Soon after Greg Russ, the Czar of Privatization & Gentrification, took over as the executive director of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, (MPHA) in 2017, he brought Tracey Scott from Atlanta as his deputy director. To our knowledge, that title never existed previously at MPHA. After Russ left, he appointed her as the interim executive director for MPHA. In order to understand how she’s currently leading MPHA, it’s important to know her background.
Tracey Scott’s education training is in business management, not public service. She received a BS from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and an MBA from Emory University. She has worked for large multinational corporations including AT&T and VISA. She has also served as the board president of the Patelco Credit Union since 2000.
She worked in the private sector for about 20 years until she began her position as Director of Voucher Administration/Participant Services at Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) in 2008. After two years, she became the Vice President of Innovation and stayed there until 2017.
Atlanta was home to the first public housing in the US and by the 1990s had more residents in public housing than any other US city. Starting with the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta began demolishing its 15,000 units, using the racist neoliberal term “concentrated areas of poverty” to justify the gentrification of low-income communities of color. The Housing Authority privatized its stock using the precursor of RAD, HUD’s HOPE VI program and private investment. Later, in 2007, AHA used funds under Section 18 Demolition & Disposition as well.
In this process, the Atlanta Housing Authority displaced roughly 50,000 residents, handing them Section 8 vouchers which became increasingly hard to use in a quickly gentrifying city. The Housing Authority came under fire for displacing communities of color and giving massive opportunities for profit to private developers.
In the end, the Atlanta Housing Authority now pays more to finance the voucher program than it did to keep up its housing as public housing and a public good. And, many of the public housing buildings it said would be revitalized have still yet to be rebuilt or renovated, they are just empty lots.
When Tracey Scott arrived in 2008 her background in financing helped the public housing authority facilitate the transfer of public land and public housing to private investment. This is the reason why Greg Russ recruited Tracey Scott to privatize Minneapolis Public Housing. AHA was under investigation in 2013 for exorbitant executive salaries. This is the same culture that is now being perpetuated at MPHA.
July of 2019 after Greg Russ announced that he was leaving, the board appointed her interim director. She was the only name raised to do so and board members at the time questioned the process that got her the appointment (see an image of an email from the board below). The board approved someone they did not know or even vet.
On September 19th, 2019, a meeting was held by the Northside Neighborhoods Council, Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition, and Keep Public Housing Public Minneapolis Coalition with Tracey Scott to understand MPHA’s Section 18 Demolition & Disposition application that MPHA, Mayor Frey and Council President Lisa Bender lobbied HUD to approve. The purpose of this application was to dismantle all 749 single-family public housing homes known as scattered sites rented by nearly 5000 low-income people that are majority Black and Black Muslim families with children. During this meeting, Tracey Scott admitted that 717 out of 749 homes have been approved to be privatized. Tracey also admitted that MPHA with the help of the City of Minneapolis will bring in lenders to take over the homes. We also found out from MPHA’s documents and HUD’s approval letter that as a result of bringing in these lenders, over 104 acres of public land, 99.9 % of the homes will be owned by private investors, and 0.01% will be owned by a private non-profit created by MPHA called CHR ( Community Housing Resources). In addition, MPHA will sell each home for $1 to CHR. After that, CHR will turn all of the homes and public land to private investors. When Tracey admitted the fact that lenders will take over our public land and homes, she tried to back-pedal. She could not answer the questions or her answers were in full contradiction on what was outlined in HUD’s approval letter and MPHA-City’s privatization plans. Clearly, Tracey Scott has been groomed for this position and this is not the kind of leadership we want to see in our city.