Zoning in Minneapolis

Parks, Minneapolis Public Schools, Density, Zoning, etc.
Silophant
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Re: Zoning in Minneapolis

Postby Silophant » December 6th, 2019, 8:26 pm

An important thing to remember is that Jim Buchta has written an article announcing that developers are done building apartments in Minneapolis and are shifting to the suburbs every six months like clockwork for, what, like five or six years now?

That being said, I do expect IZ to affect the market, probably by shrinking buildings like Anondson suggested. It's a frustrating policy, effectively taxing residents that don't live in the city yet. Which makes sense politically, since theoretical future residents don't vote, but also is a much smaller base than actual residents. If we want to really help with the housing crisis, we should bump taxes up a couple percent and build some public housing.
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jtoemke
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Re: Zoning in Minneapolis

Postby jtoemke » December 7th, 2019, 8:17 am

Reading between the lines, "The metro is absorbing new units at the strongest pace since 2010." - Are we thinking this is going to signal to 2019 being a great population growth year for the cities?

Inclusionary zoning's biggest irk to me is that I wouldn't consider the prices of the "affordable housing" to be affordable. Yes, I know it meets the definition of 30% of one's income, but I am much more comfortable splitting an older three bedroom with roommates. My rent would go up literally $700 if I moved to an "affordable" unit.

It seems like a lot of barriers without achieving much.

I agree with Silophant that I'd rather see them add a 0.5% to sales tax or something and build small, neighborhood scale public housing and scatter it all over the metro. Atleast the rents would be at a level that the families could start to get ahead.

Blaisdell Greenway
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Re: Zoning in Minneapolis

Postby Blaisdell Greenway » December 7th, 2019, 8:38 am

“I don’t know if there’s a suburb out there with a vacancy rate of less than 3%,” said Brian Roers, co-founder and owner of Roers Cos., a real estate developer. “The suburbs are definitely growth markets.”

My read is the developers are following the low-hanging fruit. Many of the easiest/most-developable parking lots are now gone in Minneapolis and we're starting to see more teardown and infill proposals (see: Yellow Tree). Costs for these kinds of projects are always going to be harder to pencil out than ones on surface lots in the suburbs, with or without IZ. Burnsville getting its first apartment building in over a decade strikes me as a win for the metro generally.

alexschief
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Re: Zoning in Minneapolis

Postby alexschief » December 7th, 2019, 9:10 am

% of MSP Metro Multi-family Housing Units Built in the Core Two Cities:

2010 - 50%
2011 - 48%
2012 - 69%
2013 - 70%
2014 - 50%
2015 - 47%
2016 - 58%
2017 - 41%
2018 - 47%
2019 (to date) - 52%

If you can find a trend in that, let me know, because I can't. The rate of multi-family being built in the cities vs the suburbs seems to have held quite steady in the past decade, with the exception of 12-13, when it seems like a few developers maybe got a couple years ahead of the market in Minneapolis.

If you go back to the previous decade, you'll see that the multi-family construction has shifted meaningfully towards the city since the recession, around 01-02, only about fifth of multi-family construction was occurring in Minneapolis or St. Paul. Between 01-09, just 12.4% of all housing units were built in the two core cities. From 10-19, 28.1% of all housing units have been built in the two core cities.

Anyway the lesson here is that Jim Buchta's articles are full of good info, but his framing is usually nonsense.

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Re: Zoning in Minneapolis

Postby MNdible » December 7th, 2019, 2:14 pm

Remember, though, that the units getting built in Minneapolis currently were all approved before the IZ went into effect (and there's still a modest backlog of other projects approved but not yet under construction). So if there's an impact from IZ, it won't show up in numbers until next year at the earliest.

alexschief
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Re: Zoning in Minneapolis

Postby alexschief » December 7th, 2019, 2:50 pm

I'm making a point about the frequent "apartment construction moving to the suburbs" narrative.

I expect IZ to slightly decrease the pipeline of new units, but it won't kill it dead by any stretch. That's what has happened in Portland, and they have a more aggressive IZ policy than Minneapolis. One thing that would be nice is if developers who don't want to work in Minneapolis went to St. Paul instead, but there are other reasons why that capital city isn't a great place to build.


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