Commenting on Lisa McDonald's affordable housing package: Now we're getting someplace! When we activists were pounding the drum for affordable housing three years ago, we knew that financing would be a tremendous challenge. Rebecca Yanisch, then Executive Director of the MCDA, told us some unvarnished truths about a $7000 per unit financing gap at the 30% of metro median income level. When the Mayor and the City Council took up the report of the Affordable Housing Task Force, 30% became 50% and there was a lot of loose talk about suburban responsibility and decentralization. Three years later, we see mighty mountains of concern but only tiny mouse-like outcomes on the decentralization profile. We see a legislative auditor's report that can't see past upscale Plymouth's prices to the cheap buildable lots in Phillips. Lately the throwaway formula of 20% at 50% has become a familiar mantra - look no further than Dean Kallenbach's remarks in the current issue of Lavender Magazine. Unhappily 50% of metro median is somewhere on the wrong side of $30,000 annual income - a copout that ignores the tens of thousands of households in Minneapolis who don't have that kind of money and never will. I'm not just praising Council Member McDonald here, although we will remember that she favored the 30% benchmark. I admire her hard-eyed look at what can be done here and now in our very city. I haven't taken a dive into the Census numbers yet, but I'll bet thousands of aging Minneapolis baby boomers who can barely afford housing costs now will be devastated by housing costs when their incomes are capped upon retirement from the workforce. Strong words, but a structural crisis of great magnitude is approaching and 20% of 50%, business as usual in the Inspections Department, and the MCDA's patent preference for market-rate enterprise will not house this population. Hold on to your knickers: that's just the incipient seniors crowd - the so-called "worthy poor". There's another big chunk of low-income demand in the "say goodbye to TANF" department, another in the thousands of first arrivals who continue Minneapolis' long history as an international destination of choice, and yet another in the very many households who are fully employed and cap out at or below $20,000 - the 30% benchmark that so many candidates and agency creatures are avoiding. Good for Lisa for forcing the primary season to look at municipal problem-solving with municipal resources - DFL loyalist legerdemain can't keep Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton's affordable housing track record from pitiless public scrutiny. Sharon's a good friend and an experienced public servant, but our grotesque housing shortfall has happened on her watch and it was her hand at the helm that replaced 30% with 50% and offered up bromides about shared responsibilities. We need housing, not campaign spin. Fred Markus, Horn Terrace, Ward Ten _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
