MPR: Minneapolis candidates debate housing issues

Campaign 2001

Minneapolis candidates debate housing issues
By Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio
August 21, 2001
Part of MPR's online coverage of Campaign 2001

RealAudio

The four major candidates for Minneapolis mayor explained how they'd supply more affordable housing in the city. City Council member Lisa McDonald, Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Stenglein, business consultant R. T. Rybak and Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton gave their views at a forum Tuesday night sponsored by two housing advocacy groups.

All the candidates were asked what the city's investment should be in affordable housing. Listen to Lisa McDonald's answer.
(MPR Photo/Dan Olson)

ALL FOUR CANDIDATES HAD DETAILED EXPLANATIONS for how to find the money - and surmount the political obstacles - to create more affordable housing. Lisa McDonald proposed the most financially ambitious plan. She'd double the city's affordable housing spending from $10 million to $20 million. The other solutions, she says, include ending the city's widely-criticized demolition over the past decade of 5,000 dwellings considered substandard, and relax repair requirements that drive up the cost of saving housing.

"The bottom line is we have to stop demolishing units. But we also have to make sure that the rules the Community Development Agency uses to rehab those units are not like building the Taj Mahal, which is basically what they are," says McDonald. "They make it impossible for anyone to take one of those units and rehab them and make it livable, because the standards are - quite frankly - higher than the house I currently live in."

McDonald said another obstacle to building affordable housing is neighborhood opposition. Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Stenglein agreed. He says Minneapolis residents have to learn to live with higher density housing. He says a mayor needs to stand up to people who oppose affordable housing in their neighborhood.

Minneapolis mayoral candidates Mark Stenglein (left) and R.T. Rybak answer the question, "What should the city's investment be in affordable housing?"
(MPR Photo/Dan Olson)
Listen to Stenglein's answer.
Listen to Rybak's answer.

"Housing should be built in the neighborhoods. There's a vacant lot down the street from me that should hold a minimum a four-plex, but all those neighbors around there say, 'we don't want a four-plex there - you know what that will bring.' It'll bring people who need housing, that's what it'll bring. That's why the supply hasn't kept up," says Stenglein.

The candidates gave their views before an audience of about 200 people in the Howard Conn theatre at Plymouth Congregational Church in south Minneapolis. Many in the audience showed with their applause they support creation of a tax to raise money for building affordable housing. Business consultant R.T. Rybak says a tax is bad idea at this point. He says the city needs to hold the line on taxing and spending. Rybak says an affordable housing tax should be considered only after Hennepin County and the state agree to play a bigger role - and after government is streamlined.

"If, after a year of these discussions, we couldn't do that - you bet I'll support that levy. But not until we force the other levels to do what they need to do, and also until we reform our own system. We are putting far too much money into overlapping bureaucracies in the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, the MCDA, the planning department and others," says Rybak.

Minneapolis mayor Sharon Sayles Belton.
(MPR Photo/Dan Olson)
Listen to her answer.

Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, who is seeking her third term, supports a tax for affordable housing. She says the $10 million the city spends each year to build and preserve affordable housing leverages $30 million from other public and private institutions. She says the city is moving faster to fix boarded properties, build on vacant lots or sell them to someone who will.

"We have affordable housing or other projects being built on those lots. We're down now to 25 boarded buildings. That's too many and we'll get rid of them right away as well, but I do want you to know that's been part of my strategy," says Sayles Belton. "A part of the strategy has been to build the partnerships - not talk about building the partnerships - but to build the partnerships with the Mortgage Bankers of Minnesota and the mortgage bankers of America, and our builders association as well, so we could actually produce affordable housing and get the loans to build them."

Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton along with challengers Lisa McDonald, Mark Stenglein and R. T. Rybak gave their views on affordable housing at a forum in Minneapolis. The two top vote getters in the September 11 primary election advance to the November election.

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