Photo and blog post by John HoffWalking around today and surveying storm damage with my 13-year-old son, Alex, we came upon 1625 26th Ave. N., where a backhoe and bulldozer were resting in the yard. Siding had been stripped from the house, and the backhoe hadn't worried about knocking down part of the chain link fence before finding a place to hang out. All in all, the conclusion was obvious: 1625 26th Ave. N. is going down soon.
The changes in North Minneapolis are relentless: substandard housing is going, going gone.
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16 comments:
Interesting transaction history on this one:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1625-26th-Ave-N-Minneapolis-MN-55411/1838997_zpid/
Why did the price increase 5X in less than a year between transactions in 2003 & 2004?
John,
I'm thinking that this isn't something we necessarily should be celebrating about. I drove past this property earlier today and saw the same thing. Obviously this house is a goner, but how can we revitalize and attract new people into the neighborhood if we're just going to tear everything down? Just say'n...
More loss of your tax base. Don't come crying to us for your LGA when you've torn down anything that can be on the tax rolls. This includes your businesses that you kill and then whine that NOMI doesn't have this or that ammenity.
@ I.I. we have all been saying this for years. You are new on the scene, you are simply repeating what we have already been lamenting about.
There is quite the predicament between getting rid of the low end housing which will 99.9% likely only be used as slum housing and drag down our property values and saving the quality historic housing stock in NOMI.
I.I. what do you suggest as an approach to the predicament?
What did this property look like before it was demolished? Any clue? I can't picture it off the top of my head. It's hard to know whether this demolition was a necessary one that will in turn ADD to neighborhood revitalization or perhaps it was a desirable house unnecessarily torn down.
To answer Ed's question, the transactions took place during a rapid increase in mortgage prices, for one thing. It could have been a foreclosure/short sale, or a house in need of rehab in 2003, then sold after a rehab or at full market value in 2004. And of course, there was a fair amount of over-inflation and downright fraud happening too.
But the mere presence of such a dramatic increase isn't necessarily nefarious.
Good another crappy NOMI house gone. Just like the ghetto memorials i'm always tearing down. Eventually we'll get rid of the undesirables in NOMI and it will like any normal neighborhood where the rightful owners live in their homes and take care of them.
Patrick, you have never in your life torn down any of the ghetto memorials. You just keep coming here and making your baseless troll claim.
To The I.I., it is indeed a predicament. I would suggest those of us who are committed to the neighborhood need to buy up housing, renovate it, and turn it into owner occupied.
Hawthorne Hawkman, the house is still there. It isn't gone yet. See it? Right there next to the backhoe of doom? It's the brown thing that has the siding removed.
Good bye to another crappy house. II - stop drinking the "Connie" juice - you used to be pro-demo... hmm, what changed?
Ah yes. I didn't pay close enough attention to the photo and title, and thought the house was a) already demolished and b) on a tiny lot that would have been behind the backhoe in the photo.
Thanks for pointing this out.
You can't really tell from the photo whether the house is deserving of demolition, especially since the siding is off. I'll have to remain neutral on this one unless other info comes out.
I don't know what to think, sometimes, EXCEPT that folks committed to neighborhood revitalization should be snapping up houses and renovating them before the slumlords get them.
I think the City of Mpls should be GIVING AWAY houses to city and county employees, maybe sell them for $1. And have housing rehab low-interest loans that are a revolving fund, like JACC has with NHS, so that this pool of new owners has a fund of money to borrow from and repay it back at low interest, so the fund keeps growing.
Seriously.
SERIOUSLY!
I like the idea of giving away houses. Perhaps we could give one house to each employee of the Fire Department to ensure that they don't burn down. Then another to any Police Officer who is willing to learn Hmong. This could be a great way to offset employee bonuses.
Yeah, it'd be nice if more of our tax dollars that go to pay the people who keep the city running actually stayed in Minneapolis. It would be interesting to know exactly what percentage of city employees actually reside in Minneapolis.
I've heard that among the city agencies that involve law enforcement or dealing with the public in stressful matters (police department employees, animal control agents, emergency personnel from paramedics and fire fighters, to the 911 phone people) it's only a very tiny percentage who actually are citizens of the city for which they work. I'm not sure a free or super cheap house would help encourage these folks, because they seem to be well aware of what goes on in Minneapolis and don't seem to want any part of it in their personal lives.
You may have better luck with people who work in a more clerical capacity or have some type of desk job that shelters them from actual contact with our city's public.
That's not to say that the general public in Minneapolis is some horrible bunch of people, but if you look at the folks who make their presence known the most (say, for example, a certain Mr. Flowers who was featured in several postings on this blog and in a strib article), you can see how somebody might get a bad impression of the type of people who reside in Minneapolis. Who wants to deal with people who flings lawsuits at anybody within range, who takes up public resources for silly things, or who not only whines and complains at the drop of a hat, but then literally tries to make a federal case of it? These are the type of people you avoid like the plague because they conduct themselves like parasites that feed off everyone and everything around them.
And while we're on the subject, I'm sure if the city did offer to sell houses in need of rehab to city or county employees for super cheap prices, we'd probably see some lawsuits piling up claiming discrimination or something else. Bet you can just about guess who'd be at the front of the pack for filing those suits,
I would think it would be fairly easy to discover who is living outside of the city limits. Then just assign them a free house and give them 60 days to move in. Doesn't the city have a policy that you have to live in the city to be an employee?
The house which is the subject of this post is gone as of last night.
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