[Mpls] Linden Hills affordable housing

[Fredric Markus]

CURA's housing forum is topical - e.g., attention will be focused on
adaptive re-use at this month's meeting on May 14 - but it should be said
that Professor Goetz draws in major talent for these discussions and from
this I infer that professional willingness would be there for the kind of
blue-ribbon effort that David Wilson and Bill Cullen have been bandying
about.

The Affordable Housing Task Force that was largely driven by community
activism has made a mark or two - actual construction, ongoing trust funds,
bipartisan political commitments, increased awareness of the regional and
statewide implications. Progress, not perfection.

But now we have the threatened HUD cutbacks re housing vouchers and MPHA
doesn't have the deep capital reserve pockets that the Bush Administration
is suggesting be used to pick up the slack in program costs. There is also
substantial future need looming in the approaching demographic bulge of
retiring baby boomers.

It would be nice to get ahead of this before existing arrangements
jeopardized by federal budget pressures meet that future demand curve. This
goes way beyond the capacities of stand-alone community activism or
free-market economics - a worthy task for government writ large.

Fred Markus, West Phillips