The basic requirement is, if I remember it correctly, that the neighborhood has to have 50% or more of its residents below a certain poverty level. I have no problem with this. It's the second criteria that is very interesting.
The proposal said that the average level of substandard housing per neighborhood in Minneapolis is 3.3%. Three maps of targeted neighborhoods were proposed. All, of course, had to meet the poverty requirement first.
Map #1 was all neighborhoods that had 3.3% or more substandard housing. It included 23 neighborhoods.
Map #2 was all neighborhoods that had 5% or more substandard housing. It included 15 neighborhoods.
Map #3 was all neighborhoods that had 10% or more substandard housing. It included 7 neighborhoods.
Guess which map was recommended? You probably guess it: Map #1. This means that the Hiawatha neighborhood with, perhaps, 87 substandard houses gets in the same pool with Jordan, which has at least 267 substandard houses.
From a political standpoint, Map #1 makes sense. You are sharing the money among a maximum number of neighborhoods so constituents are relatively happy. From the standpoint of solving the city's problems, Map #1 makes the least sense because it means, if the money is divided equally, that the neighborhoods in the worst category have seen the potential funds diluted by 2/3. That is, instead of being shared among 7 neighborhoods, it is shared among 23. The neighborhoods with the most substandard housing get only 1/3 of what they would if the focus was on fixing their housing first.
Am I the only one who thinks it might work better to focus on those neighborhoods with 10% or more substandard housing and get them down to 5% and then focus on the 15 neighborhoods with 5% or more and get them down to 3.3%. Then spread the money out further.
It is decisions like these that keep the "blighted" neighborhoods blighted. This is the gap that never gets closed.
Dottie Titus, Jordan
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