Anoka

As consumer confidence and incomes rise, home building activity in the Twin Cities metro area continues to rebound. According to the Builders Association of the Twin Cities (BATC), housing construction so far this year is up 23 percent from the same period in 2012, putting builders on a track for their best year since 2007.

During June alone, 496 permits were issued to build 912 units. Minneapolis led the top five cities permitting 380 units. Brooklyn Park and Woodbury were in the second position with 31 units, followed by Ramsey with 29. Construction of new homes in Blaine MN, Chanhassen MN and Lakeville MN tied for fifth place with 23 units permitted each.

So far this year, builders were...

The foreclosure crisis is far from over. Last year there were 25,673 foreclosure sales in Minnesota, an 11% increase over 2009 and the second-worst year on record.

According to a new report from the Minnesota Home Ownership Center, more than half of all of the foreclosure sales in the state last year happened in the Twin Cities metro area, where sheriff’s sales rose 9%. In greater Minnesota the number of sales was up 16%.

Foreclosures have been a drag down the housing market, pushing prices down and leaving an excess in available housing inventory. The situation was particularly bad in some of the communities north and northwest of the Twin Cities. Anoka and Hennepin Counties had the highest foreclosure rate statewide last year.

There have been some interesting environmental development happening around the Twin Cities and Minnesota. Here are some of the community-related green news and stories that broke in January.

An in-depth survey of 3,000 households in Ramsey and Anoka counties is providing environmental researchers at the University of Minnesota insight into what it would take to get people to make more of an effort to reduce their impact on the earth. They asked about thermostat settings, number of children, cars, bedrooms, miles driven to work, lawn size and fertilizer use, even whether there were vegetarians in the house. As it turns out, most people really do care about their impact on the environment. But what really drives them to change is knowing how they rank on their own personal pollution scores, how they compare to their neighbors, and where they can improve. In the end, the researchers hope to find out how best to influence social norms and change behavior toward a more eco-friendly culture....

This is the Land of 10,000 Lake and millions of trees. We take our environment seriously. Read on to learn about environmentally friendly news that happened recently around the Twin Cities and Minnesota!

Anoka County Highway Department is working on ways to get fewer people driving on Highway 65 in Blaine. The county has received a $7 million Congestion Mitigation Air Quality grant from the Federal Highway Administration to improve mass transit on the corridor. With $1.5 million in matching money, the county has issued a request for proposals for consultants to help create a plan to ferry nine busloads of commuters from Blaine's northern edge into downtown Minneapolis and back.

Also in Anoka County, employees may have saved a few jobs by saving energy (and money). First, lights were dimmed. Utility costs at the government center were reduced by $58,000 in 2009. In 2010, the county is expected to save more than $65,000. Next, Facilities Management and Construction team is changing the...

Minnesota Nice. You hear about it all the time, but it's not always apparent. Elk River has brought it back.

After the Elk River City Council declaired February the Month of Kindness, Mayor Stephanie Klinzing challenged residents to commit 1,000 "random acts of kindness." And the Elk River MN resdients didn't hold back. All month long, residents did kindly deeds, then recorded them either on post cards sent to the city or posted them online at www.loveelkriver.org.

"We are the kindest city in Minnesota," Klinzing declared this week, as she stood beside a wooden thermometer in Rivers Edge Park that registered the city's progress -- 1,300 acts of kindness as of Thursday.

The project was started due to Elk River's size. The city has grown so big, with a population of about 24,000, that residents worried it was losing its close-knit, small-town feel. Then Mayor Klinzing saw a YouTube video...

157 residents were going to receive weatherization assistance from the Anoka County Community Action Program. Now, thanks to $1.6 million in federal stimulus money, the program will be available to nearly 300 more. Additionally, workers will be able to look more closely at more clients' energy use than they've been able to in the past. This will enable them to find more solutions to bring a home's utility costs down.

Anoka County's allocation is part of $131 million in stimulus weatherization aid being distributed throughout the state. The federal money allows ACCAP to triple its client load and raises the average allocation per home from $3,000 to $6,500.

The program is available to county residents who qualify for federal home heating aid. The cutoff is about 200% of federal poverty guidelines, or $44,100 a year for a family of four. Those with the highest energy consumption generally get first priority because unusually high energy bills...

After $317 million, political struggles, and a 13-year wait, the 40-mile North Star Commuter line embarked on its maiden voyage on Monday morning, November 16, 2009. And people were certainly checking it out. After the last train of its first operation day finished its run, Metro Transit reported that more than 2,400 paying customers rode Northstar trains. On a typical day, the line is projected to have 1,700 passengers each way.

Trains were on time -- the first one arrived three minutes early -- but the first day was not entirely free of glitches. At Target Field, the doors of the 7:10 a.m. train didn't open for a few minutes, so its more than 300 passengers were stuck inside. Once they made their way upstairs to the Hiawatha station, light rail wasn't there to greet them because of a mechanical problem. A replacement Hiawatha train left the station at 7:25.

During the afternoon rush, there were some frantic dashes for closing doors, some doorway stumbles and even a few people who...

Including North St. Paul and Anoka, 12 Minnesota cities have begun installing wind turbines. Buffalo, Le Sueur and Faribault have had wind turbines installed already. Anoka, Arlington, Brownton, Chaska, East Grand Forks, Olivia, Shakopee and Winthrop are up next. If everything goes as planned, all of the Minnesota Municipal Power Association wind turbines will be up and running by mid-November.

The St. Paul Convention & Visitors Authority has rolled out the "50-50 in 2" program. It is meant to cut trash output at the RiverCentre and Xcel Energy Center in half and push the recycling rate up to 50% in two years.

Three Minnesota schools took top marks on a national report card that measures colleges' sustainability efforts. The University of Minnesota, Carleton College in Northfield and Macalester College in St. Paul were three of 26 schools to score an A- on this fall's College Sustainability Report Card.

To meet federal clean water standards, the Minnesota Pollution...

So maybe you've already bought a home. Or maybe you're not ready to buy one. Maybe you're a little uncertain about the economy, perhaps you're unemployed? Even if the federal tax credit deadline isn't tempting you to buy a house, maybe you can help build one!

When slow sales meant employees had to take some unpaid time off, manager Jim Boschuetz at Rockwell Automation in Roseville MN thought about what to do with the 4 1/2-day furlough. They decided to do something constructive. Literally. They helped work on an eight-unit townhouse complex being built in Ramsey by Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.

The building, in the 14800 block of Olivine Street, is the last of three eight-unit townhouses built in Ramsey by Habitat. The $3.2 million development, which began in 2007, is just north of Ramsey's Town Center. To buy the land, Habitat received grants of $540,000 from Anoka County and $209,214 from the federal Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity...