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Marcus Harcus for Minneapolis City Council - 4th Ward, November 3rd, 2009!
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OVERCOMING THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS & IMPROVING HOUSING CONDITIONS:
- Facilitate community visioning to learn what Northsiders want to see get done about the foreclosure crisis. Learn what Northsiders know and/or believe will revitalize their neighborhoods.
- Prevent foreclosures by advocating for the conversion of all subprime loans, particularly adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) to affordable fixed rate mortgages.
- Enact an Anti-Predatory Lending Ordinance that prohibits and punishes the practice in Minneapolis.
- Establish a moratorium on evictions of innocent tenants in foreclosed properties and arrange an appropriate interim management system until the marketable rental properties (including single family homes) are sold to deter further proliferation of vacancies and to prevent homelessness.
- Redirect most of the $5.6M federal Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) grant money to prospective homeowners instead of private developers by improving and expanding the Minneapolis Advantage program. Award purchase grants and rehabilitation assistance to qualified homebuyers who purchase foreclosed homes in targeted neighborhoods hit hardest by the crisis, prioritizing first-timers.
- Demolish only unsalvageable properties to rid the community of uninhabitable and depressing blight.
- Land-bank appropriate properties to limit the consumption of vacant homes by rental property investors.
- Improve and sustain an ample supply of affordable housing without concentrating poverty.
- Wealthier neighborhoods in the city should have their share of supportive low-income housing.
- Create a powerful database of problem rental property owners to enforce strict regulation of rental property licensing.
- Put chronically irresponsible slumlords out of business.
- Help decent landlords regulate destructive tenants.
- Protect the rights of good tenants. Support the prohibition of harassment, discrimination and unjust retaliatory tenant evictions.
- Identify fanatically dysfunctional anti-renter activists and discourage unjust demonization or harassment of innocent renters by them. Promote the inclusion of renters in community building activities, civic participation.
- Reward good rental property management with public recognition, and perhaps modest tax credits.
- Invest in rehabilitation of multifamily rental housing and explore development possibilities of high quality, high end multifamily rental housing in Camden to increase tax base, property values, and local buying power to support local businesses.
- Create “good neighbor” training program for residents, both tenants and homeowners, with consistent outdoor litter producing homes.
- Develop a plan to combat littering on the Northside through creative propaganda, concentrated efforts by people required to complete Sentence to Service work, community-wide clean-up programs, youth employment opportunities like Emerge’s Street Works program, more street cleaning.
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