with the work
of the others. Much of the rationale for how this went
would have been more available if he had participated.
Also we were aware that given the time-table for MHFA
submissions and the fact that the NRP Housing RFP was
about to be written meant we needed to move ahead
quickly or wait until next year. However we were
concerned that the window of opportunity regarding low
interest rates for city residents might go away. This
meant that waiting until next year would be
irresponsible with respect to the needs of low income
home buyers. We were trying to do the best things we
could imagine under the circumstances as we assessed
the whole situation.
Further comments:
Everyone needs to understand that this proposal was
intended to set aside 2 million (out of what is now 14
million for construction, adding the trust fund) while
we write guidelines for it to see if it can be crafted
to meet various jurisdictions� approval as well as the
neighborhoods. It needed to come before us now because
of the timing I described. It was clearly apparent at
the policy board meeting that this was a working draft
and not a final conclusion. It says right in the
motion that this is a work in progress and suggests
that this is not final or even necessarily going to
happen. It needs approval of guidelines by the board
first and then others. The need, the short timing,
the low interest rate, the new housing coming on line
in many affordable neighborhoods, the longing of our
very neighbors to buy one of the homes they voted for
and fought for�all of this came together for us at
once. It is something we wanted to immediately look at
to see if it could happen. It is a proposal to slow
down and see if we can form a worthy proposal. The
motion and discussion says that.
To Eric Oines: Issues of income cap and the need for
that were brought up and while it wasn�t added to the
motion, it was obvious that all of these complexities
would have to be worked out carefully at working
meetings and would be part of the guidelines the
motion says must be written and approved. Obviously,
all of this could not and should not be worked out at
one setting. We all knew that and it was apparent at
the meeting.
Furthermore, once we all actually read the motion and
realize that it is an effort to craft a new policy to
submit for approval, never to dictate anything final,
the issue of �ramming through� becomes moot.
It is deeply disturbing to me and many others that
this characterization of �ramming through�, �thumbing
noses� and threats of the board�s demise came from
Gretchen Nicholls who was there and should know better
than to characterize this discussion, the proposal,
and ourselves in this manner. Surely she heard the
concern about income caps and other issues. I was the
one who raised the income cap issue for inclusion in
the guidelines myself and also mentioned sections of
the city that could benefit, yet for reasons of her
own she writes as though that never occurred.
And surely Ms. Nicholls must have heard the concerted
effort to distinguish this proposal from the
submission of competing responses to an RFP. The RFP
is not even written yet. A community organizer from
St.Paul was in the room for this discussion and
without experience managed to understand all these
points. Nor did she think anything was �rammed
through�. She immediately understood that this was an
effort to alter part of the NRP Affordable housing
project, not a submission to it. On the contrary, she
was impressed by the quality and carefulness of the
discussion and equally impressed by the uncharitable
aftermath. I am sorry that this simple act of
understanding seems to have so thoroughly eluded some
people and find the reproachfulness in their response
unkind and unfortunate. It certainly does not help
efforts to pull together and pull ahead. And it speaks
poorly of those who would paint the work of their
neighbors in this light. All of this was so obvious
that one is led to conclude that these points were
ignored and misrepresented on purpose. I hope those
responsible are enjoying the continuing ripple effect
of wasted words and pointless anger their actions have
engendered.
Again, it should have been obvious from the meeting to
anyone who was listening to the discussion and from
the proposal itself that this was not an effort to
compete with other housing proposals in the RFP
process for NRP Affordable Housing Fund. It is an
effort to redesign part of that program in ways the
neighborhood reps thought valuable for the present
time. There is nothing wrong, wicked, or shocking
about the board redesigning some program that they
designed in the first place.
Some people made these very criticisms about the
creation of the NRP Affordable Housing Reserve Fund
itself, when it was put forward. It was designed by
the board in much the same way in the first place. And
it was a real stretching of the NRP program definition
partly because it did not come from the initiative of
the neighborhoods as it was supposed to.
