Neighbors 4 More Neighbors, YIMBYism, & The PR Campaign Against Public Housing Residents

Neighbors 4 More Neighbors (N4MN) is an organization that “stands up for secure, abundant homes for everyone in the Twin Cities.” According to their website, they trace their origin back to 2018, when they were forceful advocates for the Minneapolis 2040 Plan. This plan, which upzoned all of Minneapolis without meaningful anti-gentrification measures, demonstrated this organization’s main political strategy: characterizing all opposition to free-market housing solutions as backward, racist white “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) homeowners afraid to lose parking spaces on their block.

But this strategy is also designed to obscure the organization’s own overwhelming whiteness and to erase the existence of nonwhite communities who opposed the 2040 plan due to concerns about gentrification. This same dynamic of elevating the opposition of wealthier white homeowners to libertarian “trickle-down” housing plans while ignoring or downplaying support from real estate developers, landlords, and financial institutions and a large base of young upwardly mobile white residents continues to characterize their work today. 

Recently, N4MN decided to throw its hat in the ring in the ongoing battle over the future of public housing in Minneapolis. On one side of this battle are public housing residents, including Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition (DG&PHC), who have been fighting since 2014 to save their public housing communities from displacement and privatization. On the other side are large banks, real estate development and construction companies, Mayor Frey, the Minneapolis City Council, City of Mpls CPED, City of Minneapolis Planning Commission, nonprofit housing developers, and the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA). This government agency, MPHA, is currently facing a civil rights lawsuit due to their mistreatment of public housing residents, whose negligence led to the deaths of 5 public housing residents at the Cedar Towers just two years ago, and who has a documented history of demolishing public housing while promising residents a right to return that failed to materialize – most notably during the Hollman Consent Decree saga of the 1990s and in 2019 Elliot Twins privatized through RAD conversion. Many of the Elliot Twins residents who fought back RAD  were moved out to unknown locations,  and MPHA proposed this eviction plan to Elliot residents. Royal Bank of Canada became the new owner as the slow displacement goes on. 

Although N4MN’s recent tweet of “more public housing coming to Minneapolis” has been effectively cosigned by the MinnPost and the Star Tribune, it is downright wrong and non-factual. First, the new units will be built after Section 18 Demolition & Disposition  conversion transforms the single-family homes from public housing to publicly subsidized yet privately owned. There is no guarantee the new units will be charged at 30% income for rent permanently. The new landlord of these properties will be one of three private-sector shell limited liability companies created by MPHA specifically to manage newly privatized former public housing. The document that sealed this deal somewhat hilariously ends with Abdi Warsame signing a contract with himself, representing both the private LLCs and MPHA itself. The plan is to invite bankers and investors to have majority ownership like  MPHA did with Elliot Twins through RAD conversion.  

N4MN also conveniently ignores that the new units will be built where public housing residents already live. The units in the current scattered-site single-family housing undergoing this conversion are much larger than those that will replace it in the denser buildings. MPHA still hasn’t answered where the current residents will go, especially large multigenerational families that need large units. There is no guarantee or legally binding documents from the City of Minneapolis or MPHA  that the same size unit for  large families with young children  will be built  or if the current families that are being displaced will come back. It is all talk. 

Actually reading the policies and legal documents immediately shows that “more public housing” is not indeed “coming to Minneapolis.” Actually, the current number of public housing will decrease each year through this plan.  Despite this, Neighbors for More Neighbors decided to ignore all of the facts and nuance and instead side with MPHA and City’s false propaganda targeted to the white middle constituency. The nature of this partnership, and the misleading rhetoric deployed by Neighbors for More Neighbors in their role as de-facto PR team for MPHA, and the City of Minneapolis deserve closer scrutiny. 

The first question about Neighbors for More Neighbors must be about who comprises their membership and leadership? A quick look through their Tweets dating back to March 2018 seems to shed some insight on the group: it appears that their membership is overwhelmingly comprised well of young white adults who seem to be between the ages of 25-45, and from the very beginning they have enjoyed a cozy relationship with the most powerful politicians in Minneapolis (including  Mayor Jacob Frey and outgoing President of Minneapolis City Council  Lisa Bender).

Clearly, this group of white people feels it is their job to speak for communities it does not represent. It is difficult to understand their hostility to DG&PHC (actual public housing resident leaders) as well as their new work on behalf of MPHA as anything less than a targeted effort to marginalize and silence an organization created and led by Black women public housing residents. The vindictive nature of this partnership is revealed by a number of comments and actions from their affiliates, including (but not limited to) a now-deleted article written by Wedge Live attacking DG&PHC  and numerous antagonistic posts on Twitter that are ongoing. 

How are N4MN, City of Minneapolis, and MPHA working together? Instead of studying up on public housing privatization policies like RAD, Section 18, and HOPE VI, reading up on MPHA’s consistent broken promises to residents, or simply being quiet, N4MN is instead talking down to public housing residents. This type of toxic white male arrogance and supremacy is  not surprising, but it makes it no less ugly and exposes who runs this city. .

What kind of white arrogance leads someone to work with MPHA, in spite of their well-documented history of abuse, evictions, and neglect of public housing residents, and then declare that public housing residents need to be “defended” from our Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition – which was created to give by public housing residents the power to fight back against precisely this abuse and neglect?  These wealthy white people show a  glimpse of  the oppression, racial  disparity, racial trauma, and attacks  we face daily as Black and Brown low-income communities of Minneapolis.  


