Our Organizing

What do tenants face in Minneapolis?

Across the U.S., the number of renters in the U.S. living in unaffordable units and homes is higher than ever. In the Twin Cities, due to generations of gentrification, displacement, and privatization of housing, working people have been priced out of safe, stable and dignified housing – forced into high-density neighborhoods that face, after decades of systemic disinvestment, disproportionately high exposure to pollutants, low-wage employment, poor municipal services, and limited access to education, health care and green space. 

Racism is reproduced through our housing system. In Minneapolis, 56% of Black households are severely cost-burdened, paying over half their income on housing costs. Minnesota has the harshest homeownership disparities in the nation – in Minneapolis, only 19% of Black residents and 30% of Latinx households own their homes, compared to 58% of White households.

The entrance of corporate and private equity landlords following the 2009 recession has accelerated the housing crisis in Minneapolis. While disenfranchised communities suffered catastrophic foreclosures, investors bought  foreclosed properties and rented them to the communities they displaced, eliminating home equity from working-class BIPOC and immigrant communities. This exacerbated the power imbalance between landlords and renters, enabling landlords to further extract wealth by using racism as a business practice – intimidating BIPOC tenants to pay higher fees, neglecting essential repairs, and evicting them at higher rates than White tenants. 

North Minneapolis, a largely working-class Black community, has suffered decades of often intentional neglect by the city, including redlining, racial covenants, and industrial pollution. In an area where national investors have increased the largest Black-White homeownership gap since before the Civil Rights Era, money that could have gone into housing stability and community control is leaving North Minneapolis. Instead of being able to own their homes, tenants pay rent without building generational wealth. 

Working-class BIPOC and immigrant renters in North and South Minneapolis are the experts on the housing crisis our city is facing. We are firm in our conviction that the value of housing is its ability to HOUSE people, not PAY people.

IX’s campaigns consist of tenants in Minneapolis organizing around shared fights grounded in complete housing justice. Following the leadership of tenants, we educate about political and legal rights, reclaim the narrative about renters, work to create pro-tenant policies, and develop long-term solutions where tenants have a greater say over their homes. Most importantly, we transform ourselves by struggling together and believing that another world is possible. 

How do tenants resist these conditions?