Home demolitions: Can North Minneapolis avoid becoming a Little Detroit?
Monday, August 11, 2008 at 2:07 pm
- 11 Comments
The 2900 block of Dupont Avenue North is full of holes. Two vacant lots on one side of the street face two more vacant lots. These newly empty expanses abut old homes like the spaces left between teeth after multiple extractions. “When I look out my window, I can see all the way down the street now,” says Dupont Avenue resident Jeff Larson. “I haven’t been able to do that in more than 30 years living here.”
Last week, the city of Minneapolis tore down the duplex at 2914 Dupont. It had been condemned since 2006, cracked by flames and blackened by smoke, and sat kitty-corner across from Larson. It was the first home to be razed as part of a Minneapolis-Hennepin County partnership to rid the city of burned-out, blighted properties, the majority of which are on the north side. Two doors down from 2914, another home waits on the demo list. That one is scheduled to turn to dust in the next two weeks.
So far this year, the city has razed 21 homes. With a $1.25 million grant from Hennepin County, it hopes to demolish 100 in all by the end of the year. Since 2005, home demolitions by the city have increased a whopping 95 percent. City officials say the increase is directly attributable to the foreclosure crisis.
Like many streets in north Minneapolis, the entire 2900 block of Dupont has been under attack for years: First by drugs and crime. Then by foreclosures. Then by arsonists. And now by the implacable arm of a Bobcat.
Of the 19 North side properties with pending demolition orders, only one is homesteaded, meaning owner-occupied. The others are all rental units. And only four of those were purchased before 2000, when subprime lending first began to take off. Before the mortgage meltdown, the vast majority of the homes stood in the North for nearly a century; only one of the homes on the demo list was built after 1923.
Who pays? The cost of home demolitions
Age isn’t the main contributing factor in determining whether a property is a candidate for demolition. According to Henry Reimer, director of inspections for the city of Minneapolis, the orders are based primarily on the physical condition of the property and weighing the cost of a demo versus rehabilitation.
“We assess the historical value,” Reimer says. “We assess the condition inside and out. We estimate the cost of rehab and we estimate the value of the home after rehab. We are very critical and discerning,” he says.
The costs involved in razing homes are extensive. For most demolitions, the city pays private contractors a total of $17,500, according to Tom Deegan, manager of the city’s problem properties unit. Minnesota state law requires the city to put out calls for bids, and Deegan says the city has yet to come in with the lowest bid. So instead of going with the city’s own unionized workers, the city pays private contractors for nearly all of the jobs associated with the demo.
There are at least six private companies involved with the demo process at 2914: sewer and water shut-off; Qwest; Centerpoint Energy; Excel; a group that does the asbestos abatement survey; another that does the asbestos abatement; and the company that does the actual demolition.
Before the demolition, a catch-all company in Blaine called Castrejon, Inc. boarded the windows to secure the home from trespassers. Boards placed over the windows of empty homes cost the city $75 apiece, and city officials say they’ve spent nearly $1 million boarding homes over the last two years. Casterjon, which also does utilities, landscaping, and demos for the city, has a one-year contract with Minneapolis for boarding.
Yet the costs to the city go well beyond the actual demolitions: If there is major asbestos contamination, for example, that can add on another $5,000 or so to the $17,500 average. And if the banks or homeowners appeal the demolition orders—which around 20 percent do, according to Reimer—that adds significant costs in attorney’s fees and city workers’ time.
Reimer says that nearly 70 percent of the time the mortgage holders cough up the money for the demolitions, attorney’s fees, and subsequent care of the lot. It’s less money for them to get rid of the property than to rehab it, a service they can’t provide given how widespread the foreclosure crisis is. That means the county will recoup around $850,000 of its $1.25 city loan. That kind of partnership might look good from the onset—ridding the city of blight. But how does the city ensure teardowns don’t create a domino effect?
The homes are carted away. Now what?
Jeff Larson says the serious trouble on his block began about 12 years ago. As he talks, he stands from inside his six-foot-high chain-link fence. His German Shepherd pants at his feet. Larson put up the fence last year to protect himself, he says, after a two-foot wall he erected didn’t keep people from coming into his yard. He points across the street, at the house that’s on the city’s chopping block.
“I remember a double homicide there. And down there,” Larson points down the street, his giant skull ring piercing the sky, “that’s where the guy lived who killed the pizza guy a couple of years ago. And that house there [2914 Dupont], one time they were outside with big guns. But the city doesn’t do anything until it’s too late. Until it’s reached a crisis point.”
