Friday, August 3, 2018

Scalawags 2040

Minneapolis's new 2040 Plan is getting a lot of reaction. The Scalawag Overlord Brigade (SOB) that installed the new bicycle lanes on 26th and 28th avenues in the dark of the night (su-prise, commuters!) kept it all close to the vest until just weeks before several public meetings were announced and a public commentary period of three months declared. I hang with some real knee-jerkers, so I was hoping to be able to react to this plan with an open mind if not open arms. But now that I have done a little research, goddamn it, throw the scalawags out!

It actually didn't take much. Nearly 300 collected email comments (and many more from other venues) are available to read at https://minneapolis2040.com/received-public-comments/  and they are about 95% negative - loudly in some cases and convincingly in others. And don't think people didn't notice the sneakiness (well, a "lack of transparency" to be more politically correct). 

The goals of the city growth plan wouldn't melt in your mouth: dealing with climate change, which requires a radical reduction in car use (hence no parking requirements for new developments, heh, heh, heh); and racial equality, which means that all those historically redlined neighborhoods should have new four-plexus built wherever a developer wants to put them in order to end the "affordable housing crisis" (and I have a bridge in New York I would like to sell you. . .).

You can get the full monte on the problems with this plan as countered by Minneapolis's long-range planning director, Heather Worthington, from Minnpost's 7/24/18 article at https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2018/07/fight-over-minneapolis-controversial-comprehensive-plan-proposal-explained. Check out the butter. 

The plan must address education, jobs, skills training, small business support, yadayada somewhere, but you can't miss how it waxes fantastic about rezoning and building "affordable housing" in every neighborhood, differentially and apparently depending only on the whim of the developer.  It is outrageous - 4-unit buildings zoned in so that lower-income people and smaller houses get pushed out as the taxes go up and developers scarf up properties to build. Now I am all for making housing affordable - maybe by getting people JOBS so they have enough money? But then, we would not NEED new units, n'est pas? 

And another thing. I want to know what the city means when it says "affordable." To find out, I first called the Community Planning and Economic Development office (CPED) (and I recommend all of you do the same, since the simple request for a definition confused them so much!). The receptionist, flustered at my question, demurred about who might be best for me, then sent me to Nancy, who also did not know anything but sent me to the Mayor's Office, where I encountered the brightly smiling voice of Jacob Frey, MAYOR OF MINNEAPOLIS:), telling me to leave a message and he would get back to me. Right. Back to the CPED, I chose a random Development Coordinator who answered his own phone and tried to help me by reading to me the same description that I had found in the site's policy:

a) For residential rental projects, at least 20% of the units shall be affordable to and occupied by households earning 60% or less of AMI (Area Median Income). 
b) For residential ownership projects, at least 10% of the units shall be affordable to and occupied by households earning 80% or less of the AMI.
c) The affordable units (both rental and owner occupied) shall be reasonably distributed throughout the project and comparable in size, number of bedrooms, quality and finish to the market rate units in the project as determined by CPED staff. 

which tells me WHO can rent or buy, but not HOW MUCH THEY WILL PAY.  My young friend at PRG tells me that HUD publishes the Section 8 income guidelines on their website for the metro area and it’s broken down by household size and defines landlord limits for those parameters, but no one with the city can (or will) tell me if these guidelines are followed if no federal funds are involved. Anyone want to bet?

Finally, I sent a very specific email to SOB President Lisa Bender's office three days ago (August 1) asking for a definition, but so far no response. I sent the email because both phone numbers for my councilperson wanted me to "leave a message please I will call you back," and in the case of D'Ana Pennington, Council Aide to Ward 10, because she is "out of town from July 9-13 and will call back when she returns." Would that be in 2019? Has it really been over two weeks since she checked her messages? Maybe something happened to her. . .

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