The panhandler at our freeway exit was as much a fixture as the billboard sitting in stalwart silence there. The actual person varied daily, but we could always count on someone camping out at the stoplight. I saw this from the very beginning of our life in North Minneapolis, and I wondered when my girls […]
Any tenant who has had a landlord illegally withhold their security deposit or whose landlord has refused to make required repairs can tell you there is a lot more to the legal system than what is written in the state statutes or city ordinances. A law may say you have certain rights. But it’s another […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
Minneapolis and St. Paul both recently passed municipal minimum wage ordinances that were intended to lift up the working poor. In Minneapolis, the current minimum wage is $11.25 for large businesses, and that is scheduled to increase to $15.00 by July 1, 2022. The current minimum wage in St. Paul is the state minimum of […]
Whole Foods announced recently that they were planning on reducing prices store-wide as part of Amazon’s campaign to combat the image of a “Whole paycheck” grocery store. The Whole Foods media release gloated, “Starting Wednesday, customers will find new lower prices on hundreds of items throughout the store with an emphasis on high quality, peak-of-season […]
What is an apartment building? It can be a place to hang your hat. It can also be a community. The general perception is that apartments are temporary places to live; training wheels for home-ownership. But for many it’s not training wheels: it’s a home. Apartments are often the first step in independence for young […]
Where do people want to live? The short answer: Minneapolis. Millennials don’t want to spend their lives inside cars, and older residents don’t want to be dependent on driving for simple tasks like getting groceries or picking up a few things at Target. People increasingly want to live near the amenities of a city as […]
On a hot Monday evening in a bustling North Minneapolis park, Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia [Renters United for Justice] convened a community discussion around a ‘Renter’s Bill Of Rights’ for the city. “We have a rental supply problem in our city, we have a 2% rental vacancy rate, and most housing experts say 5 to 6 […]
Inclusionary zoning is an umbrella term for a wide range of policies designed to encourage or require the inclusion of affordable units in new housing construction. Here are three example scenarios from yesterday’s presentation to the Minneapolis City Council’s Housing Policy and Development Committee: Require 15% of a new building’s units be affordable to households […]
Here’s a chart from the recently released 72-page final report of the Governor’s Task Force on Housing, which is out today. It shows the relationship between housing supply and housing affordability for both the owner-occupied and rental markets within the Minneapolis area. Here you go: It’s a relatively straightforward situation happening here, with a tight […]