William Brown loves his four-bedroom house across from a bright red, yellow and blue playground, but the home's assessed value is $82,000 less than it cost to build 11 years ago.
A glance down James Avenue N. helps explain why: His side of the block has seven vacant lots on it.
Brown wants north Minneapolis, his home for 60 years, to stay affordable for his neighbors. But the Army veteran and retired postal worker also wants home values to rise in his neighborhood.
"That's a hard question," said Brown. "You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't."
As city planners start to gather opinions on the draft of a sweeping comprehensive plan that aims to promote racial equality and housing affordability, they will encounter skepticism in north Minneapolis that's quite different from wealthier single-family neighborhoods that oppose fourplexes.
Residents over North have already seen city housing initiatives founder, and many believe that homeownership — not a priority of the comprehensive plan — is the real key to building wealth. They live in a part of the city roiled by interlocking worries over housing and development.
"Any policy that is meant to address some of the housing disparities and housing issues but doesn't result in a benefit to communities of color and to communities in north Minneapolis, is just going to be continued institutional racism," said Jeff Skrenes, a mortgage banker, blogger and longtime resident of the Hawthorne neighborhood.
Heather Worthington, the city's long-range planning director, said the comprehensive plan is not a "magic panacea."