Suppose 30% of your city’s downtown storefronts were vacant? This candidate’s counterintuitive solution – raise taxes.

Photo above - Omar Fatah (left), Somali refugee/socialist/Muslim is running for mayor of Minneapolis, trying to unseat incumbent mayor Jacob Frey (right). Go Fateh . . .

Full disclosure – I’ve never been to Minneapolis, but I can’t imagine it’s that much different from Philadelphia, a few miles from where my mom lives. Entire blocks of decrepit, vacant townhomes. Abandoned stores where shoplifters and drug dealing have made conducting a retail business impossible.

Those buildings are vacant for a reason – nobody wants to occupy them at the prices they’re offered at. Omar Fateh – democrat candidate for Minneapolis mayor has an answer: raise real estate taxes on vacant buildings.

Of course, this isn’t going to summon a tsunami of renters or buyers. Just the opposite. It’s intended to force landlords into making repairs, obtaining occupancy/safety certificates, and luring legitimate occupants.

But that’s never really going to happen. Those properties are decrepit shitholes because the slumlord owneers have zero money for maintenance and repairs.

Omar Fateh isn’t saying the quite part out loud, however. For his plan to work, Minneapolis will have to aggressively prosecute landlords for unpaid – higher rate – property taxes. And then take over the vacant properties through eminent domain, tear them down, and sell the raw land to new investors with deeper pockets. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot could go wrong. Hooked up landlords, who are brothers- in-law or cousins of Minneapolis city council members, will no doubt “find a way” to tie the city up in court for eons, while the buildings continue to crumble, and while those landlords await some sort of hail mary situation where new renters miraculously appear on the horizon.

The other problem is that candidate Fateh will probably need to nuke entire city blocks – multiple blocks, even – at the same time. People still won’t want to build 10 story affordable housing apartments next door to a rat-infested empty warehouse which has not yet been seized for back taxes.

Okay, let’s give Fateh credit for what he gets right, and not the obstacles that will be placed in his path by career politicians. For a refugee from Somalia who got a Master's Degree after arriving here, he’s on the right path. It’s the entire Minneapolis city council which is likely going down the wrong path.

Omar, good luck. I’d donate money if I thought you had a chance in this election. And if I thought the fate of Minneapolis was of greater urgency to me than all the vacant mall storefronts right here in Tampa.

I’m just sayin’ . . .



Mayoral candidate's idea to fill empty shops: Tax the landlords