Affordable Housing, Gentrification, and Bendrification

Minneapolis is undergoing an affordable housing crisis, a crisis that affected residents feel all too painfully, but is virtually ignored or plastered over with lies by the City government. The City has been busy implementing its scheme for the construction of 25,000 new housing units, attracting investors and developments by pointing to the low vacancy rates. New condos and apartments keep going up. Older units are rehabbed, with "sizzle" added. Old apartment buildings are converted to condos. And as these new units go into the housing market, the rents go up and up. The new luxury housing units fill up, while those who can no long afford "market rate" or higher rents, are forced into other neighborhoods or third-ring suburbs.

A study by The Economist last year found that Minneapolis has the third highest cost of living of all North American cities. Much of the cost is related to high utility bills from heating and cooling. Housing costs are far lower than in cities like New York and San Francisco. However, since the cost of living here is already so high due to other factors, even a modest increase in rent can send it over the top.

You tell 'em. John. True in 1690, true today.

Over the past decade in the Wedge, thousands of "market rate" and luxury housing units have been built. Many other previously affordable units have been redone--often with more jazz than substance--and rented out at top dollar. Seven old houses have been torn down and replaced with upscale multi-unit rental buildings.

It's obvious that the City has facilitated wholesale gentrification in the neighborhood and in adjacent Uptown. Yet the faux-urbanist proponents of these thousands of new luxury condos and apartments don't like the word. Don't say the "g" word! We wouldn't want the new tenants to feel guilty about shoving out those of lesser means. We wouldn't want to tar these shiny new luxury pads with the brush of social irresponsibility. We wouldn't want to spotlight the fact that the City itself is the prime mover in the affordable housing crisis.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.

But that's what it is: gentrification, in basic terms, the process of an influx of wealthier people displacing people of more limited means. What is happening in the Wedge is different in significant ways from the gentrification that displaced thousands of residents in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Harlem. First, the Wedge never had a significant cultural or racial minority population. Second, the Wedge is not a blighted area (as are indeed a number of Minneapolis neighborhoods that the City doesn't give a hoot about.) But it is gentrification nonetheless.


The first wave of gentrification took place in the 1970s, when the Wedge was on the skids, the Haight-Ashbury of the Twin Cities. Young people (myself included) bought old, often ramshackle houses and started to fix them up. LHENA was formed, and Wedge activists re-routed commuter traffic, put in a neighborhood park, started Minnesota's first food co-op, called in housing violations by slumlords--and in so doing, made the neighborhood a safer, more attractive place to live. Of course, housing values and rents went up. You can call this "revitalization", but it fills the definition of gentrification in that by closing down hippie pads, party houses, and drug-infested rooming houses, property became more valuable, and some residents were inevitably forced out.

Wedge housing prices and rents remained stable for three decades, going up in step with the Twin Cities real estate market. And then came the Great Upscale Development Boom described above. In the three and a half years since Lisa Bender became City Council representative for the Tenth Ward, the process of displacement and skyrocketing rents has accelerated to a fever pitch. 

Editorial commentary added to a sign at a new development in Brooklyn.

While the rest of us have been busy going to work, maintaining our homes, feeding our families, paying our taxes, a coalition of City Council members led by CM Bender and supported by City Planning has been busy delivering big parcels of neighborhood real estate to developers. The usual justification for this is "Density!". Using their perverted version of Urbanist theory, the apologists for gentrification keep repeating the rubric that to be great, urban Minneapolis must increase density, access to public transportation, walkability, green living, and above all, density. (Did I already say that?) To them, the New Minneapolis belongs to people like themselves: young, white, privileged, ex-suburbanites who are doing the City a favor by driving out the old NIMBYs and embarrassingly unhip segments of the population like the poor, people of color, and pensioners.

An arnarchist meme. I wonder why a bicycle is included. Hahaha. By Anarchomemes

Last November, I wrote about the City's plan to implement the so-called "Pedestrian Overlay" on Wedge commercial streets ("Pedestrian Overlay Blues"), making the point that this deceptively named plan in reality will primarily benefit the Big Cheeses--the developers who are building the  Density Paradise engineered by CM Bender and pals. Since then, it's become obvious that the City's elimination of street parking in favor of bike lanes and up-against-the-pavement multi-story commercial buildings will be wiping out scores of small businesses. Up and down Lyndale and Hennepin, down Nicollet and across 38th Street, the City is preparing to erase hundreds of parking spaces, spaces that are the commercial life blood of established neighborhood small businesses. Add to that the City's press to implement a $15 minimum wage, and you can kiss dozens of neighborhood restaurants and service businesses goodbye. It's maddening that the City claims to want to help the poor, struggling workers, yet in reality forces them out of the area into inferior housing and puts their employers out of business. Lose, lose. Except, of course, for the developers, the corporate landlords, the investors , the bankers, and the City, which seals its image as the Hip Capital of the Midwest.

Here today, GROM tomorrow/ Gentrification at work in Greenwich Village, NYC: A neighborhood greengrocer and pizza shop replaced by a hip GROM, which will be replaced by something hipper in a year or so.

Yet CM Bender has the gall to get up in public and claim repeatedly that she's the champion of renters and affordable housing. This kind of bald-faced hypocrisy (doing just the opposite of what you're bragging about doing) led one former resident driven out of town by the City's bullshit to coin the term Bendrification. The Bendrificators don't like that term any more than they like the term "gentrification." Both are nevertheless real, and apt.

