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.  

MPHA Creates Shell Companies to Privatize Public Housing

DG&PHC found this information in the list of companies MPHA contracts with.  As a result, we were able to retrieve one of their contracts that shows this evidence. MPHA created these companies in January of 2021. Each of the above companies is a legally separate nonprofit corporation and a developer that holds a contract with MPHA (Minneapolis Public Housing Authority) itself. However, MPHA Executive Director & CEO Abdi Warsame is also the Executive Director of each company. These companies were formed to redevelop the Elliot Twins. But they exist to privatize other public housing buildings, and homes which MPHA wants to call affordable housing after they are privatized.

During the COVID Pandemic, summer of 2020, the Keep Public Housing Public Minneapolis Coalition conducted a letter campaign to hold MPHA accountable and pause all privatization schemes.  MPHA pushed RAD at Elliot Twins and  Section 18 Demolition & Disposition to privatize over 730 single-family homes known as scattered sites. MPHA failed to create a transparent process to answer questions and explain the schemes. MPHA kept pushing their plans behind closed doors. Tessa Wetjen, Commissioner of MPHA, responded to one of the letters from an ally.  Tessa Wetjen said:  “I understand people are concerned about the future of scattered site homes, but what MPHA is doing with them is essentially moving them from one (internal) program to another, not getting rid of them.” See the last paragraph of Tessa’s email.               

If MPHA is not changing anything;

  1. Why are they creating three private companies for the first time in MPHA’s history? 
  2. Why are they naming the companies all MPHA….? Is it to confuse the public and make the people think these companies are public when they are legally seperate private companies?
  3. How can MPHA claim that nothing is changing when they are legally transferring public housing to private market so-called “affordable” housing?

Call to Action: Call City Officials and Tell Them to Vote Yes on Glendale’s Historic Designation

6/23 Update:

Glendale Townhomes Historic Designation Update:

Yesterday, the Business, Inspections, Housing, and Zoning Committee, chaired by Lisa Goodman was scheduled to vote on Historic Designation for Glendale Townhomes. Instead of voting yes or no, they chose to pause the vote indefinitely and not move it forward to a city council-wide vote. They want the historic designation of Glendale townhomes to die without any discussion of MPHA’s plans or policies on the record. The council members opposed to historic designation were Lisa Goodman, Jeremiah Ellison, Jamal Osman, and Kevin Reich. All of these people are up for re-election and don’t believe that issue will affect their races. Please let them know that their disregard, disrespect, and dismissal of public housing residents will not go unnoticed. If any other property in the city were up for historic designation, it would not be an issue. But because we are public housing residents, with a majority of Glendale residents being Black, our voices, our desires for our community, and our history do not matter.

Friends of Lisa Goodman Lisa.Goodman@Minneapolismn.gov 612-637-2207 Twitter; @MplsWard7 & @cmlisagoodman

Jeremiah Bey Ellison; Jeremiah.Ellison@minneapolismn.gov612-637-2205; Twitter; @MplsWard5 @ jeremiah4north

Kevin Reich: kevin.reich@minneapolismn.gov; 612-637-2205Twitter;@MplsWard1

Jamal Osman: jamal.osman@minneapolismn.gov; 612-637-2205; Twitter; @JamalOsmanMN

CALL TO ACTION: On Tuesday the Business, Inspections, Housing & Zoning (BIHZ) Committee is VOTING on Historic Designation for Glendale. MPHA is allowed to speak, but residents & community are not. Please call and email the following City Council Members and tell them to vote YES.

Committee Chair Lisa Goodman (Edit: Phone Number, 612-637-2207)is allowing MPHA, A LANDLORD, to speak but is refusing residents, community members and historic experts the chance to speak. MPHA plans on privatizing Glendale via RAD this year, and Historic Designation is the only way that can be stopped.

Glendale Town Houses is the oldest public housing development in Minneapolis and the last of it’s kind after decades of privatization. The places where Poor, Black and Brown people live deserve historic designation too. CALL these council members and tell them to VOTE YES.

Once you Call and Email, please use the hashtag #HistoricGlendale to voice your support.

Edit: Correction on Lisa Goodman’s email

Email: Lisa.Goodman@Minneapolismn.gov