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Minneapolis, Tackling Housing Crisis and Inequity, Votes to End Single-Family Zoning
Anti-Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan Lawn Sign and All Are Welcome Here Sign, photo by Tony Webster
In a bold move to address its affordable-housing crisis and confront a history of racist housing practices, Minneapolis has decided to eliminate single-family zoning, a classification that has long perpetuated segregation.
— NYT
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37 Comments
good stuff! This is what I’m talking about! Let the damn market work for fucks sake. All zoning with the exception of industrial should be eliminated imo.
You realize that this actually places controls on the market, right?
The way I understood it is that all residential typologies are fair game, not that sfr is banned. Is that incorrect?
Not entirely, but from the maps large portions of the city it does.
http://www.startribune.com/find-out-how-your-block-could-change-in-minneapolis-2040-plan/489889431/
The plan approved by the Minneapolis City Council on Dec. 7 upzones the city to allow for triplexes in all neighborhoods, even those now reserved for single-family homes, and 3-to-6 story buildings along some transit corridors. The plan offers guidance on how to keep Minneapolis affordable, environmentally friendly and racially equitable as the population grows over the next two decades.
You can buy a lot and build a single family home on it, nothing in the zoning keeps you from doing this.
Nice try, but developers will now descend like a swarm of locusts to convert existing single family housing into rental units and squeeze the shit out of tenants. Watch and see.
The only way this could possibly work is with rent controls or public housing.
The city is also increasing affordable housing, and giving tenants more power over landlords. But really, isn't someone going to make money out of this? Lastly, with HUD abnegating their responsibility, do we really have a good policy anywhere, federally?
use agnostic residential zoning works great in japan, which has no gentrification crisis. even though tokyo has undergone a 30% increase in population, rent is flat or slightly up in popular districts--around 10-40%. contrast that to NYC and London with highly arcane euclidian zoning regulations and tranche upon tranche of residential use zones, where mere 5-10% increases in population have resulted in 600% increases in rent.
big developers LOVE restrictive zoning because it keeps the pool of new units small and easy to control: you need fuck tons of capital to build in expensive markets like NYC and Boston, which means you and your 3 buddies are the only ones who can afford to do it, and that lets you titrate supply to a high degree of control, keeping your sales high and ludicrously profitable. capital concentration abhors competition
Economic policy rewards developers and landlords. Change the tax structure and everything else will follow. Just don't hold your breath.
http://m.startribune.com/minneapolis-mayor-puts-money-behind-affordable-housing-plan/491766211/
The developer incentive plan fails as developers use the trade-off to increase their profit. They offer up modest cash payments in lieu of all requirements for affordable units that pols are only too happy to accept. What's another few percent, especially if it's deductible? Just the cost of doing business ... and keeps those dirty bums away form the lux units.
But Miles, no developer in Minneapolis is wasting time building tri-plexes, or quads for that matter.
Dangermouse - Id love to read more about Tokyo's/Japan's approach to zoning thats kept rent inflations low while increasing population, do you know of any further reading on this? After living in both NYC and London I've grown very curious about the effects of housing policy. Books or articles would be much appreciated.
Miles - I tend to agree with Beta on this one, wouldn't the point of this policy be to give more ownership to the average single-family-homeowner more autonomy to create higher-density triplexes on their own accord and rent them as a small business? I cant imagine many big-time developers wanting to get into that game (though point taken that they often find ways to muscle into just about anything...)
Developers go for max profit. If the legislation turns homowners into developers the end result is the same. The local municipality has tried a few things here. First, they did Habit for Humanity homes on town land and "sold" them at heavily subsidized prices to lower income people (but not too low ...) with the restriction that they could not be sold for 5 years or so. At 5 years they were sold at full market value, greatly enriching the heavily subsidized owners and eliminating the so-called affordable unit.
