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Turning the trend around Golden Valley, with 20,3 71 people, lost population in the last census and gained slightly in 2010. City Planner Joe Hogeboom said the city has just started talking about building more senior housing. He thinks his city is growing partly because of its commuting proximity to downtown Minneapolis and corporate campuses like those of General Mills and Honeywell. The city's large lots and bigger homes also attract growing families, he said. Minnetonka charted a 3 percent drop in the 2010 census, after gaining more than 6 percent in 2000. Community Development Director Julie Wischnack said the city of just under 50,000 people is "no longer the growth suburb it once was. "There are not a lot of housing starts now, and household size has diminished," she said. "We have a fair number of people who don't live here for the majority of the year. ... It's a symptom of people making transitions in their lives." Minnetonka officials are talking about those demographic shifts and, like urban neighborhoods of a generation ago, are trying to develop what Wischnack described as "an action plan to make sure the community maintains its viability." A study by the nonprofit Urban Land Institute-Minnesota targeted issues in Minnetonka, including that the city needs to actively address issues with aging housing stock, Wischnack said. Three-quarters of the city's houses are more than 30 years old and need expensive updates like replacement of roofs, windows and furnaces. Older residents on restricted incomes may be reluctant to spend for such improvements. Minnetonka is considering setting up revolving loan programs to help residents rehabilitate homes and help buyers with down payments or closing costs on a local home. Wischnack said the program would be aimed mainly at middle-class people looking to buy a house worth less than$300,000. Forward-thinking suburbs should be thinking about their housing stock, but it's about more than that, said Libby Starling, research manager at the Metropolitan Council. "Simply having the houses there doesn't mean people want to live there," Starling said. "It's about schools, parks,proximity to where jobs are and other amenities." Starling said some communities are growing partly because they are attracting minority homeowners, who tend to be younger than the overall population. The list includes Brooklyn Park,Brooklyn Center, Richfield, St. Louis Park, Maplewood, Oakdale,Burnsville and Apple Valley. Richfield, a classic post-World War II suburb, boomed in the 1950s as families grew up and out of Minneapolis and returning GIs started families. The city saw its population fall in the 2000 census, but it grew by more than 2 percent in the 2010 census. Community Development Director John Stark said the city is seeing the payoff for a strategy developed in the mid-1990s: build senior developments to keep folks in the city and free up homes for young families. "Our housing starts stopped around 1968," Stark said. "If you just sit back and let things happen on their own,you're going to keep losing population. You have to have a strategy to affect where your population is going." Mary Jane Smetanka• 612-673-7380