628 East Franklin Avenue

[FISHMANPET]

Although to add to the body of anecdotal evidence that supports my view of housing construction and refutes yours, where are the piles of non-profit developers lining up to develop naturally affordable housing without subsidy if it's so easy to do it? Surely somebody somewhere must have had the idea to take a look and have a go at it. I'd say the closest we have is Riverton Community Housing Coop, and look at these prices in their new building in Dinkytown:
http://www.riverton.org/sites/default/f ... 0Rents.pdf

[intercomnut]

I'd say the closest we have is Riverton Community Housing Coop, and look at these prices in their new building in Dinkytown:
http://www.riverton.org/sites/default/f ... 0Rents.pdf

Wow. I live in a 350sq ft studio in the Theater District and pay $800/month. Their lowest end studios are 381-394 sq ft and go for $925/month. Thats nuts.

[beige_box]

where are the piles of non-profit developers lining up to develop naturally affordable housing without subsidy if it's so easy to do it?

Who said without subsidy? My whole point is that the city selling this particular building for a huge loss amounts to a subsidy, and I'm wondering why the city couldn't have found a way to do a more straightforward subsidy instead, which the aim of keeping rents affordable. And my answer is because of something vaguely corrupt. Yours, apparently, is "well, since it was behind closed doors, we cannot speculate on what may or may not have happened, therefore we must err on the side of corruption-doesn't-exist-because-cmon-it's-Minnesota-dotcha-know."

[FISHMANPET]

Who benefits from a corrupt process that creates a fancy building that's too expensive for anybody to rent?

As to who said without subsidy, I would say you did, but you deleted the post, so I can't say for sure either way. If the sale price had been zero could these units have been made "affordable?" I highly doubt it. An old building that needs expensive renovation is not a good place for anybody to dedicate scarce affordable housing funds. I mean, I get that you're upset that luxury housing exists, but... it does. And sometimes people build more of it. And sometimes a city official can look at a proposal and say "you know what, I'd rather eat the $173k loss then wait for the entire basis of our economy to shift and for this to suddenly be cheap to develop."

And you know what, I went back and read the article. Fuck this whole stupid fucking debate. $1200 is not completely insane, and there are going to be units for $790, and this hasn't been officially approved, it's only tentative, so at this point I'm pretty tired of all of us talking out of our ass about something where there's no information and nothing has actually officially happened yet.

[FISHMANPET]

I don't think this is the current RFP, but as of May of this year, the estimated market value of the building was $75k. Just because the city spent $250k on it when they bought it doesn't mean it's worth $250k now.

[FISHMANPET]

OK, so actually, that article is sloppy reporting. There will be eleven TWO bedroom apartments renting for $1200 a month, and the three one bedroom apartments renting for $790.

In various RFPs (the one above where I didn't actually post the link from April: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 138532.pdf) and one from September of last year: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 127798.pdf) the value of the property is listed as $75k.

There's also this document that describes what's happening now http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/gro ... 149335.pdf
That document explains some of why the price is the way it is, and also that this is in fact the results of the April RFP.

So let's all take a second to read that before we go any farther here.

[FISHMANPET]

OK, this is probably my last post in this archaeology expedition.

This page shows up on page 2 of search results on the city website, which is bizzaire because the documents it links to show up on page 1, but whatever:
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/meeting ... S1P-149336
It was presented at the September 29th CDRS meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaG_EB_mn2w

[beige_box]

I'm glad to find out the $1200 units are 2BR. Less glad to find out that FISHMANPET was willing to doublethink his way into arguing that $1200 would be a fair rent for 1BRs just because the developers said it was, only to have it turn out that even the developers weren't saying it was.

[mattaudio]

Would $1200 for a 1br necessarily be *unfair* rent?

[FISHMANPET]

E: Nevermind, I'm not going to respond to snippy personal attacks, and especially not respond with snippy personal attacks of my own. I think my point has already been made here by Matt and mplser.

[mplser]

guys, I'm just as glad as you are that the 1 br's won't be 1200, but 1200 wouldn't necessarily be unfair. like I said earlier, there is a new-ish building about 3-4 blocks away on Chicago ave that charges that much. but lets not keep arguing about it until the thread gets locked like usual? please?

[Sara Bergen]

Just west of this property The Rose (South Quarter) has market rate one bedrooms listed at $1,250 and market rate 2 bedrooms at $1,600 to $1,700. I would be interested to know how quickly the market rate units are leasing up.

[twincitizen]

Yo tambien!

Especially since

The Rose will offer a wide range of affordability. Seven of the units will be reserved for households experiencing homelessness and 15 of the three-bedroom units will be Section 8, with tenants paying 30 percent of their income for rent. Of the 47 affordable units, 21 will be affordable to households earning between 50 and 60 percent of area median income. The rents for the units will range from $636 for a 522-square-foot efficiency unit up to $1,560 for a two-bedroom, market-rate unit

P.S. There are 43 market-rate units