Click here for an article about the government shutdown affecting project-based Section 8 voucher holders.

The government shutdown is exposing how risky and unstable housing vouchers are compared to public housing, as residents at over 1,000 project-based Section 8 properties around the country are at risk of eviction.  If the shutdown continues, even more residents will be at risk. See the map below to get a sense of the scale of this crisis.

Project-based Section 8 housing is NOT public housing; it is owned by private landlords who sign contracts with HUD to accept Section 8 vouchers. When the government is shutdown, these contracts can expire and residents will face eviction. This is not a danger that public housing faces, because it is publicly owned. Yet, MPHA and the City of Minneapolis want to convert and sell Minneapolis’ safe, stable public housing to private developers, which will cause massive evictions and displacement. 

https://nlihc.org/issues/budget/shutdown-map

MPHA and the City of Minneapolis are moving forward with their privatization and eviction plans that will destabilize the lives of thousands of public housing residents. While the federal government is shut down, MPHA and City of Minneapolis are starting the eviction plans of Elliot Twins Public Housing in Ward 6 that have majority East African- Somali, Oromo and African American seniors and elders. Both the City and MPHA want to gentrify by selling  the buildings to private developers through the RAD program, and they want residents to apply for Section 8 Vouchers with no place to go. The city and MPHA both  know that wait- list for Section 8 Vouchers including Project Based Section 8  is over 7 years, and vulnerable residents will face homelessness.  Also, hardly anyone is renting to Section 8 Vouchers holders because these residents who are majority BIPOC, immigrants and refugees face extreme discrimination in Minneapolis by landlords.

The current crisis facing voucher holders makes it clearer that this crisis must be stopped. City of Minneapolis and MPHA want to forcefully remove residents.

Please come support residents of the Elliot Twins apartments fighting MPHA’s eviction plans this Thursday, January 17 from 1:30 – 3:30 pm at the Elliot Twins Community Room, 1225 South 8th Street, Minneapolis, MN, 55404.

Say no to privatization! 

 Say no to RAD!

Keep public housing public!

Tuesday, January 8th, 2019 residents at Elliot Twins received two letters from MPHA. See both letters here: https://tinyurl.com/Elliot-RAD-Eng. The first letter stated that HUD has approved MPHA’s RAD application to privatize their homes even though HUD has been shut down since December 22nd. (Source: https://www.hud.gov/

In the letter, Minneapolis Public Housing Authority ( MPHA) is stating low-income residents who are almost all Black (African American and East African) and seniors in both buildings will be forcibly removed from their homes and from Minneapolis. MPHA has also used our tax dollars to hire a nonprofit pr group called the “Center for Multicultural Mediation” (CMM) in order to coerce very vulnerable senior residents into accepting this (https://sites.google.com/site/multiculturalmediation/). MPHA is again creating chaos in the East African community. They have hired an East African pr nonprofit to try to silence vulnerable East African Seniors. If HUD already approved their application, why do they need to hire this nonprofit?

The second letter is very weird. It is a General Information Notice (GIN), taken from a sample form letter provided on HUD’s website;
https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/1378X3CPDH.PDF. This letter is a boilerplate letter HUD provides to housing agencies to use when the agency knows that public housing residents are going to be displaced. Because the Government is in shutdown, it is unclear whether the letter came from HUD or whether MPHA used HUD letterhead in a confusing way to make it seem like HUD approved the RAD application for Elliot Twins.

We want MPHA to disclose the actual letter that came from HUD that says that the RAD application at the Elliot Twins has been approved. They have not provided this letter to residents or the public.

Either this RAD application was approved before the shutdown, and MPHA has sat on it, or MPHA is misleading residents into thinking that HUD has approved their RAD application while the government is closed.

HUD’s website seems to contradict what MPHA is claiming. It contains a notice saying that HUD is closed, and provides a link to their official Government Shutdown Contingency Plan. Page 74 of this contingency plan explicitly states that HUD is not processing RAD applications during the shutdown.
https://www.hud.gov/si…/documents/HUDCONTINGENCYPLANFINAL.PD

In order to push residents to accept this letter, MPHA went around yesterday morning passing out this letter https://tinyurl.com/Elliot-RAD-Eng and forced residents to sign a document saying they received it, even though residents did not know what the letter said or what they were signing. MPHA is doing this to try to kick residents out even though they have not been able to show any official document from HUD showing that their RAD application has been approved. MPHA must know that if apartments are vacant, HUD is more likely to approve a RAD application. In addition, the second letter asks residents who do not have access to emails to email their questions to MPHA.

First, MPHA needs to provide proof that HUD in fact approved the RAD application. Second, City of Minneapolis and City Council Members such as Abdi Warsame, Andrea Jenkins, Cam Gordon, Lisa Bender, Mayor Jacob Frey, and the rest need to be held accountable for allowing MPHA to push through this RAD conversion and evictions while HUD is shut down. City of Minneapolis and MPHA want to isolate and kick out these elders. We call on everyone concerned about this to attend this meeting on Thursday, January 17 from 1:30 – 3:30 pm at the Elliot Twins Community Room on 1225 South 8th Street, Minneapolis, 55404. MPHA has picked this time because they know it is hard for allies to attend meetings during work hours. This makes support even more important.

