SMaPl - Housing Goals & Solutions

Housing

Earl’s Story

What’s happenin’, yall? Name’s Earl. aka big man on campus. Aka the man of steel. Aka Royal Rumble. Man from the land where the bees don’t bumble and the crumbs don’t crumble! I live off Chatsworth and Sherburne over by the Johnny Baby’s. Been in Frogtown twenty.. twenty-five years now.

Bought me a Home. Raised me a family. Grew me a beard and belly. Slurped down a river’s worth of Pho at Saigon, And inhaled a small farms worth of wings down there at the Hickory Hut. I’m Frogtown through and through. Over the years, I’ve seen the landscape of this neighborhood change like the seasons. Businesses come and go. Homes built, remodeled, and torn down. Demographics shift.. I think that’s why I’ve stuck around this place. It’s always evolvin’.. becomin’ more and more of a meltin’ pot. And I’m a sucker for diversity. How many places can you go where 6+ countries can be represented on any given block? That’s what makes our community special.

Since I was a small Earl, I’ve been a bundle of curiosity.

What is a human thing? and how are we s’posed to interact? Coexist? And Live wit one another. In harmony? Comin’ from the west side of Chicago.. from a crazy fam’ly.. and an eem crazier neighborhood, I knew there had to be a better way. I began to obsess over the idea..

How do individuals become fam’ly, and how do fam’lies become community? And how do we make sure er’body’s taken care of? That they’re happy and healthy..? ..‘Cause all around me it seemed nobody was. We’s all just going through the motions. As I got older and my understanding of the world deepened, I began to realize how closely tied the design of space is to our overall well being.. ‘specially when it comes to where we lay our head at night.

It can work for us or against us.

And unfortunately, up to this point in our lil community, it’s only worked against us. But, we frogtowner’s just as resilient and prideful as we’ve ever been, ‘cause.. Frogtown is Jazz.

An orchestra of culture that dips and twists, alive with a heartbeat all its own.

Home to curious kids and meanderin’ millennials.

Mothers and fathers, hustlin’ and bustlin’.

Boomers and Empty Nesters, movin’ and groovin’.

Dreamers and schemers.

Strivers and survivors.

All boppin’ to their own rhythm to create the energy -- the music.. that is Frogtown.

And the housing available within our community should reflect that diversity.. that energy..that jazz.. ‘cause this is home.

And home adjusts to us.. not the other way around.

Goals

1. Quality housing that serves Frogtowners from all walks of life.

Frogtown is a wildly diverse community and dog-on-it, we’d like to keep it that way. in order for an under-resourced community like ours to thrive we need resources. And our best resource is, and always will be, each other.. and the cultures, values, and perspectives attached to us.

2. Housing that creates and nurtures community.

We want Frogtown to be a village. A place where we know our neighbors, can hang out, and feel safe. We want Frogtown.. our home..to feel like a place we want to be.

3. Housing that encourages entrepreneurship.

The live-work spaces of old are back in style. Artists, educators, entrepreneurs, and techies need space and time to do what they do. If we Made live-work spaces readily available in Frogtown it’d empower the residents that crave them, serve as a much needed boost to our local economy, and bring a heap of creativity and innovation to our community.

If we achieve these three goals, we can better work towards becoming the Arts, Entrepreneurship, and Education centered Urban Village we’ve set out to be. And who knows, maybe the vitality and culture of our lil community will rub off on those that surround us.

Solutions

Solution 1: Affordable and attractively designed housing options for Frogtowner’s interested in living small and/or AMONG community

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According to our most recent census (2009-2013), ‘round 33% of Frogtowners live by themselves.

And I’m sure this number would be much higher if it included people who want to live alone but can’t..

Solution 1-a: Construct Micro Communities throughout Frogtown.

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From my talks with my neighbors, many Frogtowners, young and old, want to live slower, smaller, and closer to friends and family. High inner city rents and job scarcity have loved ones living further from each other than ever before; we’re a disjointed tribe. But there’s some extremely creative ways to attack this here problem. For instance, The Tiny House movement is alive and well with micro-communities popping up all over the nation.

A Tiny House Village, complete with shared spaces.. firepits, gardens, large family style kitchens, work spaces etc.. would be a bomb solution to our affordable housing needs. ALready in St. Paul. Alchemy Architects and the East Yard Cooperative have projects underway on the East Side, but they’ll both start off at 100 plus thousand dollars a unit, which is.. way too dog-on expensive to live tiny, if you ask me. It’s the same issue present within the growin’ Micro-Apartment trend poppin’ up all over the country. One being Ray on the edge of Minneapolis and St. Paul just off highway 280.

