Minneapolis
Introduction: Our Situation
Tenants in Minnesota bear the heaviest private market housing costs in the Midwest.[1]
This critical fact underlines the importance of defending and expanding the relatively few publicly assisted housing units in our state. It also highlights the importance of bringing all available human resources to work together to resist the on-going attacks on the quantity and availability of our affordable housing and to re-establish recognition that housing is a fundamental human right of all.
How did we get to this point in Minnesota and how do we reverse this? The upcoming hearings and our preparation for them give us a good opportunity to examine those questions and develop a clear path forward.
Over the past years, Minnesota has seen a loss of affordable housing opportunities for families and households with low incomes and challenges to the little that remains. The relative scarcity of publicly supported affordable housing leaves all but a handful of tenants at the mercy of the housing “market” to provide and goes at least part way to explain why Minnesota bear the heaviest private market housing costs in the Midwest.
Project Based Section 8
To date, Minnesota has lost a total of 805 Project Based Section 8 units to landlord opt outs. Of those units lost, 392 of them are in Minneapolis, which accounts for nearly half of the total units lost in MN. Residents living in project based housing face uncertainty as private owners choose to exit the program, ending the long-term affordability of the building. Like the voucher program, households can also wait years before an affordable home will become available.
Section 8 Vouchers
Minneapolis Public Housing Authority opened its Section 8 Voucher waitlist in 2008 for the first time in five years. The ten-year-long waitlist was open for two days, receiving an estimated 17,000 applications from families in need. MPHA estimates that 600 vouchers become available each year as other families leave the program. In the surrounding Twin Cities Metro Area, Section 8 Voucher waiting lists open once every 2.5 to 5 years at a time. Once on the waitlist, a family can expect to wait anywhere from 2 to 6 years, before they will see a voucher. Currently, there are an estimated 11,141 households in the surrounding metro area waiting for a voucher.
Many households who currently have vouchers have faced serious limitations since 2004. Funding formula changes made to the program have prevented voucher holders from moving, restricted the eligibility of participating rentals, and forced some households to pay more than 30% of their incomes toward rent.
Public Housing
Minnesota is no stranger to the imposition of large-scale demolition of affordable housing justified in large part on the theory that destroying affordable housing in areas containing an “unacceptable” number of minority residents and forcibly relocating them from their communities against their will is sound public policy. Similar large-scale demolitions of public housing in pursuit of this policy have occurred or are planned to occur across the country: Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, etc. In the late 90’s, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority demolished 80% of its Family Public Housing Units. In the ten years since, one-for-one replacement for those units has not been achieved.
Prior to 1998-1999 the MPHA’s Public Housing inventory for families was already too low to meet demand — only 902 family units: Sumner Field (350 family units), Olson (66 family units), Glenwood (216 family units), and Lyndale (86 family units) and Glendale (184) for a total of 902 Family Public Housing Units. The total number of MPHA’s Public Housing inventory for families demolished in 1998 and 1999 was 718: Sumner Field (350 family units), Olson (66 family units), Glenwood (216 family units), and Lyndale (86 family units).[2] The 718 units demolished in 1998-1999 were 80% of the 902 total family public housing units the MPHA had before those demolitions.
One-for-one replacement for those units has not occurred and much of the existing public housing throughout the Twin Cities Metro Area remains in dire need of repairs. Determined to move as many Minneapolis tenants to the suburbs as they could, the MPHA gave “incentive units” to suburban housing authorities, who had no obligation to house Minneapolis public housing residents, as a way to motivate these suburban PHAs to accept some replacement units for Minneapolis tenants displaced by the demolitions, thereby permanently reducing the number of public housing units that were actually made available for displaced Minneapolis public housing tenants and other Minneapolis public housing applicants.
The Minneapolis family public housing waiting list is currently 5,200 (see MPHA website: “We currently have about 5,200 applicants on the family waiting list.” http://www.mphaonline.org/housingo.cfm The number of families on the waiting list would undoubtedly be larger, but for the fact that the waiting list has been closed for years. MPHA website.
The views of Minneapolis tenants displaced by the demolitions have been documented aand reported by Professor Edward G. Goetz in Report No. 6 of his book entitled Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America. In Report No. 6 (“The Experiences of Dispersed Families”), Professor Edward Goetz focuses on the aftermath of the demolitions and displacement: where did people move, what do they think of their new neighborhoods, how have their conditions changed?[3] Contrary to the predictions of those who promoted the demolitions, the dislocated tenants did not experience the predicted benefits. By and large, the displaced tenants did not express increased satisfaction with living conditions in their new neighborhood, did not experience increased “social capital” benefits from living with wealthier neighbors, did not experience an increased sense of safety, and did not experience increased employment opportunities.