The government is shutdown. About 800,000 workers are not getting their paychecks. But, MPHA is telling us that HUD has time and money to displace hundreds of low-income seniors on fixed income from their homes and communities?

Call your council member and Mayor Jacob Frey hold them accountable for evicting vulnerable elders and seniors from Elliot Twins is in Ward 6.

This article shows how the voluntary privatization program called RAD is displacing and evicting public housing residents in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Important quotes from the article:

“The Housing Authority made some public promises about how the [privatization] was going to secure the rights tenants had, that those would carry over,” said David Prater, an attorney with Disability Rights Maryland. “What we’ve seen is that has not always been the case. The privatization has caused many to lose out on their rights.”
“The privatization program’s rules guarantee that tenants will receive the same rights as they did under public housing laws, but Prater said he’s seeing violations.”

“Some RAD tenants have been evicted after receiving Notices to Vacate that did not conform to the legal requirements,” he wrote. “We are also concerned that residents are vacating their units after receiving notice, but before a hearing in court, as a result of receiving notices that failed to provide the required notice of due process and tenant rights. We have no way of knowing how many residents unwittingly vacated their units after receiving a Notice of Lease Termination that was likely legally flawed.”

Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) is planning do the same thing in Minneapolis. They applied to HUD to implement RAD and they are still waiting for a decision. MPHA has already received approval/endorsement through this resolution that the City of Minneapolis unanimously passed on December 7th 2018, the same day the City approved the 2040 Comprehensive Plan. MPHA and the City of Minneapolis are using RAD as a tool to gentrify and displace public housing residents out of Minneapolis starting with Elliot Twins in Ward 6 which is inline with their 2040 Comprehensive Plan. After Elliot Twins, MPHA’s targets are Glendale Townhomes, two properties in Ward 3 and one property in Ward 4 as outlined in MPHA’s Strategic Vision & Capital Plan/Proposal (click here)submitted to the City of Minneapolis Housing Policy & Development Committee Chaired by Cam Gordon in June 2018. After these properties are privatized, MPHA plans to privatize/ displace the rest of the 42 public housing high-rises, over 740 single family homes, and more properties throughout the city where over 12,000 low -income residents, majority Black, Black Muslims, Seniors, people with disabilities and families with children call home and community. 
https://tinyurl.com/Comments-6-6-18-Housing-Comm

On Friday December 7, 2018, Council Members Abdi Warsame and Andrea Jenkins became the new faces of displacement by authoring and passing a resolution at Minneapolis City Council to privatize and dismantle public housing.

Let’s Be Clear:

This resolution is dangerous to the lives of public housing residents and endorses MPHA’s privatization plans because relocation is displacement. It actually replicates the same language and talking points that MPHA has been pushing that is it’s RAD plans at Elliot Twins.
First, it opens the door to the privatization of Minneapolis public housing by embracing ‘conversion’ and empowers MPHA on that path. The entire first page is taken directly from MPHA’s presentation about RAD, which insists that there is no federal funding or otherwise available to keep public housing public which is not true. In addition, Cam Gordon ordered staff to do an MOU agreement to make sure that relocation which is displacement and investment which is private dollars and developers taking over public housing in place between City of Minneapolis and MPHA.

For more evidence of MPHA’s lies about their funding, and an explanation of how this resolution came to be and its history, please open the link below.

 https://tinyurl.com/Warsame-Jenkins-Resolution

The battle to save public housing is far from over. This resolution has finally shed the light on where the City of Minneapolis and their “progressive” council members stand. In addition, 80% of the public housing residents are Black (African American and East African). It is very telling that two Black Council Members (Abdi Warsame, Somali, and Andrea Jenkins, African American) have become the faces of destroying public housing and Black communities in Minneapolis.

See the full resolution passed by the City Council here: https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/…/Support%20for%20Public%20H…)

Contact Council Member Abdi Warsame and Andrea Jenkins and Chairman Cam Gordon of the Housing Policy& Development Committee who pushed this resolution as it was hidden in the 2040 Comp. Plan they passed on Friday and he did not notify residents. We thought Cam Gordon was our ally. But he is not. Hold them accountable for furthering the path to destroy and displace our homes and communities.

Ward 6: Abdi Warsame
abdi.warsame@minneapolismn.gov
(612) 673 – 2206
@AbdiYWarsame

Ward 8: Andrea Jenkins
andrea.jenkins@minneapolismn.gov
(612) 673 – 2208
@annapoetic

Ward 2: Cam Gordon
cam.gordon@minneapolismn.gov
(612) 673 – 2202
@CameronAGordon

Read the full report of what took place at City Hall here: https://tinyurl.com/Warsame-Jenkins-Resolution

See our report and comments below of MPHA’s failure again to submit for approval acceptable Annual Plans to HUD for their plans and programs for 2018 and 2019.

The annual plans must be submitted to HUD for approval in order for MPHA to implement plans the following year which includes budget, mission, etc. Since Greg Russ came on board, all they have been submitting to HUD are plans to privatize, sell or demolish public housing. So for 2018, and now for 2019, MPHA failed to submit acceptable, revised plans that included all the changes from the massive amounts of public comments that came from public housing residents and the larger public of Minneapolis that rejects plans to privatize, sell public housing and displace residents. MPHA ignored these comments.

These annual plans are called Moving To Work (MTW) Plans. Every year they have to submit MTW Plan for the following year. For 2018 and 2019, MPHA has failed to submit acceptable plans because they are all about how they will privatize and what loophole they will use to do it.

Here is an in-depth report about RAD (Rental Assistance Demonstration). Executive Director of MPHA Greg Russ and Mayor Jacob Frey have been pushing RAD and DFL Minneapolis City Council Members have been complicit in its implementation. If approved, RAD will privatize and end public housing, as we know it displacing thousands of low- income residents of color mainly East Africans, African Americans, seniors, and people with disabilities. Secretary Ben Carson and President Trump are in favor of RAD being implemented in Cities such as Minneapolis and Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Frey are in favor of RAD.

In this report, we examine what RAD is for our allies to learn about how this program works, and we ask the question does it make sense for Elliot Twins Public Housing which is the first public housing MPHA applied to implement RAD in 2018 as they plan to apply for more buildings in the coming years.

Just an update, MPHA submitted an application to HUD to approve RAD, HUD has yet to reply. City of Minneapolis who had the power to stop this application did not especially Ward 6 Council Member Abdi Warsama where Elliot Twins is located & Mayor Jacob Frey. When you see any of the DFL city council members or the mayor speak about affordable housing, ask them why are they approving plans Carson and Trump are pushing nationwide while there is plenty of funds available to keep public housing public.

Read the full report here:

What is RAD & Does it Make Sense for Elliot Twins Public Housing

A few weeks ago, we shared an anonymous letter by a resident of public housing exposing a major conflict of interest for MPHA executive director Greg Russ. You can see the letter here: https://www.dgphc.org/…/a-letter-from-a-concerned-and-mpha…/

The letter outlined how Greg Russ’s family owns as investors and manages Thies & Talle Inc, one of the largest companies specializing in federally subsidized low-income and tax credit properties in Minnesota. Greg Russ’s father in law, Kenneth Talle, is the President and co-founder of this company. Kenneth Talle’s daughter, Laura Russ (Greg Russ’s wife) is the “Vice President of Asset Management.” You can learn more about the senior leadership at Thies & Talle by exploring their website here: http://www.thiestalle.com/about/our-people.html

As a private investor, Thies & Talle own dozens of apartment complexes in the region, including one building in Minneapolis, and at least one Project-Based Section 8 building in Saint Paul. Here is a link to that building, called “Afton View Apartments” http://www.thiestalle.com/properties/afton-view-st-paul.html

The status of this apartment as a Project-Based Section 8 property is confirmed on the 54th page of this 2018 City of Saint Paul document, which lists the Income Restricted Affordable Housing in the city: https://drive.google.com/…/1lU6Lzim2NH-ss5W3BDnGxL89M…/view…

We encourage the public to look at Thies & Talle’s extensive real estate holdings listed on their website here: http://www.thiestalle.com/properties.html

We are sharing this information today because authorities have not followed up to investigate this conflict of interest. As called for in the letter, we ask the State of Minnesota, City of Minneapolis and HUD to investigate this, including ongoing monitoring of Greg Russ’ family’s involvement as well as involvement from the multiple investors in their real estate holdings. The potential for the Russ family to personally benefit from the sale of public housing demands a thorough and transparent investigation into this conflict of interest. Greg Russ should recuse himself from any decisions regarding all privatization of public housing in Minneapolis, including privatization occurring through the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program.

Dear Allies:

Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition supports the self-determination of the homeless families living at the Hiawatha encampment.  As the housing crisis for the most vulnerable intensifies, it is clear that the City of Minneapolis needs to fix this, and listen and enact real sustainable  solutions that come from residents that are impacted by the current housing crisis.  If not, we will continue to see more homeless camps all over this city.  We need more public housing, not less for low- income and homeless families.

As the leaders and residents of public housing, we have been fighting for the last four years to save public housing in Minneapolis from being demolished, dismantled, and privatized in order to avoid a social and economic crisis that will lead to more homelessness and tent cities. Unfortunately, Mayor Jacob Frey let us down, and we are still waiting on the City Council to act to keep public housing public and to protect public housing residents from displacement through privatization.

We also note that the Hiawatha encampment came to exist at a time when luxury development in Minneapolis is at an all-time high.  All around the city luxury units sit vacant, while the people displaced by the gentrification that accompanies luxury development are forced to live in tents.

This is why communities have to self-organize to save themselves because we have lost confidence in elected officials.  We are in support of self-determination of the Hiawatha encampment.