You don't have to just take my word for it. When you eat at local neighborhood cafes, ask the proprietors what they think of the Bendificators' plans for the commercial streets of South Minneapolis. Ask the small business owners on Lyndale Avenue in the Wedge what they think about the City's plans for biggering (or should the "i" be a "u"?) the streetscape. Ask business owners and residents of Hennepin south of Lake Street what they think of the City's plans to redo the street at their expense. Talk to former Wedge residents displaced by tenants who can--at least for a year or two--pay the "market rate" rent. And you'll find out the cost of Bendrification to renters, businesses, and property owners in the 10th Ward.

Anti-gentrification sign in San Francisco.

Zoned Out in Gopher City

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a conference on “Building the Urban Utopia: A Blueprint for the Competitive Global City.” The featured speakers were part of a contingent from Gopher City, MN:  Phillip Space, internationally renowned architect and author of “Den$ity for Dummies,” Gopher City Council Member Malcolm “Mal” Feasants, and city planner Uriah Heep IV.

MAL FEASANTS: I’m delighted to be invited to speak on the wonders of the high-density urban neighborhoods we’re rebuilding in Gopher City. The first step in this process is clearing old buildings, old people, bellyaching minorities, and the financially disadvantaged out of these neighborhoods to make way for new mixed-use commercial buildings and high density housing. It’s easy to do--We just ignore or crush any obstacle that gets in our way, like zoning ordinances or small-area plans. If a developer needs a variance or a zoning change for a new project, we just do it. That’s the beauty of being the government. As chair of the Gopher City Zoning and Planning Committee, I control what goes down and what goes up. The voters gave us a mandate, and we’re doing what’s good for them--even if some of them don’t appreciate it.

URIAH HEEP IV [M.A.,Ph.D. Stalinist Planning and Architecture]: The Gopher City Planning Department is proud to be part of the private-public partnership. We are pleased to assist any and all new development by providing the rationale needed to argue for bypassing regulations. We’re the go-to agency for developers. Who knows the city and its buildings better than we do? Who knows better how to spin the rhetoric, using all the buzzwords: “green”, “transportation nodes”, “bike-friendly”, “affordable”, and so forth? 

 The Chinese know how to do high-density development. Complete government control, planner paradise.“Harmonious Society! Long Live the People!”

PHILLIP SPACE [A.I.A., S.O.B.] May I take a moment to brag about a new project I’m designing, a six-story hotel that developer Hy Density has proposed for Gopher City’s Ro-dense Zone? It’s cheap, it’s right on the bus line, it’s easily accessible to downtown. Who cares if the current zoning doesn’t allow a hotel next to two-story-family housing? Who cares if it doesn’t suit the Ro-dense Zone small-area plan? Who cares if building it requires a conditional use permit and a floor area ratio variance? it’s what the City needs, and Mal, here, knows how to get past these pesky ordinances and get the thing built. We’ll put a bike rack for guests by the lobby entrance. No need for parking spaces. Cars are so 20th-century.

 MAL FEASANTS: One important undertaking we GC CM’s are working on is eliminating every way that citizens can comment on projects. We’re cutting out citizen review boards that allow residents free rein to bitch about what the City is doing or not doing. We still have tiresome hearings which can’t be scrapped--yet. BOR-ING. I would go out of my mind if I didn’t have my smart phone in my lap so I can tweet and look at Facebook posts while these old NIMBYs are cranking away. When they won’t shut up, I just cut the mic. The new Gopher City, love it or leave it. 

Gopher City Council Members at public hearing.

It's essential that we rid our cities of these old knee-jerk jerks who don't appreciate the Brave New World we're fashioning in the old neighborhoods. The time of these superannuated losers has passed and so should they. The new neighborhood belongs to the developers and the young and hip. If someone isn't fit enough to ride a bike or walk to a bus stop, they should be harassed into going somewhere else to die. 

PHILLIP SPACE: Hear, hear, Mal. That reminds me. I must tell you about a brilliant scheme my firm has developed to deal with both senile senior undesirables and our supporters who can't afford the rents in the new buildings. Let me announce the latest in minimalist urban pads: Troll Holes. These young male internet trolls don't have jobs, don't have friends, and don't have lives, so they don't need all the amenities required of hipsterdom. They live online. So we've designed small, windowless one-room underground units with high-speed internet access, so they can spend all their time launching anonymous attacks on the recalcitrant NIMBYs who are such a thorn in the side of the City and developers. The City can subsidize  rents in these Holes, for these young wits are providing an important service to local government. 

We've already cleared the neighborhood of annoying minorities who are always protesting for some lame reason or the other. In the big scheme of building the great metropolis, their lives certainly don't matter. And the poor? They're already on the streets or out in suburban ghettoes. Everyone else can pay up or move out.

 A-hole online in a Troll Hole

URIAH HEEP IV: Great plan, Phil! Now, I’d like to congratulate Minneapolis on the fine job the government has done in converting antiquated cow-town Uptown into a wonder of urban planning. Uptown is very much like our awesomely hip Ro-dense Zone. Thirty years ago we threw out all the bozo small businesses there.  We used tax increment financing and got subsidies by selling the Feds on how the area was blighted. Man, what suckers! It’s taken 30 years, but now we have exactly what we wanted: a place for hipsters, yuppies, bros and suburbanites to party till they puke.

PHILLIP SPACE: Well, friends, it's been fun, but we gotta run. I need to check out several building sites to be bulldozed, and I trust that Mal and Uriah here will keep up the good work running interference for us architects and our developer employers. [Applause]  And remember, as a famous German once said, "The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

                 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
                                             Praise be to Nero's Neptune.
                                             The Titanic sails at dawn.
                                              Everybody's shouting,
                                              'Which side are you on?'
                                                      --Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"  1965

                                                   
                             With a tip of the hat to Harry Sinclair Lewis of Gopher Prairie, MN.                                                   

--T.B.