{"id":201,"date":"2019-04-01T13:53:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=201"},"modified":"2019-04-01T15:43:38","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T15:43:38","slug":"fearing-privatization-public-housing-activists-push-back-against-rad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/201\/","title":{"rendered":"Fearing Privatization: Public Housing Activists Push Back Against RAD"},"content":{"rendered":"

shelterforce.org\/2019\/03\/21\/fearing-privatization-public-housing-activists-push-back-against-rad-plans\/<\/a>
\nFearing Privatization: Public Housing Activists Push Back Against RAD March 21, 2019
\nMinneapolis public housing residents show their displeasure in the housing authority\u2019s plan to convert the Elliot Twins towers using HUD\u2019s RAD program. Photo courtesy of Ladan Yusuf This article was updated and revised for clarity, including corrections, on March 28, 2019.
\nIn January, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority\u2019 hosted an informational forum for residents who live in two of its high-rises\u2014the Elliot Twins Apartments. The buildings will soon be remodeled and renovated using HUD\u2019s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, which allows housing authorities to work with nonprofit or for-profit entities to preserve and repair aging infrastructure.
\nRelations between the MPHA and some of its residents have been tenuous since 2015, when the agency proposed using RAD to convert another property\u2014Glendale Townhomes, the city\u2019s oldest public housing property\u2014into mixed-income apartments. Activist residents accused the housing authority of trying to gentrify their homes, which are adjacent to the recently opened Green Line light rail station, close to the University of Minnesota\u2019s flagship campus.
\nAt January\u2019s meeting, the contentious relationship between the housing authority and Glendale residents, who had formed a group called Defend Glendale and Public Housing Coalition (DG&PHC) in the wake of the 2015 RAD proposal, was on full display. Several videos captured by DG&PHC show police officers telling public housing residents\u2014many of whom were Somali and Somali-American women\u2014that they were acting \u201cuncivil\u201d because they had filmed the meeting and demanded that the housing authority address their concerns. Jeff Horwich, MPHA\u2019s director of policy and external affairs, says only non-residents of the building were asked to leave. He adds that the housing authority would be violating residents\u2019 privacy to expose their status as a recipient of housing assistance benefits, so it is the agency\u2019s policy not to allow photographs or filming of people\u2019s faces without their consent at non-public events for residents.
\nMeeting attendees say MPHA officials treated white allies associated with DG&PHC differently: at the meeting, one white supporter, Nathaniel Hart-Andersen, said he was repeatedly told by Horwich that the housing authority was on the same side as the residents. The residents who were asked to leave did not live at the Elliot Twins, says Horwich, and their presence at the non-public meeting was a disturbance to those who were hoping to learn more about the proposed plans.
\nThroughout the past several years, the housing authority has prepared several plans for its housing stock, developed in consultation with private consultants. Officials have always insisted that their intentions are to continue providing quality housing to low-income residents. The MPHA, which has more than 6,000 units of housing under its jurisdiction, says it has a backlog of $140 million in capital needs investments for repairs like heating and cooling systems, piping, unit modernization, and more. The long-term decline in HUD funding for public housing repairs has led to a similar backlog for housing authorities nationwide. About 1.1 million public housing units in the U.S. require $49 billion in repairs, and as a result, about 10,000 public housing units are lost each year via demolition and disposition.
\nAccording to HUD, housing authorities across the country have used RAD\u2014which began in 2012 during the Obama administration\u2014to maintain affordability and preserve 100,000 units so far. But housing activists have raised concerns that RAD follows in the footsteps of HOPE VI, a policy used by HUD in the 1990s to convert public housing to mixed-income communities, which in some cases resulted in displacement.