They got 372 square foot apartments starting at a lil over a 1000 dollars a pop. For a cubicle with amenties? (shaking head) uhn uhn. And They got the nerve to market these boxes as affordable options. How are they affordable when they’re all well above market rate? Though I’m an advocate of the movement.. I mean, I love the idea of mixing up our housing options. But only if we’re being practical. We’d like micro-communities in Frogtown to make economic sense and really be somethin’ someone working full-time at minimum wage could afford without gaspin’ for air.

That’s affordable housin’.

Solution 2: slickly designed affordable and/or subsidized social housing.

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We Frogtowners see the new fangled, fancy dancy luxury apartments poppin’ up every whicha way; Apartments with bells and whistles—Spaces to commune with your neighbors, workout, do yoga, play games, garden—I mean they even got dog parks on the roof.

DOG PARKS ON THE ROOF!

But these apartments are only constructed at market rate or above. Meaning your average Frogtowner, who makes less than 40,000 dollars a year, can’t afford to live in one. 2/3 of the people living in Frogtown, rent. And if trends continue as they are, that number’s only going up. I don’t know what the city’s game plan is, but we’re gonna need places to live.. in our area.. that make economic sense. We’d like to solve that problem through.. you guessed it! Design, dog-on-it.

Anna Bergren Miller, freelance writer, Harvard grad and Architecture Phd had this to say about social housing:

“Well-designed affordable housing is not an oxymoron. To the contrary, the best social housing being designed and built today features a combination of creative social programming, cutting-edge sustainability strategies, and a keen aesthetic awareness to rival anything available on the private market.”

And that’s all we want: Low-cost, slickly designed housin’ for people who need it.. housin’ residents can be proud of.

There are a gang of models that could be duplicated or serve as a foundation for an entirely new model like star apartments located in the heart of skid row out in la (pictured above) which “‘[offers] permanent subsidized housing...features an on-site wellness center, medical clinic, and community areas for socializing, making art, using computers, and exercising.’ Theresa Hwang, Community Architect at the Trust notes.

These additions to the residences represent a unique architectural investment in community-building activities. ‘It’s really pushing the typology of permanent supportive housing’”

All we have to do is innovate.

Solution 3: Dormitory style public housing with local and/or resident occupied shops beneath.

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The original Frogtown Granny, Sayama, touched on how much she digs the U (University of Minnesota) a lil bit ago and I have to say, I’m in love wit the U myself. And not just cause they got more tasty treats than one earl could ever enjoy. I dig the U for the same reason I dig all college campusus; they’re designed to be social epicenters, full of multiple modes of transportation, walkability, and convenience.

Since graduating from college, me and my buddies always wondered why society -- “the real world” -- did away with integratin’ a model that obviously works so well? Why aren’t cities designed like college campuses if they serve a similar purpose? Which is organizing human? Dorm Style Housing has been a growing trend ‘round the nation in response to our affordable housing crisis, spurred by start-ups like we live, common, and a handful of others. But like those Luxury Tiny House Villages being built over on the East Side, and those Luxury Micro-Apartments, these dorms aren’t being made for folks around and below poverty.

Seems nothin’ is.

Again, and I can’t stress this enough, we want every new development built in Frogtown to adhere to our Mixed-Income goal. We need ELI (Extremely Low-Income) renters on up to homeowners adequately served and represented in our community.

Solution 3: Live/ Work spaces that encourage entrepreneurship i.e. Residential units above or adjacent to office and/or retail spaces.

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A very important part of the culture we’re tryna sculpt in Frogtown is becomin’ less a community of consumers, and more a community of producers. In order to make this shift, entrepreneurship needs to be embedded into the very design of our community. Designer, Larry w. Garnett had this to say about the subject:

“In the last few years, the marketplace has witnessed the re-emergence of buildings that have residential units above or adjacent to office and retail spaces. This is actually an old concept of ‘living above your store’ found in many small towns all over the country. As you take a closer look at this type of product, you’ll find a great deal of flexibility inherent in the designs. A retiring professional might continue a limited practice of law or consulting, utilizing an area that is easily accessible to the public while actually being an extension of the home. A young entrepreneur could use one of these spaces as a low cost location to start their business. The options are almost endless.”

We have a handful of buildings designed to be live/work spaces here in Frogtown, but they’re rarely, if ever, owned by the resident(s) above. We’d like to change that ‘cause like I said before.. artists, educators, entrepreneurs, and techies need space and time to do what they do. And Frogtown would benefit greatly by not losing our creatives, our teachers, and our innovators to other communities.

Now I know this don’t seem like much in the way of solutions, but the reality is, most of our work in the housing department has to be done on the policy end of things. More Cooperative Housing options would do Frogtown some good. a community land trust would do Frogtown some good. But we’ll just have to wait and see how serious the City of St. Paul is about attacking our affordable housing crisis, and how much they’re willing to do to ease the ramifications of gentrification.. makin’ sure our city is one built on inclusivity.

Mychal BatsonComment