"Bill, I'm not sure this is as "off the table" as you speculate. Some
neighborhood activists have been grumbling that affordable housing should not be the priority it was, say, five years ago. (Others, of course, disagree vehemently.) The budget situation is forcing everyone to examine spending priorities - for example, the cops vs. housing debate within NRP - though reasonable minds can differ."<
The beauty of NRP is that it allows (or was intended to allow) neighborhoods to make those priority decisions themselves, in order to meet their particular needs and priorities. Or perhaps to create loan or grant programs to maintain the existing housing stock. (Preservation?) The problems come when the central government of the City decides that those few decision makers downtown know better what the people need than the people do themselves. This problem occurs because the "elected" politicians are usually re-acting to a need that was voiced in the last election, rather than the needs and priorities of today. This is part of the reason NRP in Minneapolis has become so envied around the Country and apparently even internationally. It allows people to be empowered to fix today's and tomorrow's problems rather than yesterday's.
"Affordable housing" is a very good model to look at to demonstrate this problem. Communities and Neighborhoods realizing that affordable housing needs were a priority ten years ago. Unfortunately only multi-unit large developments were concentrated on. The politicians responding to political pressure from four years before continued to pursue that one facet of the problem to the exclusion of all others. Even when the vacancy rate for such units is running close to ten percent they continue to pursue that one "profitable" avenue. Neighborhoods attempting to bring some awareness of this problem to politician's attention are labeled as "part of the problem". These Neighborhoods and their leaders are brushed aside and their NRP decisions are ignored. The City has taken that power from them and now decides how NRP affordable housing funds will be expended with their set-a-side funds. Same for Police. NRP has been successfully used by neighborhoods for both when their residents identified a need; as it was intended for. It was not intended to fill gaps where the City government did not adequately fund those things it was responsible for.
We need more Citizen and Neighborhood Engagement so that we are spending dollars where they are needed now. Not where they were needed four years ago! The need now is for multi-unit buildings to house those at 30% of median income. For elder housing. We have a dangerous shortage of both. Elder housing in particular will become a overwhelming problem if we do not address this problem now.
Neighborhoods have known this for years. We need affordable housing for single person families and Elders who make up half of all households in Minneapolis. Especially those who are the service workers who make our City run, but who make somewhere between minimum wage and the so called "Living Wage" of Minneapolis. Those at or below 30% of median income! Those who are the working homeless, or who are so very close to being so that even a case of the flu, or being sick for a couple of weeks, might drive them out of their present homes. Neighborhoods know this, it is why they make such housing priorities.
The insistence that affordable housing only means multi-unit apartment buildings is what is causing many neighborhoods to not be as supportive of such funding as they once were. Such negative definitions hurt the cause of "Affordable Housing" as a whole. The Mayor and the Council need to listen to neighborhoods about what they need, rather than to developers about what the neighborhoods need. We need leaders who do not have to speak against "affordable Housing". We need leadership that offers alternatives that fill real people's needs and not developer needs. T
Leaders that support what affordable housing neighborhoods have defined as needed. Support Senior Housing, Single Person Housing, housing that is affordable at 30% of MMI, and yes support affordable homeownership where the family owns not only the home but the land it is built upon.
The Mayor and Council will find that almost all neighborhoods support "Affordable Housing", but just the affordable housing that they have identified as being real needs today. Not what was needed five years ago.
Jim Graham, Ventura Village, Phillips Community, Sixth Ward of Minneapolis
Some wisdom for the politicians:
>"If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there."
- Will Rogers
"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot
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