\nOverall, the MPHA is attempting to privatize roughly 1,200 of its 6,245 public housing units. It has received approval to use the RAD program to convert 174 units at Elliot Twins, which house primarily (though not exclusively) seniors, many of them Somali, to project-based vouchers. The land would remain owned by the housing authority, and a nonprofit controlled by the housing authority would be the developer and managing partner in the company that would own the buildings. Private investors would also have a significant equity stake in that company, though RAD regulations require this to be done in a way that maintains continued public ownership or control. MPHA officials insist that RAD is the best means they have to modernize apartments and fund major building improvements, but for many residents there\u2019s a fear of displacement, even temporarily. Although RAD offers significant tenant protections\u2014for instance, residents have a right to return to their homes once construction is completed and they will not be subject to rescreening\u2014and the MPHA has promised to provide relocation assistance for residents who must move temporarily, there has been a lack of oversight of the program at the federal level.
\n\u201cI\u2019m an older woman, I have [high] blood pressure,\u201d said Elliot Twins resident Noor Adar through a translator. \u201cI\u2019ve lived here for 13 years, I don\u2019t know any other community. If I leave here, I\u2019m going to get lost. I refuse to be pushed out.\u201d
\nThe process raises important challenges for other authorities considering RAD and how conversions might shape the future of the nation\u2019s public housing stock. Such large changes in the housing that serves some of the city\u2019s poorest residents, including the addition of private investors, should entail a careful planning and communication process that residents say hasn\u2019t been present in Minneapolis. MPHA officials haven\u2019t listened to their concerns, say residents, who saw the housing authority\u2019s RAD proposal for the Glendale Townhomes as an effort to destroy their homes.
\n\u201cWe Were Nobody to Them\u201d
\nThe Glendale Townhomes, constructed in 1952 to house returning veterans and their families, exist in an area that\u2019s seen massive transformation in a short span of time. On the community\u2019s southern edge lies Prospect Park, one of the city\u2019s wealthiest neighborhoods. Thanks to the 2014 opening of the Green Line, part of a nearly $1 billion Twin Cities transit investment, Glendale\u2019s northern border is now one of the city\u2019s fastest-gentrifying areas, with the University of Minnesota just a mile westward.
\nSince 2000, the entire city has seen intense gentrification: while just 7 percent of eligible census tracts were gentrified in the decade prior, more than half have experienced gentrification since then. According to research from the University of Minnesota, Black and Latinx renters are especially vulnerable to increasing rent prices; not one neighborhood\u2019s median rent is affordable to the median Black household.
\nLadan Yusuf and her daughter, 18-year-old Kaaha Kaahiye, have called Glendale home for 15 years. While the gently sloped, tree-lined housing complex\u2014home to 28 two-story rowhouses that shelter almost 600 residents\u2014feels idyllic and peaceful, the area was largely separated from its surroundings for years, lacking transit options and bordered on one side by a largely unused industrial area. That all changed with the arrival of the Green Line, and an influx of new, largely white residents from apartments surrounding Glendale now regularly walk through the community.
\nYusuf first discovered MPHA had intentions for Glendale in 2014, when she was going door to door on a \u201cget out the vote\u201d effort with her wealthy Prospect Park neighbors and was told by a homeowner that the city would soon submit a proposal to raze the townhouses and construct new homes. (In 2014, an MPHA commissioner and an MPHA staffer also discussed Glendale\u2019s redevelopment in an email, saying the agency should \u201cresearch the history of Glendale before it gets torn down.\u201d) City Pages reported that the MPHA had discussed the idea of redevelopment at various meetings in 2013 and 2014, including the neighborhood-wide (but mostly homeowner) Prospect Park Association, at which they said residents were present, but Yusuf says she did not hear directly. \u201cNobody called us, nobody told us about what was going on,\u201d Yusuf said. \u201cWe were nobody to them.\u201d
\nThough residents were eventually given notice of meetings to discuss the plans specifically with them starting in April 2015, Yusuf says the notices were published only in English, and some of the meetings were held during Ramadan. Non-English-speaking and Muslim residents compose almost half of Glendale\u2019s population.