What leads someone to say “still at it huh” to Black public housing residents fighting to save their communities from displacement?  Only a white supremacist who was sent to silence us. 

What makes someone so confident that they understand “complicated funding and ownership structure (sic)” better than public housing residents? 

YIMBYs from Minneapolis expect you to believe MPHA & the City of Minneapolis from the strength of whiteness alone, not because of actual policy. They expect you to believe them over us because they are white and we are Black and poor. Don’t do it. Study the facts yourself.

Here is an example of their last action to silence us and support the demolition and privatization of single-family homes  through Section 18: 

  1. DG&PHC found out through a tweet on November 10th, 2021 from N4MN and one of their leaders Nick Magrino a former City’s Planning Commissioner that  on November 15, 2021, the City Planning Commission was holding a public hearing to  approve the demolition of 9 scattered sites through Section 18 Demolition & Disposition. They are doing this without holding a 30day public comment period or notifying public housing residents.   
  2. We only had 2 days to notify residents and the public. Public housing residents and allies did not have access nor the opportunity to comment. It seemed like  an inside job only N4MN, MPHA, and the City of Minneapolis had access to.  
  3. At the public hearing, the Planning Commission did not ask MPHA for any legally binding documents to make sure residents will have the same size housing, the same rent, and residents will come back. Instead, N4MN who had no idea about us as public housing residents and our lived  experience  were given the opportunity to write letters ahead of time and comment to push for the demolition of public housing and basically speak for us. 
  4. Members of N4MN, MPHA, and City use an advisory committee we have no access to, and they handpick non-public housing members who make decisions about public housing. Public housing residents who were DG&PHC youth organizers applied to be members of this committee couple of years ago, and their applications were denied. This is another example of how public housing resident leaders  are marginalized.  
  5. On November 30th, the Business, Inspections, Housing & Zoning Committee chaired by Council Member Lisa Goodman, quietly voted to approve the demolition of the scattered sites that were approved by the Planning Commission on November 15th  without notifying public housing residents or providing access to a 30 day comment period. As is typical of Goodman, she added the approval of the demolitions in the last section of the agenda under discussion 30 to 37. Lisa Goodman has been the Queen of Gentrification and Displacement of Black and Brown Communities since she was in office in 1998.  In fact, it was Goodman who fought to hire Greg Russ in 2017 – the author of the blueprint for public housing privatization in New York. Cambridge Massachusetts, and Minneapolis – less than two years after Glendale residents stopped RAD conversion. 
  6. The City Council will approve these demolitions unanimously. These steps show how the City is ending public housing and not building more. 
  7. Following is the demolition of 6 more scattered sites of public housing single-family homes the Planning Commission approved on December 6th, 2021. The  agenda was published 2 days before the meeting. This is another example of MPHA restricting accessibility and transparency. 
  8. Here are the  6 new scattered sites approved for demolition through Section 18 Demolition & Disposition on December 6th, 2021.
339 Pierce St NE, Ward 3
500 Knox Ave N, Ward 5
400 Logan Ave N, Ward 5
2110 16th Ave S, Ward 6
2740 12th Ave S, Ward 9
2744 12th Ave S, Ward 9

This was the blueprint of Lisa Goodman, Frey, Lisa  Bender, former MPHA Executive Director Greg Russ, the entire City Council, and CPED. They lobbied Trump and Carson to approve the Section 18 application for Minneapolis Public Housing. None of these public officials can deny their role. It is important to remember MPHA’s messaging to public housing residents about Section 18 Demolition & Disposition included the following; “there will be no demolition”, and “residents who chose to stay in their homes will.” They also claimed that “MPHA will only remodel the units and the majority of the residents will not need to temporarily relocate while the remodeling is taking place”. They said; “MPHA is getting 3 million dollars from HUD to make repairs which is the only reason why we applied for Section 18”. Now MPHA and the City of Minneapolis with the support of N4MN through lies, oppression, silencing, intimidation, and evictions have found a path to continue to lie, end public housing, and not to build more. 

In conclusion, we expect Lisa Goodman to approve the 6 scattered sites easily and more as she works hard to block our comments and engagement as public housing residents. After that, the entire city council will approve unanimously. We will continue to update you as all of these forces organize to end 736 single-family public housing units in similar stages outlined above and displace the large families living in these homes. Also, it will be interesting to learn more about the role agents such as N4MN and similar groups play in ending public housing and gentrifying Minneapolis. 

Relevant resources: 

Historic Public Land Grab: MPHA, Mayor Frey and Council President Lisa Bender move forward to sell 717 scattered sites of public housing and 104.67 acres of public land through Section 18 Demolition & Disposition without public input or a city council vote.
2019 Omnibus Spending Bill increases funding for Public Housing while MPHA, Mayor Jacob Frey and Council President Lisa Bender put out a false PR campaign to white homeowners that public housing is no longer sustainable or a worthwhile public good. This is racial.
Mayor Frey and City Council use Biden’s Stimulus to Demolish Public Single-Family Homes and Displace their Residents

