Expensive Minneapolis suburbs to be blighted by apartment buildings

[ErickAA]

In a misguided move to prevent racism in housing, Minneapolis has done away with "single family zoning", meaning that no neighborhoods can be zoned for single-family houses only.

This will give rise to apartment buildings popping up in these neighborhoods, which will slowly lead to their decline and an overall plummeting of property values there.

The rationale for the decision is that single-family zoning was supposedly borne from racism, after racial zoning laws were made illegal a long time ago. Supposedly it was assumed at the time that zoning neighborhoods as "single family house only" would price out most black people.

Whether or not that story is true is debatable, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is whether single family zoning is racist today, and whether it serves any valid function.

It definitely serves a valid function. Single family home neighborhoods tend to attract not just families, but families with pride in the neighborhood and the desire to set roots in the area for a long time. Apartments, on the other hand, often attract non-families and those who are not looking for a place to live long term. It is not fair to drag down longstanding nice single family home neighborhoods with the construction of apartment buildings.

Furthermore, this looks a lot like socialism to me. Rather than allowing the middle and upper class people to spend their hard-earned money to live away from the criminal elements, the city is forcing the criminal elements back into all neighborhoods.

Basically they're saying, "It's not fair that Minnesota has good and bad neighborhoods, so let's make them all bad."

Details are here: https://slate.com/business/2018/12/m...ng-racism.html ... though note that the article is on left-wing site Slate, which is heavily biased in favor of this decision.

BTW, this is basically the same argument which led to busing students from poorer areas into public schools in richer areas. The result was ruining all of the schools. Los Angeles did this decades ago (and still does), which is why the city school district is considered so terrible, and why a bunch of lousy-but-expensive private schools sprung up, which still succeed to this day.

I read the article...I think Druff is misrepresenting again...while the article discusses real problems of affordable housing vs population density, I don't see Druff's implied claim that big multi-unit high density apartment building will be allowed next to single family homes...rather only triplex housing are allowed; plus casitas and garage conversions are already allowed...and also already allowed is the Armenian mansion workaround strategy--where the home is expanded to a McMansion and three generations of a family move in (with the elders quit claiming all their ownership so they can qualify for Medicaid plus SSI, they worked off books for all their lives so they get no social security) and annoy neighbors by playing their stereo loud and clogging the streets parking their leased BMW's

In So Cal. this has played out in a lot of different places over the last 60 years or so, where former single family home neighborhoods were converted to small apartment/triplex housing, and the results are always the same. The middle/upper-class single family homeowners abandon the neighborhoods and they become ethnic ghettos. I am not even saying it is good or bad, it just is what it is. And it happens with very little large apartment buildings being built. Druff's anticipation of how this will play out is very reasonable. Again, I am not even saying it is a good or bad thing. It just is what it is.

This is the America/world we live in now. The rich (in this case the apartment developers) get richer, and everyone else is in a race to the bottom. Multiculturalism in its current inception is just a con of the rich to pit native and immigrant poors against each other, while they clean up. Divide and conquer and take all the resources for yourself.