To Mark Anderson: It is apparently a little known
fact that the NRP Affordable Housing Reserve Fund from
which the money for this proposal would come was, in
its creation, pulled out of the neighborhood
decision-making process that was supposed to attend
the NRP monies. There was no �neighborhood
empowerment� or major neighborhood decision-making
involved in the creation of the fund. No neighborhood
review process that we ever heard of. It was never set
up by what was considered �proper process� for NRP,
meaning neighborhood choice. That was why, though
many believed we needed to fund affordable housing to
a greater degree, they were fiercely against the
establishment of the NRP Affordable Housing Reserve
Fund. They felt that by consolidating money and
decision-making downtown it violated the state statute
that set up NRP.
Furthermore, from what I understand of the history, it
was proposed and passed at the same meeting with no
major neighborhood input or discussion. So while that
doesn�t justify ignoring the neighborhoods now at this
stage, one point is that the fact that our new
proposal was created and offered by the neighborhood
representatives (in consultation with neighborhood
folk) brings this particular money closer to the
neighborhood decision-making process than it ever has
been. And remember, no one ruled out a neighborhood
review process,. This just puts a hold on some money
so that something new could happen. In addition,
those who claim that the passage of this new proposal
is a unique departure from the way things have been
done regarding this money are quite disingenuous. It
is closer to proper process now than it ever has been
if neighborhood decision-making is the issue, because
this new proposal was actually created by neighborhood
reps, whereas the creation of the NRP Affordable
Housing Reserve Fund was not.
Also, while neighborhoods came up with projects in the
RFP process, the selection process for the projects to
be awarded money was strictly downtown, not
neighborhood-based. So in importsnt ways the current
process for determining funding of the proposals to
the NRP AHF plus the initial creation of the NRP
Affordable Housing Reseve Fund was never
neighborhood-based. The criteria for selection and the
committee that does the selecting did not come from
the neighborhoods.. These facts are why many
neighborhood people fought against the creation of the
fund and many still think that the NRP Affordable
Housing Reserve Fund illegally violates the state
statute that set up NRP in the first place.
I think the NRP policy board went along with
centralizing the control of this fund only because
they were out-voted at the time. It is dishonest,
however, for certain people to now be demanding proper
process�meaning review by neighborhoods, when some of
these same people are the very people who were on the
policy board and proposed and passed the creation of
this centralized fund at a single meeting with no
neighborhood review. This suggests that for those
people the cry of �to the neighborhoods� is only
uttered when the vote of the board doesn�t deliver
what is on their agenda. This is simply hypocrisy on
their part.
Cam remarks:
It is the role of the Policy Board to be guardians of
fair, open and democratic processes that lead to
neighborhood decisions that are in keeping with the
goals and objectives of the NRP.
Again, I agree with these sentiments, but when one
knows this history, it may be that the process at
Monday�s meeting was closer to that ideal than any
decisions have been thus far, at,least with regard to
this money. If the board had adhered to Cam�s view
that �
It is not the Board's appropriate role, in my opinion,
to decide how to spend funds by establishing specific
programs on its own that it may think are best for the
neighborhoods.
�if the board had operated by this, there would be no
NRP Affordable Housing Reserve Fund at all. This money
would all have remained at the discretion of the
various neighborhoods as the legislature intended upon
drafting the NRP legislation.
Last, the board�s vote is not at all the extreme it
has been misrepresented to be�Why would someone heist
this honest and creative neighborhood effort in that
direction. What is gained by giving this proposal a
spin that suggests it is an attack on someone or some
group.? The motion says guidelines must be written and
approved by the board. The money is only set aside
until that is done and done to everyone�s
satisfaction. If that doesn�t happen, it goes
nowhere. We can and should stipulate that neighborhood
review is part of that process. No one objects to
that that I know of. Someone could have added that to
the motion. Why didn�t Cam add a neighborhood review
process to the motion? This was an attempt at a
beginning and some people apparently have something to
gain by portraying it as though it were the ultimate
trump card and the end of some game.
This proposal was an effort to get things moving. It
takes years to construct new housing, subsidized or
not. This would free up units and give some a crack at
home ownership very quickly, while releasing their
affordable units to others needing them. It is not the
power play some people are trying to make it out to
be. This was an innocent effort of caring neighborhood
people. Someone ought to thank them and quit fueling
this uncharitable, ungenerous and empty debate and
earnestly assess on its merits whether this is
something we should do..
Carol Ann Pass
East Phillips Neighborhood
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