Sincerely,

Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition

defendglendale @ gmail. com | www.dgphc.org | facebook @ defendglendale    

| twitter @ defendglendale

| Instagram @ defendglendale

612-389-8527

P.O. Box 14616, Minneapolis, MN 55414 #KeepPublicHousingPublic #BuildMorePublicHousing #StopMPHA #StopFrey #DefendScatteredSites #StopSection18 #DefendElliotTwins #StopRAD   #SayNoToGentrification #StopPrivatization #DGPHC #PHIMBY #AbolishFaircloth

URGENT CALL TO ACTION: STOP THE MINNEAPOLIS PLANNING COMMISSION FROM DEMOLISHING AND PRIVATIZING SCATTERED SITE PUBLIC HOUSING

Dear Allies:

Tomorrow, Monday November 15, MPHA and the City of Minneapolis Planning Commission plan to approve the demolition of 16 single-family public housing homes. This vote comes after MPHA hid these plans from public housing residents and only collected comments from their network of white nonpublic housing residents. They want to approve these plans without notifying or holding community meetings with public housing residents and without providing a 30-day comment period or adequate translation of any informational materials.

On top of all of these failures, MPHA is currently facing a class-action civil rights lawsuit brought by public housing residents. One of the several items brought up in the suit is that MPHA is literally an illegal landlord – it has been operating without a rental license for years.

We are calling on public allies to submit public comment to the Minneapolis Planning Commission. A sample letter is included on the next page along with contact information for each of the Planning Commission members. There are two ways to submit public comment.

Email members of the planning commission.
Jeremy Schroeder: jeremy.schroeder@minneapolismn.gov
Chris Meyer: cmeyer@minneapolisparks.org
Kimberly Camprinil: Kimberly.Caprini@mpls.k12.mn.us
Andrew Frenz: andrew.frenz@minneapolismn.gov

Contact the CMs of the wards of the following addresses, each of which the planning commission is voting tomorrow to privatize.
1030 Lowry Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 1, incoming CM Elliot Payne, outgoing CM Kevin Reich)
1600 and 1606 Penn Ave N, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 5, CM Jeremiah Ellison)
2015 23rd Ave S, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 6, CM Jamal Osman)
2021 24th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 6, CM Jamal Osman)
2425 16th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 9, incoming CM Jason Chavez, outgoing CM Alondra Cano)
2220 38th St E, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 12, CM Andrew Johnson)
5633 34th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 12, CM Andrew Johnson)
5139 Penn Ave S, Minneapolis, MN (Ward 13, CM Linea Palmisano)

Submit public comment formally. Please do the following by 1:30 PM Monday November 15th.
Click on the link https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/meetings/public-hearing-speaker-sign-up/
Choose Board Or Commission under meeting type
Choose Nov 15 @ 4:30 under Independent Board/Body
Pick 1030 Lowry Ave NE Under Nov 15th public hearing agenda items
Add your name, email, and ward.
Upload the letter attachment (Letter will have to be turned into PDF or docx)
The zoom link to the meeting will be sent to your email an hour before the meeting starts.
The meeting will take place on Monday November 15th as 4:30 PM on Zoom. Here is its agenda.

See the sample letter below:

Dear Planning Commission,

I am writing to express my opposition to the demolition of 16 scattered site public housing homes in Minneapolis, 8 of which are currently under consideration by this commission. These plans do not merit approval for the following reasons:

  • The applications submitted by MPHA fail to specify the level of affordability for the units. These scattered site homes are public housing, which charge 30% of the tenants’ income as rent. MPHA’s application states their intention to build “deeply affordable” housing. Traditionally, “deeply affordable” housing refers to housing set at 30% AMI. This is not the same as charging 30% of a tenants income. The AMI for a family of 4 in the Twin Cities is $104,900. Meanwhile, the median income for families at MPHA is $10,758. 
  • Rents set at 30% AMI are prohibitively expensive for the population currently served by public housing, to say nothing of the thousands of people on the waitlist for public housing. Will rents of the new housing be set at 30% AMI or at 30% residents’ income? Right now, there is no legal guarantee that current residents will be able to stay in their homes. Will residents be able to come back?
  • MPHA failed to notify public housing residents about these plans. In fact, public housing residents only learned about them after Neighbors for More Neighbors tweeted their followers soliciting their support for these applications.We do not doubt that you have heard some comments from this network. A white-dominated organization composed mostly of wealthy and upwardly mobile residents in support of this plan, coupled with a complete failure to engage with and seek feedback from BIPOC public housing residents and low-income families, must be named for what it is: the perpetuation of white supremacy in Minneapolis.
  • The public narrative has been full of misinformation. Neighbors for More Neighbors’ initial tweet claimed that new “public housing was coming to Minneapolis.” The opposite is happening. MPHA is demolishing public housing and replacing it with denser private housing, the entire point of the Section 18 conversion process. These homes, once converted through Section 18, may be operated by one of MPHA’s shell companies, but they will not be public housing. Once public housing is privatized, it is easier for the operating agency or company  to sell properties to other private landlords and increase rents. 
  • THERE IS AN ONGOING CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS, MPHA (AND ITS NON-PROFIT SUBSIDIARY CHR) FOR MPHA NOT HAVING A RENTAL LICENSE AND MISTREATING PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS. HOW CAN THE CITY PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVE THESE PLANS WHILE THIS ISSUE IS BEING LITIGATED? 
  • It is clear that these 8 applications do not merit approval until the following conditions are met: 
  1. MPHA must hold public meetings for public housing residents and the greater public to explain these plans.
  2. All public housing residents must be notified by mail about these plans and invited to community meetings to share feedback about these plans.
  3. There must be a 30 day comment period that includes translation and interpretation services. 
  4. The Civil Rights Class Action Lawsuit against MPHA is settled and the agency brought under compliance of local and State laws. 

