Government

The birth of Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — On its surface, Glendale stood as one of the highest rated public housing complexes in Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s (MPHA) portfolio. Built in 1952, it is the city’s oldest public housing structure and is the only public housing built expressly for families, comprised of separate townhomes — instead of high rises — each with its own front porch, basement and back yard. They are also nestled within the affluent Southeast Minneapolis’ Prospect Park neighborhood and sit on prime real estate.

Published

6 years ago

June 14, 2019

Mel Reeves

By Mel Reeves

News Analysis

Last week, the MSR explored Minneapolis’ public housing rehab woes related to HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration. This week, the MSR explores the birth of its staunchest opponent: Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition.

For years, Glendale Townhomes have served as point of contention for residents who feared gentrification, privatization and the subsequent destruction of Minneapolis’ public housing.

On its surface, Glendale stood as one of the highest rated public housing complexes in Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s (MPHA) portfolio. Built in 1952, it is the city’s oldest public housing structure and is the only public housing built expressly for families, comprised of separate townhomes — instead of high rises — each with its own front porch, basement and back yard. They are also nestled within the affluent Southeast Minneapolis’ Prospect Park neighborhood and sit on prime real estate.

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) inspectors had also given the townhomes high marks — a score of 98 out of 100 — according to housings inspections released in 2010.

The first occupants were U.S. veterans and their families, then by Black families who migrated to Minneapolis looking for better employment opportunities. Now, the Townhomes include a mix of South East Asians, East Africans (Somali and Oromo) immigrants and refugees, Whites and African American descendants of slaves.

Despite glowing reports, residents were demanding repairs be made to their townhomes, including fixing faulty electrical outlets, corroded pipes, upgrading the heating system, and upgrading pest control efforts. But, according to the residents, the buildings were not in such a state of disrepair that would require demolition and reconstruction.

“We found out people were not getting enough heat in their homes — there were issues with the heating system. The homes were in good shape, just in need of minor repairs and more pest control,” said Ladan Yusuf, Glendale resident and community activist.

In 2015, the MPHA announced plans to make requested repairs.

There was one caveat. The reconstruction plan would be achieved by demolishing and reconstructing the housing, requiring residents to temporarily relocate. Repairs would also be completed using MPHA’s RAD program (Rental Assistance Demonstration) which allows the agency to secure funds through private sources.

Yusuf said MPHA’s Director of Facilities and Development, Tim Gaetz told Glendale residents that their townhomes were targeted because their repairs were the costliest.

“MPHA complained they didn’t have enough money,” explained Yusuf. “They started charging people for minor repairs. We asked, ‘Why are they charging folks for minor repairs, like replacing a doorknob?’ Later, we found out that they were sitting on millions, but had stopped putting money in Glendale.”

The MPHA plan called for tearing down the current 184 townhomes and replacing them with a mixed-income complex of 550 new apartments, some of which would be reserved for use as Section 8 housing. Residents were told they would be able to return using Section 8 vouchers. The agency also promised rents would not be raised and the private investors would alter the long-term use of the buildings.

At first glance, residents did not see much wrong with the RAD proposal, but upon further examination, it had the potential to decrease public housing stock.

While returning tenants would have a Section 8 voucher which allows residents to pay 30 percent of their income toward rent, the new project-based public housing would only guarantee a certain amount of affordable housing stock over the long term. There was no guarantee the housing that currently accepts Section 8 vouchers would remain so.

Glendale residents pushed back, forming Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition, a grassroots residents’ group led by Yusuf to oppose relocation and address privatization fears. Residents protested, calling the plan a “glorified privatization scheme,” which would lead to gentrification and displacement of the current residents and the elimination of Glendale as public housing. The tenants expressed grave doubts about the agency’s promises that they would be allowed to return after redevelopment was completed.

Relocation would also mean disruption of their livelihood, as there was no Section 8 housing in Prospect Park and very little in the adjoining neighborhoods and not much more in Minneapolis city limits, resulting in residents being scattered all over the Twin Cities metro area causing disruption and hardship, especially for elderly residents and those who rely on public transportation.

“It was obvious to me and my neighbors that they had been purposely neglecting upkeep for the last 10 years so they would have an excuse to spring this RAD plan on us,” said Yusuf.

Defend Glendale and its community allies, which include members of the Prospect Park Association the area’s neighborhood group, became a vocal and visible opponent of the changes, organizing community meetings and protests at Minneapolis City Hall and at key locations, calling for “zero displacement and zero gentrification.”

Glendale residents eventually filed a HUD complaint about lack of heat in their homes. A Minneapolis Council member pointed them to the Sustainable Resource Center, which helped weatherize the townhomes, replace old furnaces, and add insulation and other materials — without MPHA assistance.

Residents requested MPHA use its budget to make other repairs, but according to residents, the agency blocked requests for more than a year. MPHA ultimately gave in to pressure and the repairs were performed in 2018 without relocating residents.

Defend Glendale is now looking to support efforts to maintain and secure public housing at other housing sites it fears are now being targeted. It formed the Keep Public Housing Public Minneapolis Coalition, to address those ongoing concerns with the MPHA.

According to Yusuf, “In 2017, Russ said, ‘They are too organized at Glendale, let’s go after Elliot Twins.’ They said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else and maybe come back to Glendale. We realized that other brothers and sisters were under threat at Elliot Twins, we wanted to form, a solidarity so we organized with them.”

The MSR will continue to follow this affordable and public housing discussion as it unfolds.

This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

Mel Reeves

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U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

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: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”

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MacArthur Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ Advocates Restructure of Child Welfare System

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

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Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Special to The Post

When grants were announced Oct. 1, it was noted that eight of the 22 MacArthur Fellows were African American. Among the recipients of the so-called ‘genius grants’ are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit.

Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the eighth and last in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below on Dorothy Roberts is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.

Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.

This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.

After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.

Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.

CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.

In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.

These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.

She also shows that blaming marginalized individuals for structural problems, while ignoring the historical roots of economic and social inequality, fails families and communities.

Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.

Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.

By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.