State of Minnesota County of Hennepin John Edwards, District Court Judicial District: File Number: Case Type: Fourth 27-cvCivil Case No. 27-cv-______ Plaintiff, SUMMONS vs. Carol Becker, JURY TRIAL DEMANDED Defendant. 1. YOU ARE BEING SUED. The Plaintiff has started a lawsuit against you. The Plaintiff’s Complaint against you is attached to this Summons. Do not throw these papers away. They are official papers that affect your rights. You must respond to this lawsuit even though it may not yet be filed with the Court and there may be no court file number on this Summons. 2. YOU MUST REPLY WITHIN 20 DAYS TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. You must give or mail to the person who signed this Summons a written response called an Answer within 20 days of the date on which you received this Summons. You must send a copy of your Answer to the person who signed this Summons located at Briggs and Morgan, 2200 IDS Center, 80 South Eighth Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402. 3. YOU MUST RESPOND TO EACH CLAIM. The Answer is your written response to the Plaintiff’s Complaint. In your Answer you must state whether you agree or disagree with each paragraph of the Complaint. If you believe the Plaintiff should not be given everything asked for in the Complaint, you must say so in your Answers. 4. YOU WILL LOSE YOUR CASE IF YOU DO NOT SEND A WRITTEN RESPONSE TO THE COMPLAINT TO THE PERSON WHO SIGNED THIS SUMMONS. If you do not Answer within 20 days, you will lose this case. You will not get to tell your side of the story, and the Court may decide against you and award the Plaintiff everything asked for in the complaint. If you do not want to contest the claims stated in the Complaint, you do not need to respond. A default judgment can then be entered against you for the relief requested in the Complaint. 5. LEGAL ASSISTANCE. You may wish to get legal help from a lawyer. If you do not have a lawyer, the Court Administrator may have information about places where you can get legal assistance. Even if you cannot get legal help, you must still provide a written Answer to protect your rights or you may lose the case. 6. ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION. The parties may agree to or be ordered to participate in an alternative dispute resolution process under Rule 114 of the Minnesota General Rules of Practice. You must still send your written response to the Complaint even if you expect to use alternative means of resolving this dispute. Dated: August 23, 2018 BRIGGS AND MORGAN, P.A. By: s/ Scott M. Flaherty Scott M. Flaherty (#388354) Kari S. Berman (#256705) Cyrus Malek (#395223) Mira Vats-Fournier (#399692) 2200 IDS Center 80 South Eighth Street Minneapolis, MN 55402-2157 (612) 977-8400 sflaherty@briggs.com kberman@briggs.com cmalek@briggs.com mvats-fournier@Briggs.com ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFF 2 State of Minnesota County of Hennepin District Court Judicial District: File Number: Case Type: John Edwards, Fourth 27-cvCivil Case No. 27-cv-______ Plaintiff, COMPLAINT vs. JURY TRIAL DEMANDED Carol Becker, Defendant. For their Complaint, Plaintiff states and alleges as follows: INTRODUCTION 1. This is an action to prevent public figure and elected official Defendant Carol Becker from using false and misleading trademark and state-law business registrations to violate Plaintiff John Edward’s rights, and to preserve Edwards’ preexisting common-law rights to provide multimedia news, humor, and political commentary using the phrase “Wedge Live” and variations thereof. PARTIES 2. Plaintiff John Edwards is a citizen and resident of Minneapolis who provides multimedia news, humor, and political commentary under the brand “Wedge LIVE.” Edwards ran against Defendant Becker for the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation, At-Large General Election, 2017. Edwards lives in the Wedge neighborhood of Minneapolis, also known as Lowry Hill East, bounded on the east by Lyndale Avenue, on the west by Hennepin Avenue and on the south by Lake Street. Lyndale and Hennepin intersect creating a neighborhood roughly triangular in shape, which is how it gets its nickname, “the Wedge.” As of 2018, the Wedge’s population is approximately 6,780. 3. Defendant Carol Becker is an at-large representative on the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation in Minnesota. First elected in 2005, she won a new term in the general election on November 7, 2017. Becker earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and a doctorate of public administration from Hamline University. She has been a policy and budget management analyst for the city of Minneapolis, a planning analyst for the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities, the finance director for the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, and a payment system project manager and budget and operations manager and analyst for the Minnesota Department of Health. The City of Minneapolis’ public website, http://www.minneapolismn.gov/bet/bet_taxation-board, identifies her as the president of the Board of Estimate and Taxation. FURTHER FACTS 4. More than four years ago, Plaintiff Edwards attended his first neighborhood meeting after moving to the Lowry Hill East neighborhood, also known the Wedge. Disappointed in the hostility and lack of diverse representation in the room, Edwards started a blog and Twitter account to write about neighborhood issues and city politics. 2 Edwards provides multimedia news, humor, and political commentary using the phrase “Wedge Live.” 5. Since then, Edwards has published media regarding complex and controversial urban planning and political issues, using distinct comedic tone to juxtapose the frequent mundanity of municipal government. Edwards’ writing, publishing, and editing style is distinctive, and has a strong following among people that are younger, and more likely to be renters, in conversations about everything from transportation to affordable housing, and, sometimes, the Mayor’s dance moves. 6. using the Edwards is a leading source of local journalism and political information Wedge Live brand. Wedge Live publishes blog entries at https://www.wedgelive.com, publishes videos at https://www.youtube.com/wedgelive, and publishes micro-blogging https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE. entries on the Twitter platform at Wedge Live’s YouTube channel has hundreds of subscribers, its Twitter account has thousands of followers, and its website receives tens of thousands of visitors 7. Edwards recently earned the “Best Website” award from City Pages, an independent, local publication. City Pages praised his Wedge Live brand as follows: Through his Twitter feed, YouTube account, and website, John Edwards is shining a light on the often absurd mechanics of local government. He’s both entertaining and informative, which is not something that can always be said of the civic hearings and meetings he covers. His coverage spans the Twin Cities but centers on Minneapolis’ Wedge area, where development and infrastructure have become so contentious that a hoax protest calling bike lanes “Nazi lanes” actually attracted non-ironic marchers. Follow Edwards 3 for funny videos like “Sharon the YIMBY” and “The True Cost of Bike Lanes,” then stick around to actually learn a thing or two about how decisions affecting your neighborhood get made. (from http://www.citypages.com/best-of/2018/talk-of-the-town/wedge-live/479775043). 8. Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists also acknowledged Edwards’ work under the Wedge LIVE Marks, praising his “pointed reporting [as a] great example of hyper-local, Internet driven, citizen-led journalism.” 9. Edwards has common-law rights in various trademarks and service marks that combine the words “Wedge” and “Live” in combination. Edwards’ use of the “Wedge LIVE” service marks (hereinafter “the Wedge LIVE Marks”) have come to be associated with providing political information about elections; providing political information, news, and commentary in the field of election campaigns; providing a website featuring information about political issues; providing information regarding political issues, knowing how to vote and knowing how to register to vote; providing information, news, and commentary in the field of politics. The Wedge LIVE Marks sometimes appear as plain text, “Wedge LIVE” with varying capitalization, with or without an exclamation mark, and with or without accompanying images. The Wedge LIVE Marks are very strong, and in the minds of the news-consuming public, the Wedge LIVE Marks are primarily associated with Edwards. 10. Becker denies that Edwards has any rights in the Wedge LIVE Marks. 11. Becker denies that Edwards owns the Wedge LIVE Marks. 4 12. Edwards’ Wedge LIVE brand is widely known for its fusion of news, political commentary, and humor. For example, it first broke news of an incumbent Minneapolis council member taking her gum out of her mouth and handing it to her challenger—a story later picked up by the Associated Press and by the United Kingdom’s second-biggest-selling daily newspaper. 13. Edward has invested time and effort into building his Wedge LIVE brand, and those efforts have been successful, even though Edwards’ use of the Wedge LIVE Marks has been a labor of love, rather than a commercial business. Non-business uses of marks can give rise to common-law rights, like Susan G. Kommen, the United Way. The use-in-commerce requirement for common-law rights does not require that the mark holder be selling something for a profit. See Planetary Motion, Inc. v. Techsplosion, Inc., 261 F.3d 1188 (11th Cir. 2001). The use-in-commerce requirement refers to Congress’s authority to regulate trademarks under the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause — it does not to limit trademarks or service marks to profit-making activity. 14. Edward’s use of the Wedge LIVE Marks, and the association in the mind of the public between those marks and Edward’s provision of common-law rights to provide multimedia news, humor, and political commentary. He has been publicly rendering those services using the Wedge LIVE Marks since at least 2014. 15. Trademark and service mark rights are created through use, not by registration. 5 16. Becker, an elected official on the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation, was behind an effort to file business and trademark registrations for Wedge LIVE!, the name of a blog that has been critical of her. 17. 3201 48th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55406 is not in the Wedge neighborhood. 18. 3201 48th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55406 is not part of the Lowry Hill East neighborhood. 19. Becker does not reside in the Wedge neighborhood. 20. Becker does not reside in the Lowry Hill East neighborhood. 21. Becker resides in the Longfellow neighborhood. 22. In the alternative to the allegation of the immediately preceding paragraph, Becker resides in the Cooper neighborhood. 23. In the 2017 Minneapolis city election, Wedge Live and Edwards prepared a voter information guide and sent out candidate questionnaires focused on affordable housing issues. Their Twitter and YouTube accounts were a constant stream of information about campaign developments, often employing satire as critical commentary about candidates’ positions. 24. In response to Wedge Live and Edward’s 2017 publications, Becker authored a forum post titled “Who’s funding Minneapolis elections?” published at http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/5N69zQ0LRjoYqOtBhERzhO. Attached Exhibit A is a true and correct copy of that post. It reads in part as follows: 6 as … Third, I see WedgeLive as a huge influence on the conversation. They have a huge web/twitter/Facebook/video operation, much more than could be done by one person with a full-time job. I see them attack many people who they think are too entrenched in City Hall but enough but oddly, never Betsy Hodges, who has been in City Hall 12 years. When John Edwards decided he was going to do a write-in campaign for the BET, his first supporter was Javier Morales, who is married to John Stiles, Betsy Hodges Chief of Staff. I would love to see the financing of that operation disclosed also. … Carol Becker Longfellow 25. Elsewhere in Exhibit A, Becker speculates questions purported funding of Black Lives Matter and the Bicycle Coalition. 26. Becker is aware of Edwards’ blogging using the Wedge LIVE marks. 27. Becker has referred to Edwards’ provision of multimedia news, humor, and political commentary using the phrase “Wedge Live” as “a pro-developer mouthpiece.” Exhibit B is a true and correct copy of an online comment thread containing that statement by Becker and others. 28. Becker is aware of Edwards’ use of Twitter activities under the Wedge LIVE Marks. 29. Becker is aware of Edwards’ YouTube videos published under the Wedge LIVE Marks. 30. Becker has claimed that Edwards is unlawfully not paying taxes. 7 31. Becker has demanded the payment of money and other non-monetary concessions from Edwards in exchange for her to cease the actions described in this complaint. 32. Becker has threatened to sue Edwards if he does not meet her monetary and non-monetary conditions. 33. Becker intends to re-file the previously withdrawn state and federal documents that use the Wedge LIVE Marks. 34. Becker intends to attempt to prevent Edwards from using the Wedge LIVE Marks if he does not capitulate to her demands. 35. Becker’s actions described herein constitute bad faith, both objectively and subjectively. 36. Edwards recently co-founded a group called Neighbors for More Neighbors, who have advocated for a variety of proposals to increase the supply of housing and make housing more affordable, such as eliminating exclusionary zoning and easing building height limits, as well as focusing on non-motorized and mass transit to better support a growing city. 37. Becker recently co-founded Minneapolis for Everyone, a group that has said the plan would result in neighborhoods being bulldozed in favor of density and corporate gain for developers, and that making it harder to drive in the City would harm elders and residents who aren’t able-bodied. 8 38. Wedge Live asked readers to submit their opinions on the Comprehensive Plan before the comment period closed. That period closed on July 22, 2018. 39. On July 23, 2018 Becker completed an “Assumed Name” certificate, which was filed by the Minnesota Secretary of State on August 2, 2018. Attached as Exhibit C is a true and correct copy of that filing. 40. Approximately contemporaneously, Becker filed a “Name Reservation” request dated July 23, 2018, with the Minnesota Secretary of State, identifying “WedgeLive” (without a space) as the reserved name. Attached as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of that filing. 41. Becker signed the July 23, 2018 “Name Reservation” request under penalty of perjury. 42. As of July 23, 2018, Becker was not a person doing business in Minnesota as WedgeLive. 43. As of July 23, 2018, Becker was not was not a person doing business in Minnesota under a deceptively similar name to WedgeLive. 44. As of July 23, 2018, Becker was not intending to form an entity under Chapter 302A, 317A, 322C or 321 of the Minnesota Statutes. 45. As of July 23, 2018, Becker had not read Chapter 302A of the Minnesota Statutes. 46. As of July 23, 2018, Becker had not read Chapter 317A of the Minnesota Statutes. 9 47. As of July 23, 2018, Becker had not read Chapter 322C of the Minnesota Statutes. 48. As of July 23, 2018, Becker had not read Chapter 321 of the Minnesota Statutes. 49. As of July 23, 2018, Becker had not read Chapter 333 of the Minnesota Statutes. 50. On August 10, 2018 Becker’s actions became widely known. 51. One consumer of the media Edwards makes using the Wedge LIVE Marks—a self-described bike commuter, traffic engineer, North Minneapolis resident— was flipping through newspapers and came across a legal notice in the Star Tribune classifieds. 52. That consumer, and others, were confused by Becker’s attempt to use the Wedge LIVE. 53. Becker’s state and federal filings, and her public statements about her attempt to use “Wedge Live” and “WedgeLive,” have created a likelihood of confusion, and actual confusion, with Edwards’ rightful use of the Wedge LIVE Marks. 54. Since Becker’s state and federal filings, Edwards has had to spend time, money, and effort to protect and maintain his brand, and to remedy the harm to his brand from her unlawful filings. 55. Becker believed that since there were no legal entities, i.e., corporations, LLCs, or other non-natural persons, named “Wedge Live,” and no trademark registrations 10 for that phrase, that therefore she could lawfully register that name as a business and file an application for that mark. 56. Becker still believes that since there were no legal entities, i.e., corporations, LLCs, or other non-natural persons, named “Wedge Live,” and no trademark registrations for that phrase, that therefore she could lawfully register that name as a business and file an application for that mark. 57. Edwards is not required to register with the state of Minnesota to freely provide multimedia news, humor, and political commentary using the Wedge LIVE Marks. 58. Edwards is not required to register with the state of Minnesota to freely provide multimedia news, humor, and political commentary using the Wedge LIVE Marks. 59. After Becker’s state and federal filings, there was an outcry against her ham-fisted attempt to coerce Edwards into registering as a business and registering his common-law rights in the Wedge LIVE Marks. Exhibit K is a true and correct copy of an online posting authored by Edwards describing the negative reaction to her filings and detailing her demands of Edwards. 60. Becker contends that because Edwards had not federally registered his rights in the Wedge LIVE Marks, she lawful could apply for a trademark or service mark “Wedge Live.” Exhibit E is a true and correct copy of her federal application for a “Wedge Live” mark, and Exhibit H, Exhibit G, and Exhibit F are true and correct 11 copied of additional writings by Becker regarding her plan to resume her state and federal filings in less than six months if Edwards does not capitulate to her demands. 61. Becker has temporarily withdrawn her state and federal filings so that Edwards will comply with her demands to make those types of filings. Exhibit I and Exhibit J are true and correct copies of Becker’s cancellation of her assumed name “Wedge Life” and her abandonment of her federal application, respectively. 62. Becker contends that Edwards must, in using the Wedge LIVE Marks, do one or more of the following: file a DBA, file articles of incorporation (or the like), register as a non-profit, file with the Campaign Finance Board, register as a lobbyist. 63. Edwards is not legally obligated to do any of the things in ¶ 62. 64. Becker’s actions described in this complaint were designed to coerce Edwards into doing one or more of the things in ¶ 62. 65. Becker has a history of litigiousness. He sued former Mayor Betsy Hodges in 2017 at the height of that year’s campaign season. Her case was dismissed. COUNT I Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement of Edward’s use of Wedge LIVE Marks 66. Edwards re-alleges and incorporates by reference the allegations contained in the preceding and subsequent paragraphs. 67. Becker claims the right and ability to prevent Edwards from creating and providing multimedia news, humor, and political commentary using the phrase “Wedge Live” and variations thereof. 12 68. In substance, Becker claims that Edwards is now infringing or will later infringe some rights she has or will have imminently. Becker has not used the phrase “infringement” to describe this though, as she apparently has profound misunderstandings about how trademark law works. 69. Edwards owns the Wedge LIVE Marks. 70. Edwards may lawfully use the Wedge LIVE Marks to create and provide providing multimedia news, humor, and political commentary. 71. Edwards’ use of the Wedge LIVE Marks does not now and will not later infringe any of Becker’s trademark or service mark rights. 72. A declaratory judgment that Edwards’ conduct describe herein does not infringe any of Becker’s trademark or service mark rights would redress some of the injuries from Becker’s prior actions, and would limit future injury to Edwards. COUNT II Declaratory Judgment Of Ownership of Wedge LIVE Marks 73. Plaintiff re-alleges and incorporates by reference the allegations contained in the preceding and subsequent paragraphs. 74. Edwards owns the Wedge LIVE Marks. 75. Becker denies that Edwards owns the Wedge LIVE Marks. 76. Becker has taken steps, described herein, that have injured Edwards, harmed the Wedge LIVE Marks. 13 77. A declaratory judgment that Edwards owns the Wedge LIVE Marks would redress some of the injuries from Becker’s prior actions, and would limit future injury to Edwards. COUNT III — Civil Coercion 78. Plaintiff re-alleges and incorporates by reference the allegations contained in the preceding and subsequent paragraphs. 79. Becker made wrongful and unlawful acts to coerce Edwards against his will to do or refrain from doing something that Edwards has a legal rights to do or not to do, including specifically (i) forcing Edwards to register his Wedge Live Marks, (ii) forcing Edwards to create a corporation, limited liability entity, or file an assumed name or DBA; and (iii) intimidating Edwards from further criticizing Becker; (iv) paying Becker money and giving Becker other non-monetary promises in exchange for her refraining from further attacks on Edwards’ use of the Wedge LIVE Marks. 80. Edwards, and his Wedge Live Marks has been damaged by Becker’s coercion, including having to spend money, time, and effort to protect his Wedge LIVE Marks, and Becker’s actions have damaged Edwards and have damaged the Wedge LIVE Marks’ distinctiveness and reputation. 81. Becker has repeated her threat to re-file federal and state papers that are confusingly similar to the Wedge LIVE Marks, and to sue Edwards, if he does not comply with her unlawful demands in less than six months. 14 PLAINTIFF DEMANDS A JURY TRIAL FOR ALL ISSUES OF FACT HEREIN WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs pray for judgment against Defendant as follows: 1. A permanent injunction against the wrongdoing described above, including specifically as follows: a. Prohibiting Becker from filing any state registrations or certificates that seek or attempt to seek to create or identify any non-natural person with any combination of the words “Wedge” and “Live”; b. Prohibiting Becker from filing any federal trademark or service mark applications that seek or attempt to seek to create, recognize, register, or identify any marks with any combination of the words “Wedge” and “Live”; c. Prohibiting Becker from using any marks that are confusingly similar to the Wedge LIVE Marks; 2. Declaratory judgment that Edwards owns the Wedge LIVE Marks, and that Becker does not. 3. Declaratory judgment that Edwards’ use of the Wedge LIVE Marks does not infringe any trademark, service mark, or naming rights that Becker lawfully owns. 4. Nominal and compensatory damages in an amount to be proved a trial for Becker’s misconduct, detailed above. 