On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 06:12 AM, Victoria Heller wrote:
There are lots of these awful stories in Minneapolis - but the citizens don't know about them. Utterly disgusting. Which is why I am headed west to one of the "free states." I'm sick of the smarty pants college boys trying to run my life and my business.......can hardly wait to join a few cowboys and ranchers in Wyoming. For reference, here is a gorgeous property that's for sale: http://www.rockriverranch.com/.
Victoria, you're one of the fortunate few who can afford to fight city hall AND move out of this city.
Most of us are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We can't afford to move to a safer community in the metro area or in the country if we're retiring. Some of my neighbors have committed to 30 year mortgages on homes they have been chased from by crime. As the value of their unliveable Minneapolis homes crashes they're struggling to pay off that mortgage, take a huge loss, or default and have their credit ruined for life. All the while paying rent or payments for a home in a safer community they can actually live in.
Some of us will pay an even greater price for Minneapolis unlivability. Every year in Minneapolis innocent citizens are murdered, and many of those victims would be living in safer communities if they could. Many more are maimed and disabled for life by criminals, like my friend, who already had MS, and had her arm permanently damaged by a mugger in Minneapolis.
But we all pay the costs for Minneapolis tolerance of crime. Insurance rates are exorbidant, if you can get it. We take long ways home to avoid gang turfs, repair broken windows on a regular basis, and schedule our lives around the criminal activity. Our children can only play behind high fences when the gunfire is infrequent, or we have to drive them to playgrounds in the suburbs or Minneapolis' few remaining safe parks.
And that's just the crime problem. Minnesota's largest private employer is no longer Northwest or 3M or Honeywell, it's WalMart. With WalMart setting the wage scale, a two wage earner family can barely qualify for a $100,000 home. Now Minneapolis could let you build an affordable home, but they're not about to without a considerable fight. Down at the castle with the cookoo clock they call city hall the strategy is to manipulate the housing market so prices go upward. There's a simple logic to this strategy- rising property values= rising tax collections to pay for the city's out of control procurement and property acquisitions without defaulting on legacy costs like debt service and pension costs.
Problem is, within the castle they can't see this thing called a housing market. While they try to force single family homes over the $200,000 threshold, the average home buyer knows that a new townhouse can be had for that magic $100,000 number in Belgrade or Des Moines. For less than that they can have a new modular home on their own acreage. Or for $130,000, the price of a tiny old Minneapolis home with Mr. Porter and his homies next door, you can have a new single family home in Kimball or Des Moines.
So the folks who still can are still fleeing Minneapolis, and the folks in the castle with the cookoo clock still don't understand why.
held captive in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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
