Tuesday, January 8th, 2019 residents at Elliot Twins received two letters from MPHA. See both letters here: https://tinyurl.com/Elliot-RAD-Eng. The first letter stated that HUD has approved MPHA’s RAD application to privatize their homes even though HUD has been shut down since December 22nd. (Source: https://www.hud.gov/

In the letter, Minneapolis Public Housing Authority ( MPHA) is stating low-income residents who are almost all Black (African American and East African) and seniors in both buildings will be forcibly removed from their homes and from Minneapolis. MPHA has also used our tax dollars to hire a nonprofit pr group called the “Center for Multicultural Mediation” (CMM) in order to coerce very vulnerable senior residents into accepting this (https://sites.google.com/site/multiculturalmediation/). MPHA is again creating chaos in the East African community. They have hired an East African pr nonprofit to try to silence vulnerable East African Seniors. If HUD already approved their application, why do they need to hire this nonprofit?

The second letter is very weird. It is a General Information Notice (GIN), taken from a sample form letter provided on HUD’s website;
https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/1378X3CPDH.PDF. This letter is a boilerplate letter HUD provides to housing agencies to use when the agency knows that public housing residents are going to be displaced. Because the Government is in shutdown, it is unclear whether the letter came from HUD or whether MPHA used HUD letterhead in a confusing way to make it seem like HUD approved the RAD application for Elliot Twins.

We want MPHA to disclose the actual letter that came from HUD that says that the RAD application at the Elliot Twins has been approved. They have not provided this letter to residents or the public.

Either this RAD application was approved before the shutdown, and MPHA has sat on it, or MPHA is misleading residents into thinking that HUD has approved their RAD application while the government is closed.

HUD’s website seems to contradict what MPHA is claiming. It contains a notice saying that HUD is closed, and provides a link to their official Government Shutdown Contingency Plan. Page 74 of this contingency plan explicitly states that HUD is not processing RAD applications during the shutdown.
https://www.hud.gov/si…/documents/HUDCONTINGENCYPLANFINAL.PD

In order to push residents to accept this letter, MPHA went around yesterday morning passing out this letter https://tinyurl.com/Elliot-RAD-Eng and forced residents to sign a document saying they received it, even though residents did not know what the letter said or what they were signing. MPHA is doing this to try to kick residents out even though they have not been able to show any official document from HUD showing that their RAD application has been approved. MPHA must know that if apartments are vacant, HUD is more likely to approve a RAD application. In addition, the second letter asks residents who do not have access to emails to email their questions to MPHA.

First, MPHA needs to provide proof that HUD in fact approved the RAD application. Second, City of Minneapolis and City Council Members such as Abdi Warsame, Andrea Jenkins, Cam Gordon, Lisa Bender, Mayor Jacob Frey, and the rest need to be held accountable for allowing MPHA to push through this RAD conversion and evictions while HUD is shut down. City of Minneapolis and MPHA want to isolate and kick out these elders. We call on everyone concerned about this to attend this meeting on Thursday, January 17 from 1:30 – 3:30 pm at the Elliot Twins Community Room on 1225 South 8th Street, Minneapolis, 55404. MPHA has picked this time because they know it is hard for allies to attend meetings during work hours. This makes support even more important.

The government is shutdown. About 800,000 workers are not getting their paychecks. But, MPHA is telling us that HUD has time and money to displace hundreds of low-income seniors on fixed income from their homes and communities?

Call your council member and Mayor Jacob Frey hold them accountable for evicting vulnerable elders and seniors from Elliot Twins is in Ward 6.