Meeting goals to review points and suggestions for change at the City level for request review or policy change by the City Policy makers.
Additional suggestions added to plan of action for positive change.
Added To Neighborhood Suggestions:
• Community investment groups to purchase foreclosed properties (this could also be city or non profit action).
• Communities or NHA create more sign programs similar to McKinley’s signs saying things like ”courtesy is not a crime“ or “ I look, I watch, I call”. Programs that encourage community involvement, making a visible presence, empowering homeowners…
Educational /Public Schools
• Education thru the school system on how to be a responsible citizen/appropriate community behavior and conduct. also issues of living within means recycling etc.
The goal is to help in better conduct by children and aid in ending generational poverty. There are research studies showing effectiveness of these types of programs,
New Suggestions for City Policy
General
• Create incentive programs for city/government employees to purchase properties in high poverty neighborhoods.
Licensing
• With any license for rental property rental property owners agree to a signed “code of operation conduct”, to maintain property request property owners do better back ground checks on rental applicants etc.
• Displayed with any rental license in property is a “Community code of conduct” for tenants of property.
• Create a license fee that has a refundable amount if there are no problems with the property thru inspections or police actions. Placing funds in interest bearing account.
• Multiple nuisance fines for to many calls to 911 or to many zoning violations.
Zoning
• Do a further review possibility of zoning caps for rental properties in neighborhoods of poverty.
To MPHA HUD RHA
• Maintenance checks for properties/ routinely inspect properties by inspections or an RHA inspections officer. , and if repairs made by section 8 tenants are not made there will be grounds for termination from program. This also applies to landlords.
• Neighborhood service centers to meet with community and handle complaints.
• Better Tenant screening (Suggestions added from Cincinnati RHA vs Homeowners settlement, Nikita Jones study).
A request was made to add all research data that has been found to the blog http://www.northsidehomeowners.blogspot.com.
Robert would work on getting it up in some form or hyper-linking the data that has been downloaded as PDF’s
The meeting then went to summarize strategies to move forward, suggested were:
• Individually send a drafted a letter to send to officials requesting change to policies.
• Sign a petition and present it
• Present our mandate for change to council members of community and or request
to be heard by the entire council.
Although many people in the room were for using all means to get the point across to request something be done to address the livability issues for Northside homeowners.
It was agreed to converse with Barb Johnson first and ask her to present the request to the city council and go from there. Heather Fraser volunteered to draft the letter, Connie volunteered to edit the draft.
The Homeowners who participated in the meeting were specific on targeting the problem of rental property in the community as being the issue which if addressed may have the most impact on creating positive change in their neighborhoods.
At this time NHA participants at the meeting agreed upon the following areas in which they would like to see City policies/ laws or ordinances changed.
In the areas of property licensing:
These conditions would apply to either the city as whole or communities with high concentrations of poverty or impacted.
1. Demand Increase in annual license fees for rental properties, from $57 to $500 per unit. This may have a refundable portion if there are no problems at the property, thru inspections excessive 911 calls.
2. Multiple license requirements for property owners who own more than 5 non homestead rental properties. This does not apply to duplexes where owner is living on residence.
3. Create a fine structure, for multiple nuisance property problems, those who use excessive 911 and other city services.
4. With any rental license for property the city apply a “operational code of conduct” and a tenant “code of conduct” to be displayed in the property.
In the areas of city zoning revisions:
1. Would request that since renting a property is a business, and a home is then being turned into a property which is being used for the business for rental: The city of Minneapolis revise the Conditional Use Permit Requirements. Create an unencumbered system to have these properties reviewed. Must notify all people within 300’ and require some form of review and appeal process for the property.
The participants agreed that we not meet in December but continue to promote the NHA to more homeowners over the period and resume in January. The meeting time will be announced, at that time possible actions would be to invite someone from MPHA to attend to discuss section 8 in community.
Another suggestion from email was to invite someone from the licensing or zoning department to discuss the suggestions we are moving forward in the plan of action.
Other suggestions from emails the last week...
Brenda also suggested we start sending Community Impact Statements (like the ones we're invited to do for crimes) to the city council! Use that tool they devised to give us a voice with the courts .... on them!
… it's the same issues as everyone else; crime, drugs, loud vulgar music, trash, unkept houses and too many rentals in one concentrated area.
… A few ideas I would like to suggest would be to enact a city code as too how many rentals per block. This would help to prevent block after block from turning into a slum area and give the homeowners who do live here a sigh of relief that every time a house goes up for sale it it can't turn into another slum house.