Subsequently in 2008, in a review of fifteen years of similar demolition and forced displacement via the HOPE VI program, Professor Goetz concluded:
The cumulative picture emerging from these studies is that the social costs borne by these families outweighs the scant and inconsistent benefits achieved by the HOPE VI forced relocation.[4]
The Minnesota Shadow Report to the International Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (December 2008) places Dr. Goetz’s analysis of the the demolitions of public housing in the context of internationally recognized human rights law, stating:
Public housing demolitions, “no build“ guidelines, and site selection policies for public housing based in whole or in part on the racial composition of public housing tenants/applicants or their communities is prohibited racial discrimination under this treaty where, as demonstrated in the following article, the benefits of such policies for the relevant tenant population are demonstrably outweighed by the social costs imposed on minority tenants and warrant international condemnation. [5]
Homelessness Services & Prevention Programs
Lack of funding for these programs forces communities to have to choose who will get help and who will not. Often, the help provided is less that what it should be. While Minnesota’s homelessness services assist nearly 8,000 people daily, job losses and foreclosures continue to drive up the numbers of people who are in need of these services. Rental vacancies are shrinking and rents are going up in the Twin Cities Area, leading to the dramatically increased need of family shelters. In Hennepin County alone (the Minneapolis area), the number of families in need of shelters per month grew by 60% from 2006 to 2008.
It does not take a great mathematician to see that the foreclosure waters have been rising at a swift and unprecedented rate over the past four years. With this track record, what will 2009 bring? More foreclosures, more evictions, more loss of housing stock and tax base. More destabilized neighborhoods. More disrupted lives. More pain and suffering.
The suffering caused by the foreclosure/eviction juggernaut is not at all spread equally in Minnesota. A recent study of foreclosures in Hennepin County (where Minneapolis is located) shows that minority families and minority neighborhoods are disproportionately impacted by foreclosures and the evictions/displacement that follows. See Ryan Allen, “The Unraveling of the American Dream”. Be sure to note the maps showing where the foreclosures have occurred, most significantly in North Minneapolis and south central Minneapolis minority neighborhoods.
And lest anyone think that the foreclosure epidemic is a thing of the past, statistics from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office show that over 1,000 foreclosures occurred between January 1, 2009 and February 28, 2009.
Community resistance to these foreclosures is on the rise, based on the realization that public policy responses to date (primarily additional consumer information, mediation, and very temporary delays in eviction) sometimes will help, but that since most foreclosures now simply reflect the economic times (layoffs and under employment), a more basic readjustment about the legitimacy of eviction in these circumstances must take place. Fundamental challenges to the mortgage holder’s right to evict in these circumstances are being raised on three fronts: 1) legislative proposals for a moratorium and for renters rights to stay,[6] 2) defensive action in the courts to defeat foreclosure evictions, and 3) via direct public pressure on mortgage holders to adopt a Fannie Mae-type policy of allowing renters and homeowners “in place”, at least until the economy gets us all back on our feet. [7]
Minneapolis Groups in the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights
Minnesota Tenants Union
HOME Line
Minnesota Tenants Alliance
Resources
• The Minnesota Shadow Report to the International Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (December 2008) >>>
• Summary of the Goetz Report No. 6 >>>
• Peoples Bailout Bill, Minnesota HR 2222 >>>
• Out of Reach – 2008 >>>
• MN Coalition for a People’s Bailout >>>
• Ryan Allen, “The Unraveling of the American Dream” >>>
Footnotes:
[1] “Out of Reach – 2008”, National Low-Income Housing Coalition and Minnesota Housing Partnership, News Release (04/07/09): New Report Says Minnesota Has Least Affordable Rent in Midwest. See also, Attachment T1, Testimony of Abdulahi Sheikh to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Truth Commission Hearings, August 30-September 1, 2008.
[2] See Star Tribune Map & text 5/30/96. A second source, the Consent Decree itself, gives slightly different figures in Paragraph 22: Sumner Field (350), Glenwood (220), Olson (66), and Lyndale (86) = 722 units.
[3] Summary of the Goetz Report No. 6 or view Dr. Goetz’s Report No. 6.
[4] See Edward G. Goetz, “Demolition and Dispersal of Public Housing: Predicted Benefits Largely Unrealized, Outweighed by Social Costs Borne by Minority Families, University of Minnesota, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Minneapolis, Minnesota (November 2007).
[5] Editor’s Note regarding Chapter 9 of the Minnesota Shadow Report to the International Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (December 2008), item 28: Minnesota: Treaty Obligations at State Level. See also Attachment T2, Testimony of Okito Unyangunga to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Truth Commission Hearings, August 30-September 1, 2008.
[6] For example, see the foreclosure provisions of the Peoples Bailout Bill, stated separately in Minnesota HF 2222. For further information, click here.
[7] See attached files: Sign-OnLetterAdopt FannieMaePolicyNow and MHers’Policy 4HomeMaintenance.