\nThe MPHA was exploring conversion of the 28-building development into a RAD property, replacing all of the public housing units, but increasing the density by also adding market-rate units. The housing authority promised that residents would be rehoused in the development, supported by project-based Section 8 vouchers, and initially offered temporary relocation during construction. In a resident fact sheet, MPHA noted that changes were necessary because more than $15 million worth of critical repairs were needed at Glendale: \u201c[The] physical needs are past the point where it can be effectively rehabilitated, requiring that it be demolished and replaced.\u201d Yusuf has disputed this claim. In response, she founded Defend Glendale (which later became DG&PHC) to protest the housing authority\u2019s actions, which she\u2019s continued to do ever since.
\nAfter resident meetings in April, May and June saw continued resistance to the idea of selling Glendale to private investors, City Councilmember Cam Gordon placed a one-year moratorium on potential redevelopment.
\nPoisoned Waters?
\nIn the years since the Glendale conversion proposals, the MPHA has developed new plans for the future of its housing stock. Throughout this process, the housing authority has worked largely with private consultants (including one who was found to have held a revolving-door relationship with a consulting firm while working at the New York City Housing Authority).
\nThe planning culminated in a set of Guiding Principles, which stated the housing authority\u2019s intentions to continue providing housing for the city\u2019s low-income population, as well as including residents in all aspects of the planning process going forward\u2014a frustrating claim to the residents involved with DG&PHC, who believe they weren\u2019t adequately involved in the development of these principles for the future of the MPHA\u2019s housing stock, and the strategic vision that came out of them. Hoda Isak, a former resident of Elliot Twins and then secretary of its the resident council suggested in a 2017 Facebook post that the planning process had been inaccessible and representations of resident support were inaccurate.
\nAccording to University of Minnesota Professor Ed Goetz, it was in this period that the housing authority should have focused on rebuilding trust with its residents, particularly as it pursued plans that would likely disturb their housing in the coming years.
\n\u201cThat was their opportunity to really try to build goodwill and a common perspective, but they squandered that chance,\u201d said Goetz, author of New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy. \u201cIt was in that situation that the residents really started digging in their heels, and frankly at that point I don\u2019t blame them one bit.\u201d
\nInstead, planning pushed ahead. At the end of May 2015, the city planning department released its own report suggesting a redevelopment of Glendale\u2019s 184 public housing units via RAD and the addition of market-rate units to create a mixed-income development. In January 2016 the MPHA released a consultant report, known as the Sherman Report, that compared four options for Glendale, only one of which suggested preserving the development exclusively for low-income residents. The report proposed phased development with all tenant relocations on site.
\nDuring this planning period, the housing authority further alienated activist residents who had begun closely monitoring the agency\u2019s actions. Those residents say MPHA officials didn\u2019t successfully demonstrate that they understood their frustrations. Instead, in one exchange in the comment section of a news article documenting their concerns, Horwich called the residents \u201cconspiracy theorists.\u201d
\n\u201cPeople quite justifiably bring skepticism and fear to these conversations\u2014that\u2019s fine,\u201d Horwich says now. \u201cBut that\u2019s different from fact. Feeling doesn\u2019t change federal law, it doesn\u2019t change the protections that public housing residents have as recipients of this federal subsidy, and their lease with us.\u201d
\nThe four options floated in 2016 for Glendale have not been acted on.
\nIn 2016, the housing authority hired a new director, Greg Russ, who had previously worked at the Chicago Housing Authority during its implementation of the Plan for Transformation, which ultimately resulted in the net loss of at least 17,000 public housing units. DG&PHC activists are also concerned about Russ\u2019s ties to Thies & Talle, a Twin Cities-based property management company owned by Russ\u2019s father-in-law that controls voucher-assisted (or \u201cSection 8\u201d) housing across five states, concerns which the housing authority denies are an issue. (With RAD, units move to a Section 8 platform\u2014project-based rental assistance, administered by HUD, or project-based vouchers (PBV) administered by the public housing agency or a partner. Elliot Twins will convert to PBV.)
\nHorwich insists that Defend Glendale has \u201cdeliberately distorted\u201d the housing authority\u2019s intentions to renovate and modernize the housing authority\u2019s properties. But residents who felt they had been kept out of the housing authority\u2019s strategic visioning and capital planning process were skeptical about idea to apply for RAD conversion for Elliot Twins, which was first officially broached in the strategic vision document in May 2018. MPHA officially presented its RAD proposal for the Elliot Twins Apartments to residents in August 2018. Horwich says resident councils were in fact involved and do support the MPHA\u2019s plans, in general and for Elliot Twins.
