In which your correspondent ventures into St. Paul. We previously reported on the curious case of 1821 University Avenue, St. Paul, a large office complex home to no fewer than…
In 2021 Minnesota’s population grew by just 225 people, losing 13,453 residents to other states. This was Minnesota’s biggest net loss of domestic migrants to other states in at least 30…
The rent control ordinance passed in St. Paul last November has been a disaster. One of the strictest rent control measures in the United States, it capped annual rent increases at 3%…
It understandably hasn’t received much attention given the rampant shootings, car jackings, and general atmosphere of lawlessness that dominates media crime coverage. But there’s another indicator that illustrates how little…
Last week, I wrote about the closure of Tin Whiskers Brewing, one of my old haunts when I lived in Lowertown. Following the closure of Stacked Deck in October, there…
Shortly after moving to Minnesota in 2017, my wife and I went to see a Saint Paul Saints game. Arriving early, we went for a walk around Lowertown. We loved…
The Minnesota Senate voting to prohibit planning for the Northern Lights Express, a resurrection of the old passenger rail service between the Twin Cities and Duluth, wasn’t the only consequential…
After two years off due to COVID, St. Paul’s most popular summer festivals were poised to make a comeback. But a new post-pandemic reality has put several of the city’s…
St. Paul’s rent control ordinance is yet to take effect. In anticipation of the May 1 start date, the Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI), which was working towards the…
St. Paul’s rent control ordinance is set to take effect beginning May 1. Yet there is no shortage of evidence showing how disastrous the ordinance has been. Housing permits are…
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged a 15-year-old male late last month with murder for the apparently random, fatal shooting of a 34-year-old businesswoman in her car. Police were called…
Econ 101 has been getting bad rap the last few years. The time when Freakonomics was the book to be seen reading if you wanted to look smart is long past, and…
Census Bureau data show that, in 2021, Minnesota lost 13,453 residents to other states, its biggest net loss of domestic migrants to other states in at least 30 years. Data…
A third report about the 2020 riots released this week revealed once again that Tim Walz’s stated reason for not immediately deploying the National Guard is not supported by the…
In 2021, Minnesota’s population grew by just 225 people, losing 13,453 residents to other states. This was Minnesota’s biggest net loss of domestic migrants to other states in at least…
As reported by the Star Tribune, St. Paul city officials on Wednesday unveiled a proposal that would provide five full-time employees and funding to administer the rent-control ordinance passed by…
The rent control ordinance passed in St. Paul last November is having exactly the consequences that were predicted before it was passed. If you set a price below a market…
The consequences of St. Paul’s rent control policy continue to pile up. While Mayor Melvin Carter is looking for a way to amend the policy, numbers show that construction has…
High prices are not problems in themselves; rather, they are symptoms of underlying problems which lead demand to outstrip supply. Digging into these underlying problems and their causes requires some…
In digging into the free food scandal, one address not in the news sticks out. It’s a sprawling office complex in the Hamline neighborhood of St. Paul, MN. It has…
In this mini-series, we have been exploring the role played by S&S Catering, one of three primary food vendors implicated in the alleged Feeding Our Future scandal. Not one person…
Mayor Melvin Carter has been trying to make changes to St. Paul’s rent control ordinance before it goes into effect on May 1. To that, he announced on Friday that…
Restaurant and bar owners in St. Paul, already struggling to recover from COVID-19 and government responses to it, were dealt another blow last month when Mayor Melvin Carter imposed a…
On Jan. 13, Mayors Melvin Carter of St. Paul and Jacob Frey of Minneapolis announced that, to fight the spread of COVID-19, as of Jan. 19, patrons at restaurants, bars,…