Another idea to attract new homeowners, first time buyers to our area is to offer a property tax break for the first 2 years. There are some wonderful houses here to be had for such a great price but so many don't think of the northside because of the bad rap we always get. Having an incentive to at least get them to look at the northside, maybe they will see the value and move in.
…..We need more homeowners, not people running away from the problem. We need neighbors who take a stand and fight the violence otherwise it will never change. I have a young toddler and I don’t want to raise him in this kind of community where he can’t go outside to play. I’m tired of being scared to walk around the block or walk down Lowry Ave and not feeling safe…..
Next meeting time date for January as yet to be determined.
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http://www.knowledgeplex.org/news/1043451.html
City Task Force Calls for New Initiatives to Break Poverty Cycle
Gregory Smith
The Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
November 2, 2007
PROVIDENCE - Frank Shea, executive director of Olneyville Housing Corporation, was dismayed when many of the renters of his nonprofit corporation's subsidized apartments turned to rent-to-own stores for furnishings.
Those stores charge above-market interest rates on products offered at marked-up prices, Shea said, and he figured that his tenants were making bad decisions that would cloud their families' financial prospects.
So now Olneyville Housing is steering first-time homebuyers and renters to Cardi's furniture stores, which Shea said has more generous credit terms than the rent-to-own stores.
That move is the kind of action that is being recommended by a Poverty, Work and Opportunity Task Force appointed by Mayor David N. Cicilline. The task force yesterday presented its report, "Pathways to Opportunity," to the mayor at a public ceremony at Casey Family Services, a social-service agency with local headquarters in Washington Park.
Cicilline drew from social-service agencies, philanthropies, businesses and other places to assemble the 35-member task force.
The group presented an array of proposals to help low-income people get ahead in life, including reining in high-cost check-cashers and lenders, expanding adult education and preventing teenage pregnancies. For example, the task force said, poor people need better access to financial education to help them avoid predatory lenders and unnecessarily high-cost mortgages to make sound investment decisions and to plan for the future.
Given that nearly a quarter of city residents and nearly 36 percent of city children live in families with incomes below the poverty line, it is important to the future of Providence that poor people be helped to climb the economic ladder, Cicilline said at the ceremony.
One of the chapters of the task force report is "Reduce the High Cost of Being Poor," and it covers the kinds of problems faced by Shea's clients.
There are three rent-to-own stores on Olneyville Square - there are six in the city, according to the report - enticing people to buy furniture, appliances and electronics on expensive installment plans, and "they are just sucking money out of neighborhoods" such as Olneyville and Valley, Shea declared.
"The number of times we saw the rent-a-center truck come was just heartbreaking," he said. Low-income people all too often see their purchases repossessed because of a temporary financial setback, he said, and they wind up empty-handed.
Olneyville Housing solicited Cardi's for help and set up a model apartment with Cardi's furnishings to show renters and homebuyers what was available. Because Olneyville Housing gives low-income renters and homebuyers financial education, the tenants become positioned to qualify for mortgages and other kinds of credit.
Given their respective levels of creditworthiness, "people will get the credit they deserve" through the same offers Cardi's has for everyone, Shea said.
"We think this program just gets them what they earned," he added.
The task force recommends, among other proposals:
*That financial institutions be encouraged to cater to low-income customers with more-affordable banking services, such as checking and saving accounts and wire transfers of money to the customers' home countries.
*That state government, either directly or by empowering municipalities, limit the interest and fees that can be charged for financial services and regulate other terms, and use licensing to restrict the number of "payday lenders" and check-cashing businesses.
*That city government enact a living-wage ordinance, which would require the city to increase the compensation of its own low-wage employees and to mandate that certain businesses and nonprofit organizations with municipal contracts or that benefit from municipal subsidies also boost the compensation of their low-wage employees.
*That city government better coordinate with the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to expand adult education. Task force member Johan E. Uvin, director of the office of adult education for the state department, said there are 1,014 people enrolled in adult education in Providence, 1,500 waiting and tens of thousands who need it.
link to rest of article ..
http://www.knowledgeplex.org/news/1043451.html
it is ironic isn't it in north Minneapolis we want even keep a second hand store like freebies in business. Thrift education would go along way to end poverty would it not. I live and work under the poverty level myself, and most i own comes from thrift stores.
just an idea...
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