Jim Mork writes, >"Issue: Homes Let's say "homes" rather than houses. There is nothing sacred or particularly rational about these standalone houses we choose to live in. What we do is duplicate lots and lots of resources, run up the cost, and there is no particular reason for it but it helps the real estate industry plus a few other industries that depend upon the spending of owners of houses. Townhouses, row houses, whatever you call them, make a lot more sense. Why SHOULD there be more than one lawnmower per block. More than one snowblower per block, etc? If poor people have a problem, it might be because we've inflated our economy by cultural norms that are stupid. OWNERSHIP may make a lot of sense. But ownership of single-family dwellings doesn't. If you were to try to optimize the kind of dwelling that brings stability to a neighborhood without doing so at a foolish level of costs, you wouldn't end up dictating a standalone building. For one thing, there is nothing INHERENT in such a model that makes neighbors care about each other. And if you want a stable neighborhood, you need something to make it a community."<
By golly Jim Mork you have it correct! There is NOTHING sacred or particularly rational about these stand-alone houses we choose to live in. And you are also correct about it being cost efficient to put the houses close together in town homes or condo's. Though some people like to garden, very often the worst part of owning a single-family house is taking care of a lawn. I have always thought that this was the purpose of City Parks. If it is more cost efficient to put units in townhouses, does it not make sense that small units in apartments should cost a great deal less than single family houses? Why are the taxpayers paying more to subsidize the creation of an individual apartment than the actual cost to build a single-family house? Jim Mork often writes about wasting our taxpayer dollars, he aught to be screaming bloody murder about this! The same people who killed using NRP dollars for an "Affordable Homeownership Mortgage Guarantee Fund" (that would have cost the City very few actual dollars) are OK with and sponsor spending $159,000.00 per rental unit. Not for a poor person to own, but for a large company to rent and make a profit from. Doesn't anyone else want to say, "What in the hell is going on?" Jim Mork is also right when he says, "OWNERSHIP may make a lot of sense. But ownership of single-family dwellings doesn't." The key is ownership! It is the "Homes" versus "Housing". If the City wants a large multi-unit building, why not condo it and offer low income subsidies to the poor person to also own his or her own condo "Home". A subsidy of $50,000 or $60,000 sounds like a lot but not compared to a $159,000.00 subsidy to a "Non-profit" land LORD. (I purposefully do not use "land lord" when describing small rental provider. They are more like "Land Peasants". Large "Non-Profit" and subsidized holders are indeed "Land-LORDS", and they often treat their "subjects" as such.) Some people may wish to live in efficient townhouses. Some may wish to put in the extra work and expense to own a single-family house on a single large lot. Perhaps that choice should be theirs to make. What does not make sense is for the City to pay three times the subsidy it would pay to create an ownership for poor people to create a rental unit that keeps them in poverty. A rental unit that is going to cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars of further subsidy to maintain a poor family in for the next twenty years. This is where helping people got carried over into an "institutionalized poverty industry" of taking advantage of the poor. Without "soft cost" profit making it more the cost of a condo townhouse should be less than 100,000 dollars. If that were subsidized by even 25% of the subsidy to build a rental apartment (say 40,000) for those making less than 50% of median income, then you have a cost of 60,000 dollars to the poor person. OR it would cost the poor family $340.60 a month plus taxes and insurance. A poor family would then own its own "Home" for less than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment under "affordable" guidelines. In addition the taxpayers would save the subsidy that is paid each month to keep that family in poverty. Or several hundred thousand additional dollars over the life of an apartment. Habitat for Humanity, GMMHC and American Indian Housing have it right. If you want to truly help someone out of poverty provide them with their own "Home". It actually helps the person up and out of poverty rather than taking advantage of them. A single mother on welfare bought the first Habitat house in Phillips. She used the stability of homeownership to go back to school and get a college education. She still lives in that house, but not in poverty! This lady is a valuable member of the Ventura Village Neighborhood, but what would her and her children's life have been without that opportunity? Homeownership changes the lives of poor families, but they also enrich our entire community, our City, and our State. Look how much more it costs to "temporarily" house homeless people than it does to put a couple of them together to share a house of their own. Sure some may need some life skill training and homeownership training, but that is far cheaper to do than to keep them homeless and using social services. It is easier and cheaper to create and administer "Supportive" homeownership than it is "Supportive Housing". But some feel they need to some how punish poor people for being poor. Some people actually act like they believe "You do not want to help them get out of poverty, if God had not wanted them poor they would not have chosen to live that way". Cousin Jimmy Carter had it correct when he helped to create Habitat for Humanity. You help people to succeed in life, not "exist" in poverty. Most people just need some skills and an opportunity. Or put another way they just need to be taught "how to" and shown where the river is to fish for themselves. We have been saying, "just sit here and be a little bit hungry and we will give you a fish every once in a while, you are so dumb you might hurt yourself if you try fishing for yourself." A little care and education coupled with the empowerment of owning a home might change a life forever. We only have so much money and resources to use. Let's start using them wisely to change lives and our community for the better, not waste them on a few political friends. There are even fewer dollars today, so we need to really think of the "return" our communities get for them. I look forward to meeting with our new "Planning" and "Housing" gurus so we can discuss this. We can do so much more with so much less, IF (and its a big IF) we "plan" and act wisely. Jim Graham, Ventura Village >"There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies, revolution into minds, or families into homes."< TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ 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
