(C) Minnesota Reformer
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The Legislature needs to provide help to renters

By:   ['More From Author', 'April', 'Nelima Sitati Munene'], Minnesota Reformer
Date: 2022-04-26 00:00:00

No matter our race or residence, everyone in Minnesota has faced frightening uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic. For nearly two years, though, our most vulnerable and hardest hit communities could rely on one essential resource: housing. Recognizing the necessity of keeping families in their homes during a public health crisis, the statewide eviction moratorium and emergency rental assistance prevented a tidal wave of evictions and unprecedented swell in homelessness.

The public health emergency underscored that state leaders have the power and resources to safeguard the lives of renters and provide critical housing stability — when there is political will. But, as the pandemic continues to have devastating consequences in communities of color, we have seen that political will dissolve, putting families still on the economic brink at grave risk of exploitation and eviction.

To prevent massive, destabilizing displacement in cities statewide, the Walz administration must immediately prioritize working with the Legislature to pass $330 million in emergency rental assistance and ongoing eviction protections for renters with pending applications for support.

As a community-based organization, we work with low-income, immigrant and people of color renters who have faced an epidemic of housing inequities for generations. When the state rolled out RentHelpMN — the emergency rental assistance program funded with federal dollars — we advocated to ensure our community members had access to and support applying for these funds. As a field partner, our organizers door-knocked apartments, set up pop-up events in residential areas and provided rental assistance information at community events and vaccine clinics.

In 2021 alone, we connected with 2,300 households and assisted more than 700 renters apply for assistance. We were able to make sure a grandmother raising her seven-year-old grandson was able to stay in her home when she lost her job and fell behind on rent. We made it possible for a front line worker who took care of her elderly mother and fell thousands of dollars behind on rent, to catch up and renew her lease but also find new employment.

But then, that support abruptly ended. With just three days’ notice, RentHelpMN stopped accepting applications. While we frantically assisted renters rushing to meet the unexpected deadline, the process was too cumbersome for many to complete the necessary steps and paperwork in time. The consequences of ending that critical support will have broad and lasting impacts.

Given generations of intentional economic exclusion and exploitation, those impacts are felt most acutely in communities of color. RentHelp MN received more than 100,000 applications for assistance, with more than two-thirds coming from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) households. In the BIPOC communities we serve in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, the average tenant household has to spend 60% of their monthly income on rent — and many of those families are still facing deep debt from lost wages and job insecurity over the course of the pandemic.

Now, with the end of the eviction moratorium protections and rental assistance, leaders are opening the floodgates in the midst of the storm. In the 11 weeks since the closure of RentHelpMN, eviction filings have soared 67% compared to the 11 weeks before. An overwhelming majority of these evictions are for nonpayment of rent, leaving families in financial crisis while state leaders debate a budget surplus. But those numbers — as staggering as they are — only tell part of the story. We work with many renters who are facing informal, off-the-books evictions through non-renewal of leases, intimidation, discrimination and retaliatory practices to push people out of their homes.

With a state budget surplus of more than $9 billion, this suffering is negligent and unnecessary. Providing additional rental assistance is both necessary in the near term and strategic in the long term. When people are displaced from their homes, it destabilizes our communities, undermines our childrens’ ability to learn in school and reduces businesses’ access to a healthy and stable workforce — while also adding to the growing number of Minnesotans experiencing homelessness. When tenants are evicted from their housing, the mark on their record can make it challenging, if not impossible, to find safe, affordable and reliable housing for years to come.

Every day, we hear heartbreaking stories from our community members. A family that couldn’t pay their rent because of burial expenses for loved ones lost to COVID-19. A first-generation college student who had to drop out so someone could be at home with younger siblings when schools went online.

We cannot pretend this crisis is over. We need a lifeline for the thousands of Minnesotans who are still navigating the economic and emotional devastation of the pandemic. Investing $330 million in rental assistance now will dramatically reduce the need for additional funds to address housing instability and homelessness in the future.
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[1] Url: https://minnesotareformer.com/2022/04/26/the-legislature-needs-to-provide-help-to-renters-opinion/
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