The future of public housing in general (and these 8 scattered site homes in particular) is an urgent social, racial, and housing justice matter that warrants genuine public engagement and participation, not rubber stamps and backroom negotiations. A failure to pause the approval process to allow input from the populations most impacted by the decisions you make today would represent nothing less than the perpetuation of the system of white supremacy that has inflicted untold violence on the Black and Brown residents of this city for well over a hundred years.

Sincerely,

Stop the privatization of public housing.

Mayor Frey gives $375k for Repairs to Developer McCormack Baron Salazar Instead of Funding Public Housing

For all of his talk about deeply affordable housing on the campaign trail, Jacob Frey barely mentioned the most affordable type of housing – public housing – in his plan to spend American Rescue Plan stimulus money. However, one of the few times Frey mentions the Minneapolis Public Housing Agency in his plan, he is not actually referring to public housing at all. Specifically, Frey’s plan reads 

“Heritage Park, a mixed-income housing community constructed in the early 2000s by McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS) and Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) has significant recapitalization needs, including immediate infrastructure, lighting, and security improvements.

This funding will cover the cost of a series of immediately needed physical safety improvements at Heritage Park, informed by extensive community engagement, while plans for a larger recapitalization of the properties are developed.”

This description is misleading. Heritage Park has not been public housing since the late 1990s and it makes little sense to mention MPHA.  Now that the City Council has approved Frey’s plan, the city is spending $375,000 on “emergency stabilization” support for the Heritage Park development, private “mixed-income” housing built on a 145-acre plot of land leased by MPHA to private developer McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS). Why are Minneapolis politicians handing out stimulus money to private developers? The answer lies in the history of the Heritage Park development, located on the former site of Minnesota’s first public housing – the Sumner Field homes. 

The Sumner Field Homes were built in 1938 in the Sumner Glenwood and Willard-Hay neighborhoods in North Minneapolis. Shortly after, three other adjacent public housing complexes were built and combined into a superblock. By the late 1970s, the homes included 700 households, including many that lived in highrises built throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the public housing residents were Black or Hmong. 

By the 1990s, there was a concern by politicians about the extent to which public housing had contributed to the racist policy that turned out to be a tool for gentrification, “concentrated poverty” in Near North. After a lawsuit was filed in 1992, the Fourth Federal District Court ruled that the Sumner Field homes and adjacent public housing buildings did concentrate poverty.  The resulting ruling, known as the Hollman vs. Cisneros decree, effectively allowed MPHA to privatize the Sumner Field homes and adjacent highrises, all under the supposed purpose of “deconcentrating poverty.” After the decree, the city and the civil rights groups who initially filed the lawsuit alleging segregation disagreed over what to do with the housing. The city supported demolition while the NAACP supported repopulating and rehabilitating vacant units. 

Judge James M Rosenbaum ultimately sided with the city. The following was published on October 22, 1999:

      “ The city of Minneapolis won a Court battle against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) over the issue of what to do with 306 dwelling units at the Glenwood-Lyndale public housing projects on the near Northside of Minneapolis.  

        Federal Court Judge James M. Rosenbaum ruled against the NAACP’s motion for injunctive relief in a decision announced on September 30. The NAACP motion called for the rehabilitation and repopulation of all the vacant dwelling units at the Glenwood-Lyndale housing projects.”

As a result, Minneapolis demolished all 770 units of public housing in Sumner-Glenwood in 1998 as part of the HOPE VI program. HOPE VI uses federal funding to demolish and privatize public housing deemed “blighted” by local and regional planners, with the intention of developing mixed-income subsidized housing in its place. Its results are often disastrous, with original residents rarely moving back into their housing. As expected, most residents of Near North’s public housing were displaced as a result of HOPE VI, moving farther north to suburbs like Brooklyn Center.  

Ten years after the demolition of the Near North public housing, Judge James M. Rosenbaum retired. He has been an MPHA Commissioner ever since, still working hard to dismantle and end public housing in Minneapolis.

The City and MPHA then leased 145 acres of the public housing land to McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS), from St. Louis  Missouri.  MBS is known as “ the nation’s leading for-profit developer and manager”. MBS replaced the public housing with the Heritage Park development, a mixed-income, “high-amenity” development that includes both rental and for-sale homes. The overall number of rented units declined from 700 before HOPE VI to 440 after privatization. The story of the Sumner Field homes shows what MPHA wants to do with the other 200 public housing units they have been trying to privatize through RAD and other schemes. 

Officials in housing authorities and HUD claim that HOPE VI and its successor Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) are intended to allow for private funding to supplant public funding of “affordable housing.” In fact, many officials and academics have argued that these two programs are necessary to ensure that housing is well-maintained through private funding, since there is allegedly insufficient public funding for maintenance. This is a lie for two reasons. 

First, private housing is not as affordable as public housing, which rents for 30% of residents’ income. Regional definitions of affordability are based on the Area Median Income, the midpoint income for the entire 13-county Twin Cities metro area. As a result, many working-class people cannot afford the rent for private-market housing that the Met Council deems “affordable”. 