\n\u201cI think the waters have been well and truly poisoned by Defend Glendale over the years, without any contribution from us,\u201d Horwich says.
\nMPHA\u2019s Plans and What Residents Suggest
\nIn addition to converting the Elliot Twins to RAD properties, the housing authority hopes to use HUD\u2019s Section 18 to convert its 730 scattered-site housing units to a PBV model. The housing authority says it\u2019s moving quickly on these plans in order to take advantage of a competitive new pool of HUD funding, which it believes will disappear quickly. But residents are concerned about the use of Section 18, which has seen some of its resident protections loosened during the Trump administration.
\nAt the core of the disagreement between activist residents and the housing authority is the question of funding. MPHA says it faces $140 million backlog in capital needs investments and expects the backlog to grow to more than $500 million over the next two decades. The MPHA currently receives nearly $15 million annually from HUD for these purposes, a marked increase from recent years, but still considerably less than housing authorities received decades ago.
\nStill, residents argue that the MPHA could adequately fund its repairs by seeking other available public funds. They also argue that the main argument for RAD\u2014that it offers financial assistance currently unavailable to housing authorities in a way that will make the units sustainable over time\u2014is questionable. As James Hanlon, a professor of urban studies at the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, asks, \u201cIf we didn\u2019t have enough money for public housing, but that\u2019s the money that we\u2019re converting to [vouchers], how is that going to be enough money to keep the units online?\u201d (Editor\u2019s note: The two are actually totally separate appropriations pools which Congress can treat differently.)
\nDG&PHC argues that there are other potential funding sources. For example, the reinstatement of a city property tax levy could provide MPHA with upward of $8 million annually. MPHA has recently publicly supported the reinstatement of this levy, but DG&PHC says the housing authority appears to see it as a way to leverage private funding, not a replacement for it. Then there is the potential for state grant and bond funds\u2014the agency secured a $2.2 million state of Minnesota housing preservation grant in 2018, for example. The housing authority reports that it needs $30 million in additional investment over current funding levels to recover from its capital needs backlog, but DG&PHC suspects that number is inflated and would like to see an independent audit. Members believe repairs could be accomplished while keeping the city\u2019s housing stock under public control.
\nWhile HUD has previously claimed that housing authorities employing RAD had leveraged upward of $19 in private capital per dollar of government spending, an independent audit from the Government Accountability Office released in 2018 found that the ratio was actually closer to $1.23 per dollar of public funds.
\nWhile deteriorating housing conditions remain a concern for public housing residents everywhere, recent experiences with RAD have proven wildly uneven, including evictions in some jurisdictions. The MPHA says it will use RAD only to modernize its housing stock while maintaining long-term affordability, but way the planning process has been carried out worries residents, who don\u2019t believe the housing authority\u2019s claims that residents will not be displaced.
\nNeeded: A More Involved Process
\nBefore submitting its application, MPHA held two meetings to explain its plans to residents, which is required by HUD before a housing authority can submit a RAD application. (The housing authority has since held further meetings with residents to discuss changes that will be brought by RAD.) Dozens of public housing residents aligned with DG&PHC showed up to each event, in part to hear the authority\u2019s plans, bu\u00adt also to express their continuing frustration at the housing authority\u2019s approach.
\nJessie Cassella, a former attorney at the National Housing Law Project, believes residents deserve a thorough explanation of what RAD will mean to them, as conversions likely involve temporary relocation, as well as transferring control of a property to a spinoff nonprofit, which could change how residents interact with a housing authority.
\n\u201cFrom what we\u2019ve seen around the country where RAD has resulted in the preservation of public housing, early and more often tenant engagement is critical,\u201d Cassella said. \u201cWe believe that three meetings with residents is not nearly enough to explain the many changes they\u2019re going to experience.\u201d
\nAlthough Cassella believes HUD officials have learned from the shortcomings of previous efforts like Hope VI, putting RAD into practice will be unlikely to benefit residents should a housing authority not make their needs a central priority every step of the way.
