Excelsior Residents Concerned Over Lack of Affordable Lakeside Mansions

EXCELSIOR – An increasing number of local residents are raising concerns over the lack of affordable options for mansions along the coast of Lake Minnetonka, sources say.

“It’s a real problem,” said local activist and 40-year old retiree Helena Bundt. “My parents bought their first lakeside mansion here for just a quarter-million dollars in 1976, but now you can barely afford even a lakeside cabin for that amount!”

Housing prices are on the rise all across the Twin Cities metro area, but more importantly around Lake Minnetonka, where local millionaires are having to deal with multi-millionaires moving into their communities and driving up property values.

“First they come, and the next thing you know it’s $200 lattes and gold-plated Lamborghinis everywhere you look,” said Arnold Johnson, a longtime area mansion resident who’s had to rent out one of his seven bedrooms just to make ends meet. “We’re getting shoved out. It’s gentrification, plain and simple.”

Johnson and Bundt are both members of the Lake Minnetonka Affordable Luxury Housing Project, a for-profit grassroots effort dedicated to making life in super-wealthy communities possible for the merely very-wealthy. The organization’s recent efforts include a series of rejected applications for Section 8 housing vouchers and a town hall-style meeting which local Congressman Erik Paulsen did not attend.

“If we can’t figure something out, I don’t know what I’ll do. Move to Edina?” Bundt said before fainting from shock.