Dear Council Member Katie Cashman,
I'm a resident in your ward. My request of you is this: Can you please tell me, what are you planning to do about crime and the erosion of business confidence in our city? How are you giving energy to local issues, rather than global concerns?
Our company, Solhem, has typically delivered 10 to 15% of all the new housing units in the City of Minneapolis each year for the past dozen years. We have built over 2,300 units in the City in total since 2009, about $750,000,000 of new construction.
We have longstanding relationships with city staff and work closely with them on a regular basis. In our conversations with staff, it’s uniformly apparent that they’re concerned the council's newest leading majority lacks both gravity and ability. I hope that’s not true.
As you may have read in the Star Tribune, property tax payment delinquencies are on the rise. This is a trailing indicator of the stress that property owners are experiencing in the current city environment.
It's also the tip of the iceberg — the stresses we are seeing today are the result of difficulties faced over the past two to three years. In the coming months, and years, our community will face serious hurdles to not only maintain, but also to add to our tax base.
As you know, the tax base is what drives all possible solutions for social or economic goals in the city. If it is eroding, then we all share a smaller pie. Conversations will become much more difficult than what we face today. There are virtually no new land use applications pending in the city at this time.
At Solhem, we have not undertaken any new land use applications in the city for the past three years, and our last project opened in 2023. We do not foresee undertaking any in the near future, and perhaps for many years. Any new building we could build in Minneapolis today would be worth less than the cost to build it. The model is broken.
What would it take for us to choose to invest in the city again, you ask?
First off, it will take several years to regain trust in the authorities that run our city. Capital is on strike given the raft of impediments to making a return on the risk required to invest here. It's much smarter and vastly safer to invest in things like government securities, or to develop housing in other regions of the country. Equally, it will take an enormous amount of work for our community to combat the crime that has eroded all aspects of our civic life. Each time there's a carjacking, or a break in, or worse, residents lose faith, are faced with lifelong traumatic scars, and frequently vote with their feet to leave the place where they were harmed.
Our buildings are regularly robbed, vandalized, crashed into by stolen cars, and in at least one case burned by criminal elements in the city. Our building entryways may hold unhoused individuals who are not able to or not choosing to avail themselves of the systems set up to help them. Their suffering is real; people are not getting the help they need.
We see this when they urinate and defecate on our property, cause property damage and in some cases, accost residents and customers. There is a cost to every one of us when these unfortunate situations occur.
We own and manage eight properties in the city constituting commercial, industrial and residential uses, including about 1,000 apartments. Some sites see multiple break-ins per week. The rest weekly.
This is a vast change from prior to May 2020 and the aftermath of the pandemic and social unrest when we might have seen criminal activity at this level possibly once per quarter per building. We rarely report crimes anymore given the lack of any kind of restitution or even knowing that the criminal may face a consequence.
Any crime statistics you may see are understated by the fact that so few people like us are reporting these now continuous crimes. Our building costs have gone up tremendously for repairing entry and garage doors, managing frustrated residents who wish to break their leases, and "hardening" any access points.
Copper, cars, bicycles and packages are frequently the prize for criminals. Purses, phones and other belongings as well. We've had one murder and one attempted murder adjacent to our properties in the past few years. Our property insurance costs have tripled — or more — since 2019. Our staff is regularly at risk of harm. None of this is sustainable.
Our police do yeoman's work.
My understanding is that the current conditions frequently require officers to work six shifts per week, on a team where the staff has been reduced by a third of its former employee count.
Can you imagine your workplace with a third less people to do the job along with a greater workload than prior? Who would stick around? Our police investigators now rarely have time to investigate, and we seldom solve murders in the city.
There’s virtually no time for solving things like property crime. All of these issues drive kind, decent people out of our city, while the criminals enjoy the mayhem and count the proceeds.
Crime is close to home for all of us.
On our own little block of 20 homes this week, we had first a house invasion, and then an attempted car theft. Sadly, neither of these are surprising anymore. Two of our elderly neighbors have been physically assaulted by thieves in the past 18 months, with one ending up in the hospital with serious injuries. This is among a group of about 45 individuals.
As far as we know, none of these crimes have had resolution — only victims. Neighbors are openly talking about leaving the city. I know it's far worse in some other neighborhoods. If you’d like to meet with me or others in our neighborhood in person to discuss our block or our business and the issues we face in staffing, building and maintaining our beautiful, awardwinning, sustainable communities, please let me know. I’d be happy to give you a tour and further share our story with you.
Again, please share your plans for how we will resolve these issues — our leaders have not gotten traction for years now, and the wheels are off the bus.
In hopes that we can all have a better city, that is more successful and more just, I wish you well.
I emailed Cashman the following on March 20:
Elevating my request in your inbox. Please respond.
I'm adding a link to the recent 2024 City Assessment Report (https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCAV2/34608/2024-Assessment-Report.pdf), prepared by the Minneapolis City Assessor, which reports a 3.1% decline in property tax base across the city this past year, consistent with the trends I suggested above, but alarming given the speed with which this is already occurring.
How will you manage a required 3.1% decrease in the city budget? Or, are you proposing we increase taxation on a declining property tax base? Please advise, what are your plans?
Best Regards, Curt