Second, even private affordable housing gets public funding, even after agencies implement HOPE VI or RAD. The mayor and city council voted to hand $375,000 dollars in federal stimulus funding to MBS, specifically for maintenance. If HOPE VI and RAD  were intended to free up private-sector cash for maintenance, why is the public sector still covering maintenance? The public is now paying a private developer who offers housing that is less affordable than the public housing it replaced. This series of events shows the real reason why politicians and bureaucrats are foaming at the mouth to privatize public housing: they want to hand more money to their campaign-funding developer friends. 

Please ask Mayor Frey and City Council Members why they don’t instead fund the repairs that are badly needed in the public housing highrises and single-family homes (scattered-sites) around the city. 

City Council Pushes Mayor Frey’s Displacement Agenda by Demolishing Single-Family Public Housing in Gentrifying Neighborhoods

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In August 2021, the Minneapolis City Council approved Jacob Frey’s plan to fund the demolition of 16 small (single-family or duplex) public housing homes with money from Biden’s American Rescue Plan stimulus package. Called scattered-sites, each unit is home to one or two households, usually large families living in a house with up to four bedrooms. In total, 22 households will be displaced as their homes are demolished and rebuilt into four-plexes and six-plexes (with smaller units) owned by private developers. So far, there is no evidence that MPHA or City of Minneapolis is collecting public comments or notified  public housing residents that live in these homes, their neighbors, or neighborhood organizations.

Before explaining exactly what is happening to these 16 homes and the 22 households affected by privatization, it is necessary to understand the Minneapolis 2040 Plan – the city’s current plan to increase housing density over the next few decades. This plan is often hailed by liberals and progressives who misguidedly claim that increases in density will solve the “affordable housing crisis”. In actuality, research suggests that density increases property values without necessarily leading to new housing construction or lower rents. Further, the plan itself could exacerbate the city’s racial disparities by encouraging expensive new luxury developments.

More importantly, if the main goal of the 2040 Plan is to ensure housing affordability, why does it include a resolution to get rid of fully rent-controlled public housing in Minneapolis? In December 2018, without notifying public housing residents or soliciting public comments, Council Vice Chair Andrea Jenkins and former Councilmember and current MPHA Executive Director Abdi Warsame quietly inserted into the 2040 plan a resolution to privatize the entire stock of Minneapolis Public Housing. Immediately after, the rest of the city council voted to approve the full plan. 

The city’s initial writeup on Frey’s stimulus spending uses the 2040 Plan to justify the specific targeting of the scattered site homes. To the city’s public officials and their developer cronies, scattered site public housing is an obstacle that stops them from building denser private market housing. In fact, the 2022 Moving to Work (MTW) plan – a report MPHA submits to The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) each year – states that the scattered sites are “sought-after” properties for this reason. 

These 16 public housing properties have been slated for conversion into private market housing through a process called Section 18 Demolition & Disposition. While Minneapolis’ City Council was putting the finishing touches on the 2040 Plan, the Trump Administration broadened Section 18 to allow housing authorities to privatize and demolish any number of public housing units they desired, as long as local Cities & politicians approved. 

Local governmental approval came quickly. In 2019, Mayor Frey and Council President Lisa Bender wrote a letter to then HUD Secretary Ben Carson expressing support for MPHA’s plan to privatize 730 scattered-site public housing single family homes  through Section 18 Demolition & Disposition. Despite vocally opposing Trumpism in Minneapolis, Frey and Bender were actively using Trump Administration deregulation to advance their gentrification agenda.

Section 18 Demolition & Disposition may be supported by Minneapolis’ politicians, but it is not supported by public housing residents. MPHA’s initial Section 18 application to HUD was written and submitted without any input from scattered-site residents. Now, as the Section 18 process continues, MPHA has coercively asked residents to sign leases that include rent increases and fee hikes, even after initially promising that housing costs would not substantially change after privatization. 

Defend Glendale and Public Housing Coalition obtained the neighborhood locations of these 16 buildings from an MPHA data request (data shown at the end of the article). It is unsurprising that the 16 units  and 22 households are located in several gentrifying neighborhoods. The above map shows the neighborhoods of the 16 units  and 22 households. Notably, four of the two-homes are located in Phillips (East and Midtown Phillips specifically). Phillips is one of the most diverse – and fastest gentrifying – areas of the city. Five other units slated for demolition are located in the North Side neighborhoods of Harrison, Willard-Hay, and Jordan, home to large Black and Asian American populations. Even Beltrami in Northeast Minneapolis is one of that area’s more racially diverse neighborhoods.

As Minneapolis approaches the 2021 local elections, the current City Council Members  have questions to answer: Why did they vote to privatize public housing? Why did they vote to use federal funding to demolish public housing and displace families in their own Wards? How can they talk about racial justice as they actively advance the gentrification of low-income majority-BIPOC neighborhoods? 

If Minneapolis politicians were serious about ensuring affordability, they would be preserving and expanding public housing, not actively privatizing it in gentrifying areas. This election season, listen carefully to incumbents and their challengers. Promises to build more “affordable housing” ring hollow when politicians turn around and vote to demolish public housing with rents fixed at 30% of residents’ incomes. Politicians’ calls to fight against gentrification make little sense when they vote along with Mayor Frey to get rid of public housing in Black and Brown neighborhoods. 

