Vacant houses should be someone's home

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Each morning as I walk out my front door, lugging my ever-heavier one-year-old son to day care, I can see it looming, cold and ominous: the empty house across the street.

It's been dilapidated since I moved here in 2019. Every few months my neighbor Josiah and I turn our attention to it as we chat on the sidewalk. According to Josiah, the house has been unoccupied longer than just four years. The building is owned by a business firm that used to have an address in Georgia, but now claims to be located a few streets away in another seemingly abandoned building.

It seems such a waste to have a house molder and rot away rather than serve as a home to more people in our vibrant neighborhood. Especially at a time when so many need affordable places to live.

We're told over and over again — mostly by people who profit from building new, expensive buildings — that the only answer to housing costs is supply. Build big, build new, build at all costs. But what about the empty homes already in our communities? The Minneapolis rental housing vacancy dashboard shows that 5.8% of units are vacant, but that only includes buildings with five or more units. Everyone I ask can rattle off even more empty properties in their neighborhood. If you don't know of one, ask your neighbors.

Each of these buildings has a unique story, but each has one thing in common: they could be a home for someone who wants to live here. We should build, yes, but we should also activate the dormant housing stock Minneapolis already has.

The city's Vacant Buildings Registry lists 291 properties, but it takes a lot of time and effort to actually get a property deemed "vacant." Even if a building is listed, there's no penalty or recourse besides a fee. What's a few thousand dollars a year to a real estate investment group? Prices only need to rise around 3% for a $250,000 house to appreciate more than the annual fee.

Corporations, LLCs, and other business entities own 42% of the buildings on the VBR. Of those corporate-owned homes, another 43% have been vacant since 2020. Just to pick one as an example: a two-story single family home, empty since February 2012, sits just a couple of blocks from some of my favorite places in Minneapolis: Bogart's Doughnuts, Victor's 1959, B-Squad Vintage, Petite León, and Nicollet Ace Hardware. Three years seems like enough time for a company to make a decision and take action on a vacant building. Eleven years seems excessive.

Empty buildings are a public health and safety issue. They can harbor a variety of pests. I still remember when a developer knocked down a derelict building and my old neighborhood was flooded with rats after I went years without a rat sighting. The risk of fire in a vacant building can threaten entire neighborhoods. One absentee landlord has had two large, empty apartment buildings catch on fire in the past year. Neighbors had raised concerns for years, and both properties were on the VBR when they went up in smoke.

That same landlord just had another property join the registry in February. I wonder how long it will take for that one to burn down.

The city must take action on empty homes. We must expand and strengthen the city's Vacant Buildings program. This is a common-sense solution to an extremely solvable problem. Investors and businesses should not be able to leave their buildings empty for years on end — taking a tax deduction and watching their property values tick ever higher — while working people struggle to afford housing. There are healthy, happy, affordable homes for our neighbors if only we have the courage to act.

Josiah and I have talked about what we could do with that building across the street. One of us could reach out to the investor/owners and see what's going on. Josiah has daydreamed about buying it, fixing it up and renting it out. Maybe he could sell it if the market's right. When I see the house's haphazardly boarded-up windows, snaggletoothed fence and debris-strewn yard, it makes me sad. This could be a home for a family. Kids chasing a dog around the yard, delicious smells wafting off a hot grill out back, holiday lights twinkling through the winter.

But for now its windows are dark and rooms are hollow. Just another empty home in a city full of them.

Daniel Suitor is a housing attorney and member of the Fill Empty Homes Minneapolis coalition. He served on the City Council's Rent Stabilization Work Group.