Minnesota legislative ‘big, big deal’ spends $1B on affordable housing
Peter Callaghan · MinnPost · 9 May 2023
The first-ever tax devoted to affordable housing would raise $200 million a year for housing projects and programs in the seven-county area. It is part of a $1 billion investment in affordability that sponsors and advocates are calling historic.
Who’s afraid of integration? A lot of people, actually
Thomas Edsall · New York Times · 5 April 2023
Policymakers of good will face the enormous and perhaps insuperable task of restoring integration to center stage while somehow avoiding the political and logistical errors that characterized busing and affirmative action in the past.
Understand tax increment financing before throwing shade
Stephen Bubul · StarTribune · 6 April 2023
Tax increment financing is often criticized by those who don’t understand it. You just can’t build a building that will be affordable to people with lower incomes unless the costs are subsidized somehow.
Triplexes facing hurdles in Mpls.
Susan Du · StarTribune · 5 April 2023
Despite the 2040 Comprehensive Plan’s elimination of single-family zoning four years ago, zoning codes have not yet been updated to align with the plan, making it hard to redevelop lots into multifamily housing.
Duluth apartment-to-hotel conversion rankles residents, city officials
Dan Kraker · MPR News · 4 April 2023
A Duluth developer’s plans to convert part of an apartment building built with a public subsidy into a boutique hotel has prompted a public outcry.
Governors Push Faster Construction to Meet Housing Needs
Erika Bolstad · Route Fifty · 20 March 2023
Several states are working to increase the pace of home construction and the availability of affordable housing.
Sociologist Matthew Desmond on why poverty persists in the U.S.
Ayesha Rascoe · NPR News · 19 March 2023
Audio interview with the author of Poverty, by America.
Minneapolis 2040 zoning remains stuck in the 1960s
Bill Lindeke · MinnPost · 17 March 2023
Cities in general, and downtowns specifically, have been organized for too long to be specialized places.
In Matthew Desmond’s ‘Poverty, by America,’ the Culprit Is Us
Alec MacGillis · NYTimes · 13 March 2023
The endurance of poverty in the United States is the product not only of larger shifts such as deindustrialization and family dissolution, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans. This includes exclusionary zoning in suburbs.
Program aims to close racial gap by helping prospective Black homeowners
Kelly Smith · StarTribune · 10 February 2023
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and the Minnesota Homeownership Center are launching a new down payment assistance program.