5. Attorney’s fees and costs pursuant to applicable law; and 6. For such other and further relief as this Court deems just and equitable. 15 Dated: August 23, 2018 BRIGGS AND MORGAN, P.A. By: s/ Scott M. Flaherty Scott M. Flaherty (#388354) Kari S. Berman (#256705) Cyrus Malek (#395223) Mira Vats-Fournier (#399692) 2200 IDS Center 80 South Eighth Street Minneapolis, MN 55402-2157 (612) 977-8400 sflaherty@briggs.com kberman@briggs.com cmalek@briggs.com mvats-fournier@Briggs.com ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFF 16 8/14/2018 forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post/5N69zQ0LRjoYqOtBhERzhO Post in Who's funding Minneapolis elections? Carol Becker Posted at 7:38pm, Oct 27 Share Mr. Bearman. When I teach public policy, I ask my students the following question. If I line your mother and your father against a wall and I tell you you must shoot one or the other, who has the power in that situation? The person making the decision or the person shaping the question? I would argue that the person shaping the question.   In this case, I look across the landscape of what is going on in the City and try to see who is really shaping the discussion. And I then ask myself who is funding them because most people have jobs and kids and lives beyond just politics. We have a paid advocacy class that has been growing in strength and is leading the discussion in our community more and more, especially as people like you and I are involved less and less. I wonder who is funding them.   I see three groups that have really shaped the discussion this election in Minneapolis. FairVote, as RCV is driving all the debate, all the campaign strategy. It is even driving people to get snarly with each other on this forum. RCV would not be here if FairVote had not pushed it and not continued to protect it. And I have looked at their 990’s, I have asked Jeanne Massey personally and gotten no answer to who is funding them. I honestly, legitimately would love to know who is behind it.   Second, I see Our Revolution Twin Cities. I have also asked them who is funding them. I asked as one of their folks was literally carrying in cases of free beer to a gathering of several hundred people. And was told that it was all donated. And that because they had not accepted any cash donations, they don’t have to disclose who is funding them. But I know they had what had to have been thousands of dollars of donations between food, drinks, venues, printing at the convention, their website, etc. But they have not filed any paperwork.   Third, I see WedgeLive as a huge influence on the conversation. They have a EXHIBIT A http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post/5N69zQ0LRjoYqOtBhERzhO 1/2 8/14/2018 forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post/5N69zQ0LRjoYqOtBhERzhO huge web/twitter/Facebook/video operation, much more than could be done by one person with a full-time job. I see them attack many people who they think are too entrenched in City Hall but enough but oddly, never Betsy Hodges, who has been in City Hall 12 years. When John Edwards decided he was going to do a write-in campaign for the BET, his first supporter was Javier Morales, who is married to John Stiles, Betsy Hodges Chief of Staff. I would love to see the financing of that operation disclosed also.   I also think there are other organizations that are having a huge influence on elections, groups that I hope I will be able to get information on who is funding them eventually. The Bike Coalition has nine positions listed on its website that someone is paying for. They are responsible for the growing bike lane wars. Jake Virden and the Park and Power project through Hope Community which I think is a grant from a local foundation. NOC. BLM. TakeAction Minnesota. A few others. There is money behind these folks, serious money. I expect when their reporting is filed, we will better understand who is funding them. And better understand what is tearing our community apart. After all the non-profit reporting is in, I hope to make a request to all the major players to ask the same question - who is funding them.   I don’t think we are seeing just a popular uprising. I think there is money driving what we are seeing. I do agree with Mr. Kelly that some is probably local and some national. But without reporting, it is all speculation.   I think raising a stink about last-minute mailings is really a smoke screen. The last minute mailings will have an impact of a few points in the voting at best. The real power, the real shaping of what is happening, is with the groups that I listed above. It is in paying people from the Advocacy Class to work day in and day out on the issue you want to have promoted. We still honestly don’t understand the money behind that. And that is why I ask.   Carol Becker Longfellow EXHIBIT A http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post/5N69zQ0LRjoYqOtBhERzhO 2/2 Page 1 of 57 Forums ▾ About ▾ Projects ▾ Blog Get Involved Donate Help Sign In/Join ▾   The Theology of YIMBY  Share ◃ Newer (5mMM1BxCC4IsYqtXVwTv6s) ⬆ (/groups/mpls/) Older (2BfhFBIW2VqKENBKy2gCeF) 33 posts by 14 authors • Last post (/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/#post-3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms) by Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) at 10:58pm, Jul 02 Keywords: house, crisis, zone, market, price   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 7:52pm, Jun 24 The Minneapolis  ShareComp Plan is built on a simple concept – density is good. The plan purports a 12% growth but up-zoning the whole city means Minneapolis could take all the growth forecast for the Twin Cities and much more. Any home can be demolished. 15-20 story towers are envisioned throughout the City. Uptown and around the lakes becomes Manhattan. And according to this theology of density called YIMBY - this is good. Why do YIMBY? The argument is that we are not producing enough housing to meet demand because of onerous regulations like zoning. If we reduce regulations on developers, the marketplace will produce more housing and home prices will decline, rental costs will decline, income inequality will be reduced, historic racial inequities will be reduced and we will be a better city. Clayton Nall, a professor of political science at Stanford, calls YIMBY “An economically progressive message tied with a pro-development message that can potentially ameliorate the concerns of liberal homeowners.” ('Not in My Backyard' to 'Yes in My Backyard.' Alana Semuels. The Atlantic. Jul 5, 2017) https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/yimby-groups-pro-development/532437/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/yimby-groups-pro-development/532437/) Where does this pro-developer/anti-regulation thinking come from? The Atlantic did a good review of this movement called “YIMBY.” Unsurprisingly, it is a tech and developer-funded effort coming from San Francisco, a place that is truly having a housing shortage because of the large influx of people due to the tech boom. North America’s first YIMBY convention, YIMBY2016, was funded by the National Association of Realtors and the Boulder Area Realtor Association among other groups. ( https://truthout.org/articles/yimbys-the-alt-right-darlings-of-the-real-estate-industry/) (https://truthout.org/articles/yimbys-the-alt-right-darlings-of-the-realestate-industry/) But is Minneapolis having a housing crisis? Are we San Francisco? Are we Seattle? No. When adjusted for inflation, median housing prices in Minneapolis are what they were in 2003. Apartment rents went up 3.3% overall last year. We do have a small amount of inventory on the market currently for people buying new homes but that is because developers did not expect our current economic expansion to last as long as it has. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 2 of 57 Developers will build to meet demand as they always have and that will be addressed. Minneapolis is not San Francisco. Minneapolis is not Seattle. Will reducing regulations on the development industry produce really produce more housing? Undoubtedly, as that is the usual consequence from deregulation. But will it produce more affordable housing as the YIMBY advocates claim? More housing for historically oppressed groups? No. New housing construction costs are too high for the private market to produce housing affordable to low income persons without government intervention. In fact, existing naturally occurring affordable housing will be first to fall to the axe, as it is the housing that can provide the most profits. This will reduce affordable housing and not help any historically oppressed groups. It will also accelerate gentrification. And because any home can be demolished and up-zoned, home prices overall will increase, making all existing housing less affordable. Won’t supply and demand mean that if we have more supply, costs will go down? First off, traditional thinking about supply and demand doesn’t work because people don’t have a cabin in the City. They don’t go out and buy another house when prices go down. Every person buys only one housing unit. So traditional supply and demand thinking doesn’t really work. Builders don’t build housing they expect will be empty. Unless you are an extreme situation like Seattle or San Francisco where a large number of people are living doubled or tripled up waiting to buy housing, building more housing won’t drive down housing costs. In Minneapolis, new housing is much more expensive than existing housing and building more new housing will not drive down the cost of existing housing. Also, our real-life experience shows that new housing is not driving down the cost of housing. Minneapolis has added about 20,000 new housing units yet rents in Minneapolis have gone have gone up because of the new housing, not down as YIMBY advocates say it will. New housing is just more expensive than 100 year-old, fully depreciated housing. Who is helped by deregulating the housing industry? Developers. Rich people. Here is a real example. North Bay wants your money. http://northbaycos.com/projects/ (http://northbaycos.com/projects/) If you give North Bay $100,000, they will invest it in this rental property that will be built at 2407 2nd St NE: https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCA/3255/2407%202nd%20St%20NE%20Staff%20report%20attachments.pdf (https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCA/3255/2407%202nd%20St%20NE%20Staff%20report%20attachments.pdf) And you will get back 15% a year each year for 20 years. Pretty sweet return, right? That is the reality of market rate development in Minneapolis. I have to give it to the YIMBY movement. They have done a really good job of enlisting good people who care passionately about this City. And telling them things that are just not true. And those good people believe this stuff because they want solutions to things like historic racism and EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 3 of 57 inequality and expensive housing. We need solutions to those things. But radically deregulating developers isn’t going to do that. What do we need to do? We do need to find housing for another 50,000 people over the next 20 years. But we also need to protect our existing housing stock because old houses are more affordable than new ones. We should not up-zone the City and open it all up to bulldozers. We need to invest government resources in more affordable housing and we need to do that smartly. We need to stop tear downs of existing affordable homes. We need to continue to focus new development in our existing walkable environments and at high frequency transit nodes throughout the City. What shouldn’t we do? We shouldn’t just turn the keys of the City over to developers to let them have their way. The YIMBY movement should be exposed for what it is: a de-regulation gift to developers. (/groups/mpls/messages/image/wnAjFDUCQN9N5dfFxCngYTPRWUv(/groups/mpls/messages/image/wLnuc1MJXVdhehDp4OgEMroPyhJ(/groups/mpls/messages/image/1XQIDxXB7Db0Nb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/5BXiGnVAQLhlYRucZt2xcUqaPB59nL-2GZvQ0y) qtR-2GZvQ1x) ezX-2GZvQ3c) Dta-2GZvQ1C) image.png 35.22kb image.png 99.41kb 2407 2nd st NE.jpg 148.17kb Average Rent.jpg 54.73kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/wnAjFDUCQN9N5dfFxCngYTPRWUv(/groups/mpls/messages/image/wLnuc1MJXVdhehDp4OgEMroPyhJ(/groups/mpls/messages/image/1XQIDxXB7Db0NbgI87C8kujVMjD(/groups/mpls/messages/image/5BXiGnVAQLhlYRucZt2xcUqaPB59nL-2GZvQ0y) qtR-2GZvQ1x) Dta-2GZvQ1C) ezX-2GZvQ3c)   Matt Steele (/p/mattsteele) Posted at 1:02am, Jun 25 Thanks forposting Share a link to that 2407 2nd St NE project. That looks like a really nice project! I'd love to see that in my neighborhood.   Carin Peterson (/p/carinpeterson) Posted at 1:39am, Jun 25 Could yourepost Share the link 're the property/project 2407 2nd st ne? I cannot access whatever project Matt is so excited about but I do know the property.A lovely mid century home with a FABULOUS backyard! Who's property value may have taken a hit as it now sits...I'd swear with in arms reach (another variance granted ) of a truly hideous looking town home ~ 4 plex.At least ...they have parking! Thanks,CarinPeterson Sheridan Powered by Cricket Wireless. ▶ Rest of post   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 2:35am, Jun 25 EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 4 of 57  Share https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCA/3255/2407%202nd%20St%20NE%20Staff%20report%20attachments.pdf (https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCA/3255/2407%202nd%20St%20NE%20Staff%20report%20attachments.pdf) It takes a while to load... > On Jun 24, 2018, at 9:39 PM, carpete61 <> wrote: > > > > Could you repost the link 're the property/project 2407 2nd st ne? > I cannot access whatever project Matt is so excited about but I do know the property.A lovely mid century home with a FABULOUS backyard! > Who's property value may have taken a hit as it now sits...I'd swear with in arms reach (another variance granted ) of a truly hideous looking town home ~ 4 plex.At least ...they have parking! > Thanks,CarinPeterson Sheridan > > > Powered by Cricket Wireless. > > -------- Original message -------> From: Matt Steele <> > Date: 06/24/2018 8:02 PM (GMT-06:00) > To: mpls@forums.e-democracy.org > Subject: Re: [Mpls] The Theology of YIMBY > > Thanks for posting a link to that 2407 2nd St NE project. That looks like a really nice project! I'd love to see that in my neighborhood. > > Matt Steele > Northrop, Minneapolis > About/contact Matt Steele: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/mattsteele (http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/mattsteele) > > > 1. Be civil! Please read the rules at http://e-democracy.org/rules. (http://e-democracy.org/rules.) > If you think a member is in violation, contact the forum manager at > before continuing it on the list. > > 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. > > > -----------------------> Reply: Reply-All or visit http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/2Ys0YUtxEQoFMlYY3V8n78 (http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/2Ys0YUtxEQoFMlYY3V8n78) > New Topic: mpls@forums.e-democracy.org > Digest: Subject: digest on > Leave: Subject: unsubscribe > Forum Home: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls (http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls) > > > EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 5 of 57 > > Help? http://e-democracy.org/support (http://e-democracy.org/support) Hosting: http://OnlineGroups.Net (http://OnlineGroups.Net) > > > > > Carin Peterson > Sheridan, MN > About/contact Carin Peterson: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/carinpeterson (http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/carinpeterson) > > > 1. Be civil! Please read the rules at http://e-democracy.org/rules. (http://e-democracy.org/rules.) > If you think a member is in violation, contact the forum manager at > before continuing it on the list. > > 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. > > > -----------------------> Reply: Reply-All or visit http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/24VsCoLEcRC43qOzobUQ1W (http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/24VsCoLEcRC43qOzobUQ1W) ▶ Rest of post   Matt Eckholm (/p/matteckholm) Posted at 7:16pm, Jun 25 "When adjusted  Sharefor inflation, median housing prices in Minneapolis are what they were in 2003." This is all well and good in a vacuum, but wages have not risen with inflation, meaning that there are more people who cannot afford what was considered affordable in 2003. Look at the article posted to streets.mn today: https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starter-home/ (https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starterhome/) An affordable home was purchased, by some definitions, by the exact target market of a 'starter home.' By making some small changes over time, they ended up selling at a profit of $100k. Not because they wanted to flip the house, but because the demand for housing in Minneapolis is greater than the supply. By simply not neglecting the house into a ruin, they made it less affordable. How can you reconcile that with "don't build anything so houses stay affordable." We can't afford to be neutral on a moving train, especially with housing. You're adamant that we're not San Fransisco or Seattle, but they weren't either. Until they were. Portraying the YIMBY movement as callous deregulation is disingenuous, considering we wouldn't be having these problems in the first place if neighborhoods in South Minneapolis didn't push for downzoning in the 1970s. "Won’t supply and demand mean that if we have more supply, costs will go down? First off, traditional thinking about supply and demand doesn’t work because people don’t have a cabin in the City. They don’t go out and buy another house EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 6 of 57 when prices go down. Every person buys only one housing unit. So traditional supply and demand thinking doesn’t really work." Um, weren't you lamenting that Invitation Homes was purchasing thousands of houses in the city in the comments on streets.mn? Apparently they see some value in hoarding property that you're imagining doesn't exist. Take a look through the newspaper archives preserved by WedgeLive: https://www.wedgelive.com/p/paper.html (https://www.wedgelive.com/p/paper.html) Neighborhood groups pushing for downzoning resulted in vibrant neighborhoods being suddenly restricted from building housing that had always been allowed by right. Op-eds cheered the "reclamation" of boarding houses and small apartments, featuring people who were converting multifamily housing to "right size neighborhoods." Apartments built nearly 50 years ago are affordable now. By restricting neighborhoods from building those apartments across Minneapolis in the 1970s, it's not hard to see where all our affordable housing went - to regulatory capture by homeowners in these neighborhoods who had a vested interest in preventing the apartments from being built. The best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago. The second best time is now.   Adam Miller (/p/adammiller) Posted at 7:52pm, Jun 25 I'm mostlygoing Shareto leave you guys to talk yourselves into your personal self-interest (higher housing prices that benefit homeowners) actually being good and virtuous and helpful for people who aren't homeowners, but the amateur economist in me can't let this go: "First off, traditional thinking about supply and demand doesn’t work because people don’t have a cabin in the City. They don’t go out and buy another house when prices go down. Every person buys only one housing unit. So traditional supply and demand thinking doesn’t really work." That's not at all how supply and demand works. If an increase in available supply of a given good causes the price to fall the additional units are not consumed by the same number of people buying more. The whole point is that a lower price brings in marginal additional consumers. Maybe they'll substitute other consumption (i.e., buy a cheaper banana instead of their usual strawberries) or they are so enticed by the deal they will forgo some savings. Even the regular banana buyer who buys more is making the same type of marginal decision (foregoing either other consumption or savings). The mechanisms involved are cross-elasticities with savings and other goods. The same is true of housing. Were housing prices to drop (all else equal), more people who rent would buy and more people living in their parents basement would get their own place and more families would form households looking for housing. Except, of course, all else isn't equal because, in part thanks to regulations that keep housing expensive or impossible to add, house prices usually do not fall except in the case of particularly severe economic conditions, which are a EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 7 of 57 bigger impediment to household formation and moving up the housing food chain than the dropping price. Anyway, the point is there very much are marginal consumers of housing that are sensitive to pricing and supply and demand absolutely do apply to housing. Which is why south Minneapolis house prices are skyrocketing, even if a lack of those same market conditions on the north side is keeping the city-wide median down. And yes, new housing is more expensive than old housing. That's why it was such a mistake, in hindsight, that we downzoned in the past. We could really use all those forgone units right now.   