As reported in the April 15 edition of the Northeaster, eviction filings are on the rise in Minneapolis. A report from HOME Line, a nonprofit tenant advocacy group, claims that recent eviction rates indicate “sustained pressure” on tenants.
The most worrying part of the report, however, comes when HOME Line points towards the future. “Temporary supports helped suppress filings early in the year, but as those supports recede, eviction filings rebound, often sharply.”
In other words, the current trickle of eviction filings could turn to a flood.
So: What are elected officials planning to do about this?
The Minneapolis City Council has pushed the Pause Evictions, Save Lives (PESL) ordinance, which would extend the pre-eviction notice. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has opposed the measure, instead advocating for rental assistance programs.
“I believe that this is the best path forward,” Frey wrote in a letter to City Council. “Rental assistance is working and getting to renters quickly.”
City Council President Elliott Payne has described the veto as “frustrating,” saying that he was “disappointed (that) Mayor Frey vetoed this bare-minimum policy.”
On April 23, the Council voted, in an 8-5 vote, to extend the pre-eviction notice from 30 to 45 days — a meaningfully shorter window than their original goal of 60, but an extension nevertheless. At time of writing, that extension is currently pending mayoral review.
The dispute between the City Council and the Mayor appears to have deepened since.
On April 15, in a letter to the City Council about a potential nominee for Community Safety Commissioner, Frey accused council members of “gamesmanship and horse trading, or even worse, using the confirmation process as a ‘blunt tool’ to force me to adopt unrelated Council policy positions.”
Later, Frey laid out his purported approach to governing: “Our government structure was determined by the voters and it’s our job to enact it… The people of Minneapolis now expect us to work together to achieve success and deliver results.”
And, on May 1, Payne released a statement condemning Frey’s veto of PESL, calling it “a sad day for the most vulnerable residents in our city.”
Ultimately, here, everyone is at least a little bit correct. Frey is right in saying the government of Minneapolis ought to work for its voters. In the wake of Operation Metro Surge, during which many voters lost employment or struggled to get to work, the City Council is on the right track in advocating for an extension on pre-eviction notices. Payne is correct in saying that the city’s most vulnerable residents need assistance. And the Mayor is correct that direct funding helps renters in an immediate and obvious manner.
But here’s the rub. Both rental assistance and pre-eviction notice extensions have merit, but neither is without its drawbacks. By dividing their energies, the Mayoral office and the City Council are risking promoting a watered-down version of either in order to get anything out the door.
This infighting, in other words, promotes poor policy — and poor policy, in the case of evicted residents, is not abstract. Instead, it is disorientingly real: Individuals put into unneeded predicaments because of drawn-out disagreements outside of their control.
The fact that disagreements between the Council and the Mayor wound up in other letters between the offices makes this even more serious: If political disputes threaten to throw sand in the gears, who knows what policies could get slowed down? Ultimately, a governmental agency that achieves less than it hopes to is, on some level, a failure.
It is not the place of this piece to suggest which idea is more worth pursuing. It’s far better to leave that to policy experts, tenant organizations, nonpartisan research centers and the like. With stakes like that, it would be far better to pick one policy and push it as far as possible.
But it seems as though, in choosing to have a back-and-forth on this issue, both governmental offices are running the risk of letting more individuals wind up on the street. This infighting — all of which bears good intentions — nevertheless marks a failure on the part of the government.