Minneapolis mayoral candidate Raymond Dehn recently released a position paper on affordable housing. It’s by far the most detailed housing policy paper any mayoral candidate has released to date. From a high level perspective, here are a few of the key points: Affordable Housing Trust Fund Priority #1 for Dehn is increasing funding to the […]
Efforts are underway to preserve existing “naturally occurring affordable housing” (NOAH) in Minneapolis. A $25 million loan program created by the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund (GMHF) will provide non-profit housing organizations with low-interest loans in order to purchase and preserve existing NOAH properties. What is a NOAH property? The GMHF site puts it this way: […]
There’s a handful of housing projects coming up on the April 13, 2017 Minneapolis Planning Commission Committee of the Whole Agenda. I’m primarily writing this because every time people hear about new housing being built, there are often groans of “Ugh, it’s always more bro/luxury apartments.” It’s not really true, so I wanted to highlight these projects. So here’s a […]
On Tuesday, November 1, the Minneapolis City Planning Commission will be voting on three important items that will help shape the future of the city. The first item is a measure to allow intentional communities in Minneapolis. MSPyimby supports the motion, which would create more flexibility for residents who want to live in Minneapolis. According […]
On September 26th, the Obama administration released the Housing Development Toolkit, signalling to the country that they are on Team YIMBY (that’s “Yes In My BackYard”). The document outlines the barriers for housing growth that many cities, including Minneapolis and Saint Paul, have been experiencing in recent years. Local zoning laws, outdated land use regulations, […]
This weekend I attended the first ever YIMBY conference in Boulder, Colorado. The YIMBY movement (that’s “Yes In My Back Yard!”) is an effort to make housing more affordable in cities across the United States and around the globe. Many people are struggling to pay rising housing costs and are being displaced due to ongoing […]
Property values in Minneapolis and the surrounding metro area have been rising rapidly for the past several years, and there’s little evidence that the trend will stop anytime soon. Properties are on the market now for a matter of days (or even hours). Multiple buyers often end up in bidding wars at prices which far […]
The intersection of Ninth Street and Nicollet Mall is one of the busiest in downtown Minneapolis. As a pedestrian mall, Nicollet caters primarily to pedestrian traffic and also offers a roadway for buses and bicycles. Ninth Street is essentially an urban highway, stretching 55 feet across and featuring three lanes for cars, as well as an unprotected bike […]
Advocates for fair housing policies received a boost recently, thanks to a UCLA study which demonstrates a link between restrictive land use policies and income segregation within cities. Instead of focusing on the issue of “concentration of poverty,” the study identifies the primary problem as a geographic concentration of affluence brought about by overly restrictive, […]
In an effort to increase transparency, the City of Minneapolis has started publishing data that it routinely collects during the course of day-to-day activities. This concept of “open data” has picked up steam as the utility of this data is discovered. By freely publishing this data, institutions create a tool for citizens to piece together […]