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 2:10pm, Jun 27 First off, my personal self-interest would be to have up-zoning and have my  Share house worth more because it goes from a single family home to a corporate wealth generator. I am working against increasing my own net income. Second, YIMBYs argue that if you build more houses, prices will drop. So lets do a thought experiment. Say we have a city with stagnant growth. Flat population. If some (stupid) developer builds more housing, the housing will set empty because people only live in one house. They dont go buy a cabin in the city when prices drop. No “Hey Martha, the price of houses dropped so lets go buy more and stock up.” (Houses are not bananas). And any developer building new housing where there is not demand for it is just throwing away money. Now yes, if there were enough stupid developers who built more and more empty housing, the oversupply would drive down prices. In that case supply and demand would work. But what developer would be that dumb? Now if we extrapolate that to the real world, developers are constantly trying to match demand with supply. They dont want to build more than are needed to meet demand for every person to have a place to live but no more. So the idea if we just build more housing, prices will drop is hooey. Unless you think we have really stupid developers. You are right that if the price of home ownership was lower, more people would buy homes. But the pro-developer YIMBY folks are just simply wrong by saying building more homes will reduce home prices through supply and demand. Supply and demand does not work like that. YIMBY folks argue that housing prices are skyrocketing but we have shown over and over that is not true. Home prices are where they were in 2003 and rents went up 3.3% last year. So does regulation increase costs or decrease costs? We have pretty much established that new housing prices are higher than existing 100 year old fully depreciated housing unless you are talking about small scale addition of ADUs to existing housing and small scale owner occupied housing. Protectionary zoning that retains and maintains lower cost housing is critical to the vitality of this city. We should not bulldoze lower cost housing. As to the downzoning issue, it is really a question of whether substandard EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 8 of 57 housing is better than what we have today. I suspect Mr. Miller was never in any of those single family homes that were hacked into six or eight bedrooms or more by slumlords. Filthy. Too few bathrooms and no kitchen for many. It is easy to hark back to a day you never saw and say how wonderful it was. But having seen it, Powderhorn was full of just horrid housing. Slumlords made out like bandits. I am not sure going back to that is the best solution either, especially as we are a city that is 40% parents and kids. We need to preserve and build more family housing and downzoning did that. Carol Becker Longfellow PS - Mr Miller - don't you own a house in Howe? ▶ Rest of post   Adam Miller (/p/adammiller) Posted at 2:43pm, Jun 27 Again, you're incorrectly assuming there are no marginal consumers of housing.  Share When prices drop (in the real world we're actually talking about prices going up at a slower rate more than a nominal drop), there are more people who want to purchase housing. They're people who currently rent and would like to buy a home. They're people who are currently living with family. They're people who are currently living in St. Louis Park because they could not find a home they could afford in the city. They are couples who are holding off on getting married or moving in together because they can't afford a home yet. Especially in our world of regulated housing scarcity, there are always more people who would like to purchase housing than there is housing. Right now, we have way more people that want to buy homes in our neighborhoods than there are homes available to buy, and prices are skyrocketing, because, yes, supply and demand do in fact work like that. Adding additional housing units is the only way to bring balance to the market and stop the price spiral. Median house values in Minneapolis went up 9.5% last year (https://www.zillow.com/minneapolis-mn/home-values/) (https://www.zillow.com/minneapolis-mn/home-values/) That's not a normal number. And that's city-wide, which means it understates the situation in in-demand South Minneapolis neighborhoods. It's increasingly difficult to find starter homes in the city, because those older homes are being renovated, replaced or just appreciating into expensive homes. See: https://www.minnpost.com/economy/2018/02/why-it-s-extremely-difficult-buy-first-home-minnesota-right-now (https://www.minnpost.com/economy/2018/02/why-it-s-extremely-difficult-buy-first-home-minnesota-right-now) http://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-home-sales-plunge-12-percent-as-supply-thins-even-more/480148183/ (http://www.startribune.com/twin-citieshome-sales-plunge-12-percent-as-supply-thins-even-more/480148183/) http://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-housing-market-gets-tighter-with-less-than-10-000-homes-on-sale/483346501/ (http://www.startribune.com/twincities-housing-market-gets-tighter-with-less-than-10-000-homes-on-sale/483346501/) Again, this situation is financially great for those of us who already own homes. Our wealth is growing. It's terrible for our children who are going to be priced out of the city. ▶ Rest of post EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 9 of 57   Matt Eckholm (/p/matteckholm) Posted at 2:50pm, Jun 27 "As to the downzoning issue, it is really a question of whether substandard Share housing is better than what we have today. I suspect Mr. Miller was never in any of those single family homes that were hacked into six or eight bedrooms or more by slumlords. Filthy. Too few bathrooms and no kitchen for many. It is easy to hark back to a day you never saw and say how wonderful it was. But having seen it, Powderhorn was full of just horrid housing. Slumlords made out like bandits. I am not sure going back to that is the best solution either, especially as we are a city that is 40% parents and kids. We need to preserve and build more family housing and downzoning did that." I think two things are missing from your side of the housing debate, Carol. One is an understanding that what you consider a baseline and "standard" for housing is not the end all, be all definition of what everyone else considers acceptable housing. And two, a bit of empathy. First off, you're completely mischaracterizing the housing of the past in order to fit your narrative. Single family homes were, for the most part, not used for boarding houses. Boarding houses were made illegal and largely torn down as the downzoning activists cried that "nobody should be living like this" and pointed to their own middle class sensibilities as justification. "Decent people" don't share bathrooms. "Decent people" can afford a kitchen. But when we send students off to college, they share a bathroom and kitchen with the rest of their colleagues, generally on one floor of 20+ other adults. When they graduate and complain they can't afford to rent a one bedroom apartment, NIMBYs like yourselves point to cherry picked rent growth numbers and say "Whatever happened to having roommates?" Why then, is the idea that 6-8 people sharing a bathroom and kitchen in a multifamily development so foreign? Is it because you're actually concerned about the conditions, or is it pearl clutching in order to defend what you really are concerned with: street parking? Because we have building codes now that prevent the actual problems with boarding houses (and single family homes) from the era, the only thing holding us back now is cries of decency. And it's all well and good to tell 20 somethings to go live with roommates. They're young, it's socially acceptable to tell them to live in conditions poorer than yours because that's character building or something. But what about the 40 year old single mother? The man in his 50s who goes through a messy divorce and loses everything? Older members of the LGBT community who don't have the resources to afford what you consider sensible? Are they supposed to somehow room with 20 somethings if they can't afford an apartment themselves? How is that supposed to work? Minneapolis hit its peak population in the 1950s because it was possible to rent a room and use shared facilities if that was what you felt you needed. We did away with that once people who could afford single family homes decided that was no longer decent, and codified their beliefs. So then we started building more apartments, as studio apartments became the bottom rung of decent housing. But then the 1970s rolled around, and sensibilities again decided that single family homes need to be prioritized over the scraps we left for people who couldn't afford them. And that's why we're in the position we're in today. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 10 of 57 It's also pretty privileged to claim that families can only live in single family homes. Believe it or not, millions of people around the world live with their families in multifamily housing and don't think they're living in squalor. Again, a middle class, TV Land version of decency shouldn't be applied to everyone. Some people don't consider it a crime against humanity to have two children share a bedroom - allowing the classic four member nuclear family to live comfortably in a 2-br apartment. If it wasn't for the false narrative that small families need 3+ br single family homes to be considered decent, those homes might have still been affordable enough for the large multigenerational families appropriate for 1800sq ft that are currently making do in smaller spaces. In a major city, not everyone is going to demand the same amount of space as a middle class baby boomer. And that's not only okay, it's the diversity in life experience and taste that make city living actually enjoyable. All we're asking for is the option to allow people who don't share your opinion about what is sensible and decent to have a place in the city. I don't think that's a major ask.   Connie Sullivan (/p/conniesullivan) Posted at 4:28pm, Jun 27 People interested  Share in the contours of the Minneapolis 2040 density controversy should not miss two independent Op-Ed pieces about it in today's Star Tribune. Both authors question the wisdom of the radical proposal to upzone the entire city's R1A and R2B low-density housing zones. Let's not have the builders/developers and real estate brokers/managers who are commenting on this forum in favor of removing any restrictions on what can be built in any residential neighborhood, have us conclude that there is not reasonable opposition to their proposals and their supporting arguments. Lots of Minneapolis residents agree with Carol Becker, and I'm glad the word is getting out, Connie Sullivan, on a block currently zoned low-density in Como, in Southeast Minneapolis ▶ Rest of post   Phelan O'Neill (/p/phelano'neill) Posted at 4:47pm, Jun 27 Plenty more Minneapolis residents voted for and still support the council  Share members and Mayor who campaigned on "building more housing" less than a year ago. Carol is playing fast and loose with her numbers in an attempt to mislead people into thinking there's no housing shortages, even as mountains of evidence piles up against her claim that upzoning isn't the solution. In Seattle, a city that just went through a massive construction boom, rents have flatlined metro-wide, and landlords, not tenants are the ones who are being forced to compete with one another: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/free-amazon-echo-2-months-free-rent-2500-gift-cards-seattle-apartment-glut-gives-renters-freebies/ (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/free-amazon-echo-2-months-free-rent-2500-gift-cards-seattle-apartment-glut-gives-renters-freebies/) EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 11 of 57 But let's give Carol's wildly misleading numbers a spin. In a crazy world where real estate investors were making 15% returns annually, rents would have to be going up pretty substantially to keep up with that massive expense for landlords and developers. If their financiers are demanding 15%, profits must be close to 30% or more for that to be feasible. Moreover, the only reason this would happen is that all the construction for new units right now is concentrated in high demand, high value areas where it requires an incredible amount of capital to build and maintain a rental complex. So much so that even high priced developers can't rely solely on a bank loan or line of credit to finance their projects. In that case, wouldn't it be the perfect reason to pass the comp plan? It would legalize construction in places that were previously off limits, and allow for much smaller scale apartments to be build (duplex/triplex/fourplex). So in that world, it'd require less cash to decide to build rental units, allowing for people other than mega-developers who have extensive ties to those wealthy financiers to get in on the game. And since these new landlords could use more traditional methods to finance their construction, including low-interest publicly backed loans with interest rates in the single digits, they could easily undercut the rent prices of these mega landlords. Mega developers then would either have to find a way to compete with these smaller landlords who are stealing their business, or go out of business due to an inability to pay the massive overhead costs that these developers seemingly have. If you're stuck trying to pay 15% returns on a $30 million dollar loan, you're not going to bail yourself out by converting your house to a duplex and renting out the extra unit. But homeowners with decent equity in their home could, and that's why they'd be the ones who'd benefit in this plan. Phelan O'Neill, renter in a 100 year old walk up on an East Isles block without a SFH On Wed, Jun 27, 2018 at 11:28 AM sulli002 University of Minnesota < ▶ Rest of post   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 7:15pm, Jun 27 Mr. Eckholm wrote:  Share Mr. Eckholm “First off, you're completely mischaracterizing the housing of the past in order to fit your narrative. Single family homes were, for the most part, not used for boarding houses. Boarding houses were made illegal and largely torn down as the downzoning activists cried that "nobody should be living like this" and pointed to their own middle class sensibilities as justification. "Decent people" don't share bathrooms. "Decent people" can afford a kitchen. But when we send students off to college, they share a bathroom and kitchen with the rest of their colleagues, generally on one floor of 20+ other adults. When they graduate and complain they can't afford to rent a EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 12 of 57 one-bedroom apartment, NIMBYs like yourselves point to cherry picked rent growth numbers and say "Whatever happened to having roommates?" Carol: Mr. Eckholm, please go back and reread what I wrote. What happened in Powderhorn in the 1970’s was not some nice “Friend”-type roommates. Wasn’t some pretty co-housing or dormitory housing. It was slumlords slapping up walls and then calling them units. Without adequate bathrooms or even access to bathrooms at times. Or access to kitchens. I had a friend who lived in one of these and it was a room, no kitchen but he did have access to a bathroom. Shared with six other “units.” Others in the house did not have access to a bathroom. That is the concept of slum lord and what was the impetus for downzoning. So saying that all of today’s problems are because of downzoning Powderhorn in the 1970’s ignores what was really going on. It was really bad housing. Mr. Eckholm goes on: “Why then, is the idea that 6-8 people sharing a bathroom and kitchen in a multifamily development so foreign?” Carol: Absolutely nothing. I shared a house with four other people in college. But what I wrote had nothing to do with this. Mr. Eckholm “Is it because you're actually concerned about the conditions, or is it pearl clutching in order to defend what you really are concerned with: street parking?” Carol: I actually have many concerns…. One of them is families with children, the elderly, the disabled and others dependent on cars being able to live in our city. And they have as much right to live in this city as the young, the childless, the able bodied. Mr. Eckholm “And it's all well and good to tell 20 somethings to go live with roommates. They're young, it's socially acceptable to tell them to live in conditions poorer than yours because that's character building or something. But what about the 40 year old single mother? The man in his 50s who goes through a messy divorce and loses everything? Older members of the LGBT community who don't have the resources to afford what you consider sensible? Are they supposed to somehow room with 20 somethings if they can't afford an apartment themselves? How is that supposed to work?” Carol: Again, not clear what this is pointing to? We do have a great need for housing for low income people. But we are not having a crisis in market rate housing, which is what this discussion was about. I have put data up on that repeatedly. Building new housing will not create housing for those you talk about in this paragraph. Mr. Eckholm “Minneapolis hit its peak population in the 1950s because it was possible to rent a room and use shared facilities if that was what you felt you needed. We did away with that once people who could afford single family homes decided that was no longer decent, and codified their beliefs. So then we started building more apartments, as studio apartments became the bottom rung of decent housing. But then the 1970s rolled around, and sensibilities again decided that single family homes need to be prioritized EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 13 of 57 over the scraps we left for people who couldn't afford them. And that's why we're in the position we're in today.” Carol: Minneapolis hit its peak population in 1950 because we had larger families than we do today. A bunch of guys came back from the War and made a bunch of babies and family sizes grew. And have been declining since. Here is the chart: We did have about 177,000 housing units for about 40 years, as we downzoned in some places and added in others. It was all oddly pretty stable up until the population growth in the last 10-15 years. Mr. Eckholm “It's also pretty privileged to claim that families can only live in single family homes. Believe it or not, millions of people around the world live with their families in multifamily housing and don't think they're living in squalor. Again, a middle class, TV Land version of decency shouldn't be applied to everyone. Some people don't consider it a crime against humanity to have two children share a bedroom - allowing the classic four member nuclear family to live comfortably in a 2-br apartment. If it wasn't for the false narrative that small families need 3+ br single family homes to be considered decent, those homes might have still been affordable enough for the large multigenerational families appropriate for 1800sq ft that are currently making do in smaller spaces.” Carol: I have, in fact, been fighting for multi-family housing. I would refer you to some of my other posts. Just not everywhere and at developer's whim. Deregulation does not get you what you say you want. Mr. Eckholm “In a major city, not everyone is going to demand the same amount of space as a middle class baby boomer. And that's not only okay, it's the diversity in life experience and taste that make city living actually enjoyable. All we're asking for is the option to allow people who don't share your opinion about what is sensible and decent to have a place in the city. I don't think that's a major ask.” Carol: We agree on something! Yes, I think lots of folks want different options for housing. That is why we should preserve existing housing. Not everyone wants a condo living. Mr. Eckholm. Question for you. You are on the St Louis Park Planning Commission, correct? St Louis Park requires full code compliance to current existing codes, not the codes when the house was built. This means that St Louis Park housing cannot really deteriorate because at sale, homeowners have to make upgrades to today’s code regardless of the age of the home. St Louis Park is the only city that has that requirement. As such, that substantially increases housing costs there. Are you working to eliminate that requirement in St Louis Park? Carol Becker Longfellow PS - Mr. Miller, I will respond to you when I have more posts available, hopefully tomorrow. