When light rail travels through Hopkins, affordable housing projects will likely follow. The result will draw more low-income residents and people of color to the first-ring suburb, which is already 30 percent minority.
Some critics believe that those housing units should instead land in “whiter” cities and outer-ring suburbs with lower poverty rates, and thus more financial ability to provide services — cities such as Plymouth, Afton, Minnetonka or Lakeville.
The discussion is not just academic. As the Metropolitan Council prepares its regional housing policy plan, some minority advocates and first-ring suburban mayors are criticizing efforts to situate affordable housing along transit lines like the future Southwest Light Rail, an extension of Metro Transit’s Green Line, formerly known as the Central Corridor.
Now, they’re speaking out. At 2 p.m. on April 21, officials from the St. Paul chapter of the NAACP and the cities of Brooklyn Park, Oakdale, St. Louis Park and Richfield are expected to attend an affordable housing discussion at the University of Minnesota Law School. University of Minnesota Law Professor Myron Orfield, director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, is one of the lead organizers of the forum. This will be the third in a series.
Previous forums are on YouTube:
Part One: University of Minnesota forum on affordable housing and diversity in the suburbs
Part Two: Second University of Minnesota suburban diversity forum
ADDENDUM 05/14/14: Here’s another voice in the fray, a retired attorney writing for the conservative ‘Power Line’ blog.
Orfield, a former state lawmaker, has been a frequent critic of the Met Council’s housing plans, which emphasize the importance of connecting low-income renters — especially minorities — to transit. He said the heavy emphasis on building housing along transit lines guarantees that affordable units land in cities and school districts that already have plenty of diversity and plenty of need.
“Let’s leave the white suburbs, like we did with the white neighborhoods in the cities, off the hook entirely? … These newer suburbs end up being a little like a tax shelter — Minnetonka, Plymouth, Lakeville, Afton,” Orfield said.
“Those places have nice big tax bases and no poverty,” he continued. “If you can afford to live in those places, you have better taxes and services. We can spend a lot on you and tax you not very much. Who wouldn’t choose, if they can afford to, to live in a place where they have better taxes and services, and no poverty?”
He’d like to see more subsidized housing units in higher-end Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods (think Linden Hills and Mac-Groveland) and in richer suburbs.
Orfield is not a popular guy in housing circles. His arguments have been criticized on the basis that affordable housing projects in richer areas would simply draw low-income minorities and recent immigrants farther away from familiar churches, mosques, shops, cultural organizations and other forms of social support, not to mention away from transportation and jobs. How well, for instance, would a new Cambodian immigrant fare in Farmington without a car, culturally or financially?
His detractors have also said that affordable housing is often used as a preservation tool, aimed at ensuring that modest neighborhoods that might start getting a little pricey once the light rail runs through remain accessible to existing neighborhood residents. In other words, affordable housing retains the locals when rents go up.
Here’s an online comment from a reader, reacting to Orfield’s recent scholarship on affordable housing:
Both sides make valid points. However, I really hate urban gentrification, and that would be the alternative. Putting low income housing where the low income people live makes sense, plus they get to keep their neighborhoods. Without the low income housing, Minneapolis and St. Paul rents will continue to rise and will price out the people already living there. If the low income housing goes out to the suburbs, that will not necessarily make it easier for those folks, as they then need to have a car and those expenses. The way to fix the schools is to fix the schools from the inside out, not just move the kids to a better district.
Alan Arthur, the president of the Aeon, an affordable housing developer, is quoted in the same February 2014 article as so:
Arthur, the president of Aeon, points out that affordable housing developments often do much the opposite of what Orfield suggests. Rather than introduce poverty, “workforce housing” developments are targeted to the working poor and middle-income earners, which can bring up the average income on a street. Workforce housing tends to be geared toward workers earning up to 60 percent of area median income, which is about $82,000 for a family of four in the Twin Cities.
“In our poorest neighborhoods,” Arthur says, “I don’t think most people would say, ‘Oh my, I’m having someone who makes only $49,000 move in next to me!’ “
Nevertheless, Orfield’s April 21 forum at the U of M Law School is expected to draw some folks that don’t always attend Met Council discussions on housing, such as parents and community advocates from North Minneapolis.
Orfield is also known for raising concerns about the “re-segregation” of schools and neighborhoods, ethnic charter schools and discriminatory mortgage lending. The Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, formerly known as the Institute on Race and Poverty, publishes its reports online, free of charge: www.law.umn.edu/metro/.