Cities plan ahead to meet residents where they live

Across half a century, three generations and a lifetime of changes, Blaine has been home to the Wax family -- which is exactly how the city likes it and wants it to be for other families.

Lois Wax, 84, who raised five children with her now-deceased husband, Adolph, on the family farm in Blaine, lives at city-owned senior apartments. Son Galen, 54, lives on 9 acres in Blaine with his wife, Angela. Now, their daughter, Rachel, 24, and her fiancé, Chad, plan to start their married life in a rambler, not far away.

The family, with members in three stages of life in three types of homes, could be poster children for a concept called "life cycle housing." Blaine and other cities are striving to make available the housing, the amenities and a culture that people need throughout their lives; in return, cities get stability, value and an engaged resident base.

"We want to make sure everyone who is in Blaine can stay in Blaine," said Community Development Director Bryan Schafer. "If you're starting your employment life, we want to make sure we have homes for those young workers. And as you mature through that process, we have that move-up home available. And when you're done with that process, your move-down home is available, too."

Having a diversity of ages and household types gives a community vitality, said Becky Yust, professor of housing studies at the University of Minnesota. But there are other, practical reasons not to create a city made up just of, say, detached single-family homes.

"In ecology, you might call this a monoculture," Yust said. "There's just one type of housing, and one type of family structure, and it just doesn't continue to necessarily work as the needs of one stage of life are different from another stage of life. Communities are challenged to provide the kind of services and amenities across that entire age range."

Not sole factor, but a big one

"The type of housing [a city] has creates that macroenvironment in which that allows for those other things to happen," Yust said. "You've got to have the people and the housing and around that, based on the households you have, that will characterize the schools and issues of transit and safety."

To some extent, a diversified housing stock also helps insulate cities from shifts in demographics and economics.

"From a social aspect, we find a benefit in having a lot of different types and incomes and backgrounds of people makes the community more interesting," said Kersten Elverum, Hopkins' director of economic development and planning. "From an economic perspective, we have always been cautious about having too much of any one product type, so when that market is weak you're not overly impacted."

Ideally, in fully developed cities like Hopkins, housing passes from one generation to the next, and there's something there for each stage of life.

Hopkins is noted for having everything from multi-family rentals in a walkable, transit-friendly city center, to modest single-family neighborhoods and sprawling executive houses on its fringes.

"We're preserving our housing stock with programs aimed at keeping people in place," said Kersten Elverum, the city's director of economic development and planning. "If their home isn't big enough, instead of moving from Hopkins, we'll let you make your house meet your needs."

Serving the cycles

Elsewhere in the metro area, Shoreview, like other upscale suburbs, has struggled with the bookends of life.

But the city recently built senior-oriented apartments and townhouses, which have been split evenly between empty-nesters and young singles, said Community Development Director Tom Simonson.

Young families -- long-term residents who drive the retail base and who are the heart of school and community programs -- likely are drawn in by the city's parks and trails, a convenient location and good schools, but they might be turned off by the need to update mid-century houses, he said.

"In a city like Shoreview and other first- and second- ring suburbs, we don't have large tracts of land to develop any longer," he said, "so [we're asking,] how can we help provide incentives in existing neighborhoods to support reinvestment and look at redeveloping areas to provide different housing in the future?"

In Blaine, the Wax family planned a Mother's Day gathering at Galen's 9-acre spread, which he bought in 1988 because he wanted to give his three kids space to run, much as he had growing up on the farm.

He and Angela are already planning their retirement, someplace with access to transit, shopping, and family members clustered in the north metro.

"In my heart of hearts, I don't think we're ever going to get that far away from each other," he said.