MPHA commissioners are okay with sending their executive director, Abdi Warsame, to create chaos.

Glendale Townhomes families are closer than ever to getting their housing historically preserved. This would secure Glendale’s place in Prospect Park, ending a decades-long fight against privatization and demolition. On April 22nd, the Minneapolis Historic Preservation Commission approved the designation of Glendale as a historic district. Today, May 6th, the decision will move to the City Council’s BHIZ committee, after which it will go to a full council vote for final approval on  Thursday, May 15th.

In response, MPHA has been engaging in a misinformation campaign, telling residents with large families that MPHA has plans for demolition, which Historic Preservation would thwart. At an April 5th meeting at Glendale, MPHA CEO Abdi Warsame falsely claimed that basic maintenance fixes and repairs can come only if historic preservation is rejected. MPHA Commissioners want to demolish Glendale through RAD, then convert the Section 9 public land to privately owned land through Section 8. Once Glendale is demolished, MPHA Commissioners want private developers to take over the land for $1, then use more public funding to build luxury buildings with smaller units that no one can afford. This is intentional and will block the large families here from returning because they won’t qualify to move back due to their family size. First off, it is categorically false that historic preservation will hinder renovations. Second, this lie ignores the current political climate around federal housing policy, especially with Donald Trump’s recent threats to cut Section 8 vouchers. If MPHA demolishes Glendale and converts the land into Section 8 in the hands of private developers, they will put all of their eggs in Trump’s basket while sacrificing their ability to use stable, reliable state funding sources, such as POHP and Historic Preservation.

Defend Glendale and the Public Housing Coalition have consistently raised concerns about MPHA’s increased use of the federal RAD and Section 18 programs to convert housing from public to private. Residents of MPHA’s scattered sites experience sharp hikes in maintenance fees after privatization, costs that used to be included in rent when the housing was public. In Addition, the Section 9 single-family homes that have been privatized through Section 8 are being demolished, families have been displaced, and the ones that are not the tenants are facing high costs with fees and rents.  MPHA is still evicting tenants who can’t pay these high rents. 

Additionally, when MPHA demolished the Section 9 single-family homes known as scattered sites, many scattered-site families were displaced and pushed out of the city. We don’t know where they are. The new units were smaller, and the large families that used to live in the single-family homes didn’t come back because they didn’t qualify. The new, smaller units are not for large families, and MPHA gave the land to a private LLC.

MPHA has conveniently ignored these details. Instead, they purposely spread misinformation and promise residents “four approaches” for demolition, which amount to a few CGI renderings and photographs of bathrooms with no substantive information. 

One Glendale resident asked these exact questions and was told there was no concrete plan or real details. Put simply, MPHA has no clue what it wants to do with Glendale in the long run, beyond demolition. The MPHA commissioners are okay with sending their executive director, Abdi Warsame, to chaotically spread misinformation and bring the trauma of displacement to Glendale families. In addition, many MPHA commissioners, especially the board chair, Tom Hoch, have deep ties to the Minneapolis Downtown Council. Why are millionaires running public housing?

Every problem with RAD  and Section 18 is multiplied under the current federal political climate. The Trump administration, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is gutting HUD and slashing spending on housing programs. When Trump froze federal funding in early March, the freeze initially included Section 8 rental assistance, leaving voucher recipients across the country on the hook for the remainder of their rent, which is set by private landlords, which would have led to massive displacement across the nation. MPHA Commissioners want this for Glendale and the smaller number of Section 9 public housing units left throughout the City.  

Recently, plans to cut Section 8 vouchers in Trump’s upcoming proposed budget were leaked, sending housing authorities across the country into a panic and demonstrating that cuts to Section 8 are a long-term goal of Trump and his cronies. Reductions to HUD personnel will further delay the timely administration of the voucher program, leaving tenants with even less support. Currently, 44% of employees in the office overseeing the Section 8 Project-based rental assistance program may be laid off. This coincides with Trump pausing funding for thousands of government programs, including 100 that the HUD administers. All of these DOGE cuts exacerbate existing issues. Because of funding limitations, only 1 in 4 people in need of rental assistance received assistance in 2022.  It is unwise for MPHA to propose demolition in Glendale now, at all times. Why is MPHA putting all its eggs in Trump’s basket? The MPHA Commissioners, most developers, and the downtown business council do not believe we deserve secure and stable Section 9 public housing, which has more protections for tenants than Section 8. 

For as long as Trump is in office, it is wildly dangerous for MPHA Commissioners to rely on federal Section 8 funding for residents, especially when there are state funding sources insulated from Trump’s federal chaos. DGPHC has already discussed MPHA’s avoidable failure to fully draw on Minnesota’s Publicly Owned Housing Program (POHP). POHP is a program established by the state legislature in 2005, dedicated to renovating and preserving  Section 9 publicly owned housing in Minnesota through providing 20-year, zero-interest loans forgivable under the condition that the housing stays public. Despite MPHA receiving 12.3 million in POHP funding in the past, by privatizing and demolishing its Section 9 housing portfolio through Section 18 and RAD, MPHA deliberately limits its ability to use POHP funding in the future.  POHP funding is available only for Section 9 publicly owned housing, and any housing privatized through RAD and Section 18 is explicitly exempt.   This is because RAD and Section 18 convert housing from Section 9 to Section 8, meaning housing is no longer publicly owned but publicly funded for private developers to become millionaires. 

When the City Council approves Glendale’s historic designation, it will also allow MPHA to access the State and City Historic Preservation Grants-in-Aid Program, in addition to PHOP, another stable source of state funding. These grants are explicitly used to renovate, repair, and rehabilitate historically preserved, publicly owned buildings and homes. Despite the existence of this program, MPHA wants residents and community members to believe that historic preservation will make it impossible to maintain the homes and fix and repair them, which is a blatant lie. 

The correct choice is clear: by historically preserving Glendale and keeping it as Section 9 public housing, MPHA will retain and gain access to more funding from the State of Minnesota. Instead, by pushing for demolition and fighting against historic preservation, MPHA Commissioners are leaving the question of long-term funding up to Trump. By continuing their push with Glendale right at the beginning of Trump’s second term, MPHA Commissioners show that they do not care about the well-being of their residents.