Bruce Brunner helpfully points out that there are some 200 one-bedroom
apartments in Minneapolis that can be had for $1000 a month or less, not
the downtown average rent of $1,500 for a one-bedroom that Jeff Skrenes
also very helpfully points out.
I was a bit, but not much, off the market with my top-of-the-head rent
figures based on the highly distorted rental market there is in the
University area, where I live. The Como neighborhood is full of
average-to-small single family homes and some natural duplexes (many more
are awful "conversions" to duplexes that were jerry-rigged and no sane
person would ever live in one if they had a choice) that are now mostly
owned by absentee landlords rather than owner-occupants. They've been
modified to creatively convert this or that room or attic or porch or
basement area (complete with the required emergency egress windows) into
more bedrooms; the house is then rented out by the bedroom. Some landlords
have even built two-story additions on the back of the houses, to add
bedrooms. Recently, Minneapolis changed its housing rules so that as long
as a renter doesn't have to go through someone else's bedroom to get to
theirs from the bathroom, say, there can be as many renters in the house as
there are bedrooms. Currently, each bedroom rents separately for between
$600 and $800 a month, plus utilities that landlords now force renters to
pay. We often see on front doors those bold orange city water department
signs that notify of water shut-offs and illegal occupancy because the
water/garbage bill hasn't been paid.
Think about it: If you can convert a 3- or 4-bedroom house that was
"affordable" and even suitable for a family renting for, say $2000-2500 per
month, into seven or eight bedrooms at an average of $700 each, you do the
math as to net profits for the landlord. Most of Minneapolis housing does
not rent by the bedroom, I admit. Neither did Como, in the 1980s.
The single family home next to me, built in 1906 on a standard 40' by 132'
lot with four nice bedrooms, two and a half baths, big kitchen, two
fireplaces (one in the basement rec room) and a big front porch, had a
resident homeowning family in it until 2009, when it was bought by a guy
from Oshkosh. He added a basement bedroom and bath, and a BR to the third
floor; a newer landlord has added another separate bedroom in the basement.
There are now seven single young men living in that house, still designated
single-family, each paying a monthly rent of more than $700--the basement
BRs rent for less than the others. BTW: each of those young men has a car,
so the back yard has become a parking lot and there's intense street
parking pressure because other houses around here also have too many
renters with too many cars.
I'll add that new multi-unit construction in Como tends to have
one-bedrooms going for about $1,500 per month, even those that are not
really "one-bedroom" because the room divider in the square footage equal
to that of the building's studio apartments doesn't reach the ceiling--the
wall around the bed just stops at door-height, so you can't see the bed
from the "living area." I honestly don't know who comes up with these
things. [I add: The original gouging rents in one building--its tiny
studios were asking rents of $1300 per month!--came down after its first
rental season, when most of the place emptied out and stubbornly stayed
that way.]
Bottom line: My neighborhood has always--since 1883--been full of
affordable single-family homes and duplexes. Now, we have mostly renters
and very few families with children. And rents are not cheap, in old sf and
new multi-unit buildings.
Connie Sullivan
Como in Southeast Minneapolis
On Thu, Jul 25, 2019 at 10:41 AM Bruce Brunner <