Counterpoint: My wife and I are staying in Minneapolis

In 1976, my wife and I chose to become Minneapolis homeowners.

With two good union jobs working as cub reporters downtown at the Star Tribune, we had locational choices. We'd grown up in suburbs, came here for college, and stayed for the big-city energy.

Forty-five years later, we're still here and we don't regret it.

Bashing Minneapolis is fashionable lately. The Wall Street Journal recently published a disavowing essay by the writer who long ago penned the Time magazine cover story that has passed into Minnesota lore for declaring us "the state that works." His mostly Minneapolis-based case that we're no longer so exceptional is based on portraying the city as a hotbed of crime, a capital of wokeness and (horrors!) more diversity.

Andy Brehm suggests ("Anarchy in Minneapolis goes unchallenged," Opinion Exchange, Feb. 15) that the city is in a downward spiral. He describes Minneapolis as a hell world after dark, citing a recent spasm of Uptown hooliganism.

Gee, we senior citizens must have missed that memo. We still take the bus to Orchestra Hall at night, and regularly see films at our go-to venue in Uptown.

Yes, crime is up. That happens when a pandemic curtails most youth programs. It also happens when cops abandon a city by retiring or claiming a PTSD disability.

Yes, our tax base growth is on pause. But that's caused by the same pandemic that's emptied downtowns across the nation. That feeds the perception that they're unsafe. But I venture downtown repeatedly without problem.

So this household still hasn't found a reason to leave this city.

Here's what Minneapolis has given us. It's been a place of great neighbors and an engaging community. Its schools educated our sons in a more multicultural setting than either of us grew up with. It's enriched us by acquainting us with people who are different from us in race, class, immigration status and gender orientation — at our church, the YMCA and our branch library. And despite any peccadilloes of the city, our house now is worth 11 times what we paid.

Those all seem like reasons to stay.

Yes, there was rioting after George Floyd's murder. We were out of town, so our neighbors called to tell us they were moving any flammable items like leaf bags away from our alley, as the city urged, and patrolling through the night. Those are the kind of people I want to have as neighbors.

Rioting cost us the auto supply store half a mile from us, where I bought oil and filters. Now it's a prime redevelopment opportunity that likely will boost the city's tax base. Apartment construction continues to flourish — $1.5 billion in new valuation in two years. That vote of confidence helps our tax base.

Yes, overall tax base growth is at a virtual standstill during the pandemic. But downtown residential occupancy is rebounding. Downtown commercial properties are seeing occupancy creep upward; I'm confident that in a few years they'll recover lost value. The market keeps bidding up our home values — especially over the last two years in parts of the North Side that see the worst gun violence — and that's another vote of confidence.

Admittedly, not everyone has the same risk tolerance. Yours may differ from ours. But we've found plenty of reasons to stay.

We stay in Minneapolis because we can walk or bike over to an evening band concert at Lake Harriet, which I've run around thousands of times. We stay in Minneapolis because we share an electric lawn mower with four other neighboring households with small yards. We stay in Minneapolis because several neighbors let me raise vegetables on narrow margins between their garages and the alley. We stay in Minneapolis because I get to help run our neighborhood's annual sap boil, which builds community by bringing together people who tap their maples.

I'm no Pollyanna. Our city has deep and stubborn racial gaps in housing, education and policing. It's heartbreaking to see young men like Amir Locke and Deshaun Hill gunned down before they could realize their potential. Crime is too high, and too many cops don't seem to get the need to change their ways.

We admittedly live in a part of town where income usually insulates us from the impacts of poverty and crime. But we're not immune. We've had four carjackings — only one successful — within two blocks over the past two years, and a mugging that left a neighbor with a concussion. But the carjacking at the other end of our block was foiled when our neighbor's screams brought other neighbors running to chase down some of the young perps.

I've spent plenty of my work life, and more recently parts of a political campaign, in stressed neighborhoods. I know that many people there and elsewhere in Minneapolis are working for a better city. The city needs to support them by restoring full funding to the neighborhood associations that bring people together to work on common issues. The city also needs to rebuild the network of cop-civilian teams that worked with neighborhoods on crime issues.

I've seen those approaches work. That's why we stay. Staying offers our city a more hopeful future than fleeing.

To those who stay with us, get involved in your neighborhood. Embrace its children. Rebuild your pandemic-frayed social connections.

And to those of you living outside the city, try trading your view of it through a TV news screen for actual experiences here. Those of us living here will be glad to show you around.

Steve Brandt lives in the King Field neighborhood in Minneapolis. He is a member of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation.