Urgent Action!
Contact the City of Minneapolis and your state representatives (see contact info in the comments) to demand that the City hold citywide listening sessions for public housing residents and the people of Minneapolis to comment on the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the City wants to sign with MPHA to privatize and dismantle public housing forever!
Dear allies, demand that the City of Minneapolis do the following:
1) Hold at least 4 to 5 citywide listening sessions for public housing residents and the people of Minneapolis about the MOU.
2) Notify every public housing resident by mail and in multiple languages about the listening session times, dates and locations. Provide at least 2 to 3 weeks notice.
3)Hold the listening sessions from 6 to 8 pm at the Brian Coyle Community Center, Horn Towers, Glendale Townhomes, Spring Manor and the Cora McCorvey Health and Wellness Center so that public housing residents are able to attend.
4) After the listening sessions are complete, provide a 30 day comment period.
5) Hold a public hearing at City Hall before the vote at a time everyone can attend.
On April 11, 2019, Council Member Cam Gordon announced on Facebook and by email to a few people that he and Council Member Abdi Warsame will hold one listening session at Matthews Park on Wednesday, April 17th from 7-9 pm about the MOU the City of Minneapolis and the MPHA plan to sign regarding the financial support MPHA will receive from the City for privatizing and dismantling public housing. The City Council will then vote to approve the MOU on Friday, April 19, 2019.
Neither the City nor MPHA notified any of the thousands of public housing residents who are at risk of displacement and homelessness about this MOU. In failing to do so the City violated its own Core Principles of Community Engagement. Holding only one meeting and voting two days later to approve the MOU is unacceptable and violates any transparent democracy and governance.
The MOU and the meeting at Matthews Park are not designed to involve public housing residents or to protect public housing, but rather to convince non-public housing residents that MPHA’s privatization scheme is not what it seems. The MOU misleadingly implies that transferring ownership of public housing from MPHA to an unaccountable private non-profit and companies such as the one MPHA Executive Director Greg Russ’s family owns does not constitute privatization. It also repeats the lie that privatization is necessary when MPHA has a surplus of over $23 million and ample funding sources to keep public housing public. Furthermore, the MOU offers no meaningful protections to residents.
The MOU helps MPHA force through its plans to privatize all Minneapolis public housing through Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) and Section 18 Demolition & Disposition, against the will of residents. The City and MPHA are taking advantage of Trump’s pro-privatization agenda to gentrify Minneapolis. Trump and Carson’s HUD recently gutted resident protections for Section 18 and is failing to properly monitor the RAD program. Privatization will displace 12,000 of our city’s most vulnerable residents and rob over 40,000 people on MPHA’s waitlist of the chance to access housing they can afford.
Contact your City and State elected officials to demand citywide listening sessions for public housing residents and the people of Minneapolis to learn about this MOU. MPHA cannot interfere with this process or intimidate public housing residents. The future of our city is at stake.
Link to the contact info sheet: https://www.dgphc.org/mn-elected-officials-and-city-of-minneapolis-contact-information/
#KeepPublicHousingPublic #BuildMorePublicHousing #PHIMBY #NotoRAD#DefendElliotTwins #StopFrey #StopRuss #SayNoToGentrification#StopPrivatization #DGPHC