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The same Minneapolis City Council that voted to award the violent, racist MPD with more funding each year is being hailed as a champion of progressive values for its supposed efforts to end racial disparities in housing through its 2040 Plan. The City Council has gone to great lengths to promote this plan – they even hired a PR firm to buy themselves some good press. But, the 2040 Plan is just neoliberal, free-market deregulation dressed up in progressive language. Our campaign, Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition (DG&PHC), as well as other anti-gentrification activists around the country, have spent years explaining how increasing the supply of housing alone doesn’t make housing more affordable, and actually leads to real estate speculation that prices us out low-income communities of color. Yet, the supposedly progressive Minneapolis City Council, their nonprofit allies, and the white-dominated press ignored POC opposition to the plan, even as we protested about how up-zoning would put development pressure on our neighborhoods that are already suffering from gentrification.
This City Council does not care about making Minneapolis affordable for POC residents. If it did, it would not have passed the 2040 Plan, and it would also not be engaged in privatizing Minneapolis public housing. Since 2015, DG&PHC led by Black, Black Immigrant Muslim women who are public housing residents have been fighting to keep public housing public and to expose MPHA’s (Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s) xenophobia, racism, and misogyny. The City Council has not only refused to stand with residents of public housing, but they have also gone out of their way to support MPHA’s privatization plans that put at risk over 12,000 poor, low-income majority Black, Black Muslim immigrant residents with children, seniors/ elders, people with disabilities and Hmong residents. Mayor Frey and the current City Council passed a resolution approving MPHA’s privatization plans through Section 18 and RAD which has been highly endorsed by Trump and Secretary Carson. To mislead the public, once again the City of Minneapolis used “progressive language” to hide their neoliberal, pro-Trump agenda allowing MPHA to sell over 720 single-family scattered sites public housing homes for $1 – yes, literally $1 a piece – to a shady nonprofit MPHA created who will then hand majority ownership over to private investors. This is in line with the 2040 plan which by way does not mention keep public housing public or building more public housing to address the houselessness crisis. DG&PHC and allies sent 100’s of comments to the city to add that language to the 2040 plan, as usual, we were ignored by Mayor Frey and City Council. If the City wants to brag about how it’s working to make housing more” affordable and equitable”, they need to explain why they support dismantling public housing which is rent-controlled by law at 30% of residents’ income. Public housing is the only type of housing POC low- income residents can afford to rent in Minneapolis. The city refuses to talk about public housing, and they want to talk about “ “affordable housing” which is not really affordable for our communities. This fact sheet explains the difference between public housing and affordable housing:
The so-called affordable housing schemes promoted by the City and white-led nonprofits as an alternative to public housing are worthless. “Affordable housing” relies on racially-discriminatory measures of area median income that result in housing that is out of reach for most POC in this city. So the City of Minneapolis is destroying Black and Brown communities with one hand and patting themselves on the back with the other. And white-led nonprofits, banks, developers and investors are benefiting from this crisis. Enough is enough. How can the City pretend there is not enough money to keep public housing public and build more when they found more than enough money to prop up the white supremacist police force that murdered George Floyd? We demand a city government that works for the people, not landlords, and developers. We demand that the City of Minneapolis to #KeepPublicHousingPublic, #Build more public housing, #StopSection18, and #StopRAD.
Sources:
Story on PR firm they City hired to promote the 2040 Plan:
A story explaining a study on how up zoning led to higher real estate prices in Chicago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-31/zoning-reform-isn-t-a-silver-bullet-for-u-s-housing
Ubuntu article about BIPOC opposition to the 2040 Plan: https://www.weareubuntu.com/race-politcs/2019/4/16/the-san-francisco-fication-of-minneapolis