Minneapolis Residential Discrimination: Why Eliminating Single-Family Housing with Neo-Liberal Zoning will Fail

The spatial distribution of housing in Minneapolis and all of the Twin Cities metro area is a

product of race and class.  Yet curing this discrimination does not reside in the elimination of single-family housing through changes in zoning or a comprehensive plan.  Such an approach, call it neo-liberal zoning, is destined to achieve the same results in land use that neo-liberalism achieved economically over the last 40 years domestically and internationally.
Residential housing patterns are the product of discrimination.  Private discriminatory preferences coupled with market decisions were enabled by racial covenants, government redlining, and zoning to produce the segregation patterns we see today. Countless books, such as Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton’s classic American Apartheid, tell this story well.  Nearly 25 years ago at the Institute of Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, I helped author a study pointing to the Twin Cities Metro region being the third most segregated urban area in the nation.  More recently, the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity located  persistent segregation in the placement of low income housing and education policy choices that concentrate low income people of color in specific neighborhoods and schools.
Fixing this segregation demands a metro-wide solution.  Yet Minneapolis has acted on its own via its 2040 comprehensive plan to address this problem.  It solution mostly includes elimination of single-family zoning, believing that intensification of land use along with market incentives will encourage the building of more housing.  Presumably this market-driven approach will mean more housing in more places, thereby fixing the economic and racial residential discrimination.
Both the New York Times and current Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson laud this market-driven fix.  Unfortunately, this approach will fail, exacerbating existing problems.
The Minneapolis approach to liberating the market to address its housing woes is neo-liberal zoning.  Neo-liberalism is the term used to describe a series of US domestic and international economic policies that begin with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (in the UK)  and continued through Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and into the present with Donald Trump.  Neo-liberals believe that a return to market fundamentalism–cutting government regulation and business taxes along with globalization in free trade–would rejuvenate domestic and world economies.  The reality, as many economists such as Thomas Piketty, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz have described and statistics show, is that neo-liberalism has produced the greatest gaps between the rich and poor in the US since before the Great Depression.  The rich have truly gotten richer, with the middle and lower classes gaining little.  Maybe we are overall richer as a nation as a result of neo-liberalism, but the externalities of these policies have produced powerful economic inequities that overlap with race.
The elimination of single-family zoning to encourage intensified land use across the  city rests on a similar logic that will yield parallel results.  In theory the breaking up of  large single family houses in South Minneapolis will produce more housing, but it is doubtful it will be low income or affordable.  Conversely, permitting the break up of existing homes in North Minneapolis into multi-family units or their demolishing and replacement with multiple units too will not guarantee affordable housing in integrated neighborhoods.  This is a recipe for gentrification as developers will enter areas, buy homes, and dislocate current residents by building  more high end units. 
The Minneapolis comp plan fix ignores the realities of how housing markets  work.  While there may be a local demand for affordable housing, housing is also a national market  sensitive to price, profit, and cost issues that often are not local.  Developers have few incentives to provide affordable housing, and Minneapolis’s neo-liberal zoning amounts to no more than government sanctioned market red lining.
Beyond the fact the neo-liberal zoning will not fix the segregation problems, elimination of single family zoning will produce additional problems.  One, there is an inherent value in preserving  a mixture of uses both from a historic preservation perspective, but also in terms of how a multiplicity of uses, ages, and styles of buildings and residential options appeals to the widest variety of individuals.  As Jane Jacobs, perhaps the greatest 20th century scholar on cities wrote in her Death and Life of Great American Cities, cities are generators of diversity, it is that which makes them interesting and centers of commerce.  Two, phasing out single family zoning does not eliminate a demand for these types of units and people seeking them, often middle class and those starting families, will flee to the suburbs. Three, for many, single family homes represent a sense of community, connectedness, and stability that are worth preserving.  Finally, given how interconnected  residential and education discrimination are, tackling one without addressing the other dooms solving both problems.
Minneapolis’s population is exploding and more housing is needed to address that demand.   This housing needs to address all income levels and needs, and be spatially distributed in a way that is economically and racially fair.  Unfortunately, Minneapolis’s neo-liberal zoning policies will do little to address these issues.

PS:  David Schultz is Hamline University Professor of Political Science.  He is a former city director of code enforcement, zoning, and planning and  a former housing and economic planner.  He also served on the St. Paul Housing Board of Appeals, appointed to it by then Mayor George Latimer.

Elitism of Caucuses?

This blog appeared on the commentary page for Minnesota 2020 on March 7:


Democracy’s strength resides in an active and engaged citizenry. Creating institutions that will sustain and grow this engagement is a challenge. While many might contend that the Minnesota political caucuses excel in promoting participation, the reality is just the opposite. Instead, the Minnesota caucuses are exclusionary.

America is historically famous for its sense of civic engagement. Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 Democracy in America located the success of politics in the United States as residing in part in the propensity of its people to join and engage through voluntary associations. Whether it was barn-raisings, clubs, or community associations, engagement in them fosters important virtues. It tempers self-interest, fosters respect for working with others, and produces community building.

Tocqueville identified the concept of social capital. Urbanologist Jane Jacobs in the Death and Life of Great American Cities and political scientist Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone define social capital as the glue of democracy. It represents the building of trust with others that facilitates engagement and commerce. Social capital is of two types: bonding which reinforces ties to one another, and bridging which builds linkages across society. Social capital helps equip people to engage politically and make democracy work.

Putnam’s concern highlights gradual citizen disengagement from the 1960s onward in the United States. This disengagement was seen in declining voting and participation rates, increased distrust in government, and the growing polarization of political parties. The most recent symptom of this declining social capital appears both in Washington and St. Paul in the inability of the Republicans and Democrats to work together.

How does this relate to the Minnesota political caucuses? Some argue that the caucus system is actually a major producer of social capital. It asks of citizens to spend an evening together with neighbors, debate politics, and learn how to work together. It is participatory politics par excellence, New England town democracy at its best.

But the most powerful critique is how the caucuses are exclusionary. Look at who can participate. The first level of caucuses takes place one evening in February. Many simply cannot attend. Those in active military duties, those employed in second shifts or out of town working, those who are ill, and for many who are single parents and unable to address child care issues, they are excluded from participating because there are no absentee voting procedures. Proof of exclusion resides in the numbers. In 2008 approximately 2.5% of Minnesotans attended the caucuses to cast votes in presidential preference poll. In comparison, the Wisconsin presidential primary had a 36% turnout. Clearly far fewer attended the Minnesota caucuses than participated in a Wisconsin primary, speaking volumes to their exclusionary nature.

Think about who does attend the caucuses: The criticism is that caucuses favor party activists and those who are generally more liberal or conservative than the Democrat or Republican voters in a primary. Evidence of that is seen in comparing preferences of caucus and convention attendees to primary voters. The caucuses may encourage party building but not necessarily the construction of community building and trust that make it possible for the parties and diverse people to work together.

The caucuses have virtues but are not flawless. They increasingly seem insular and exclusionary, irrelevant to average citizens. At their worst they are being captured by special interests, thereby rendering them increasingly unable to forge the community building and social capital necessary to making Minnesota’s political system work. What we need is to rethink the caucuses, asking if they are the institution up to the governance challenges we face today.