Since then the town has maintained ownership of the land and sold the buildings to "qualified" lower income people. These units invariably get purchased by people from elsewhere as the financial requirements are so narrowly defined that locals are either too poor or or too 'rich' to qualify for them. So the local affordable housing problem persists while outsiders are brought into the area, expanding the population and exacerbating all the problems associated with that.
The conversion of single- to multi-family has promise but AirBNB is often the result. Again, it is an economic problem. Change the reward/penalty structure and behaviors will follow accordingly. Of course this also means what many consider intrusion by the state.
Sounds like what Rowan Moore wrote in an excellent book (Slow Burn City) explaining that transition you're describing during the Thatcher years in London. Essentially pulling funding from building affordable housing in Britain and transitioning to a voucher-system, thereby flipping the supply/demand incentive. Prices sky-rocketed and costs increased on the program than if they had just left it alone and built affordable housing in the first place. Shocker.
“Profit” is being unnecessarily demonized constantly...can you please explain how a society can operate without an incentive for profit? Who would develop without developers, and where does the money come from if not from profit? I don’t understand..?
a brief but decent overview: https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60
if you google tokyo zoning you get around the paywall
I wish there was an alternative (3rd way! lol) between YIMBY vs NIMBY dichotomy -- a way to better judge which lots can make way for larger developments and what buildings should stay. This is like tending a garden with a blindfold on while being clubbed by protesters.
It's the 21st century, you'd think we could do better.
NIMBY and YIMBY should be replaced with INYBY “it’s not your back yard!” Both of these attitudes come from a sense of entitlement that we should be able to determine what happens on our neighbors property.
Fuck a garden....Nature is self-organizing without the need of a gardener. A natural order is more resilient, dynamic, and interesting imo.
@Chemex, presumably you've heard of PHIMBY?
We have the very best of everything that money can buy. Government, health care, public transit, etc., etc.
Well, Houston, Texas, has lax zoning laws, is prospering with lots of jobs and a low cost of living. Entry level workers there can actually live on their incomes. Maybe Minneapolis wants to be like Houston?
Nobody wants to be like Houston.
Minneapolis isn't slacking on zoning. As the Miles stated, no one wants that nightmare.
Go to Zillow or Realtor and see what is available for $200,000 to $250,000 in Houston and what is available in Minneapolis for the same price. The article was about a 'housing crisis in Minneapolis'. Houston has jobs and affordable housing. Minneapolis has jobs and endless frozen tundra.
Funny how cities like Houston actually offer a decent quality of life for the working and middle class, yet still get shit on.
Then they wonder why there is this suspicion of metropolitan elitism...
Yeah. Flooding and global climate change isn't a problem in Houston. There are endless articles about Houston and their zero zoning policies contributing to the problem.
Oh, the frozen tundra, we're building close to year round now, a "benefit" of climate change. Thanks Houston!
I agree that those are both real problems, the question is how you contend with the needs of the people while mitigating those as much as possible without the yellow vests coming out. Best quote I heard from a French guy...”we are concerned with the end of the world, but we are also concerned with the end of the month.”
"Flooding and global climate change isn't a problem in Houston" Flooding has been happening in that part of the country since way before LaSalle tooled down the Mississippi. The French planters built houses with the expectation that the first story would be occasionally flooded. That's why all the important rooms were on the second story.
Jobs, affordable homes, decent neighborhoods, very diverse, top notch food scene/small businesses...but pretty lousy infrastructure...don’t throw away what seems to work...
This is a good move by the city to make this zoning change. What it probably won't cause is the wholesale demolition of single family homes in the city anytime soon. The existing homes have to be made available to the market and then the buyer would want to add a unit, subdivide the building or buildings on site into other units or tear down and build a duplex or three flat. There will be single family homes and neighborhoods with majority single family homes well into the future.
This basically allows more units per lot without the need for a variance it is not a land grab or a city funded plan to demolish a type of housing nor does it forbid single family homes or penalize them with fines or onerous fees.
Over and OUT
Peter N
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