Ward Locations of the 22 Households/Public Housing Single-Family Slated for Demolition 
NeighborhoodsWard(s)Current Council Member(s)Public Housing Units 
Windom Park1Kevin Reich2
Beltrami3Steve Fletcher1
Seward2 & 6Cam Cordon, Jamal Osman2
Jordan4 & 5Phillipe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison 2
Harrison, Willard-Hay5Jeremiah Ellison3 (1 Harrison, 2 Willard-Hay)
East Phillips, Midtown Phillips9Alondra Cano8 (4 in each)
Standish, Morris Park12Andrew Johnson2 (1 in each)
Lynnhurst13Linea Palmisano2
Notes: Ward and neighborhood boundaries obtained from this map. Data on housing unit locations from a data request  made to MPHA. 
Raw Data Obtained from MPHA Data Request
Site ID NumberExisting UnitExisting Unit Bedroom SizeNew BuildingNeighborhood
Site 1Unit 141 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsHARRISON
Site 2Unit 132 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsMIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 2Unit 232 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsMIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 3Unit 132 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsMIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 3Unit 232 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsMIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 4Unit 132 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsEAST PHILLIPS
Site 4Unit 232 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsEAST PHILLIPS
Site 5Unit 132 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsSEWARD
Site 6Unit 131 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsEAST PHILLIPS
Site 6Unit 231 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsEAST PHILLIPS
Site 7Unit 131 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsBELTRAMI
Site 8Unit 122 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsLYNNHURST
Site 8Unit 222 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsLYNNHURST
Site 9Unit 102 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsJORDAN
Site 10Unit 122 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsWINDOM PARK
Site 10Unit 222 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsWINDOM PARK
Site 11Unit 142 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsWILLARD-HAY
Site 12Unit 132 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsSTANDISH
Site 13Unit 122 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedroomsMORRIS PARK
Site 14Unit 131 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsHARRISON
Site 15Unit 131 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsSEWARD
Site 16Unit 131 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedroomsJORDAN

Area Median Income in 2021: AMI goes up and so does rent

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Bar chart with three categories showing area median income. First category shows area median icnome for all familes in the metro region, second shows AMI for all familes in ramsey and hennepin counties, and thrid shows AMI for black families in the metro region. Black families are shown to have the lowest AMI.

This 2021 election season, candidates running for Minneapolis mayor and council consistently mention expanding “affordable” or “deeply affordable” housing in their platforms. But few seem to understand what affordability actually means, according to city public agencies. To really understand why nods to “deep affordable” are meaningless, one needs to investigate the metric known as Area Median Income. In this piece we will show that housing with rents tied to AMI numbers are not very affordable after all, certainly not for working class people in the city. 

The Area Median Income (AMI) is a key metric in determining rents for so-called “affordable” housing. In the Twin Cities metro area, the current Area Median Income is in the six figure range, at $104,900.  The Met Council categorizes housing as affordable if its rent is affordable for a household earning 60% of the AMI, which in 2021 is approximately $62,900. AMI also is used to determine income limits for public housing residents and residents of housing subsidized with Section 8 vouchers. Despite its importance in housing policy, AMI is a misleading number and its use in classifying housing as affordable has disastrous results.

Before understanding why AMI is inequitable and glosses over deep inequality in the Twin Cities metro region, it is useful to understand how it is computed. Calculated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and used in metropolitan areas across the United States, AMI hypothetically captures the exact median (or midpoint) of all family incomes for an entire metro area. In actuality, HUD is estimating the AMI. HUD uses 2018 Census data on family incomes across each metro area. It then uses inflation numbers and assumptions about wage increases to project what the AMI will be in the future. This is how public agencies have calculations for the 2021 AMI even though raw Census data from 2021 doesn’t exist yet. This is also why the AMI increases year after year, increasing the rental rates for fake “affordable” housing on the private market. 

The fact that AMI numbers are projections drawn from old data is not the only reason why these figures should not be used to determine housing affordability in cities. The geographic scope over which the median family income is estimated is far too wide. Metro areas are determined by HUD, usually reflecting boundaries set by the US Census Bureau. The Twin Cities metro area includes the two principal cities Minneapolis and St Paul, all surrounding first and second ring suburbs, and even exurbs reaching all the way into Wisconsin. The AMI is skewed upwards by the inclusion of the wealthier and whiter suburbs in the sample used to calculate it. Despite this, numbers derived from the AMI still determine how public agencies and nonprofits qualify housing as affordable in Minneapolis. 

Further, what populations live in the housing for which AMI affects income eligibility and rental prices? The Twin Cities region has high racial income and wealth gaps, yet the AMI is the median of ALL families’ incomes. As a result it glosses over racial inequality and makes little sense for public agencies to use, all while they claim they are thinking about racial equity in public policy. Even though Black and Brown people make up over 90% of Minneapolis public housing residents, according to data obtained from MPHA, the AMI used to determine eligibility and classify Minneapolis rental housing as “affordable” captures incomes from a much weather and whiter region. As displayed in Table 1, quick calculations using HUD’s own methods show just how much the AMI obscurs inequality within the metro area.

Although Black families are the majority of Minneapolis’ public housing and Section 8 residents, the Met Council uses a number that is over twice metro Black families median income to define affordability. Further, why do federal regulations have MPHA, the city of Minneapolis, and other public agencies using the 13 county area’s AMI instead of income statistics from their own jurisdictions? Hennepin and Ramsey counties – the two most urban and populated counties in the region – have an AMI that is about $30,000 lower than the overall AMI. The use of the 13 county AMI to set rents and income limits in Minneapolis and St. Paul is deeply racist and classist.