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 14 of 57 ▶ Rest of post (/groups/mpls/messages/image/f0wLfrz7yLbrqf2ZfxsLHGXaT3Te0d-2H1fFA2) Av Household Size.jpg 52.57kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/f0wLfrz7yLbrqf2ZfxsLHGXaT3Te0d-2H1fFA2)   Matt Eckholm (/p/matteckholm) Posted at 7:24pm, Jun 28 "What happened  Share in Powderhorn in the 1970’s was not some nice “Friend”-type roommates. Wasn’t some pretty co-housing or dormitory housing. It was slumlords slapping up walls and then calling them units." I'll have to take your word for what happened in Powderhorn, because I don't have access to a primary source record. However, the link I provided *IS* a primary source record of the downzoning fight in Lowry Hill East. It was not slumlords slapping up walls in houses, it was tenements being torn down by vengeful homeowners who wanted to maintain what they believed their neighborhood should be - exclusionary. "I actually have many concerns…. One of them is families with children, the elderly, the disabled and others dependent on cars being able to live in our city. And they have as much right to live in this city as the young, the childless, the able bodied." You're very focused on those dependent on cars. But what about those who cannot afford cars? Plenty of families with children, elderly, disabled, and others are entirely dependent on Metro Transit, or services within walking distance. It's easy to scapegoat this argument as young people trying to chase the old out of the city, but your vision for Minneapolis ignores that plenty of the people you claim to care about are unable to benefit from unlimited parking and low density. "But we are not having a crisis in market rate housing, which is what this discussion was about. I have put data up on that repeatedly. Building new housing will not create housing for those you talk about in this paragraph." I was very clear when I drew the connection between a lack of multifamily housing development starting in the 1970s and our current lack of naturally occurring affordable housing. As the pressures grow on existing housing stock, it becomes more and more lucrative to renovate older properties and remove them as options for affordable housing. Preserving every single family home without exception has already created a market where the bottom is too high for many first time home buyers (speaking as a resident of Saint Louis Park who spent months searching for a Minneapolis home). This kind of surprises me from you actually - do you think many families with EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 15 of 57 children or elderly, with multiple jobs they need to drive across the city for, and youth sports and all the related time sinks, have the time, energy, or resources to put sweat equity into the few derelict properties that remain? Or does it seem more likely that someone is going to come along, pick up a property for $150k, tear it down, and build a mansion on it? Why is that more acceptable than someone coming along and building a property designed (by modern code! with bathrooms and kitchens!) to support four families? "Minneapolis hit its peak population in 1950 because we had larger families than we do today." The provided chart alone isn't enough data for you to have securely drawn that conclusion. Data on Minneapolis family size, or Minneapolis population by age for the era, would have been more appropriate. Both family sizes and what we considered acceptable living changed in the 1950s. Here's some more information on that, with the caveat that this isn't me drawing a conclusion that this is the culprit of Minneapolis' woes - it's another area of study: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boarding-house/6236/ (https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boardinghouse/6236/) "We did have about 177,000 housing units for about 40 years, as we downzoned in some places and added in others." We aren't adding as much as we're bleeding. Minneapolis lost over 6,000 duplex, triplex, and fourplex units since 1990. But we added 2,500 single-family homes in same period. And as an aside, we can't replace fourplexes lost citywide when the downtown adjacent neighborhoods that you say we should be building in put up thousands of dollars to fight tall buildings in areas where there are already tall buildings. https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/991298317077307392 (https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/991298317077307392) "I have, in fact, been fighting for multi-family housing. I would refer you to some of my other posts. Just not everywhere and at developer's whim. Deregulation does not get you what you say you want." I mean, that's the definition of Not In My BackYard, isn't it? No multifamily near me, build it in the Wedge. The Wedge says build it in St. Anthony. St. Anthony says build it near the University. Dinkytown says build it in Uptown, Uptown is built out and ECCO wants to keep the boundaries from spreading. That's the whole point of the blanket upzone. Yes, the single family districts are going to four units. But areas where we should have been building taller already (like Uptown) can go to ten. We'll be able to build smaller cores around transit stations up to twenty. My favorite part of the whole plan is the blanket upzoning of the wasted industrial land next to Target Field - there's no historical warehouse district there, so we'll see thirty story buildings right next to what will hopefully be the busiest transit station in Minneapolis. My point in saying all that is - there will be places the demand will be naturally drawn to before anyone comes after single family homes. But it also recognizes that on the fringes of popular areas, there may be places where smaller multifamily units are still appropriate, and can still mix well into the urban fabric. It recognizes that the few properties that have fought their EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 16 of 57 way through public hearings haven't destroyed neighborhoods like the doomsayers claimed. It recognizes that historically, the city was not zoned single family, and that the assumption that it should remain so forever is misguided. But what the plan isn't - it isn't open season for neighborhoods. Single family homes aren't going extinct any time soon in Minneapolis, nor should they. But there needs to be an understanding that in the densest core of the state, the days in which there are single family homes that are affordable are coming to an end. And locking them down as the only thing that can be built will only lead to renovation and tear down. Like San Francisco, if you focus on preserving the buildings with an iron grip, the culture that makes the buildings worth living in will slowly trickle out of your grasp like sand. And as for the code compliance - I can't say I disagree with it. If someone buys a home that's out of compliance and renovates it to be compliant, they're still making it less affordable one owner down the line - like in this article. https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starter-home/ (https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starterhome/) Unless they're content to buy a property, do absolutely nothing with it, and hastily make the changes a year later when the code compliance becomes a contingency for sale, nothing changes. But in case you're curious, I do intend to push for higher density and changes in my own backyard! I want bodegas and coffee shops within walking distance to better connect my community :)   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 1:19am, Jun 29 Adam Miller wrote:  Share “Again, you're incorrectly assuming there are no marginal consumers of housing. When prices drop (in the real world we're actually talking about prices going up at a slower rate more than a nominal drop), there are more people who want to purchase housing. They're people who currently rent and would like to buy a home. They're people who are currently living with family. They're people who are currently living in St. Louis Park because they could not find a home they could afford in the city. They are couples who are holding off on getting married or moving in together because they can't afford a home yet. Especially in our world of regulated housing scarcity, there are always more people who would like to purchase housing than there is housing.” I do agree that if prices drop, people would shift from renting to buying. But that wasn’t the question. The question was if you build more housing overall, you will somehow make housing values drop. Supply and demand. That if you build more housing stock overall, you will somehow reduce prices, as if houses are bananas and people buy more housing when prices drop. They don’t. Unless you have a huge mismatch between supply and demand like Seattle or San Francisco. Our economy is not theirs and our housing needs are not theirs. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 17 of 57 And you have not yet explained how building more market rate housing will create more affordable housing. Market rate housing is more expensive than our existing depreciated 100 year old housing stock. How do you get the cheaper housing that you say you want by deregulating developers? Mr. Miller wrote: “Right now, we have way more people that want to buy homes in our neighborhoods than there are homes available to buy, and prices are skyrocketing, because, yes, supply and demand do in fact work like that. Adding additional housing units is the only way to bring balance to the market and stop the price spiral.” Yet over and over I have shown that prices are not skyrocketing. I will put up again the chart of our median home value, which shows that home values declined for five years before increasing for about five years. The median home is what is was in 2003, before the housing bubble. We are in the ninth year of an economic expansion, something that has never happened in the history of the United States. Developers have not wanted to risk building when a recession is due. The developers that I have talked to have said the peak has passed and they don’t want to be holding stock when there is a downturn. Also, given that a mere ten years ago, they couldn't give away a house, it is understandable that they are gun shy. Likewise, rents increased 3.3% last year, not exactly “skyrocketing.” We are not San Francisco or Seattle with burgeoning economies and burgeoning population growth. We are Minneapolis, with moderate growth in population, about 1% a year. That is what we must accommodate. Also, you note that there are more people wanting to buy in South Minneapolis than there is available housing. Yet in North Minneapolis, we have lots that the City can’t give away. On East Lake, we still have car dealerships. In Northeast, we still have low utilization industrial land. If we don’t make Uptown Manhattan, if we don’t turn Southwest over to developers, maybe they will be forced to develop other parts of the City? Mr. Miller wrote: “Median house values in Minneapolis went up 9.5% last year ( https://www.zillow.com/minneapolis-mn/home-values/) (https://www.zillow.com/minneapolis-mn/home-values/) That's not a normal number.” You are right. Perhaps that is why Zillow is being sued for bad housing estimates? My data is coming from the City Assessor, not a website known to overvalue homes to incent homeowners to sell their homes. A website owned by a hedge fund that invests in real estate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/zillow-faces-lawsuit-over-zestimate-tool-that-calculates-a-houses-worth/2017/05/09/b22d0318-3410-11e7 -b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?noredirect=on&;utm_term=.1c6b852b4b83 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/zillow-faces-lawsuit-overzestimate-tool-that-calculates-a-houses-worth/2017/05/09/b22d0318-3410-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1c6b852b4b83) Mr. Miller wrote: EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 18 of 57 “And that's city-wide, which means it understates the situation in in-demand South Minneapolis neighborhoods. It's increasingly difficult to find starter homes in the city, because those older homes are being renovated, replaced or just appreciating into expensive homes. See: https://www.minnpost.com/economy/2018/02/why-it-s-extremely-difficult-buy-first-home-minnesota-right-now (https://www.minnpost.com/economy/2018/02/why-it-s-extremely-difficult-buy-first-home-minnesota-right-now) http://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-home-sales-plunge-12-percent-as-supply-thins-even-more/480148183/ (http://www.startribune.com/twin-citieshome-sales-plunge-12-percent-as-supply-thins-even-more/480148183/) http://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-housing-market-gets-tighter-with-less-than-10-000-homes-on-sale/483346501/ (http://www.startribune.com/twincities-housing-market-gets-tighter-with-less-than-10-000-homes-on-sale/483346501/) ” All of your articles are from the last year. Call me in five years, after our next recession and show me that your one/two year trend has held through that recession. And then there will be a real trend to do something dramatic like deregulating developers. But when you look at this over even ten years, the argument of a crisis doesn’t hold up. It isn’t a justification for the radical change that YIMBY advocates for. Mr. Miller wrote: “Again, this situation is financially great for those of us who already own homes. Our wealth is growing. It's terrible for our children who are going to be priced out of the city.” My house is pretty much the median value house. My wealth is where it was in 2003. If we stay on this track, my kid will be able to afford my house. If we open any house to being bulldozed, prices will go up. If you care about housing prices, you don’t up-zone. You don’t deregulate. Carol Becker Longfellow ▶ Rest of post (/groups/mpls/messages/image/bcnXvQSGel88LzZARUKOuX42M0Hd26-2H1Z4zh) Median Home Values .jpg 48.93kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/bcnXvQSGel88LzZARUKOuX42M0Hd26-2H1Z4zh)   Jeff Skrenes (/p/hawthornehawkman) Posted at 3:32am, Jun 29 I'm kind ofmiddle Share of the road for these arguments. As much as I value Carol's accounts, I do recall being a mortgage originator from 2001 - 2007 and worrying EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 19 of 57 that the home value rises were far outpacing wage and income growth - a pattern that contributed to the market crash and a pattern we're seeing again. So while the similarities to 2003 show that we aren't in a historic crisis, it's not exactly a comforting comparison. However, the notion that we "lost 6,000 duplex, triplex, and fourplex housing units since 1990" is even more misleading. I submit that this statistic is being entirely and intentionally misused to perpetrate the notion that a wholly nonexistent trend took hold in Minneapolis. I've ONLY been here since 1999, but I don't remember the destruction of thousands of mutlifamily properties in my fair city. What I do remember, and what I did more than a few mortgages on, is a trend where multifamily housing units were split up into co-operatives and small-scale condos. In that case, a four-unit building that was once classified as one mutlifamily housing unit may now be considered four single-family units even though the built form of the structure or community did not change. If I'm wrong, show me the six thousand demo permits. Show the the block after block (outside of north Minneapolis) of demolished housing. And I know I'll get backlash from the YIMBY's for bringing up old stuff as if it shouldn't matter anymore, but anyone who yearns for the good old days of boarding houses as an alternative affordable housing strategy, but celebrated the demolition of the Orth House is quite frankly full of it and I won't let that go without pointing out the hypocrisy. We had the last remnants of that form of naturally occurring affordable housing in the neighborhood, with quite a few indigent boarders who would not be able to afford anything - certainly not the new construction in its place - in that community. Where are they now? Did Lisa Bender make sure THEY had their affordable housing - in the community where they wanted to live - maintained? Lastly, I wholly agree with the classification of YIMBYism as a "theology." Or at least as fanaticism, since theology implies a degree of rationalism in its construct. I see repeated assertions that wholesale citywide zoning changes won't result in single-family homes getting demolished to build fourplexes. Yet the numbers I've found seem to indicate that is exactly what will happen. Please, prove me wrong. And call me a YIMBYer because I find it absurd that my street, Penn Ave N, is largely zoned R1 when this corridor needs density more than anyplace else in the city. My neighborhood and its bus lines have the highest percentages of ridership that depend on the bus as a primary source of transportation. We're poor. The commercial corridors are full of vacant parcels. Businesses say they can't expand without more of a population base. We NEED the density here. But it's not coming and the 2040 plan doesn't create it either.   Dave Garland (/p/davidgarland) Posted at 3:45am, Jun 29 On 6/28/2018 8:18 PM, Carol Becker wrote:  Share > Also, you note that there are more people wanting to buy in South > Minneapolis than there is available housing. Yet in North Minneapolis, we > have lots that the City can’t give away. On East Lake, we still have car > dealerships. In Northeast, we still have low utilization industrial land. If > we don’t make Uptown Manhattan, if we don’t turn Southwest over to > developers, maybe they will be forced to develop other parts of the City? EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 20 of 57 This. I don't particularly object to 4plexes. There's one (and a bigger apartment building) on my block. They're good neighbors. But there's plenty of space to build them. The northside needs new construction, and there are lots of lots to build on without tearing anything down. We don't need high rent replacements for existing properties, unless we're willing to wait 40 or 50 years for the payoff (when the new properties have deteriorated enough so that they're affordable). Everywhere needs owner-occupied properties. No place needs teardowns. But not enough quick profits for developers. Developers (in general) don't give a crap about neighborhoods beyond getting the place sold. OTOH, even though I'm an elderly homeowner, I'm not sympathetic to the "my house is my life savings" angle, the city doesn't guarantee any of my other investments, and I do need a place to live in. A place where I don't have to deal with sleazeball slumlords, like I did before. ▶ Rest of post   Bill Kahn (/p/billkahn) Posted at 5:49am, Jun 29 Know a family that owned one in Marcy Holmes and the City gave the last man  Share managing it as rental housing a terrible lot of grief; they sold when he died and it is a fraternity now. Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 28, 2018, at 10:32 PM, Jeff Skrenes <> wrote: > > We had the last remnants of that form of naturally occurring affordable housing in the neighborhood, with quite a few indigent boarders who would not be able to afford anything - certainly not the new construction in its place in that community. Where are they now?   Adam Miller (/p/adammiller) Posted at 2:29pm, Jun 29 "I do agree if prices drop, people would shift from renting to buying. that Share But that wasn’t the question. The question was if you build more housing overall, you will somehow make housing values drop. Supply and demand. That if you build more housing stock overall, you will somehow reduce prices, as if houses are bananas and people buy more housing when prices drop." It only took you three sentences to contradict yourself. "The median home is what is was in 2003, before the housing bubble." If you use the Case-Shiller index, it's more like 2006, or close to the peak of the bubble, and trending upward: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kiJv (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kiJv) We're not Seattle or San Francisco. This discussion is about how to avoid becoming like them, because we're on that path. Your prescription is do what EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 21 of 57 they did and don't allow more housing. It will have the same result. "We are in the ninth year of an economic expansion, something that has never happened in the history of the United States." Not that it particularly matters, but this is not true. "Call me in five years, after our next recession and show me that your one/two year trend has held through that recession." First of all, even if it was true that housing prices will come back down in the next recession, it's hardly a solution to our housing shortage to just wait for the next economic hardship. Second, it is not true that housing prices necessarily fall during a recession. The linked graph from the St. Louis Fed of the Case-Schiller index shows recessions in gray. Note that housing prices were flat through the 1991 recession and actually rose steadily through the 2001 recession (note, those are more than 9 years apart). Third, it's not a one or two year trend. Local home prices have been climbing fairly rapidly since at least mid-2012.   Morgan Bird (/p/morganbird) Posted at 4:08pm, Jun 29 Carol: "But are not having a crisis in market rate housing, which is we Share what this discussion was about. I have put data up on that repeatedly." Only someone who hasn't interacted with the housing market in over a decade could believe that. Anybody who has tried to buy a house or rent an apartment—I know many people who've done both recently and I just rented a new apartment last year—can tell you there's a severe housing shortage. Home buyers have to expect to bid over asking price and likely still not get the house. Renters have to schedule same day showings and expect to submit an application on the spot even though someone else probably already applied that morning. And the "data" you keep repeating in multiple threads here and on streets.mn is just flatly false. Not only, as Adam showed, are housing prices basically back up to where they were at the peak of the housing bubble, your claim that the bubble hadn't started in 2003 is just wrong. Analysts were already warning of a housing bubble in 2003 and now say that it started in 1998-1999 (you can see it in the graph Adam linked to). The bubble was very much well underway by 2003 but again, prices today are well above where they were that year. Here's Dean Baker writing about the bubble in August 2002: http://cepr.net/publications/reports/the-run-up-in-home-prices-is-it-real-or-is-it-another-bubble (http://cepr.net/publications/reports/the-run-up-in-homeprices-is-it-real-or-is-it-another-bubble) For people who didn't bother clicking Adam's link, here's the graph: [image: Screenshot from 2018-06-29 10-59-20.png] ▶ Rest of post EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 22 of 57 (/groups/mpls/messages/image/yZclHV81HKDt94Geh8XDUp8EkOrf7H-2H2lteS) Screenshot from 2018-06-29 10-59-20.png 56.77kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/yZclHV81HKDt94Geh8XDUp8EkOrf7H-2H2lteS)   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 4:55pm, Jun 29 Matt Eckholm wrote:  Share “When every small area plan assumes development should happen somewhere else, or in very defined districts within their neighborhoods to prevent anything from changing near the people in charge of the plans, that's not very democratic is it?” You live in St Louis Park so have never participated in a small area plan, correct? If you had, you would know that is not true. Our small area plans have been very thoughtful and also accommodated appropriate growth. And been highly democratic as those who will be affected had a hand in crafting them. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Like I said in the discussion with Carol Becker, the blanket upzone isn't just for single family zoning - it means taller and denser development where dense development is already happening. It means taller and denser development where dense development *isn't* already happening, like the area near Target Field, industrial areas near the Blue Line, and a larger area around downtown.” You would not need to blanket up-zone to do this. Existing zoning would allow development along the Blue Line near Target Field. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “But it also recognizes that low density zoning is *not* the historical norm. It was a change made to appease exclusionary neighborhood organizations that were afraid the whole city would be covered with Riverside Plaza style, brutalist apartment towers.” I don’t understand this. What are you referencing? Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Equating fourplexes, buildings that are so close in size and character to single family homes that you probably have no idea which properties are fourplexes unless you count mailboxes, to buildings like that is intellectually dishonest. And the new multifamily properties that have fought their way through the hours long public hearings have proven the doomsayers wrong - the sky didn't fall. The neighborhood didn't explode. Everything was fine.” EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 23 of 57 True, if fourplexes were at a scale and mass of a single-family home, no one would care. But they are not. They go full lot front to back, side to side. The minimum is two and a half stories and developers will be able to appeal to build higher. They could combine two lots to build substantially higher. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “If the plan scaled back its ambitions, and only allowed a block or two of multifamily housing as a buffer to higher density corridors, would that be acceptable? Or have we reached a point in this debate where the only acceptable option for density opponents is for nothing to ever change?” My group agrees that we need to add about 50,000 people over the next 20 years. That is a 12% growth. We added about 40,000 people over the last 20 years by building new housing in downtown, by the U and at high frequency transit nodes. We can continue doing this very successful approach without turning the City over to developers. There is an enormous amount of land available under current strategies. As to your points on density, I would remind you that Minneapolis is the 46th largest City in the United States but the 11th most dense without any of these changes. I attached the data. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “You're very focused on those dependent on cars. But what about those who cannot afford cars? Plenty of families with children, elderly, disabled, and others are entirely dependent on Metro Transit, or services within walking distance.” They make up about 15% of the population. Currently we provide sidewalks and transit for them. But we also have to be clear. One of the best ways of keeping someone in poverty is to limit their access to jobs and affordable daycare. Having a car is one of the best leading indicators of a family leaving poverty. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “It's easy to scapegoat this argument as young people trying to chase the old out of the city, but your vision for Minneapolis ignores that plenty of the people you claim to care about are unable to benefit from unlimited parking and low density.” I am uncertain what you mean by this. We are 46th in population but 11th in density for the top 50 largest cities. We are already a high density city overall. I attached those charts to this email. And yes, there is no real discussion of life cycle transportation needs in the draft 2040 Plan. Just that the way that most young people travel is what everyone should doing, as if they will not age, or have children or have to take care of elderly people or need to have jobs they can't walk or bike to. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 24 of 57 Mr. Eckholm wrote: “I was very clear when I drew the connection between a lack of multifamily housing development starting in the 1970s and our current lack of naturally occurring affordable housing. As the pressures grow on existing housing stock, it becomes more and more lucrative to renovate older properties and remove them as options for affordable housing. Preserving every single family home without exception has already created a market where the bottom is too high for many first time home buyers (speaking as a resident of Saint Louis Park who spent months searching for a Minneapolis home).” You are 26 and you tried to buy in the last year or two? Correct? There is a shortage of homes right now as we are in the ninth year of an economic expansion and developers not wanting to be caught as the next recession arrives. Give it time. The market will respond. It has in the past, it has in other cities and it will here. We don’t need radical up-zoning for the market to do what it has done for the last 20 years – produce new housing. We created 20,000 new units already and will produce many more without any zoning changes. And given that new development is more expensive than existing housing means every house you demolish gets replaced by something more expensive, not less. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “This kind of surprises me from you actually - do you think many families with children or elderly, with multiple jobs they need to drive across the city for, and youth sports and all the related time sinks, have the time, energy, or resources to put sweat equity into the few derelict properties that remain?” Absolutely I do. It is called sweat equity and a great way to build wealth. I personally am a wiz with sheetrock and plaster patch for that exact reason. I rebuilt my own garage, did my own plumbing, replaced toilets, landscaped and a whole bunch of other things. My whole house was painted pepto-bismal pink inside when I bought it too and I fixed that. And the pink shag carpeting. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “ Or does it seem more likely that someone is going to come along, pick up a property for $150k, tear it down, and build a mansion on it? “ Only if the City continues to allow that. We could have a Comp Plan that protects lower value homes with one stroke of the pen. But the City chooses not to do that. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Why is that more acceptable than someone coming along and building a property designed (by modern code! with bathrooms and kitchens!) to support four families?” Because new housing is more expensive than existing housing. Unless you do the small scale developer housing that Bruce has talked about, which will be only a tiny amount of the total housing. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 25 of 57 And you will not fit four families with children in the same space as a single-family house big enough to support families with children. You can’t tear down a three-bedroom house and replace it with four three bedroom condos, not without building crazy out of scale for the neighborhood. You will build four micro units or studios and replace one house with four people with four units with four people. And remember, Minneapolis is 40% parents with children under the age of 18. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “The provided chart alone isn't enough data for you to have securely drawn that conclusion. Data on Minneapolis family size, or Minneapolis population by age for the era, would have been more appropriate. Both family sizes and what we considered acceptable living changed in the 1950s.” True – but I am already spending an inordinate amount of time digging out data to explain to pro-developer advocates why they are being lied to. US-wide data is close enough for my point. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Here's some more information on that, with the caveat that this isn't me drawing a conclusion that this is the culprit of Minneapolis' woes - it's another area of study: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boarding-house/6236/” (https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boardinghouse/6236/”) Just put it in high frequency transit corridors or in downtown or around the U. Like I have been advocating for? Kind of like this? https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mn/minneapolis/university-commons/floor-plans/4-bed-2-bath-dbl (https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mn/minneapolis/university-commons/floor-plans/4-bed-2-bath-dbl) Mr. Eckholm wrote: “We aren't adding as much as we're bleeding. Minneapolis lost over 6,000 duplex, triplex, and fourplex units since 1990. But we added 2,500 single-family homes in same period. And as an aside, we can't replace fourplexes lost citywide when the downtown adjacent neighborhoods that you say we should be building in put up thousands of dollars to fight tall buildings in areas where there are already tall buildings. https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/991298317077307392” (https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/991298317077307392”) WedgeLive is a pro developer mouthpiece. Ask who is funding them. Here is what the data really says. 1990 Single Family 2016 75,196 77,631 3% 5,239 6780 29% Duplex/Triplex 31,180 24,932 -20% Townhome EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 26 of 57 Multi-family 59,263 80,988 37% 170,878 190,331 11% We did have a decrease in duplexes and triplexes but more than made up for that in adding multi-family. We added 11% more housing overall. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “I mean, that's the definition of Not In My BackYard, isn't it? No multifamily near me, build it in the Wedge. The Wedge says build it in St. Anthony. St. Anthony says build it near the University. Dinkytown says build it in Uptown, Uptown is built out and ECCO wants to keep the boundaries from spreading.” Nope. Again, go read what I have written previously. Put development in walkable environments and in high frequency transit nodes. Don’t scatter it through dozens of square miles of single family homes. If you want density, you have to create it. You only have 12% growth to put somewhere and you can either cluster it and make reasonable density or you can Mr. Eckholm wrote: “That's the whole point of the blanket upzone. Yes, the single-family districts are going to four units.” Not if we can help it. And there are a lot of opponents and we are growing every day. Go to www.MinneapolisforEveryone.org (http://www.MinneapolisforEveryone.org) and join us. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “But areas where we should have been building taller already (like Uptown) can go to ten. We'll be able to build smaller cores around transit stations up to twenty. My favorite part of the whole plan is the blanket upzoning of the wasted industrial land next to Target Field - there's no historical warehouse district there, so we'll see thirty story buildings right next to what will hopefully be the busiest transit station in Minneapolis.” So you are arguing for what I have been arguing for. Not ten or twenty story towers randomly placed throughout the City but building in downtown and at transit hubs. We agree on something! You can build the housing once – put it downtown, around the U and at high frequency transit hubs. Make it rational scale. Spread it around the City. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “My point in saying all that is - there will be places the demand will be naturally drawn to before anyone comes after single family homes. But it also recognizes that on the fringes of popular areas, there may be places where smaller multifamily units are still appropriate, and can still mix well into the urban fabric. It recognizes that the few properties that have fought their way through public hearings haven't destroyed neighborhoods like the doomsayers claimed. It recognizes that historically, the city was not zoned single family, and that the assumption that it should remain so forever is misguided. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 27 of 57 This is just not true to say the “few properties that have fought their way through public hearings”. We have new multi-family housing all over the City. Come drive the City and see it. Springing up like dandelions. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “But what the plan isn't - it isn't open season for neighborhoods. Single family homes aren't going extinct any time soon in Minneapolis, nor should they. But there needs to be an understanding that in the densest core of the state, the days in which there are single family homes that are affordable are coming to an end. And locking them down as the only thing that can be built will only lead to renovation and tear down.” It is actually open season for neighborhoods. Every house can be bulldozed. That is open season. As to whether the single family home is becoming unaffordable, I will once again note that the median home in Minneapolis is what it was in 2003. The message that we in Minneapolis are having some crisis is fake. And the single family home is only unaffordable if the City lets them become unaffordable. If they then let developers build market rate housing over the remains of single family homes. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Like San Francisco, if you focus on preserving the buildings with an iron grip, the culture that makes the buildings worth living in will slowly trickle out of your grasp like sand.” If we happened to have the hottest economy on the planet and crazy population growth, we would become San Francisco. But we are Minneapolis. Our economy is not that. Our population demand is not that. We are not that. That is what is driving the issues with San Francisco, not historic preservation. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “And as for the code compliance - I can't say I disagree with it. If someone buys a home that's out of compliance and renovates it to be compliant, they're still making it less affordable one owner down the line - like in this article. https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starter-home/ (https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starterhome/) I read this piece. The guy finished his whole basement, probably added 50% to his square footage (unless he has an expansion attic) and then is surprised the value went up. He is the reason his value went up. Carol Becker EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 28 of 57 Longfellow   Morgan Bird (/p/morganbird) Posted at 6:37pm, Jun 29 "But we also have to be clear. One of the best ways of keeping someone in  Share poverty is to limit their access to jobs and affordable daycare. Having a car is one of the best leading indicators of a family leaving poverty." What's your plan for helping 15% of the city afford cars, Carol? On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 11:55 AM Carol Becker <> wrote: > > Matt Eckholm wrote: > > “When every small area plan assumes development should happen somewhere > else, or in very defined districts within their neighborhoods to prevent > anything from changing near the people in charge of the plans, that's not > very democratic is it?” > > You live in St Louis Park so have never participated in a small area plan, > correct? If you had, you would know that is not true. Our small area plans > have been very thoughtful and also accommodated appropriate growth. And > been highly democratic as those who will be affected had a hand in crafting > them. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “Like I said in the discussion with Carol Becker, the blanket upzone isn't > just for single family zoning - it means taller and denser development > where dense development is already happening. It means taller and denser > development where dense development *isn't* already happening, like the > area near Target Field, industrial areas near the Blue Line, and a larger > area around downtown.” > > You would not need to blanket up-zone to do this. Existing zoning would > allow development along the Blue Line near Target Field. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “But it also recognizes that low density zoning is *not* the historical > norm. It was a change made to appease exclusionary neighborhood > organizations that were afraid the whole city would be covered with > Riverside Plaza style, brutalist apartment towers.” > > I don’t understand this. What are you referencing? > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “Equating fourplexes, buildings that are so close in size and character to > single family homes that you probably have no idea which properties are > fourplexes unless you count mailboxes, to buildings like that is EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 29 of 57 > intellectually dishonest. And the new multifamily properties that have > fought their way through the hours long public hearings have proven the > doomsayers wrong - the sky didn't fall. The neighborhood didn't explode. > Everything was fine.” > > True, if fourplexes were at a scale and mass of a single-family home, no > one would care. But they are not. They go full lot front to back, side to > side. The minimum is two and a half stories and developers will be able to > appeal to build higher. They could combine two lots to build substantially > higher. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “If the plan scaled back its ambitions, and only allowed a block or two of > multifamily housing as a buffer to higher density corridors, would that be > acceptable? Or have we reached a point in this debate where the only > acceptable option for density opponents is for nothing to ever change?” > > My group agrees that we need to add about 50,000 people over the next 20 > years. That is a 12% growth. We added about 40,000 people over the last > 20 years by building new housing in downtown, by the U and at high > frequency transit nodes. We can continue doing this very successful > approach without turning the City over to developers. There is an enormous > amount of land available under current strategies. > > As to your points on density, I would remind you that Minneapolis is the > 46th largest City in the United States but the 11th most dense without any > of these changes. I attached the data. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “You're very focused on those dependent on cars. But what about those who > cannot afford cars? Plenty of families with children, elderly, disabled, > and others are entirely dependent on Metro Transit, or services within > walking distance.” > > They make up about 15% of the population. Currently we provide sidewalks > and transit for them. > > But we also have to be clear. One of the best ways of keeping someone in > poverty is to limit their access to jobs and affordable daycare. Having a > car is one of the best leading indicators of a family leaving poverty. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “It's easy to scapegoat this argument as young people trying to chase the > old out of the city, but your vision for Minneapolis ignores that plenty of > the people you claim to care about are unable to benefit from unlimited > parking and low density.” > > I am uncertain what you mean by this. We are 46th in population but 11th > in density for the top 50 largest cities. We are already a high density > city overall. I attached those charts to this email. > EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 30 of 57 > And yes, there is no real discussion of life cycle transportation needs in > the draft 2040 Plan. Just that the way that most young people travel is > what everyone should doing, as if they will not age, or have children or > have to take care of elderly people or need to have jobs they can't walk or > bike to. > > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “I was very clear when I drew the connection between a lack of multifamily > housing development starting in the 1970s and our current lack of naturally > occurring affordable housing. As the pressures grow on existing housing > stock, it becomes more and more lucrative to renovate older properties and > remove them as options for affordable housing. Preserving every single > family home without exception has already created a market where the bottom > is too high for many first time home buyers (speaking as a resident of > Saint Louis Park who spent months searching for a Minneapolis home).” > > You are 26 and you tried to buy in the last year or two? Correct? There > is a shortage of homes right now as we are in the ninth year of an economic > expansion and developers not wanting to be caught as the next recession > arrives. Give it time. The market will respond. It has in the past, it has > in other cities and it will here. We don’t need radical up-zoning for the > market to do what it has done for the last 20 years – produce new housing. > We created 20,000 new units already and will produce many more without any > zoning changes. > > And given that new development is more expensive than existing housing > means every house you demolish gets replaced by something more expensive, > not less. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “This kind of surprises me from you actually - do you think many families > with children or elderly, with multiple jobs they need to drive across the > city for, and youth sports and all the related time sinks, have the time, > energy, or resources to put sweat equity into the few derelict properties > that remain?” > > Absolutely I do. It is called sweat equity and a great way to build > wealth. I personally am a wiz with sheetrock and plaster patch for that > exact reason. I rebuilt my own garage, did my own plumbing, replaced > toilets, landscaped and a whole bunch of other things. My whole house was > painted pepto-bismal pink inside when I bought it too and I fixed that. > And the pink shag carpeting. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “ Or does it seem more likely that someone is going to come along, pick up > a property for $150k, tear it down, and build a mansion on it? “ > > Only if the City continues to allow that. We could have a Comp Plan that > protects lower value homes with one stroke of the pen. But the City > chooses not to do that. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 31 of 57 > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “Why is that more acceptable than someone coming along and building a > property designed (by modern code! with bathrooms and kitchens!) to support > four families?” > > Because new housing is more expensive than existing housing. Unless you do > the small scale developer housing that Bruce has talked about, which will > be only a tiny amount of the total housing. > > And you will not fit four families with children in the same space as a > single-family house big enough to support families with children. You > can’t tear down a three-bedroom house and replace it with four three > bedroom condos, not without building crazy out of scale for the > neighborhood. You will build four micro units or studios and replace one > house with four people with four units with four people. And remember, > Minneapolis is 40% parents with children under the age of 18. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “The provided chart alone isn't enough data for you to have securely drawn > that conclusion. Data on Minneapolis family size, or Minneapolis population > by age for the era, would have been more appropriate. Both family sizes and > what we considered acceptable living changed in the 1950s.” > > True – but I am already spending an inordinate amount of time digging out > data to explain to pro-developer advocates why they are being lied to. > US-wide data is close enough for my point. > > Mr. Eckholm wrote: > > “Here's some more information on that, with the caveat that this isn't me > drawing a conclusion that this is the culprit of Minneapolis' woes - it's > another area of study: > https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boarding-house/6236/ (https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boardinghouse/6236/) >” > > Just put it in high frequency transit corridors or in downtown or around > the U. Like I have been advocating for? Kind of like this? > > > https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mn/minneapolis/university-commons/floor-plans/4-bed-2-bath-dbl (https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mn/minneapolis/university-commons/floor-plans/4-bed-2-bath-dbl) ▶ Rest of post   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 6:10pm, Jul 01 Matt Eckholm wrote:  Share EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 32 of 57 “When every small area plan assumes development should happen somewhere else, or in very defined districts within their neighborhoods to prevent anything from changing near the people in charge of the plans, that's not very democratic is it?” You live in St Louis Park so have never participated in a small area plan, correct? If you had, you would know that is not true. Our small area plans have been very thoughtful and also accommodated appropriate growth. And been highly democratic as those who will be affected had a hand in crafting them. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Like I said in the discussion with Carol Becker, the blanket upzone isn't just for single family zoning - it means taller and denser development where dense development is already happening. It means taller and denser development where dense development *isn't* already happening, like the area near Target Field, industrial areas near the Blue Line, and a larger area around downtown.” You would not need to blanket up-zone to do this. Existing zoning would allow development along the Blue Line near Target Field. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “But it also recognizes that low density zoning is *not* the historical norm. It was a change made to appease exclusionary neighborhood organizations that were afraid the whole city would be covered with Riverside Plaza style, brutalist apartment towers.” I don’t understand this. What are you referencing? Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Equating fourplexes, buildings that are so close in size and character to single family homes that you probably have no idea which properties are fourplexes unless you count mailboxes, to buildings like that is intellectually dishonest. And the new multifamily properties that have fought their way through the hours long public hearings have proven the doomsayers wrong - the sky didn't fall. The neighborhood didn't explode. Everything was fine.” True, if fourplexes were at a scale and mass of a single-family home, no one would care. But they are not. They go full lot front to back, side to side. The minimum is two and a half stories and developers will be able to appeal to build higher. They could combine two lots to build substantially higher. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “If the plan scaled back its ambitions, and only allowed a block or two of multifamily housing as a buffer to higher density corridors, would that be acceptable? Or have we reached a point in this debate where the only acceptable option for density opponents is for nothing to ever change?” EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 33 of 57 My group agrees that we need to add about 50,000 people over the next 20 years. That is a 12% growth. We added about 40,000 people over the last 20 years by building new housing in downtown, by the U and at high frequency transit nodes. We can continue doing this very successful approach without turning the City over to developers. There is an enormous amount of land available under current strategies. As to your points on density, I would remind you that Minneapolis is the 46 th largest City in the United States but the 11th most dense without any of these changes. I attached the data. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “You're very focused on those dependent on cars. But what about those who cannot afford cars? Plenty of families with children, elderly, disabled, and others are entirely dependent on Metro Transit, or services within walking distance.” They make up about 15% of the population. Currently we provide sidewalks and transit for them. But we also have to be clear. One of the best ways of keeping someone in poverty is to limit their access to jobs and affordable daycare. Having a car is one of the best leading indicators of a family leaving poverty. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “It's easy to scapegoat this argument as young people trying to chase the old out of the city, but your vision for Minneapolis ignores that plenty of the people you claim to care about are unable to benefit from unlimited parking and low density.” I am uncertain what you mean by this. We are 46th in population but 11th in density for the top 50 largest cities. We are already a high density city overall. I attached those charts to this email. And yes, there is no real discussion of life cycle transportation needs in the draft 2040 Plan. Just that the way that most young people travel is what everyone should doing, as if they will not age, or have children or have to take care of elderly people or need to have jobs they can't walk or bike to. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “I was very clear when I drew the connection between a lack of multifamily housing development starting in the 1970s and our current lack of naturally occurring affordable housing. As the pressures grow on existing housing stock, it becomes more and more lucrative to renovate older properties and remove them as options for affordable housing. Preserving every single family home without exception has already created a market where the bottom is too high for many first time home buyers (speaking as a resident of Saint Louis Park who spent months searching for a Minneapolis home).” EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 34 of 57 You are 26 and you tried to buy in the last year or two? Correct? There is a shortage of homes right now as we are in the ninth year of an economic expansion and developers not wanting to be caught as the next recession arrives. Give it time. The market will respond. It has in the past, it has in other cities and it will here. We don’t need radical up-zoning for the market to do what it has done for the last 20 years – produce new housing. We created 20,000 new units already and will produce many more without any zoning changes. And given that new development is more expensive than existing housing means every house you demolish gets replaced by something more expensive, not less. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “This kind of surprises me from you actually - do you think many families with children or elderly, with multiple jobs they need to drive across the city for, and youth sports and all the related time sinks, have the time, energy, or resources to put sweat equity into the few derelict properties that remain?” Absolutely I do. It is called sweat equity and a great way to build wealth. I personally am a wiz with sheetrock and plaster patch for that exact reason. I rebuilt my own garage, did my own plumbing, replaced toilets, landscaped and a whole bunch of other things. My whole house was painted pepto-bismal pink inside when I bought it too and I fixed that. And the pink shag carpeting. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “ Or does it seem more likely that someone is going to come along, pick up a property for $150k, tear it down, and build a mansion on it? “ Only if the City continues to allow that. We could have a Comp Plan that protects lower value homes with one stroke of the pen. But the City chooses not to do that. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Why is that more acceptable than someone coming along and building a property designed (by modern code! with bathrooms and kitchens!) to support four families?” Because new housing is more expensive than existing housing. Unless you do the small scale developer housing that Bruce has talked about, which will be only a tiny amount of the total housing. And you will not fit four families with children in the same space as a single-family house big enough to support families with children. You can’t tear down a three-bedroom house and replace it with four three bedroom condos, not without building crazy out of scale for the neighborhood. You will build four micro units or studios and replace one house with four people with four units with four people. And remember, Minneapolis is 40% parents with children under the age of 18. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 35 of 57 Mr. Eckholm wrote: “The provided chart alone isn't enough data for you to have securely drawn that conclusion. Data on Minneapolis family size, or Minneapolis population by age for the era, would have been more appropriate. Both family sizes and what we considered acceptable living changed in the 1950s.” True – but I am already spending an inordinate amount of time digging out data to explain to pro-developer advocates why they are being lied to. US-wide data is close enough for my point. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Here's some more information on that, with the caveat that this isn't me drawing a conclusion that this is the culprit of Minneapolis' woes - it's another area of study: https://www.citylab.com/equity (https://www.citylab.com/equity) /2013/07/it-time-bring-back-boarding-house/6236/” Just put it in high frequency transit corridors or in downtown or around the U. Like I have been advocating for? Kind of like this? https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mn/minneap (https://www.americancampus.com/studentapartments/mn/minneap) olis/university-commons/floor-plans/4-bed-2-bath-dbl Mr. Eckholm wrote: “We aren't adding as much as we're bleeding. Minneapolis lost over 6,000 duplex, triplex, and fourplex units since 1990. But we added 2,500 single-family homes in same period. And as an aside, we can't replace fourplexes lost citywide when the downtown adjacent neighborhoods that you say we should be building in put up thousands of dollars to fight tall buildings in areas where there are already tall buildings. https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/991298317077307392” (https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/991298317077307392”) WedgeLive is a pro developer mouthpiece. Ask who is funding them. Here is what the data really says. 1990 Single Family 2016 75,196 77,631 3% 5,239 6780 29% Duplex/Triplex 31,180 24,932 -20% Townhome *Multi-family 59,263 170,878 80,988 190,331 37%* 11% We did have a decrease in duplexes and triplexes but more than made up for that in adding multi-family. We added 11% more housing overall. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 36 of 57 Mr. Eckholm wrote: “I mean, that's the definition of Not In My BackYard, isn't it? No multifamily near me, build it in the Wedge. The Wedge says build it in St. Anthony. St. Anthony says build it near the University. Dinkytown says build it in Uptown, Uptown is built out and ECCO wants to keep the boundaries from spreading.” Nope. Again, go read what I have written previously. Put development in walkable environments and in high frequency transit nodes. Don’t scatter it through dozens of square miles of single family homes. If you want density, you have to create it. You only have 12% growth to put somewhere and you can either cluster it and make reasonable density or you can Mr. Eckholm wrote: “That's the whole point of the blanket upzone. Yes, the single-family districts are going to four units.” Not if we can help it. And there are a lot of opponents and we are growing every day. Go to www.MinneapolisforEveryone.org (http://www.MinneapolisforEveryone.org) and join us. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “But areas where we should have been building taller already (like Uptown) can go to ten. We'll be able to build smaller cores around transit stations up to twenty. My favorite part of the whole plan is the blanket upzoning of the wasted industrial land next to Target Field - there's no historical warehouse district there, so we'll see thirty story buildings right next to what will hopefully be the busiest transit station in Minneapolis.” So you are arguing for what I have been arguing for. Not ten or twenty story towers randomly placed throughout the City but building in downtown and at transit hubs. We agree on something! You can build the housing once – put it downtown, around the U and at high frequency transit hubs. Make it rational scale. Spread it around the City. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “My point in saying all that is - there will be places the demand will be naturally drawn to before anyone comes after single family homes. But it also recognizes that on the fringes of popular areas, there may be places where smaller multifamily units are still appropriate, and can still mix well into the urban fabric. It recognizes that the few properties that have fought their way through public hearings haven't destroyed neighborhoods like the doomsayers claimed. It recognizes that historically, the city was not zoned single family, and that the assumption that it should remain so forever is misguided. This is just not true to say the “few properties that have fought their way through public hearings”. We have new multi-family housing all over the City. Come drive the City and see it. Springing up like dandelions. Mr. Eckholm wrote: EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 37 of 57 “But what the plan isn't - it isn't open season for neighborhoods. Single family homes aren't going extinct any time soon in Minneapolis, nor should they. But there needs to be an understanding that in the densest core of the state, the days in which there are single family homes that are affordable are coming to an end. And locking them down as the only thing that can be built will only lead to renovation and tear down.” It is actually open season for neighborhoods. Every house can be bulldozed. That is open season. As to whether the single family home is becoming unaffordable, I will once again note that the median home in Minneapolis is what it was in 2003. The message that we in Minneapolis are having some crisis is fake. And the single family home is only unaffordable if the City lets them become unaffordable. If they then let developers build market rate housing over the remains of single family homes. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “Like San Francisco, if you focus on preserving the buildings with an iron grip, the culture that makes the buildings worth living in will slowly trickle out of your grasp like sand.” If we happened to have the hottest economy on the planet and crazy population growth, we would become San Francisco. But we are Minneapolis. Our economy is not that. Our population demand is not that. We are not that. That is what is driving the issues with San Francisco, not historic preservation. Mr. Eckholm wrote: “And as for the code compliance - I can't say I disagree with it. If someone buys a home that's out of compliance and renovates it to be compliant, they're still making it less affordable one owner down the line - like in this article. https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starter-home/ (https://streets.mn/2018/06/25/who-gentrified-this-minneapolis-starterhome/) I read this piece. The guy finished his whole basement, probably added 50% to his square footage (unless he has an expansion attic) and then is surprised the value went up. He is the reason his value went up. Carol Becker Longfellow EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 38 of 57 (/groups/mpls/messages/image/izfKrwg8iYlMGmACECCDNjieiIE(/groups/mpls/messages/image/yRtg0vcVbMa3amgmKlqGfdottLjSKt-2H3z2jD) C7q-2H3z2fB) Rank by 2018 pop.png 205.52kb Rankings by density.png 143.10kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/izfKrwg8iYlMGmACECCDNjieiIESKt-2H3z2jD) (/groups/mpls/messages/image/yRtg0vcVbMa3amgmKlqGfdottLjC7q-2H3z2fB)   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 6:15pm, Jul 01 Mr. Miller - Share YIMBY advocates argue that if we just build more housing, prices will fall. Simple supply and demand, right? As if houses are bananas. Here is a question from the YIMBY folks at the Kenwood 2040 Plan meeting showing this thinking: "One economist has developed a model that says that for every 3% increase in housing units, rent will drop by 2% - thus to achieve a 25% reduction in rent, rental units will need to increase by almost 40%." Minutes are here: https://gallery.mailchimp.com/4d525d1838259ebfd1265a83f/ (https://gallery.mailchimp.com/4d525d1838259ebfd1265a83f/) files/f3c9fd46-3eaa-46cf-a915-9991dff64881/June_6th_2040_ Info_Session_Minutes_CIDNA_KIAA.docx.pdf But this does not work. Because everyone lives in one house.If we were to build 40% more rental housing overnight, we would have about 38% of that vacant and yes housing costs would go down but no developer would be stupid enough to build housing no one would buy. Now there are some percent of people who live doubled up because they can't find market rate housing. In San Francisco and Seattle, that is a large number of people because of the very rapid influx of people due to the tech boom. Seattle is the fasted growing city in the country. San Francisco's county is one of the fastest growing large counties in the country. That is where YIMBY theology started and why it makes sense there because they have not been adding enough market rate housing fast enough to meet this rapidly growing population. In those places, if you did add 40% more rental housing, you would see rents decline because the pent up demand for market rate housing from people who have not been able to get housing would be met. This is where YIMBY theology started and it makes sense there. They do need to add more housing. In Minneapolis, we have no tech boom. We have a pretty stable economy. We have no burgeoning population growth. We don't have huge numbers of people sleeping in their cars in the parking lot of their corporations where they work. We are talking about a 1% a year population growth, a fraction of EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 39 of 57 what Seattle and San Francisco have. We are not having a market housing crisis, especially not one that requires subjecting the whole city to displacement zoning. To quote Heather Worthington from the Kenwood meeting: "Density does not make housing affordable. We never said this. The housing chapter is a draft and will be amended to reflect current policy discussions around housing. This is not a density issue at its core." Even Ms. Worthington is clear about this - building more density does not create affordable housing. What creates more affordable housing? Building cheaper housing. Problem? It costs a lot to build new housing. But I have to give it to the pro-developer folks - they have taken the arguments about needing to build more market rate housing that are true in San Francisco and Seattle and using them to sell a pro-developer agenda here in Minneapolis. The problem is, if we are not having a housing crisis, the YIMBY argument falls apart here in Minneapolis. So, are we? Are housing prices going crazy? Mr. .Miller argues the following: If you use the Case-Shiller index, it's more like 2006, or close to the > peak of the bubble, and trending upward: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/gr (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/gr) > aph/?g=kiJv If you use the Case-Shiller Index, our housing costs, measured from the beginning of the Case Schiller Index to now, the growth in our housing costs are substantially less than the national average. And way way below Seattle and San Francisco. Even by this measure, we are not having a crisis. ▶ Rest of post (/groups/mpls/messages/image/yF3Z28fOA22WqOl6pyLYUQ1AqP0(/groups/mpls/messages/image/u6qBQb01gchQalR4EGXB94wZFd0C93-2H3zb5W) Lzs-2H3zb7W) image.png 143.20kb Case Shiller.jpg 178.58kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/yF3Z28fOA22WqOl6pyLYUQ1AqP0(/groups/mpls/messages/image/u6qBQb01gchQalR4EGXB94wZFd0C93-2H3zb5W) Lzs-2H3zb7W)   Morgan Bird (/p/morganbird) Posted at 11:37pm, Jul 01 >  Share > The median home value in Minneapolis is a record-setting $249,000 (and > $294,000 in suburban Hennepin County). This is the second year that median EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 40 of 57 > home values have topped the previous high water mark set in 2007 of > $214,000 ($270,000 in Hennepin County). > [...] > This year, the standout factor driving up home values in Hennepin and > Ramsey counties is the rock-bottom vacancy rates. There just aren't a lot > of homes for sale — and that drives up prices. > "What's really driving our market today is the lack of inventory," said > Patrick Todd, the city assessor for Minneapolis. "There [are] so few > properties on the market today. I'm seeing oftentimes [a] property listing > on a Friday and selling by Sunday." https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/04/11/property-tax-assessment-faq (https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/04/11/property-tax-assessment-faq) Carol, it's very hard to take anything you say seriously when you very clearly cherry-pick data to fit your preferred narrative and ignore everything else. Case Schiller shows housing prices are back to the 2006 housing bubble peak. Rents are up 17% adjusted for inflation since 2010 (https://www.mhponline.org/publications/rentalmarket-watch/111-rental-market-watch-minneapolis) and many families were already cost-burdened before that. The median house in San Francisco costs *a million dollars*; we don't have to be just like them to have a housing crisis. Housing prices didn't drop during 2001 and 2002 because unlike 2006 they were not caused by a massive foreclosure crisis; they are actually unlikely to drop during the next recession (https://realestate.usnews.com/realestate/articles/what-will-the-housing-market-look-like-in-the-next-recession) . We are not "pretty much where we were" before the housing bubble and it's not going be solved by "normal market cycles". You're bordering on climate denialism arguments here and your dismissal and complete lack of concern of the problems thousands or millions of people is appalling. ▶ Rest of post   Morgan Bird (/p/morganbird) Posted at 2:39pm, Jul 02 That slide doesn't Share say whether they're adjusted for inflation or not. There are plenty of