\n\u201cThere are these very clear tenants\u2019 right protections that are enforceable, but we worry when folks on the ground are not being made aware of those rights,\u201d she said. \u201cI think RAD has a strong foundation to support tenants, but how it\u2019s actually implemented will impact the local RAD conversion itself.\u201d
\nWhile the city government has extensive regulatory powers to govern the MPHA\u2019s actions, elected officials have failed to make public housing a priority as part of the city\u2019s long-term housing plans. For example, the city\u2019s public housing received no attention in Mayor Jacob Frey\u2019s $53 million affordable housing proposal last year, which directs approximately 40 percent of its funds toward subsidizing developers in exchange for the construction of affordable units.
\nCity council members have declined to stop MPHA from making plans without their approval, even though in 2016, Minneapolis and St. Paul were forced to settle a lawsuit that claimed that local officials had failed to follow federal guidelines to \u201caffirmatively further fair housing\u201d practices in the city. Then-councilmember Frey was one of two dissenting votes in the 10-2 decision accepting the ruling; the other, Lisa Goodman, has suggested that the MPHA deserves to operate without oversight as it continues to develop its privatization plans.
\n\u201cThis is a multimillion-dollar organization with a multimillion-dollar financial problem,\u201d Goodman told Councilman Cam Gordon at a Housing Policy & Development Committee hearing last June. \u201cShould you be indicating that you want the city to help solve that problem, that will be at your peril.\u201d
\nMost recently, the city council unanimously voted on a resolution \u201cestablishing guiding principles in support of investments in public housing and the people who live there,\u201d which focused on tenant protections, but also included formal support of MPHA\u2019s RAD application process. Gordon, whose ward includes the Glendale Townhomes, had previously expressed skepticism of the decision to use RAD to privatize public housing, and activists felt betrayed by the one public official who had been willing to support their efforts.
\nResidents are still concerned about the future of their housing and the ongoing lack of clarity from MPHA officials. Whether the MPHA\u2019s promised good intentions play out in practice is yet to be seen\u2014though activists like Yusuf hope that their efforts to hold officials accountable will make a difference.
\n\u201cWhat keeps me going is the faith that justice will prevail,\u201d Yusuf said, her voice shaking. \u201cThe truth will come out, no matter how much we\u2019re demonized.\u201d
\nRise Local, a project of the New America National Network, also helped support this article.
\nCorrections:
\nThe article originally stated that the January 2019 meetings at Elliot Twins were public meetings. They were not; they were for residents of the buildings only. The placement of Edward Goetz\u2019s quote in the original article implied that he was referring to the post 2016 strategic planning and\/or Elliot Twins process. He was referring to the time period of 2015\u20132016 only. The article originally stated that MPHA receives $2.2 million\/year from the state of Minnesota. MPHA does not receive any regular state appropriations.. It applies for bonds and grants. In 2018 it received a $2.2 million grant.. The article originally stated that MPHA had expressed an annual total need of $25 million to address its capital needs. It has expressed a need of $30 million of additional investment above current funding levels. The article originally implied that Hoda Isak\u2019s comments were referring to the Elliot Twins plans. They referred to the earlier strategic planning process. Isak moved out of Elliot Twins before the specific RAD plans for those buildings were presented. The article originally stated that MPHA was not asking for a reinstatement of the property tax levy. MPHA did make that request in 2018.
\n Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

shelterforce.org\/2019\/03\/21\/fearing-privatization-public-housing-activists-push-back-against-rad-plans\/ Fearing Privatization: Public Housing Activists Push Back Against RAD March 21, 2019 Minneapolis public housing residents show their displeasure in the housing authority\u2019s plan to convert the Elliot Twins towers using HUD\u2019s RAD program. Photo courtesy of Ladan Yusuf This article was updated and revised for clarity, including corrections, on March 28, 2019. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}