Molly Priesmeyer looks at the Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (facts on the program; PDF from MnHousing.org) in which the Twin Cities will work together to purchase vacant homes in both cities. MnSpeak’s own Ranty is quoted in the story: “I think it’s horrifying that all that money is going to demolition, for a number of reasons,” Nompelis tells the Daily Planet. “The first is that I don’t believe all of these homes should be demolished. It’s much cheaper and greener to renovate. And one of the things that could be used as an attraction to North Minneapolis is the low prices of these homes. By mowing these houses down we are removing opportunity.”
Blight Flight: Minneapolis, St. Paul receive housing bucks, but who benefits?
Dec 2 2008 — 12:24am
3 Reader Comments
12:45 pm
well…you want to renovate all of the homes in north and southside? where in the world are you supposed to get the materials to renovate these dumps affordably? I have over 50 houses in my neighborhood that are boarded or empty…within cedar to bloomington ave alone. many false starts and stops and just plain old bad renovations…it’s time to cut them loose and free us of these dangerous and decrepit structures. irght now I see friction between the mortgage and the insurance happening in the nicer neighborhoods…here? they are left standing empty for YEARS and YEARS! did I mention that my taxes went up 63 percent in the last 3 years?
1:19 pm
Bravo to Connie Nompelis, Molly Priesmeyer, and Michele Bruch who wrote
about the Strategic Acquisition Fund, the $5.6 million Neighborhood Stabilization Fund, and First Look in the Downtown Journal this week.
At the center of these programs are Inspections and the Community Planning and Economic Development departments in Minneapolis. Their focus is DEMOLITION and DEVELOPMENT.
There lots of information to absorb
but from what I’ve seen so far, the amount of money being allocated for demolition seems to be greater than that the amount allocated for purchase and rehab.
So with a projected 3000 vacant houses
in Minneapolis who will be making the
decision of what houses to save versus
what houses to demo?
If it’s only the guys in Inspections
and CPED…there will be plenty of
demolitions of houses that could have
been saved. There needs to be neighborhood representative, housing advocates and preservationists on
the team involved in these decisions.
Even though the “non-profit” partners
GMHC and Dayton’s bluff will be doing
the rehab, with a projected 3000 vacant buildings in Mpls this year and 500-600 supposed to be rehabbed for these programs, the non-profits will likely be overwhelmed.
This will open a new FOR PROFIT frontier for the condo and parade
of homes builders who’ve (poor dears)
got nothing to do except file bankruptcy.
The women journalists and preservation activists are doing an excellent job
here alerting us to the good and potential problems with these new programs.
How about some of you fellows doing the same?
1:39 pm
@southsider have all of those boarded and empty homes been made available to potential purchasers?
Have they been offered for reasonable, market-based prices to an owner-occupant?
Has there been rehab loan money available to assist those potential owner-occupants?
The answers are: no, no, and no.
THAT is why [most of] the houses you mention are still vacant.
Personally I know 1001 people who be excited at the opportunity to renovate an older home, but they can’t do it if there’s no streamlined method for acquisition and borrowing on such places.
If we have $17,000 per building to knock them down, that means we also could have $17,000 to acquire the homes from the owners and potentially turn around and GIVE them to qualified owners.
While it may not make the city/county/state any money, it’ll sure save a lot of landfill space, and it’ll attract real stakeholders to neighborhoods long divided and marginalized by their overabundance of speculative property ownership.
And since all these nice lenders are going to play ball, how about asking them to develop a new purchase-rehab loan product or two?