Jeff has raised an interesting prospect. People with credit problems have problems obtaining housing therefore they should be punished by not being allowed to make the same profits from housing as he or some others might. Or they are punished by fate by not having the luck to find a situation such as he found. That is probably why Minneapolis needs to create a method of "giving the luck" to poor people who fate just happened to slide on by.
The answer is to create a guaranteed loan program. Instead of subsidies simply guarantee the mortgage to 30 or 40%. Most people that luck has dealt an unlucky hand would then qualify. Small downpayment equivalent to two months rent and you are in. No mortgage insurance and VERY low interest. (And very low from present rates is low indeed). At 2% or 3% interest some people would qualify that would not at 6% or 7% on a lower mortgage amount. Let most people who qualify for subsidized rent then qualify for a guaranteed mortgage and BANG you have an economic boom. It is what happened after the GI's came home after the big war and got a lower interest and no downpayment because the government guaranteed 20% of the loan. The difference is that a subsidy spends the money forever; a guaranteed loan costs very little and allows the money to be used many times and always be returned to the taxpayer's pot. But Bill Cullen and others are correct; such a program leaves less room for politicians to get donations or baksheesh from special "Friends". More people out of poverty, paying taxes, and spending disposable income equals economic good times. It means more housing construction and jobs for the builders in our community. NO, I do not mean the contractors and developers I mean the sheetrockers, roofers, and other hammer swingers who live in our community and need "affordable" workforce housing. It does not make sense to pay tax dollars to "maintain" or keep people in poverty when an even smaller amount of money could make those people self-sufficient. A smaller investment in empowering people could take them from poverty to middle class and make them tax payers rather than tax burdens. What a concept! What is needed is not a land trust that siphons away the product of their hard work and "Luck". What is needed is a program to help them clean up credit and succeed at home ownership. We need a program for "Supportive Homeownership" not "Supportive Poverty"! Don't get me wrong those who need the poverty plantation may need landtrusts, so I am in favor of it if they want it, but don't try to sell it as a viable alternative to actual ownership of the home. For me, I am probably scarred by past childhood experience of poverty and living on someone else's land. Landtrusts smack too much of the sharecropper farms of my childhood. Sure it is your crop, but it's the MAN's land. So most of your profit is going to the MAN. Same with the share-houser landtrust. Work as hard as you want on your house and improving your neighborhood, but the Land Trust MAN is going to get most of the profits. If the City wants to do a subsidy then subsidize the land and give it to the affordable homeowner client after the house is built. How is that different for affordability than those $155,000 houses of Hope's landtrust? We KNOW a housing unit can be built for that amount or less. This is not speculation, but hard facts. Only one example is Carolyn Olson's GMMHC program, which builds very nice houses for less. Jeff says, "(NOTE: Before the City of Lakes > Community Land Trust was formed, Hope Community knew that affordability > would one day be lost on these units if not protected, so they wanted to put > them into the land trust so that the subsidy THEY raised for these units > wouldn't be lost.)" The "THEY raised" sounds almost like it is money out of their own pockets or "raised" from private sources. It is not! It is money that taxpayer's PAID! The Hope land is NOT procured with private money, but from public money. So what is the advantage? For Hope it is also to "Control" the land on "their" block into the future, for the buyer paying $155,000 it is little or no advantage in cost and a terrible disadvantage in their future. If they go into the proposition knowingly I am OK with that. But they should know their may be alternatives that give them more opportunities. The true "hope" for the affordable property owner is to rise out of poverty and make a better life for their family, lets give that opportunity when ever possible. Otherwise we maintain a system of indentured homeownership. How many years do they need to work until they end the bondage? I have not heard when the landtrust runs out and the land is finally owned by the homeowner. Jim Graham, Ventura Village Wise sayings >"We can only be what we give ourselves the power to be" - A Cherokee Feast of Days >"The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson 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. 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