Table 1: Median Family Incomes of Different Groups in Twin Cities Metro
Group Median Income 2021
Families of 4 in 13-county area (HUD AMI)$104,900 
All Black Families in 13-county area  $40,400 
All Families Hennepin and Ramsey Counties$71,600 
All MPHA Public Housing Resident Families$10,758
Data on overall 13-county AMI (first row) from Met Council. Data on other median incomes (next three rows) from 2018 American Community Survey sourced from IPUMS USA, computed with HUD’s procedures for AMI calculation. Income numbers for the bottom three rows were computed midpoint incomes for the groups described in the left hand column.

As a result of these disparities, very expensive housing gets classified as “affordable” because its rents are within-budget for people making under a certain percentage of AMI. Hennepin County continues to publicly fund fake affordable housing, as defined by the inappropriate and misleading AMI figures. For example, the Fort Snelling Upper Post development’s units are considered affordable because their rents are set at 30% of income for people making under 60% AMI – roughly $62,000 for a four person household. However, as shown above, these rents are out of reach for working class people in the metro area. By contrast, although public housing residents cannot earn more than 80% AMI, the rent they are actually charged is 30% of their income. Table 2 shows the rent that the same families would pay for the same unit in both public and so-called affordable housing.

Public housing is a guaranteed way to preserve truly affordable housing because it is rent controlled at 30% of residents’ actual income. Despite this, MPHA is actively privatizing public housing in Minneapolis through the RAD and Section 18 Demolition & Disposition program. Although MPHA claims that residents will remain in their units after RAD converts public housing to Section 8 subsidized housing rented on the private market, history suggests otherwise. Residents will be displaced as Minneapolis’ politicians and developers continue to deliberately transform the city into a playground for the elite. If anyone in power was serious about ending the housing crisis, they would talk less of fake “affordable” housing and more of expanding public housing – the only proven way to protect against displacement and gentrification.

Table 2: 2021 Rents in Public Housing Versus “Affordable” Housing 
HouseholdHousehold Income Per MonthApartmentPublic Housing Rent(30% income)“Affordable Housing” (30% AMI)“Affordable Housing” (60% AMI)“Affordable Housing” (80% AMI)
Senior citizen on SSI$794 1 Bed$225$590$1,101$1,468
Median MPHA Public Housing Household (avg size two) $896.50 2 Bed$268.95$708$1,417$1,889
MPHA Median Family of 4  $1685.08 3 Bed$505.52$817$1,635$2,180
Notes: Public housing median incomes and average household items computed by DGPHC using data gathered from an MPHA data request. Data on SSI income from Social Security Administration. Data on rents at different levels of “affordable housing” from Met Council.

Call to Action submit public comments to reject the destruction of public housing in MPHA’s 2022 MTW Annual Plan

Released August 22, 2021


Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition is asking all of the public housing residents that have been marginalized & ignored and all of our allies to submit this call to the action letter;  https://actionnetwork.org/letters/reject-mphas-2022-mtw-annual-plan. This letter rejects MPHA and Minneapolis City’s plans to destroy the entire stock of Minneapolis public housing. 

MPHA and the City of Minneapolis have been planning to do this in stages for years. This destructive plan is the first time since the creation of public housing shortly before WWII that the City of Minneapolis decided to end public housing as we know it.  Please submit your call-to-action letter/ comments to MPHA, Minneapolis City Hall, MN State Legislatures, and HUD.

Here is the link to submit your letter/comments, https://actionnetwork.org/letters/reject-mphas-2022-mtw-annual-plan. You will see our demands, background information/ analysis of MPHA’s 2022 MTW Annual Plan, and a sample letter in the right-hand corner when you open this link. You can start writing and adding your comments. When you submit the letter, it will go to over 40 elected officials. The letters go to all Minneapolis City Council, Mayor Frey, Minneapolis State and House Representatives, MN Attorney General, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Senator Tina Smith, MPHA Commissioners/ staff, and HUD staff. 

MPHA’s deadline to submit comments is August 31, 2021, but you can submit comments to the rest of the officials until Friday, September 10, 2021. 

Here are our 6 demands outlined in the letter and explained in our analysis; 

  1. MPHA must hold virtual public meetings that are accessible to public housing residents and the larger community before the 2022 MTW Annual Plan is approved.  
  2. Provide translation of the  2022 MTW Plan before Board &  HUD approval.
  3. Reject the regional MTW plan because Minneapolis residents will be displaced to the suburbs.
  4. Reject The “Pathways Forward” plan which will disproportionately punish large families living in Public Housing.
  5. Reject rent reasonableness for Section 8 project-based voucher subsidized housing because it will increase rents, accelerate gentrification and displacement.
  6. Reject using RAD to privatize high rises and the demolition of 16 scattered sites because it will lead to displacement and increase rents.

Thank you for supporting us in the long struggle to keep public housing public and save our communities.  

Public Housing Civil Rights Class Action Lawsuit against City of Minneapolis, MPHA & CHR

On September 7th, 2021 a Public Housing Civil Rights Class Action Lawsuit was filed on behalf of Public Housing Tenants in Minneapolis against The City of Minneapolis, Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, and Community Housing Resources (MPHA’s nonprofit).

