On Friday July 2nd, the Minneapolis City Council voted to largely approve Mayor Jacob Frey’s plan to disburse 102 million dollars of federal funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act. The ARP, more commonly known as President Joe Biden’s stimulus package, provides cities with money for business development, housing, and social programs. Frey’s proposal included $37 million on business development, $13.7 million for “public safety” (more cops), and $28.7 million for housing. 

Frey buried an important and dangerous plan to demolish public housing at the bottom of his itemized $28.7 million “affordable housing” ARP proposal. Specifically, Frey (and now the City Council) plan  to use $4.6 million to demolish 16 scattered site homes with  84 units  for denser developments they call 

“deeply affordable”  that will not be affordable for public housing residents because rents will be based on Area Median Income estimates that price out most low income families.

Referring to the $4.6 million, the ARP proposal approved by Frey’s office reads “This funding will provide gap financing for MPHA’s proposal to assemble approximately 16 scattered sites and replace current structures with modularly constructed higher density (four-unit and six-unit buildings), all 2 and 3 bedroom unit properties.” 

Frey is omitting that the currently existing houses include several bedrooms and are often home to larger families (up to eight members per household), mostly Black and Brown Minneapolis residents. MPHA will force these families to leave their houses while the construction is ongoing. 

Most of the families will not return, even when construction is complete. Notably, Frey does not say whether the housing will remain public housing, instead opting to use the vague buzzword “deeply affordable” to describe the buildings that will be constructed after the demolition. It is likely that the ARP money will be used to further MPHA’s ongoing mission of privatizing all public housing in Minneapolis. When public housing is privatized and converted into subsidized housing leased on the private market, rents and fees begin to increase and overall affordability erodes.

The denser housing that will replace the scattered site homes will likely have fewer bedrooms and be less accessible for large families. Instead, in line with the 2040 Plan, it will be designed to attract high-income young white professionals at the expense of Minneapolis’ working class and low-income families.  

This plan can be traced back to a resolution to a city council to privatize public housing, all under the guise of “preservation”. Later on, Frey and outgoing Ward 10 councilmember and Council President Lisa Bender sent a letter to Trump’s HUD. Then, MPHA submitted its Section 18 Demolition and Disposition application and deliberately lied to residents, claiming that their homes will be repaired, leading to no displacement. MPHA then immediately uncovered its own lie by asking residents to sign new complicated leases with lots of fine print and confusing fees, often valued above regular rental payments. This cleared the way for the demolition of the 16 homes listed by Frey in his ARP proposal.

MPHA and other public housing authorities around the country have a history of using federal money to demolish and privatize public housing. The Clinton era HOPE VI program demolished public housing deemed “blighted” by state, local, and federal authorities. Although new private buildings replaced units destroyed by HOPE VI, few original residents remained after conversion. The Obama administration started the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, which provides housing authorities funds to convert their public housing into private market so-called “affordable housing” leased on the private market and subsidized through Section 8 vouchers. RAD has similarly disastrous results. When RAD takes place, public housing residents are displaced, as we are seeing with Minneapolis’ current privatization plans for the Elliot Twins highrises in Ward 6. 

Frey and the City Council have played important roles in the ongoing gentrification of Minneapolis and their consistent decisions to destroy public housing make this abundantly clear. This is what displacement looks like; politicians use public money to demolish publicly-owned buildings and then lie about who will benefit from the new properties built in their place.