Dennis Plante wrote: If you want to do everyone a favor, including the impoverished, lower-class, maybe mobilizing to pass a city ordinance that caps the number of rental properties by neighborhood?
Bill Cullen Responds: Is rental property density or concentration of poverty the problem? There are many neighborhoods that have a high concentration of rental property and do not have the problems of North Mpls. I am unable to find rental property density information by neighborhood. Maybe someone could provide me with a URL? However, I suspect that Loring Park, Downtown and parts of Uptown have nearly as high or higher rental property density than North Mpls. I know those neighborhoods are not perfect, but none of them have the constant battle North Mpls has. The danger in blaming landlords is that tenants believe they are not the problem. I once received an application from a tenant that had been evicted five times -- all because the "landlords were slumlords." It never occurred to this lady that maybe she was doing something wrong (especially frightening because a lease violation must be proven in court to win an eviction!). I am not saying landlords have no responsibility; only that the tenants have to be held accountable if we want them to behave differently. Jim Graham wisely added: the only way to create affordable housing without concentrating poverty is to create more "affordable homeownership". .... The City of Minneapolis has totally ignored the implications of the Hollman Decree. Bill Cullen Responds: I agree. Our current solutions are likely to repeat our past results. Instead of Public Housing, we concentrate poverty in heavily subsidized buildings owned by the private sector (usually a non-profit). Who expects different results from this? If we help people purchase their own home we give them an investment in the community and an asset to build on. For those families unable to purchase (or not ready to), we should provide them with something like "rent stamps." Then every rental property in the twin cities is affordable housing and opens up all the neighborhoods to low income families. The best part? Both options cost a lot less than $158,828 per unit! Regards, Bill Cullen Hopkins & Uptown. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dennis Plante Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 3:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Mpls] Crusaders;Affordable Housing Jim Mork Wrote: I agree with the idea that no city problem should be solved on the back of a poor neighborhood. Cooper or Kenwood could be a location as easily as any other. Two PRACTICAL problems I'd like seen addressed, though. Problem 1: Nice neighborhoods generally contain well-maintained properties. That fact TENDS to make it pretty expensive to acquire property for any kind of social institution. Contrast that with a poor neighborhood which probably has high densities uninhabitable properties. Poor people generally can't shoulder the expense nor have the energy for the kind of maintenance activities that keep property expensive. So, what is a practical choice. Spend MORE taxpayer dollars to acquire property that doesnt need a change of use? Or get rid of something that is unfit for use and build something new? Because I'm sorry but it is sounding to me like some of the residents of these poor neighborhoods have some real RESISTANCE about being neighbors to people who have problems. I guess I understand that, but to make a different "crusade" about shoving the people into Kenwood or somewhere else sounds like prejudice. OK, fine, prejudice is nobody's exclusive property. But it is aggravating to have the people who feel that way tee off on OTHERS about it seems a bit hypocritical. It sounds like these people are saying "OK, you made the effort to keep your property up. Here's your rewardd, the people WE don't want to live next to! Gotta love the justice of statements like that. Dennis Plante Responds: On the surface Jim, your contention that that well-maintained properties in more affluent neighborhoods would be cost-prohibitive to include in the affordable housing mix seems valid. However, I think it's important to way both all the costs and all the benefits before coming to that assumption. I'd be curious to find-out just how proportinate the staffing of the 4th precinct is to the number of citizens it provides services to. Who pays for this currently? I'd be curious to find-out just how less likely a child would be to join a gang, commit a crime, or generally end-up not reaching their full potential IF they had at least some options for positive role models and options available to them? Who pays for this currently? I'd be curious to find-out just how many of the young African American males we currently have incarcerated MIGHT not be there, had they been afforded the same opportunities that their more fortunate WHITE counterparts had? How much does this cost, and who pays for it. Not too awfully long ago, classroom size (in MN schools) was a hot topic. To make a bad analogy, would you rather have your child (assuming the teacher's skills were equal) enrolled in a school that had a class size of 20-1, or 40-1? I have known far too many minority children in my neighborhood that came from both stable and unstable homes, that were sucked into a life of crime and pverty due mainly to the overwhelming peer pressure they felt. Right now, the neighborhood I live in has a 40-1 ratio, and I want it changed. My main reason for becoming a proponent on this issue is NOT because I want to "reward" Kenwood (or other affluent neighborhoods) for their hard work by making them take the people "I don't want to live next to", but to give the people that I live next to as close to the same chance (in life) as I have had. They will never get it as long as we compact them into very limited geographic spaces. Not to say that this is the ideal end result, but I quite often read the outdoor section of the Strib. I recently came across an article written by a late 70's man (it had a photo) that had taken his grandson fishing at a northern Minnesota lake. The grandson caught a very nice Walleye. The grandfather was a "lilly-white" Norwegian, and his adopted grandson was a 10 year-old black child from Jamaica. For most of the children (in my neighborhood) the potential for this experience will never become part of their reality. Personally, I'd like them all to have the ability to experience it and form their own opinions. Dennis Plante Jordan _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. 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