This class-action lawsuit challenges the egregious discriminatory practices that have forced tenants to endure hazardous living conditions. It alleges that the City of Minneapolis has discriminated against public housing residents on the basis of public assistance. It also names MPHA and Community Housing Resources as defendants, alleging that they breached the terms of their leases by failing to obtain rental licenses and inspections and respond to maintenance requests. The lawsuit goes on to assert consumer protection and housing law violations against all three defendants.


This is an exciting time for public housing residents in Minneapolis. For years the City and MPHA have refused to engage with residents. Now, we are heard!


If you have any questions or need more information see the below press release and the contacts of the law firms handling the case.
Press Release: https://www.nka.com/news-and-articles/mpha-release.html

MPHA Finally Admits Elliot Twins Will Not House Public Housing Residents

On July 2nd, 2021 The Minnesota Daily published an article entitled “Frey proposes $28 million in affordable housing and homelessness”. The article primarily focuses on Jacob Frey’s plan to spend federal funding disbursed from Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) stimulus on several housing initiatives, including the displacement of public housing residents from scattered sites. However, its main photo is of the Elliot Twins Apartments, a former public housing complex not explicitly mentioned in Frey’s plan to use ARP funds. The photo’s caption (shown below along with the photo itself) describes the Elliot Twins as “a public housing option for low-income households on campus” that could “potentially experience renovations under certain initiatives.”

This blurb inadvertently tells the general public something that the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority has long denied: upon its privatization, Elliot Twins will not house public housing residents. This is a subtle change of the official narrative. Despite us calling MPHA’s bluff over a year ago, public officials have repeatedly claimed that public housing residents will continue to live in Elliot Twins.  

The story of Elliot Twins’ privatization is long and complicated and involves Minneapolis Councilmembers, MPHA officials, and Mayor Frey himself repeatedly lying to residents. Lies repeated for over four years are finally set straight by this admission in the Minnesota Daily.

The story begins in April 2017, when MPHA submitted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) a statement of intent to privatize the Elliot Twins. Specifically, MPHA expressed their interest in using the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program to convert Elliot Twins from public housing into private housing subsidized through Section 8 vouchers. In early 2018, the Elliot Twins resident council undemocratically and opaquely voted to approve MPHA’s privatization plan, without the acknowledgement or consent of the vast majority of residents. 

Upon discovering this, Elliot Twins residents wrote a letter to MPHA disavowing MPHA’s puppet resident council and outlining their grievances with the slow and confusing so-called “relocation plan”. In August 2018, residents met with MPHA Executive Director Greg Russ to convey their opposition to privatization and displacement. Greg Russ responded that displacement would not occur and that during the renovation process residents could use Section 8 vouchers to find housing, ignoring the tight rental market and the long Section 8 waitlist. But there was no guarantee residents would come back after the renovation was complete.   In December 2018,  Mayor Frey and the City Council passed a resolution to allow MPHA to privatize Minneapolis public housing properties, starting with Elliot Twins. The resolution was authored by Councilmembers Abdi Warsame and Andrea Jenkins without consent or feedback from public housing residents or the general public. The media focused more on the Minneapolis 2040 gentrification plan, which was also approved that same exact day. 

In the spring of 2019, Jacob Frey and Greg Russ sent Warsame to stall Elliot Twins residents’ momentum against RAD. Warsame exploited relationships he developed during his previous Ward 6 election to convince some vulnerable elders to stop organizing. Specifically, he promised them no one will be displaced – a boldfaced lie. Shortly after, the City of Minneapolis signed an MOU with MPHA to allow the privatization of public housing without enformentent or protection measures for public housing residents from displacement. 

By late 2019, the RAD process was complete. Upon conversion to subsidized private housing, MPHA leased the Elliot Twins’ land to the Royal Bank of Canada for 99 years, effectively selling off the buildings and giving the private sector the ability to make the renovations. Despite being a private financial firm, The Royal Bank of Canada still received over $18 million in public funding in the form of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). Despite this, MPHA claims to maintain control of the buildings through questionable private shell companies, which have taken on large risky loans in order to renovate the buildings. RAD did not save taxpayers any money. The only difference is that now private financiers, developers, and landlords get a cut. 

The cosmetic renovations financed by the Royal Bank of Canada and other private financial firms, yet actually funded by the general public’s tax dollars illustrate MPHA’s apparent desire to attract a new type of tenant. The destruction of Minneapolis’ public housing is part of the city government’s broader campaign to attract wealthier and young majority white people to downtown neighborhoods to increase their tax base. By contrast, the long-term residents of Elliot Twins are majority Black and Brown people, seniors, and people with disabilities who receive $750 a month from SSI. The fact that MPHA is apparently marketing these apartments to University of Minnesota students (despite their distance from campus), further demonstrates that long-time public housing residents are not a part of MPHA’s vision for the future of these properties. In order to rent to University of Minnesota students, MPHA and the Elliot Twins’ new owners will have to permanently displace public housing residents. Now that MPHA and City of Minneapolis have effectively acknowledged their real plans to the Minnesota Daily, they have finally exposed their utter disregard for public housing residents and their true intention for Elliot Twins. This is what RAD displacement and destruction of public housing looks like.

Mayor Frey and City Council use Biden’s Stimulus to Demolish Public Single-Family Homes and Displace their Residents

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.