Having lived in San Francisco it is my belief that rents are high there because there is such a high demand. The geography there is spectacular and the city is very alluring, urban, exciting, well-climatized, and fun. Did I say gorgeous. The rents were high because the landlords could get that amount.
It isn't just rents in SF that are expensive. Everything is. Houses are out of the ballpark in price. Parking is very expensive. In 1987 I paid $8 for 20 minutes in a parking ramp. I had to have a permit to park on the street in front of my house and I even witnessed physical altercations over street parking spots. I paid $90 for electric in a 2 bedroom apartment. Car insurance was out of this world. They wanted $3,500 a year for two medium priced cars, no tickets, no accidents. I am a bit puzzled by what is happening here in Minneapolis. How did we go from 1-2% vacancy rates a couple years ago to between 20-30% vacancy rates now? Did we really build that many more units? Are rents so unaffordable that people are doubling or tripling up? Did a bunch of people move out of the city? Exactly what happened?. I have heard people say that apartments operated by private landlords are more expensive than those operated by the so-called "non-profit affordable housing" industry folks. In all the information I have collected that is not true. In fact, many private landlords are charging less money to rent an apartment than the non-profits who are calling their buildings affordable. If you look, the non-profit buildings have just as many vacancies right now as the private landlords do. So it appears that whatever is going on is industry wide. One could say that rents would go down in a market where there is so little demand. I don't see that happening. Rents used to be a lot less just five years ago. What expenses went up during that time to affect rent prices so much? Heat? Water? Taxes? Please advise. I would be interested in an honest discussion about the true vacancy rate, average rent prices, costs of providing rental units etc. and the things contributing to the problems of high vacancy rates and rent prices. Barb Lickness Whittier ===== "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