sources you could use that would tell you that for sure, including Case-Shiller. We're above 2003 and 2003 was well into the bubble and pretty close to peak prices. Even if you were correct that prices today are the same as 2003 that would still mean we have a serious problem. On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 6:27 AM Carol Becker <> wrote: > There is the presentation from the City Assessor. > > I cut out the specific slide > > I also attached my spreadsheet where I adjusted the numbers using the EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 41 of 57 > CPI. The CPI calculator is here: > https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm) > > Run the numbers. Show me where I messed up. > > Carol > > > On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 6:36 PM, Morgan Bird <> wrote: > >> The median home value in Minneapolis is a record-setting $249,000 (and >>> $294,000 in suburban Hennepin County). This is the second year that median >>> home values have topped the previous high water mark set in 2007 of >>> $214,000 ($270,000 in Hennepin County). >>> [...] >>> This year, the standout factor driving up home values in Hennepin and >>> Ramsey counties is the rock-bottom vacancy rates. There just aren't a lot >>> of homes for sale — and that drives up prices. >>> "What's really driving our market today is the lack of inventory," said >>> Patrick Todd, the city assessor for Minneapolis. "There [are] so few >>> properties on the market today. I'm seeing oftentimes [a] property listing >>> on a Friday and selling by Sunday." >> >> >> https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/04/11/property-tax-assessment-faq (https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/04/11/property-tax-assessment-faq) >> >> Carol, it's very hard to take anything you say seriously when you very >> clearly cherry-pick data to fit your preferred narrative and ignore >> everything else. Case Schiller shows housing prices are back to the 2006 >> housing bubble peak. Rents are up 17% adjusted for inflation since 2010 >> (https://www.mhponline.org/publications/rentalmarket-watch/111-rental-market-watch-minneapolis) and >> many families were already cost-burdened before that. The median house in >> San Francisco costs *a million dollars*; we don't have to be just like >> them to have a housing crisis. Housing prices didn't drop during 2001 and >> 2002 because unlike 2006 they were not caused by a massive foreclosure >> crisis; they are actually unlikely to drop during the next recession >> (https://realestate.usnews.com/realestate/articles/what-will-the-housing-market-look-like-in-the-next-recession) >> . >> >> We are not "pretty much where we were" before the housing bubble and >> it's not going be solved by "normal market cycles". >> >> You're bordering on climate denialism arguments here and your dismissal >> and complete lack of concern of the problems thousands or millions of >> people is appalling. >> >> On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 1:16 PM Carol Becker <> wrote: >> >>> ― 2 file links ― EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 42 of 57 >>> >>> Mr. Miller >>> >>> YIMBY advocates argue that if we just build more housing, prices will >>> fall. Simple supply and demand, right? As if houses are bananas. Here >>> is >>> a question from the YIMBY folks at the Kenwood 2040 Plan meeting showing >>> this thinking: "One economist has developed a model that says that for >>> every 3% increase in housing units, rent will drop by 2% - thus to >>> achieve >>> a 25% reduction in rent, rental units will need to increase by almost >>> 40%." >>> >>> Minutes are here: >>> https://gallery.mailchimp.com/4d525d1838259ebfd1265a83f/ (https://gallery.mailchimp.com/4d525d1838259ebfd1265a83f/) >>> files/f3c9fd46-3eaa-46cf-a915-9991dff64881/June_6th_2040_ >>> Info_Session_Minutes_CIDNA_KIAA.docx.pdf >>> >>> But this does not work. Because everyone lives in one house.If we were >>> to >>> build 40% more rental housing overnight, we would have about 38% of that >>> vacant and yes housing costs would go down but no developer would be >>> stupid >>> enough to build housing no one would buy. >>> >>> Now there are some percent of people who live doubled up because they >>> can't find market rate housing. In San Francisco and Seattle, that is a >>> large number of people because of the very rapid influx of people due to >>> the tech boom. Seattle is the fasted growing city in the country. San >>> Francisco's county is one of the fastest growing large counties in the >>> country. That is where YIMBY theology started and why it makes sense >>> there >>> because they have not been adding enough market rate housing fast enough >>> to >>> meet this rapidly growing population. In those places, if you did add 40% >>> more rental housing, you would see rents decline because the pent up >>> demand >>> for market rate housing from people who have not been able to get housing >>> would be met. >>> >>> This is where YIMBY theology started and it makes sense there. They do >>> need to add more housing. >>> >>> In Minneapolis, we have no tech boom. We have a pretty stable economy. >>> We >>> have no burgeoning population growth. We don't have huge numbers of >>> people >>> sleeping in their cars in the parking lot of their corporations where >>> they >>> work. We are talking about a 1% a year population growth, a fraction of >>> what Seattle and San Francisco have. We are not having a market housing >>> crisis, especially not one that requires subjecting the whole city to >>> displacement zoning. >>> EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 43 of 57 >>> To quote Heather Worthington from the Kenwood meeting: "Density does >>> not >>> make housing affordable. We never said this. The housing chapter is a >>> draft >>> and will be amended to reflect current policy discussions around housing. >>> This is not a density issue at its core." Even Ms. Worthington is clear >>> about this - building more density does not create affordable housing. >>> >>> What creates more affordable housing? Building cheaper housing. >>> Problem? >>> It costs a lot to build new housing. But I have to give it to the >>> pro-developer folks - they have taken the arguments about needing to >>> build >>> more market rate housing that are true in San Francisco and Seattle and >>> using them to sell a pro-developer agenda here in Minneapolis. >>> >>> The problem is, if we are not having a housing crisis, the YIMBY argument >>> falls apart here in Minneapolis. >>> >>> So, are we? Are housing prices going crazy? >>> >>> Mr. .Miller argues the following: >>> >>> If you use the Case-Shiller index, it's more like 2006, or close to the >>> > peak of the bubble, and trending upward: >>> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/gr (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/gr) >>> > aph/?g=kiJv >>> >>> >>> If you use the Case-Shiller Index, our housing costs, measured from the >>> beginning of the Case Schiller Index to now, the growth in our housing >>> costs are substantially less than the national average. And way way >>> below >>> Seattle and San Francisco. Even by this measure, we are not having a >>> crisis. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Mr Miller wrote: >>> >>> We're not Seattle or San Francisco. This discussion is about how to avoid >>> > becoming like them, because we're on that path. Your prescription is do >>> > what they did and don't allow more housing. It will have the same >>> result. >>> > >>> >>> When we have the same economy driving the same population growth, then we >>> should be talking about the same prescriptions. But we are not. We are >>> talking about a 1% a year growth, positively pokey compared to those >>> cities. >>> >>> I wrote:"We are in the ninth year of an economic expansion, something >>> that EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 44 of 57 >>> has never happened in the history of the United States." >>> >>> > >>> > Not that it particularly matters, but this is not true. >>> > >>> >>> Sorry - I was a little ahead on that one. We will be in a couple months. >>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/18/ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/18/) >>> the-u-s-is-on-track-for-the-longest-expansion-ever-but>>> its-coming-at-a-cost/?utm_term=.0212e914183c >>> >>> I wrote:"Call me in five years, after our next recession and show me that >>> your one/two year trend has held through that recession." >>> >>> Mr Miller wrote: First of all, even if it was true that housing prices >>> will >>> > come back down in the next recession, it's hardly a solution to our >>> housing >>> > shortage to just wait for the next economic hardship. >>> > >>> >>> Housing prices plummeted in the last recession. >>> >>> Mr. Miller. Let me see if I can summarize this because we seem to be >>> going >>> in a circle: >>> >>> Your arguments:We are having a housing crisis. We have a low inventory >>> and >>> rapidly increasing prices. We know this because Zillow says there is a >>> 9.5% >>> increase next year and because of the low inventory numbers. And prices >>> have been increasing since 2012. >>> >>> My arguments: We are not having a housing crisis. When you look at the >>> median house, it is what it was in 2003. Rent increased 3.3%. >>> Case-Shiller >>> shows we are below the average for costs in the United States. Rental >>> experts say we still have an affordable market. Developers have told me >>> they have been holding back building because they don't want to be caught >>> when the economy turns. And although prices have been increasing since >>> 2012, they fell for the previous five years. When you look before and >>> after the housing bubble, we are pretty much where we were. >>> >>> Your argument: Onerous regulations have been driving up market rate >>> housing >>> costs and the solution is inclusionary zoning. If we just remove these >>> regulations and let developers build more market rate housing, overall >>> housing costs will come down. >>> >>> My argument: We have built over 20,000 housing units net (the gross >>> number >>> is actually north of 25,000) with our current zoning. We have also build EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 45 of 57 >>> two new walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods. We do have a low >>> inventory now but this is typical when you are at the top of an economic >>> expansion. It has changed before and will again. None of this argues for >>> deregulating the development industry and adopting displacement zoning. >>> >>> Did I miss anything? I feel like no matter how much I put data out, you >>> won't accept it. You have bought this kool-aid and no amount of data will >>> be enough. Or is there data that you would accept? >>> >>> As to Mr. O'Neill, there is less inventory on the market right now than >>> there has been in the past. If you want to buy a home, there is less >>> inventory than in recent years. As to rents, rents went up 3.3% last >>> year. >>> But is this just a normal market cycle or a crisis which requires drastic >>> solutions like displacement zoning? Maybe I am older but I have been >>> through this before. I was through this when my sister was buying. I was >>> through this when a friend of mine was buying. These things cycle. The >>> market will respond without us taking any drastic action. At least for >>> market-rate housing. Housing for low income folks is a different thing. >>> >>> Mr. O'Neill wrote: >>> >>> "And the "data" you keep repeating in multiple threads here and on >>> streets.mn >>> is just flatly false. Not only, as Adam showed, are housing prices >>> basically back up to where they were at the peak of the housing bubble, >>> your claim that the bubble hadn't started in 2003 is just wrong. >>> Analysts >>> were already warning of a housing bubble in 2003 and now say that it >>> started in 1998-1999 (you can see it in the graph Adam linked to). The >>> bubble was very much well underway by 2003 but again, prices today are >>> well >>> above where they were that year." >>> >>> The Median House Cost is from the City Assessor. Adjusted with the >>> CPI. I >>> have provided the link to the data repeatedly. >>> The rent data came from RentCafe although I see other rental tracking >>> sites >>> are at about the same number. >>> Case Shilling is here: http://www.realestatedecoded.com/case-shiller/ (http://www.realestatedecoded.com/case-shiller/) >>> >>> As to when the housing bubble started, there was a recession in 2001 and >>> 2002, it didn't seem fair to use them. >>> >>> If you have a question on any other data that I am using, I am more than >>> happy to provide sources and cites for everything. >>> >>> Carol Becker >>> Longfellow. >>> >>> ― 2 files ― >>> >>> image.png (147kb) EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 46 of 57 >>> >>> http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/file/yF3Z28fOA22WqOl6pyLYUQ1AqP0-C93-2H3zb5W/ (http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/file/yF3Z28fOA22WqOl6pyLYUQ1AqP0-C93-2H3zb5W/) >>> >>> Case Shiller.jpg (183kb) >>> >>> http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/file/u6qBQb01gchQalR4EGXB94wZFd0-Lzs-2H3zb7W/ (http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/file/u6qBQb01gchQalR4EGXB94wZFd0-Lzs-2H3zb7W/) >>> >>> >>> >>> Carol Becker >>> Longfellow, Minneapolis >>> About/contact Carol Becker: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/carolbecker (http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/carolbecker) >>> >>> >>> 1. Be civil! Please read the rules at http://e-democracy.org/rules. (http://e-democracy.org/rules.) >>> If you think a member is in violation, contact the forum manager at >>> before continuing it on the list. >>> >>> 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. >>> >>> >>> ----------------------->>> Reply: Reply-All or visit >>> http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/1wZG3luLAOJrWuwjIGlYgJ (http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/1wZG3luLAOJrWuwjIGlYgJ) >>> New Topic: mpls@forums.e-democracy.org >>> Digest: Subject: digest on >>> Leave: Subject: unsubscribe >>> Forum Home: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls (http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls) >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Help? http://e-democracy.org/support (http://e-democracy.org/support) Hosting: http://OnlineGroups.Net (http://OnlineGroups.Net) ▶ Rest of post   Connie Sullivan (/p/conniesullivan) Posted at 3:40pm, Jul 02 This discussion has been beating around in the weeds of housing-price  Share minutia for a while now. We've forgotten the main issue we're now circling from afar: the wisdom of universal or blanket elimination of all building and development restrictions in the zoning code that protect low density housing in certain areas or even on certain blocks that are not along transit or traffic corridors. Elimination of all zoning code density restrictions is great for developers, who have long wanted the city to get off their backs with "It's not zoned for that use" or "The code prohibits a triplex there" or "That EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 47 of 57 structure is too tall for that lot" or "You must abide by the rule that says you can't use the entire lot area for the structure," etc. That kind of blanket elimination of rules and restrictions on where certain land uses are not permitted is only justified if Minneapolis is experiencing a severe housing crisis. For all economic classes. We are not experiencing a housing crisis. There is available housing--obviously not enough of it in the "desirable" parts of the city the yuppie population would like it to be--but the cost of it keeps going up with [and no more than] the inflation rate, after the second-worst financial meltdown in the history of the United States. Duh. What is not going up is the average wage of Minneapolis workers. That's the major problem, that's what's making housing "unaffordable," and the 2040 plan does nothing to address that with blanket elimination of zoning restrictions. What amazes me is that the pro-density advocates in our discussion admit of no nuance, and would gladly get rid of all the Small Area Plans that our many distinct neighborhoods so democratically put together in the past decade or 15 years. Those plans recognize and accommodate lots of different points of view, because they were developed with intense citizen input. The same, sadly, cannot be said of the **draft** 2040 Plan. Let's hope that the input by Minneapolis residents on the 2040 is half as intense and sincerely received as the input was to all those Small Area Plans that the pro-density folks would toss in the trash can. The Greater-Density-Everywhere proposal is widely seen by residents as unwise and unnecessary at this point. It's based on theory, not on ground-level facts. Opposing the greater density everywhere proposal does not mean that we Minneapolis residents oppose the whole 2040 Plan draft! We simply don't believe that Minneapolis has to become some Wild West nirvana for small and medium developers. Like Houston (the housing crisis in Houston after the hurricane was a direct result of that city's having absolutely no zoning restrictions and consequent highly inappropriate building done--the Wild West). Connie Sullivan, still believing in the Rule of Law and Zoning Codes in Como, in Southeast Minneapolis ▶ Rest of post   Sue Kolstad (/p/susanhornskolstad) Posted at 4:54pm, Jul 02 This has been an interesting discussion to follow. I still don't have an answer  Share to my question (on some thread, don't even know if it is on this) about breaking down what price/size apartments are not available. Then, after that, what price/size apartments will become available if we up zone the whole city. If we up zone the whole city, do the residents lose any control over what is built? It seems to me over the past few years that we have lost a lot of control already. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 48 of 57 As to the 2040 plan, it is about much more than what is discussed in this thread and we should check it out and make our responses. I have been getting a FB post from the city about the plan that features one section at a time, giving me a chance to take it in small bites and make my own comments to the city. I encourage all of you to do that. I am getting it from "Minneapolis City Government" on FaceBook. Sue Kolstad Seward   Gayle Bonneville (/p/gaylebonneville) Posted at 5:21pm, Jul 02 This is really sad and disturbing -- in fact alarming -- to hear that the city  Share is communicating details like those noted by Sue below only via Facebook (aside from in-person meetings). All too many people will not, will never, refuse to, or simply cannot use Facebook due to, among other things, the corporate methodology involved, the invasion of privacy and the false renderings now so well noted about Facebook. Instead, why isn't the city using the email list it set up for the comp plan to communicate those same factoids? They sound like they could be useful. I signed up for that email list long ago and rarely receive anything via that method. Sounds like the Facebook postings might have some substance to them? By over-dependence on one method of communication (in this case Facebook), the city once again is catering to a segment of residents and not fostering an inclusive community. And once again, as the city continually chastises our little neighborhood organizations to be inclusive and use every method of communication known to humankind, the city itself fails to follow its own directives! On Jul 2, 2018, at 11:55 AM, Sue Kolstad wrote: > snip > I have been getting a FB post from the city about the plan that features one section at a time, giving me a chance to take it in small bites and make my own comments to the city. I encourage all of you to do that. I am getting it from "Minneapolis City Government" on FaceBook. ▶ Rest of post   Matt Eckholm (/p/matteckholm) Posted at 5:37pm, Jul 02 Sue Kolstad: "If we up zone the whole city, do the residents lose any control  Share over what is built? It seems to me over the past few years that we have lost a lot of control already." The only thing that would change is there would be a slight change in the number of units allowed in a new construction building by-right. Given that many, if not most, Minneapolis fourplexes can only be identified as such by counting mailboxes, the only thing that changes is there might be new ones next to ones that have existed in the city for decades. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 49 of 57 It does not mean someone will come in and destroy an entire neighborhood. It does not mean someone can build whatever they want, any more than they're allowed to build whatever they want under the current building code. The major thing changing for most residential areas is the number of units allowed. That's it. Jeff Skrenes: "I've ONLY been here since 1999, but I don't remember the destruction of thousands of mutlifamily properties in my fair city." Did we tear down thousands of properties? No. That didn't happen. Did we *downzone* multifamily properties in the 1970s, allowing these units to be lost by attrition over time as properties lost their grandfathered status as multifamily units? Yes, because that's exactly the reason neighborhood groups fought for the downzoning. A duplex in S. Minneapolis makes for a really big single family home if it's not allowed to be rented as a duplex. We didn't have to tear them down for the units to be lost. Jeff Skrenes: "And I know I'll get backlash from the YIMBY's for bringing up old stuff as if it shouldn't matter anymore, but anyone who yearns for the good old days of boarding houses as an alternative affordable housing strategy, but celebrated the demolition of the Orth House is quite frankly full of it and I won't let that go without pointing out the hypocrisy." I don't think you'd be able to find a YIMBY who supported that. Connie Sullivan: "What is not going up is the average wage of Minneapolis workers. That's the major problem, that's what's making housing "unaffordable," and the 2040 plan does nothing to address that with blanket elimination of zoning restrictions." Two things. One, the city has zero control over that. Two, housing isn't something that sits in a vacuum away from other economic issues. The city made the choice fifty years ago to restrict housing in dense areas like the Wedge, and now we're encountering 2-3% vacancy rates despite bringing online thousands of new rental units a year. If that's not a crisis, I'd love to hear your definition of the term. It's also kind of ridiculous to point to North Minneapolis and say "housing is cheap there, don't bother me in my neighborhood." There's cheaper housing in Appalachia too. People are drawn to neighborhoods in South Minneapolis because of what already exists there - the restaurants, the nearby amenities, the transit connections, and yes, the neighborhoods. Maybe one day people will be attracted to North in the same way, but I hope it's because the people who live there now are given the tools to make West Broadway exciting in its own right, and not because someone who wanted to live by Lyndale was priced out, and then tries to replicate Lyndale on Broadway. It's getting tiring trying to explain the facts of the plan to someone who wants to pretend this is all about big, evil developers coming to run bulldozers through Como. That kind of fearmongering is self defeating - because a city where a bank would find it fiscally prudent to co-finance a plan to *tear down an entire street* and replace it with row housing is in a major, EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 50 of 57 0.0% vacancy rate, San Francisco on steroids crisis. That's a level of crisis that nobody here is claiming. But in a city where there is no crisis at all, one that you are proposing is the case, your development proposal would be laughed out of every bank in the world and would never come to fruition. So pick one - either we're not in crisis and this ultimately will change nothing other than the occasional fourplex built on corner lots or near other neighborhood amenities, or we're in such a major housing crisis that the Como neighborhood is in immediate risk of extinction, because such a plan would be financially prudent? Carol Becker: I'm not going point by point through your response until you read the first hand accounts of the downzoning fight in the Wedge neighborhood. I have been responding to you in good faith, but that has not been returned. I'm not going to fight cherry picked stats if you're not going to do the basic amount of engagement with the data I'm providing in turn. The same question I posed to Connie about whether we're in a major crisis or not applies to you as well though. The "we are not San Francisco" line is also getting tired. We get it. SF wasn't SF either until Google and Facebook. Seattle wasn't Seattle until Amazon. You might argue "that's not something a city can plan for", but *this is exactly how you plan for an unexpected boom*. You acknowledge that it might happen and take steps to provide a mechanism for growth. You don't lock down half the city into low intensity land use until several years into the problem. The fact that we've continued to maintain a low vacancy rate despite *not* having a major tech boom like those cities is a sign that if we *did* ever have some company like that sprout up here, we would be completely unprepared for what it would do to our city.   Bill Kahn (/p/billkahn) Posted at 7:15pm, Jul 02 Public notice and access are always important, and they seem to be using both  Share Facebook and Twitter as the 2040 draft is pretty much web based: https://minneapolis2040.com/overview/ (https://minneapolis2040.com/overview/) A PDF file of the plan can be downloaded from this site to print out, but if someone requested a copy from CPED, I’m sure they would reluctantly send one out or perhaps order one to be made to pick up at a copy center near them. They could certainly do much better. I watched video from the 4th Ward open house on Facebook and was not happy. They focused on the speakers instead of the visuals everyone there could see (useless, unless one can follow exactly that discussed from the presentation, which I believe was right off the site linked above). I suppose one way to do this for folks not connected to the web would be to conference at libraries with a facilitator and a big monitor to show the site as you go through the plan, just as the past open houses did. I strongly suspect they reached more people than they have in the past with EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 51 of 57 like plan drafts (not that this is like anything I’ve ever seen). I’m in the camp of folks who believe we’re never going to deal with the issue of affordable housing at the city level of government except through supported housing by contract or city owned housing (MPH for our guvmit plus the regional infrastructure). We need to continue to shift folks at the bottom in an upwardly mobile direction, so I think scrapping this part of the plan (parts of two sections, I think) and remaining with conventional planning and zoning practices until we figure out something more workable and satisfying than this draft. I don’t agree with Carol’s numbers some of the time in this thread and others, but she is right to doubt the efficacy of this approach IMHO. Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 2, 2018, at 12:21 PM, Gayle Bonneville <> wrote: > > This is really sad and disturbing -- in fact alarming -- to hear that the city is communicating details like those noted by Sue below only via Facebook (aside from in-person meetings).   Janet Nye (/p/janetnye) Posted at 9:44pm, Jul 02 I guess that  public Share access wasn't too important when Councilmember Barbara Johnson told City Clerk Casey Carl to keep the discussion and vote on the $10,000/year raise off the agenda so the public would not be aware of it. I'll continue to grind this axe because it is an indication of where we are headed. As far as affordable housing, I commend all the people who have been doing the research. I wish that this discussion had taken place before the plan emerged that is now being given to the taxpayers for a few cosmetic changes. This top down method of government is not democratic and will make for bad decisions where greed always has the winning hand. On the subject of affordable housing, I think first things first. Homelessness is a plague in our country and more every day world-wide as people flee war and famine. Homelessness afflicts families and breaks down the structure of society. It is a very serious problem that will have ramifications for future generations. It needs to be dealt with, which means examining the underpinnings of it including the false conclusions arrived at without honest and rigorous thought. Auditors (in scarce numbers at City Hall) can give us hard numbers that give a clearer picture of what is going on. I think that the situation at our borders and elsewhere is putting some pressing issues in perspective. If Minneapolis wants to be a true world class city, it can put itself on the map by dealing with homelessness. Janet Nye EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 52 of 57 Phillips I On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 2:15 PM, Bill Kahn < ▶ Rest of post   Connie Sullivan (/p/conniesullivan) Posted at 10:48pm, Jul 02 The publication called The Northeaster had an article in its very  Share interesting June 27 issue on how, just in Northeast Minneapolis, there will be 3,000-plus new housing units up within a year and a half or so. Just in Northeast! Several big developments will be built on lots that currently hold a single-family home or a duplex. The units span from "affordable" to the income-restricted Affordable-Housing target population to seniors, to market rate condos and rentals, and pure Minneapolis luxury (high-in-the-sky condos selling for more than $4 million each, on the former site of the East Side Commercial Club (just behind the Pillsbury Library). It's not the Wedge, but Northeast is the New Chic in our city following on the heels of the North Loop. Minneapolis keeps bopping along developing multi-unit housing, addressing just fine the influx of new population. I repeat: No housing crisis. Second point: Gary Cunningham (on the Metropolitan Council) last week called out the drafters of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan draft for falsely using language suggesting that the plan's details address problems of racial inequity in the city. However related housing issues are to income levels and wages, the city can't do more than fight with the business community for a $15 minimum wage for hourly workers, fair scheduling of work hours, paid sick leave, and other decent and necessary worker benefits. The Plan doesn't address the real issue, but Cunningham noted how full it is of rhetoric that suggests it does. Part of the required Sounds-Good rhetorical gamut that is thrown around too easily, a clear hypocrisy. I'll throw in a piece of historical fact that explains why it does worry me that absentee landlords have bought up contiguous properties in my Como neighborhood over the past twenty years, and the frustrated plans of several to maximize their income by building too-dense housing on the site of a former Victorian that sat on three lots (allowing up-to-fourplexes will mean that that landlord will not have to pass Go with city or neighborhood to build there). I'm told by younger folks here Don't Worry, Be Happy; developers will not swoop in and suddenly change Como. But that kind of thing does happen! As a former faculty member of the University of Minnesota I was permitted access about twelve years ago to the U's Real Estate Office's historical records for its Twin Cities properties. Part showed how the University, over about thirty-five to forty years in the mid-20th century, slowly bought up residential properties in the area just north of the East Bank campus, east of 15th Ave. SE to beyond Oak St., and north of University EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 53 of 57 Ave. SE to 8th St SE. Hundreds of homes--I recall going to parties there in the late 1960s, in houses the U owned and rented out--and a factory that made some noxious stuff on 5th St. SE. Anyway, in 1969 the University DID swoop down and destroy the whole lot of the residences. Massively, suddenly, to build out its intercollegiate athletic facilities (the Taj Maholtz football complex, Bierman Field in its 1960s iteration, and some rec sports softball fields, etc.. The U did actually take bulldozers and tore the whole shebang down, displacing mostly renters at that point; they long since had bought out homeowners. Nobody made much of it in 1969, because the U had so quietly done the cheap buying-up over decades, and the whole shebang was theirs to destroy. Like a balloon, the affected renter population that was so displaced shifted westward to Marcy-Holmes and north to Como and eastward eating into Prospect Park, and all of those neighborhoods experienced severe changes in the housing stock, and its ownership, as a result. Awful thing, historical knowledge! Makes you cautious, makes you question things that sound good but have worrisome details. There's no hysteria about it, thanks very much. Connie Sullivan Como, not in The Wedge On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 12:37 PM, Matt Eckholm <> wrote: ▶ Rest of post   Carol Becker (/p/carolbecker) Posted at 10:58pm, Jul 02 Ms. Koldstad:  Share There is no study to answer to how many new apartments at what price will be built if we up-zone. I think the best answer is that we will see more housing exactly like we have been getting because that is where the private market can build housing and make a profit that is acceptable to them. Rents have been increasing as developers have built more higher end housing and that would continue. As to the question if we up-zone do residents lose control, the answer is yes. The Plan makes it clear that although it is "informed" by Small Area Plans, it would trump Small Area Plans, basically tossing out the window all the work done by residents to design their neighborhoods. We have seen this already happening at Sons of Norway and other locations around the City. It is just another way the City would limit citizen participation, a trend that has been happening since the 2000's. Mr. Eckhorn: 2%-3% Apartment Vacancy Rates has been the norm since the Great Recession. I have attached the chart of this from the Minneapolis Trends report. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 54 of 57 No, I don't see a crisis - in part because I have talked with developers and landlords who don't see any real need to do anything else than what they have been doing. In fact, two big developers here in the City told me they thought the peak had passed and were thus reluctant to build substantially more quickly. They will eventually if demand persists. As to the point about people having some right to live in a specific South Minneapolis neighborhood, I don't think everyone has the right to be able to live in the neighborhood of their choice. I know I wasn't able to. I would love to live next to a lake but that isn't going to happen. I would note that the article from Mr. O'Neill states that the City of St Paul hasn't recovered from the Great Recession yet and as such, there may be great opportunities for people to purchase affordable housing there. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/04/11/property-tax-assessment-faq (https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/04/11/property-tax-assessment-faq) As to the first-hand accounts about the downzoning fight in Wedge, please do send me the links. I would love to read them. I am also trying to respond in good faith. I am very familiar with what happened in Powderhorn and it really got rid of a lot of substandard housing. As to us needing to plan to become Seattle or San Francisco, I would also point out that we could become Detroit or St Louis. There have been recent years where little growth has occurred in the region. It seems that we should plan for the most likely scenario and I don't think that is Amazon or Google. By up-zoning the City, we are actually scattering fourplexes like birdseed. Or at least the potential of fourplexes everywhere. You are probably correct though that if we leave it up to developers, southwest Minneapolis will be slammed by fourplexes while the empty lots remain vacant in North and the car dealerships remain on East Lake. Even Seattle did not go as radical as this plan does. It is carefully up-zoning specific neighborhoods to control growth. That is part of why I think blanket up-zoning is a bad idea, or scattering fourplexes like birdseed as you call it. As to the question of bulldozing neighborhoods, the question is why do we need to up-zone the whole city? No other major city has done this. Either we are in a crisis, which requires a crisis response, or we are not. If we are not, there is no reason to up-zone. There is also no reason for the towers wherever developers want them either. Our existing system has produced housing for 40,000 new residents and can handle another 50,000 over 20 years. Likewise, the idea that we are not producing enough housing because of onerous regulations is an idea that comes from Seattle and San Francisco, which is why you have to keep bringing it up. These are the birth places of YIMBY and that is where you have to start when talking YIMBY. As to us not being Seattle or San Francisco, but could become that, we could also become Detroit or St Louis. There have been years where there was no population growth and it could happen again. It would seem that we should handle the crisis when it comes, not up-zone just in case. EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 55 of 57 Mr. Bird: You accused me of making up numbers about the housing prices in Minneapolis. I sent you a picture of median home values, the report that it came from and my spreadsheet showing how I adjusted these for inflation. If I calculated something wrong, please do let me know. Understand that I am using this data because I, like you, heard we were having a housing crisis. So I went to the smartest guy about our housing value changes, the City Assessor, Patrick Todd. I asked him about how housing prices were going crazy and he told me that they are not. Which got me into all of this other information, including the information that I shared with you. If you have questions about the data or report, please do contact them because what I am using here is from them. As to Case-Shiller, I have looked at it. It says that our housing costs are substantially below the average for the United States. We are not only not San Francisco or Seattle, we are not even average. We are below average. I have attached that to this email also. As to the concern that rents are up 17% since 2010, inflation for that same time period is 16.1%. Run the numbers yourself. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm) The article that you linked to also talks about St. Paul. I appreciate it is not Minneapolis (and not Appalachia but I can see it from my house). Median home price there is only $184,000 and they have not even recovered from the Recession. Hard to argue we are having a crisis when across the river they are not even back to even. Do we need developers to build more housing to meet demand? Yes. Is there any reason they won't? Is it the onerous regulations like Mr. Miller argues that all of the sudden, after adding 40,000 more people somehow stop working? I don't think so. Five years ago the concern was too much inventory. Ten years ago the concern was too little inventory. The wheel turns. It always has and always will. As to being a "climate denier" I have given you the median home values, which are not going crazy. I have given you several cites for rent, which went up 3.3% last year. I showed you Case-Shiller which shows we are substantially below the rest of the country for market-rate housing. I have shown other pieces of information. I have backed up everything I have said with hard data. The question is how much information do I have to show you to get you to see there is nothing happening in the marketplace that supports a radical upzoning. We are not in a crisis. We can add another 50,000 people with our existing plans and be just fine. If in five years, we have even lower inventory, if prices double, if rents double, if St Paul starts having prices like ours, call me and I will be there shoulder to shoulder fighting against those evil regulations that stopping developers from building more. But until then, we are not having a market rate crisis. We are having a crisis for low income folks but that will not be resolved EXHIBIT B http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/3VURYBmjpL2UsoAjb5zhms/ 8/15/2018 Page 56 of 57 by market rate housing. One of the key things we do need to do is to preserve existing affordable housing. The link you provided talks specifically about that. That doesn't happen with displacement zoning that you are advocating for. https://www.mhponline.org/publications/rental-market-watch/111-rental-market-watch-minneapolis (https://www.mhponline.org/publications/rentalmarket-watch/111-rental-market-watch-minneapolis) Ms. Sullivan: I agree with everything you wrote. Right on. Carol Becker Longfellow 2018 Budget Presentation.pdf (/groups/mpls/files/f/fqcX6giYRCBcvAs88UIN6g22l0y867.14kb 3IZJ- (/groups/mpls/files/f/fqcX6giYRCBcvAs88UIN6g22l0y-3IZJ2H4gxgA/2018 Budget Presentation.pdf) 2H4gxgA/2018 Median Home value.xlsx (/groups/mpls/files/f/q7TMYohk5eHU58VtuzfyKTJxg9r17.12kb Budget 4yI- (/groups/mpls/files/f/q7TMYohk5eHU58VtuzfyKTJxg9r-4yI2H4gxhE/Median Home value.xlsx) Presentation.pdf) 2H4gxhE/Median Home value.xlsx) (/groups/mpls/messages/image/hh8WroL97umIbEAdnSJCFrxNhCjh8D-2H4gxe8) (/groups/mpls/messages/image/sT316goWxPoX3K7JaUf11RCXdMvApartment Vacancy Rates.jpg 64.34kb Cch-2H4gxfx) (/groups/mpls/messages/image/hh8WroL97umIbEAdnSJCFrxNhCjSingle Family Median Value.jpg 143.39kb h8D-2H4gxe8) (/groups/mpls/messages/image/sT316goWxPoX3K7JaUf11RCXdMvCch-2H4gxfx) (/groups/mpls/messages/image/7uHwL9SVOxdoCdKdem3EI9NZZp1Lh4-2H4gxhR) Case Shiller.jpg 177.47kb (/groups/mpls/messages/image/7uHwL9SVOxdoCdKdem3EI9NZZp1Lh4-2H4gxhR) ◃ Newer (5mMM1BxCC4IsYqtXVwTv6s) ⬆ (/groups/mpls/) Older (2BfhFBIW2VqKENBKy2gCeF) You cannot post because you are not logged in. 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D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D • D D D Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting (Code 11) Mining (Code 21) Utilities (Code 22) Construction (Code 23) Manufacturing (Codes 31-33) Wholesale Trade (Code 42) Retail Trade (Codes 44-45) Transportation and Warehousing (Codes 48-49) Information (Code 51) Finance and Insurance (Code 52) Real Estate Rental and Leasing (Code 53) Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (Code 54) Management of Companies and Enterprises (Code 55) Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services (Code 56) Educational Services (Code 61) Health Care and Social Assistance (Code 62) Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation (Code 71) Accommodation and Food Services (Code 72) Other Services (except Public Administration) (Code 81) Public Administration (Code 92) EXHIBIT C Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State Assumed Name I Certificate of Assumed Name MinnesotaStatutes, Chapter 333 4. (Select up to one) Is this entity a full time or part time endeavor for those primarily responsible for operating this entity? D Full time l!l!IPart time 5. (Select up to one) - If applicable, what were this entity's gross revenues for the past year? 1111 $0 - $10,000 0 $ I 0,00 I - $50,000 0 $50,00 I - $250,000 0 $250,001 - $1M D Over $1M AssumedNameRegistrationRev.9/19/2016 EXHIBIT C Work Item 1025426100062 Original File Number 1025426100062 STATE OF MINNESOTA OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE FILED 08/02/2018 11:59 PM Steve Simon Secretary of State EXHIBIT C llllllllllll IIIIIII Ill i 025!'2-E-1 Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State Name Reservation I Request for Reservation of Name Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 302A. ll 7, 317 A. II 7, 322C 0/09 or 321.109 Read the instructions before completing this form. Filing Fee: $55 for expedited service in-person and on line filings, $35 ifby mail I hereby request the Secretary of State to reserve the name listed below. I understand that the name reservation does not register the business name, and is valid for twelve months from the date on which it is filed. The name reservation may be renewed for additional twelve month periods, pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, sections 302A. I 17, 317 A.117, 322C.0109 or 321. 109. I, Desired Name: (Required) 2. Reserved for: (Required) _-,,t=.0o=""'"""~e.-=L-'-i...,vc.:<-=:.....,~~-,-,.~-~-r----,,--.-~--/"" 'CJ' l N" 5(>"'l,.,e.+,;• ...:- t,,J • .,..,£ Y) ~"'° I <>-S )u..r' ~c Note: If this name is reserved for an organization not yet formed, list the individual who will be signing the documents, which will be submitted at the time of the organization of the business. 3. List the complete street address of the individual or organization who this name is being reserved for: (Required) ~2.ot