Electing a New People in Minneapolis

The Geography of Politics, Part 4

The population of the City of Minneapolis peaked above 521,000 back in 1950 and has not recovered since.  In 1950, 17.5 percent of the state’s population lived within the city limits of the City of Lakes.  Today, only 7.3 percent of the state’s population lives there.

Desperate to regain population and influence, the city is working hard to attract new high-rise apartment and condo projects and mixed-use commercial/residential developments.  But not all current Minneapolis residents are buying into the city’s new skyscraper vision.

The Politics of Poverty, Part 3

Yesterday’s State of the Region speech by Met Council head Susan Haigh has received glowing reviews in all of the expected quarters.  As I describe in Part 2 of this series, the government agency in charge of local bus service and the regional water utility has decided to get into the income redistribution business.

Income redistribution?  Yes, it all has something to do with the Met Council’s sideline in housing.

In conjunction with Chair Haigh’s speech, the Council released an 8-page summary of its Fair Housing Equity Assessment report, along with a new draft of the full report.

The assessment paints an ever-bleaker portrait of what the Council terms to be “racially-concentrated areas of poverty” or RCAP.

As I point out in Part 1 of this series, every single one of these areas is, and has been for decades, under the direct control of the state’s most progressive Democrat politicians.  That every liberal policy ever invented has already been implemented in these areas appears to be no deterrent to prescribing more of the same.

This go around, the new twist appears to be the relocation of low-income families within RCAP’s to areas of higher income.  As the Council describes in their report summary (p. 8), they plan,

To promote expanded housing choices for people of all economic means by:

          − preserving existing affordable housing across the region

− encouraging new affordable housing, especially in areas well connected to jobs and transit

− investing in affordable-housing construction and preservation in higher-income areas of the region

− providing competitive rent limits to expand residential choices for holders of Housing Choice Vouchers

− supporting research into Fair Housing issues, discriminatory lending practices, and real estate steering to determine how housing practices may be limiting housing choices

By “investing in affordable-housing construction,” the Met Council means that they will be using your tax dollars to build new public housing in “higher-income areas.”

Simply relocating low-income families to other areas will not, of course, raise the household income of the individual relocated families.  It however, will appear to close income gaps by lowering the average income of higher-income areas and raising the average income of lower-income areas.  RCAP’s will appear to vanish—not because poverty (the “P” in RCAP) is relieved—but because we have dispersed it (the concentration, “C” part).  On paper, the problem appears solved, even if the lives of the low-income families involved have not materially improved.

The Council’s report cites impressive statistics on how many new jobs will be created and how much additional economic activity would be generated by raising the incomes of low income families, rather than closing the gap by mere statistical legerdemain.

The whole exercise seems like begging the question:  showing what success would look like, but not indicating how the Council’s efforts would actually bring it about.

To where will these families be moved?  The Met Council’s draft report (Section 6, Page 5) maps what it calls “Blue Clusters,” areas characterized by good public schools and low crime, among other attributes.  These areas are found throughout the metro region, mostly in 2^nd and 3^rd-tier suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Besides good schools, the distinguishing characteristic of these areas is that they are now—or recently have been—represented by Republicans.  Whether or not moving low income households will succeed in raising their incomes remains to be seen.  What will occur is moving likely Democrat voters from areas of densely concentrated Democrats to political swing areas that now lean Republican.

If the object of this exercise is to elect more Democrats, count me out.  If we are trying to help impoverished areas, here are a few ideas:

·         More school choice

·         Parent trigger options for failing public schools

·         Consolidation of benefit programs into an expanded earned income tax credit

The Politics of Poverty, Part 2

Today in St. Paul, the Chairperson of the Met Council regional government agency delivered a speech from the throne-style address on the State of the Region.  It turns out that the government agency that runs our local bus service has gotten into the income redistribution business.  No, really.

Met Council Chair Susan Haigh delivered her remarks this morning on the campus of the private Macalester College.  It turned out to be a speech on race relations.  She said,

As a country and a region, we have made progress on race relations and equal opportunity.  But it’s not enough.  In fact, our region has some shocking race-based disparities that are the very worst in the nation - worse than Atlanta, Dallas and Washington DC.

I don't know about you, but quite frankly I am embarrassed that our region is at the top of the list of the 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas with the worst race-based income disparities in the country.

If we want the future I just described for all of our people, we must change.

OK so far, but what does any of this have to do with our region’s water utility?  As I described in Part 1, the Met Council is implementing a bizarre, Federally-mandated plan to relocate low-income households, scattering them across the region.  As Chair Haigh explains,

Poverty by itself really isn’t the only problem.  As you can imagine, people who live in neighborhoods where most of their neighbors are also poor encounter problems that higher income neighborhoods have less of…

…These poor and segregated neighborhoods are what we term ‘racially concentrated areas of poverty.’

The Met Council claims that scattering our low income families will provide benefits for everyone,

Those improvements create nearly $35 billion more in income to be spent in our regional economy for housing, childcare, education, healthcare and consumer goods.

The logical progression escapes me.  It reminds me of the thinking behind South Park’s underpants gnomes, who created the famous formulation,

Phase 1:  Collect Underpants

Phase 2:  ?

Phase 3:  Profit 

The joke being that by diligently and earnestly engaging in an effort, you will produce the desired result:  regardless of how unconnected your efforts are to your goals.

The same goes for the Met Council: Phase 1, scatter low-income families, Phase 2, ?, Phase 3, growing economy.  In the latest draft of the Fair Housing & Equity Assessment (FHEA), the Met Council attempts an explanation,

To the extent that people of color and low-income people cannot live in communities of their choice, they cannot access the specific types of opportunities those communities offer.  Where one lives matters, because one’s place of residence determines one’s position within the regional landscape of opportunity.

The Met Council will be finalizing its fair housing plan over the next year.  It’s an effort worth following as it evolves.

In Part 3, the Met Council reveals their last gasp weapon in the war against poverty: send in the Republicans!

The Politics of Poverty, Part 1

Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten recently wrote about the Metropolitan Council regional government and its efforts to remake the region’s demography using data collected through a “Fair Housing and Equity Assessment.”  Kersten writes,

Using these data, the council will lay out what the region’s 187 municipalities must do to disperse poverty.