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
Neighborhoods	Ward(s)	Current Council Member(s)	Public Housing Units
Windom Park	1	Kevin Reich	2
Beltrami	3	Steve Fletcher	1
Seward	2 & 6	Cam Cordon, Jamal Osman	2
Jordan	4 & 5	Phillipe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison	2
Harrison, Willard-Hay	5	Jeremiah Ellison	3 (1 Harrison, 2 Willard-Hay)
East Phillips, Midtown Phillips	9	Alondra Cano	8 (4 in each)
Standish, Morris Park	12	Andrew Johnson	2 (1 in each)
Lynnhurst	13	Linea Palmisano	2
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 Number	Existing Unit	Existing Unit Bedroom Size	New Building	Neighborhood
Site 1	Unit 1	4	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	HARRISON
Site 2	Unit 1	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	MIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 2	Unit 2	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	MIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 3	Unit 1	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	MIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 3	Unit 2	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	MIDTOWN PHILLIPS
Site 4	Unit 1	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	EAST PHILLIPS
Site 4	Unit 2	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	EAST PHILLIPS
Site 5	Unit 1	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	SEWARD
Site 6	Unit 1	3	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	EAST PHILLIPS
Site 6	Unit 2	3	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	EAST PHILLIPS
Site 7	Unit 1	3	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	BELTRAMI
Site 8	Unit 1	2	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	LYNNHURST
Site 8	Unit 2	2	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	LYNNHURST
Site 9	Unit 1	0	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	JORDAN
Site 10	Unit 1	2	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	WINDOM PARK
Site 10	Unit 2	2	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	WINDOM PARK
Site 11	Unit 1	4	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	WILLARD-HAY
Site 12	Unit 1	3	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	STANDISH
Site 13	Unit 1	2	2 two-bedrooms, 4 three-bedrooms	MORRIS PARK
Site 14	Unit 1	3	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	HARRISON
Site 15	Unit 1	3	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	SEWARD
Site 16	Unit 1	3	1 Two-bedroom, 3 three-bedrooms	JORDAN