If you lived here, you wouldn't have a home by now

You don't have to open up the piles of daily mail from mortgage companies to know they all offer similarly specious-sounding promises: Do you rent? Have good credit? Let us put you in the home of your dreams for as much as you're paying in rent! But if your apartment is the home of your dreams, you can pretty much forget about paying as much in rent once it's converted into a condo. In fact, in some cases you'll be paying almost twice as much.

One such apartment building at 35th and Hennepin was renting one-bedroom apartments for $750 a month. The same apartments recently were converted into condos and put up for sale for $183,900. With $15,000 down at a 30-year-fixed mortgage, the monthly payment with condo fees jumps to $1,378 a month. According to Home Line, a local tenant advocacy organization, the condo conversion craze is putting the squeeze on Minneapolis' already depleted affordable-housing stock. In the last five years, the city has lost 1350 affordable apartments to condo conversions.

The city of Minneapolis defines "affordable" as a unit that is 30 percent of the household income for a family making 50 percent or less of the median income. That means that because the median household income in Minneapolis for 2005 is $77,000, a family making 50 percent of that at $38,500 and forking over $11,550 a year ($962 a month) in rent lives in a city-defined "affordable" unit.

In 2004, the city adopted a Unified Housing Policy, which promised to create more units affordable at 30-50 percent of the median income. According to the study by Home Line, Minneapolis actually incurred a decrease last year in the number of units affordable at 50 percent or less. That loss can be solely attributed to condo conversions.

However, the increase in the number of condos doesn't mean the renters are turning into first-time buyers: An advocacy and nonprofit legal organization called the Housing Preservation Project found that less than 25 percent of the new condos contain affordable units ($115,000 or less.) Though there are programs that offer financial assistance and incentives for first-time home buyers, there is no such program in place for first-time condo purchasers. And unlike other major cities where condos are popping up like weeds, the city of Minneapolis doesn't offer relocation assistance to those who are displaced from their apartments.

While the city is reneging on its promise to create more affordable housing stock, it's also failing to follow up on city ordinances that require developers to give conversion notices to the planning commission. Over the past two years, only 52 percent of apartment-to-condo property owners submitted conversion notices. There is no penalty for not filing a notice. Meanwhile, more than half of the apartments that have been converted into condos were once a piece of the city's now rapidly dwindling affordable-housing stock, leaving a hefty burden on low-income renters.