Larson says that, for now, he’s glad the home is gone. He never knew if it was renters or squatters staying there, and there was no easy way for him to find out. But he wonders what will happen next and what it will mean for him and his home. Larson says he’d move, but he’s put so much money into his home over the last 30 years—raising it up and putting in a second floor—that he won’t be able to get any of it back with empty lots and foreclosures filling the street.
The city of Minneapolis has what it calls a five-point plan (pdf) for the North side. Included in it are strategies to “promote reinvestment and sustainability” and “attract and retain a healthy mix of stable residents.” As part of those strategies, Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) has started to review the city’s design standards to include “sustainable attributes.” And an $11 million Strategic Acquisition Fund will allow the Greater Minneapolis Housing Corporation to acquire and rehab boarded homes.
But what about all of those empty lots? The city says it’s courting investors, but has no safeguards in place to avoid selling to speculators and no safety nets in place to ensure the cycle doesn’t begin again. For one thing, it’s almost always cheaper to rehab than build new, in-fill homes. And with home prices still plummeting, it’s not exactly financially sound to invest in brand-new construction on a diseased street.
What’s more, the new homes will not only need to be “sustainable” by the city’s to-be-determined standards, but also be able to sustain the neighboring homes around it. Cities like Detroit and North St. Louis have suffered for decades from demolitions that drove down the values of housing stock all around them and invited in more crime and blight. In most cases, if new homes were built, they served to make a quick buck for investors but were substandard shells for new homeowners.
“I’m glad that it [the home] is gone for now,” Larson says. “But in the long run, I don’t know if it’s such a good thing. I have no idea what will end up over there, if anything at all.”
More: Watch video of demolition and city officials discussing the plans for more throughout the city, from 612 Authentic:
11 Comments
Comment posted August 12, 2008 @ 6:19 pm
To dbauer – I can see how that could have happened on your old block, and I’ve witnessed that on other blocks too. I’m not discounting your experience. I’m just saying that it doesn’t mean the houses are to blame. Certainly there are crappy houses (as Molly points out) which have the tendency to only attract slumlord-types, since they’re so poorly built that nobody wants to buy them to live in. At the same time, my own neighborhood is positively packed with boarded houses which have doppelgangers in places like the Wedge and Kenwood – and people just adore them over there…
I for one don’t want my neighborhood ripped apart and filled with holes just because some absentee landlord bought a great old house and rented it to problem tenants before ultimately stopping utility service and walking away from his/her investment.
Rather than knock these kinds of places down, we might consider reinstating some type of dollar-house program. It seems to me that such a thing could save the city money as well, since they won’t have to pay for costly demolitions.
Comment posted August 12, 2008 @ 10:31 am
There are plenty of boarded homes that should never have been built in the first place: two-piece prefab homes that were considered “affordable” but were hardly built to last. Only one home of the 19 on the list supplied by the city was built after 1923. (It was built in 84.) Nearly all were built between 1900 and 1915. It’s telling that the city would rather tear these down and put something in their place yet have no plans or requirements for what should go there. It’s a boon for builders who don’t care about the neighborhood or reinvesting in it, but it’s detrimental to the neighborhood and the rest of the city.
Comment posted August 12, 2008 @ 8:16 am
I can see your side of the argument, but you’d have to give me another option to reduce the “vacant house to crack house” path that many of these homes take.
I used to live in Brooklyn Park. Two years ago, the worst houses, with the worst neighbors, with the least respect for their neighborhood or neighbors, were all happily spending their days dealing drugs and drinking.
Today, those same houses are the ONLY ones on the four blocks around my old house that are now boarded up. Those houses have been destroyed by the former occupants, including several fires. Certainly a very small example. I just know that my example seems to be what the city is talking about.
Comment posted August 12, 2008 @ 3:16 am
I can see your side of the argument, but you'd have to give me another option to reduce the “vacant house to crack house” path that many of these homes take.
I used to live in Brooklyn Park. Two years ago, the worst houses, with the worst neighbors, with the least respect for their neighborhood or neighbors, were all happily spending their days dealing drugs and drinking.
Today, those same houses are the ONLY ones on the four blocks around my old house that are now boarded up. Those houses have been destroyed by the former occupants, including several fires. Certainly a very small example. I just know that my example seems to be what the city is talking about.
Comment posted August 12, 2008 @ 5:31 am
There are plenty of boarded homes that should never have been built in the first place: two-piece prefab homes that were considered “affordable” but were hardly built to last. Only one home of the 19 on the list supplied by the city was built after 1923. (It was built in 84.) Nearly all were built between 1900 and 1915. It's telling that the city would rather tear these down and put something in their place yet have no plans or requirements for what should go there. It's a boon for builders who don't care about the neighborhood or reinvesting in it, but it's detrimental to the neighborhood and the rest of the city.
Comment posted August 12, 2008 @ 1:19 pm
To dbauer – I can see how that could have happened on your old block, and I've witnessed that on other blocks too. I'm not discounting your experience. I'm just saying that it doesn't mean the houses are to blame. Certainly there are crappy houses (as Molly points out) which have the tendency to only attract slumlord-types, since they're so poorly built that nobody wants to buy them to live in. At the same time, my own neighborhood is positively packed with boarded houses which have doppelgangers in places like the Wedge and Kenwood – and people just adore them over there…
I for one don't want my neighborhood ripped apart and filled with holes just because some absentee landlord bought a great old house and rented it to problem tenants before ultimately stopping utility service and walking away from his/her investment.
Rather than knock these kinds of places down, we might consider reinstating some type of dollar-house program. It seems to me that such a thing could save the city money as well, since they won't have to pay for costly demolitions.
Comment posted September 6, 2008 @ 5:06 am
Glad you asked dbower,
I live in Mpls's Jordon Park area. I see the same things that you see.
But the solutions have less to do with the properties themselves than with the social issues that create vacant and unmaintained homes. When these homes are gone the troubles simply move on to another house in the neighborhood. The vacant lots break up the integrity of these blocks leaving them even more vulnerable to the issues that demolition is trying to solve.
The real solution includes integrating public policies regarding what our expectations for community living should be with a better understanding of how we can enable good neighbors to safely invest in urban living.
This includes:
-More tools for Law enforcement of anti-social behavior.
-Keying entitlement payments to positive social responsibility.
-Ensuring that child welfare officials have access to crime reports at these properties and enforce standards that reinforce proper social behaviors.
-Tighter control of absentee landlords.
The City must also recognize and establish programs that encourage more middle class families to invest in these older homes. The cost of rehabbing and maintaining a home can get expensive. While it may seem very noble to limit finance programs to low income individuals, the turnover further undermines neighborhood stability. Under maintained homes create a downward spiral for the entire community.
Most of these homes have had a portion of the copper removed by salvage thieves. The city does nothing to monitor scrap metal yards from accepting this metal even though it must be blatantly obvious where it is going. The removal of 10-20 feet of copper from a home yields a home uninhabitable and costs $6,000-10,000 to reinstall. Banks don't loan on these properties and the city won't let individuals live in them.
The City of Minneapolis requires special license requirements for plumbers and electricians in the City of Minneapolis, driving up the cost of hiring over what it would cost for the same job in Edina, Eagan, Maple Grove or any other suburban community.
The fact that these homes are older is an asset.. Homes of this vintage were generally overbuilt by todays standards. The availability of old growth forests and full dimension lumber opposed to formaldehyde laden chipboard and laminated beam construction means you get more house for the money.
Comment posted June 8, 2009 @ 8:05 pm
Molly, you went with a lot of images that leave a false impression. Most of the houses we are talking about here aren’t “burnt out” or we’d be having an arson every night on the Northside. The image of Detroit is also false. Most of Detroit is empty. There are whole blocks of Detroit that are empty and scheduled for demo. (The backlog of city demos is what gave them the devil’s night reputation). I applaud Minneapolis’s attempt not to let a backlog of demos further endanger city residents, although I also understand and lament the loss of historic quality homes because there aren’t enough people who want to save them. In Minneapolis, a “devastated” block has 3 or 4 vacant houses and maybe one or two of them is demo candidate. Usually the rest are in some kind of ownership limbo or are actively being rehabbed. If things get worse, sure we could get there. But the Detroit comparison is so much hyperbole.
I think that the fear of the loss of “quality” homes with crap building is real but it’s misplaced. It’s not like you can just build any house on any lot with getting a lot of permits and permissions. If the process is somehow faulty or corrupt, that ought to be addressed not with more regulation that will just get sidestepped by the people with the juice. As Urik pointed out, Minneapolis actually has MORE code and permit restrictions than the suburbs. Some of the worst houses (the modular home fiasco) in the city were greased by the city council because of the heavy emphasis on building affordable housing. You get what you pay for.
Comment posted August 25, 2009 @ 6:02 am
How do contracting companies make remodeling bids on boarded up and foreclosed homes in Minneapolis?
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