Posted on 12/24/2018 3:15:38 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Seattle is on the verge of making some controversial land-use changes that advocates say will make this increasingly expensive city more livable for people who aren’t wealthy.
The city may soon allow taller buildings in the cores of many neighborhoods and ease restrictions on mother-in-law apartments and backyard cottages. But change is hard: Those moves have encountered legal challenges.
Minneapolis this month took a much more dramatic step on density meant to ease its real-estate crunch and address its history of racial segregation: The City Council there voted to end single-family zoning altogether. Moving ahead, the Midwest city will allow duplexes and triplexes on every block.
The Seattle Times talked with Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender about the headline-grabbing change that she championed. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What just happened in Minneapolis?
We just adopted our Minneapolis 2040 plan. We’re required to adopt a land-use and infrastructure plan every 10 years, and this time our goals included eliminating racial disparities and taking action to fight climate change.
As part of that, the new plan says you can build up to three units on every lot. We’ll no longer have neighborhoods set aside for single-family homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
We left easy bethel for darn near Brainard 2 years ago.
Lots of buffer around our home.
Faimly keeps us here. For now.
I moved even further out.
All I need is a good internet connection for work. We stayed in the state because of family
Don’t know about MN but such a law would be illegal in PA. Every municipality must have zoning for EVERY type of building, period.
Translation: We can tax a lot more if we crowd everyone together by design instead of just waiting for entropy to do it.
I looked at my city’s plan (suburb of Seattle). It says right in the plan how it is in accordance with the UN’s Agenda 21.
And as a friend of mine said “Hey - you bring in Chinese that are used to 20,000 people living in a single building and sell them a condo that only has 400 people - they are living high!”
The trouble is, the 400-person condo building was built on land that had an insurance agency on it that maybe had 50 people in it. And the condo isn’t even required to provide for parking! (Mass transit don’t you know.)
My suburb probably has 20 to 30 new condo buildings like this. Either built on a former lot for a small business, or a couple of old homes. Traffic of course is terrible - as is parking.
Removing zoning laws are key to maintaining a middle class; way back in the 1830s Alexis De Toqueville predicted America’s dominance over Europe, not because of our endless land, but because landowners were able to subdivide that land, whereas in Europe they could not. Thus, we have a middle class, instead of a peasantry.
But we’re not talking allowing division of property; we’re talking here cramming multiple families into housing designed for a single one, in what is already a center city. So, essentially, you can cram multiple families into a unit designed for a single family, but you can’t build a second unit on that property. That’s insane.
AGENDA 21
> “The Twin Cities is the 7 county metro.”
Yes, and they did not ALL change their zoning regulations, did they? Only a very small part of the 7 county metro area changed their regulations.
Where I’m at folks from India and the Middle East have completely overtaken the suburban apartment and condo complexes.
>> Property values will plummet which brings in trouble. <<
The goal is to stop property values from going up so quickly, which seemed reasonable in Seattle. But property values are already reasonable in Minneapolis.
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