A bit of a backgrounder is in order here. Dream Homes specialty is plopping down 6 bedroom rental homes with no basements, electric heat, and no offstreet parking on 40 foot lots. They or whatever "investor" they sell them too then makes a killing collecting $1600 or so a month in rent on them. Now, there are clearly a number off problems with this sort of design that suggest the city try to encourage more sustainable construction.
Meanwhile, just up the block from me our city is happily issuing permits and even variances for rehabbing hundred year old tenements with 6 bedrooms and no useable basement nor offstreet parking into rental housing. They'll at least have hot water heat, but they've got 4 of them on 2 43 foot lots!
What's the difference between the two projects? Near as I can tell, the one our city is trying to discourage is- horrors -manufactured housing! That means instead of being built by frostbitten hands, and probably nonunion hands at that... It was built under optimum conditions in a factory, and probably by union labor. And instead of being a one-off the manufactured home is more affordable thanks to the considerable cost savings of mass production.
Now as a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor party since the days of Humphrey the first I remember affordable housing was always a key value of our party. Back to that "North News" article... Council Members Natalie Johnson-Lee and Don Samuels seem to be saying that affordable housing like manufactured homes is a bad thing because it's too affordable. So please, Council Members, do I hear you saying that we should make Minneapolis housing even more expensive? Do I hear our honorable Council Members saying that we should put home ownership out of the reach of the working class core of our Democratic Farmer Labor party? Of course, Council Member Johnson-Lee by flying the Green Party flag of convenience is not held to quite so high a standard... At least by here party.
I think I'm now starting to understand why my friend Laurie is so cynical about politics, even the DFL variety. Blind from birth and now in her 50s, Laurie survives on Social Security Disability and occasional work as a musician. Suffice to say most of her income goes to her landlord. And despite having reliably paid her rent every month there's no way she could get financing on the cheapest Minneapolis home, now priced well above $100,000.
Laurie and I made the rounds of the camping show a couple months back and she fell in love with a small manufactured home. At 12 foot wide by 36 feet long the proportions don't give away it's factory beginnings. The various exterior trims available make it look like a perfect little country cottage or northwoods log cabin. It's just the right size for one or tow people. We looked all over and under these homes, through the manufacturers' literature, and at their websites. We found that these little homes meet Minnesota building codes but still cost only about... $40,000!
Better yet, at only 12 feet wide you could easily fit these little homes on the "sliver" lots that aren't normally buildable. Even with a full basement and utilities were talking about $60,000 or so to give low income citizens the dignity and long term stability of home ownership.
But apparently some of our Council Members would rather keep my friend broke and stuck in a near century old tenement, freezing in the winter and baking in the summer's heat. It seems they're more interested in artificially inflating property values well beyond the reach of working class citizens. Such behavior is not in the proud traditions of the Democratic Farmer Labor party, and any Council Members expousing same need not ask for our party's endorsement.
hanging on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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