MPHA and Mayor Frey announced they have officially privatized and sold Elliot Twins Public Housing to the Royal Bank of Canada through Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD): mphaonline.org/mpha-and-partners-begin-unprecedented-modernization-of-the-elliot-twins/. Elliot Twins are two apartment buildings for seniors and low-income single residents, located in the Elliot Park neighborhood of Minneapolis in Ward 6. The majority of the residents are Black (Black American and East African) seniors on a fixed income. The RAD privatization program promoted by Donald Trump and Ben Carson is what MPHA and the City of Minneapolis used to convert Elliot Twins from public ownership to private ownership and into the hands of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). MPHA and the City of Minneapolis leased the public land Elliot Twins are built on for 99 years to RBC. As a result, Elliot Twins is no longer public housing nor a public good. According to RBC’s contract with MPHA, page 1 says RBC will own 99.99% of Elliot Twins; https://tinyurl.com/Sale-of-Elliot-Twins-to-RBC. The remainder will be owned by an unaccountable private non-profit that MPHA created. The $25 million MPHA and Mayor Frey are bragging about are private dollars and low-income housing tax credits that benefit inventors, not the residents. MPHA claims the units will be subsidized through Section 8 vouchers, but Section 8 housing is unstable and very vulnerable to budget cuts. Majority of the current residents are on social security fixed income of $750 a month, $9000 a year, and they pay 30% of their actual income which is $225 to $245 per month for rent for one-bedrooms and studios at Elliot Twins. This is rent control. However,page 14 of MPHA and RBC’s contract reveals rents will increase and will not be based on the public housing rate of 30% of actual incomes; https://tinyurl.com/Pg14-Rent-Increase-ElliotTwins. Page 14 says under RAD and Section 8 guidelines, rents for studios known as 0 bedrooms will be $816, and rent for one-bedrooms will be $998.
There is nothing affordable about this. The current vulnerable residents will be displaced and evicted slowly if they can’t make up this rent gap of $591 to $773 per month. Residents with higher incomes will replace the current residents. Even though MPHA has a waitlist of over 40k people to move into public housing, they currently have at least 22 empty units at Elliot Twins. We don’t know what happened to the residents who used to live in these units. Have they been quietly displaced or evicted? MPHA will not say.
Since 2017, Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition (DG&PHC) has been ringing the alarm bell about RAD. Ever since then, MPHA intimidated residents from speaking out, misled, and marginalized them. Mayor Frey, Abdi Warsame, and the rest of the current City Council Members manipulated the facts, failing to explain what RAD is and what it does. Instead of learning about RAD, City Council Members with their “great wisdom” began demonizing the residents and organizers. Regardless, Elliot Twins residents continued to organize to fight back and stop RAD, and they filed a complaint at City Hall and HUD about how unethical, illegitimate, and egregious MPHA’s tactics were, and of course this complaint was ignored; https://tinyurl.com/Elliot-Twins-Ltr-to-MPHA-HUD. MPHA even called the police on residents and organizers at a protest against RAD. MPHA and Minneapolis City Hall did everything possible under this illegitimate process to sell Elliot Twins to RBC under the false pretext that they cannot afford to maintain the buildings as public housing even though MPHA receives a 45% budget increase for repairs yearly from HUD and sits on $23 million in surplus.
By privatizing Elliot Twins, the real affordable, rent-controlled public and stable housing in the city is being destroyed intentionally to allow the risks of private banks to profit from poverty. This is an unacceptable decision made even worse because it is happening in the midst of COVID 19 Pandemic. Our elders’ lives are already at risk, and now their homes are too. The entire Minneapolis City Council, Mayor Frey, Abdi Warsame and the rest of DFL elected who are silent are also responsible for supporting this attack on public housing. This case is emblematic of the City’s lack of respect for POC communities and makes it very clear that gentrification and privatization, not affordability, is their real goal.
Source:
mphaonline.org/mpha-and-partners-begin-unprecedented-modernization-of-the-elliot-twins/
MPHA’s manipulation of the media
https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/minnesota-housing-retraction-mpha.php?fbclid=IwAR07AIL
https://tinyurl.com/Sale-of-Elliot-Twins-to-RBC.
https://tinyurl.com/Elliot-Twins-Ltr-to-MPHA-HUD