Riverside Plaza is the 1300-unit apartment building in a crime-ridden section of Minneapolis that is about to get a $65 million government gift towards a makeover. It’s also the center of the Somali “community,” and it’s privately owned. Privately owned yet taxpayers are footing most of the bill for the “public housing” wreck? Is this magic or what?
From The Republic:
That vitality is why the federal government and others are plowing $65 million into Riverside to address leaky pipes, moldy ceilings, outdated utilities and the general battering of nearly four decades of operation.
[….]
Riverside’s renovation is part of a $132 million refinancing package assembled by the federal government, the city of Minneapolis and more than 14 other public and private sources. Sherman Associates, the company that owns the 11-building campus, is contributing $3 million to the project.
Big whup! Sherman Associates, the owners, will be putting up $3 million. Sounds fishy, Sherman must be politically well-connected [I hope not to former governor Tim Pawlenty!]
More magic? Half of the apartments are government subsidized.
Mixing the market-rate and subsidized units together never panned out, as the federal funding required the units to be separated, and over time Riverside became something very different. Today, about half of Riverside’s 1,303 units are government-subsidized and half are market-rate. The more than 4,500 tenants also make the complex unique: about 70 percent are Somalis, 14 percent are Ethiopians and nearly 10 percent are Vietnamese.
No! here is the real “magic” of Riverside Plaza!
“It works really, really well as villages within a city,” she [director of the tenant’s association] said. “If you live here, you can be with your own folks, speaking your own language. … And I think that’s the magic of the place.”
Yup, that’s it, no need for the American melting pot—just huddle with your own kind, speak your own language and create ethnic enclaves within American cities. That is magic alright.