Twin Cities Officials Wage War On Poor People!
Bob> These practices by both Cities governing bodies concerning code enforcement is shameful! Where is the empathy? I hope you all are voted out in 2007.
Reprinted from City pages.
In the name of restoring order on the North Side, Minneapolis housing inspectors are issuing citations at a record pace. But is that flaking paint on Jean Coste's garage contributing to North Side crime—or just the city coffers?
Story and photos by Mike Mosedale
It's about 6:30 a.m. on a hot July morning when Harold Middleton starts looking for involuntary customers. Middleton doesn't use that term, "involuntary customers." It comes from the business plan devised by his bosses at the Minneapolis Department of Regulatory Services and it describes violators of the city's housing code. These days, that typically means residents of the North Side, where Middleton and his co-workers have been swarming the streets.
After a quick smoke in the big, empty parking lot at the Bean Scene, a coffee shop on West Broadway and Penn avenues, Middleton settles into the air-conditioned comfort of his office—a city-issued Chevy Malibu. He reaches into the big plastic bin in the back seat and extracts a thick stack of files. He then sorts the papers by address and affixes them to his clipboard.
Today, Middleton explains, he is doing re-inspections—checking properties that have already been cited for violations that range from such minor offenses as flaking garage paint and missing storm windows to big-ticket stuff like worn-out roofs and crumbling driveways. If Middleton finds that a problem hasn't been adequately addressed, the property owner faces the prospect of a $100 re-inspection fee and a $200 "administrative citation." In case of uncorrected environmental violations—inoperable vehicles, tall grass, rubbish in the yard—Middleton will make a note in the file and a contractor will be summoned. The next communication from the city will come in the form of a bill.
On this morning, Middleton is starting out in Jordan, one of the North Side's poorest neighborhoods. Middleton used to live in Jordan and has worked the North Side for most of the past seven years. He says he hasn't noticed the housing stock declining in recent years. If anything, he ventures, conditions have improved because of new buyers who have moved into the neighborhood and spruced up long-neglected properties. That fact notwithstanding, the sweep that Middleton represents is unprecedented in both scope and pace. Under the so-called "North Initiative," the exterior of every property in the city's Third, Fourth, and Fifth wards will be inspected by the end of October.
It is a daunting task: There are approximately 23,000 parcels in the three wards, which are mainly located on the North Side, but also include parts of Northeast and downtown. Since the program kicked off in mid-May, inspectors like Middleton have been pulled from other duties to focus exclusively on the sweep. And they've been busy. By the end of July, the inspectors had already paid a visit to some 20,628 properties and issued a staggering 20,378 citations. Along the way, they've served notice to the owners that they face escalating fines if they don't correct the problems promptly—a policy that could net a few million dollars for the city's general fund.
Once his day's paperwork is in order, Middleton throws the Malibu into gear and rumbles down the alley. Overall, Middleton estimates, compliance rates have hovered around 50 percent at the properties he has re-inspected. Some of the property owners who received multiple citations have only half-satisfied their work orders.
On the prowl: Housing inspector Harold Middleton
Photo by Mike Mosedale
Middleton quickly spots an example. "We had a big motor home here that was not properly licensed," he says as we rumble down an alley. "It's gone now. But they still didn't get the painting done on the trim of the dwelling." So Middleton steps out of his car, snaps a picture of the offending house with a city-issued digital camera, and scribbles the JPEG number on his clipboard. In the event the property owner contests the citation before a hearing officer, Middleton explains, the digital pictures will be used as evidence.
Dressed in a loose-fitting, untucked AFSCME T-shirt and blue jeans, Middleton doesn't look the part of the stickler or the zealous enforcer of city code. He's low-key and personable and takes no apparent pleasure in issuing citations. Still, he accepts the city's stated rationale that the crackdown is a benefit to the North Side. "I guess the whole idea is to get people to take pride in their property, keep the properties looking good," he offers.
In the view of the initiative's biggest boosters, among them mayor R.T. Rybak and Fifth Ward councilman Don Samuels, the sweeps aren't just about maintaining the housing stock. They argue that tougher standards on property can help restore social order and, in so doing, stem the rising tide of crime that is now swamping the North Side.
Middleton does not make such grand arguments. He is mindful that enforcement can come at a steep cost, especially for poor homeowners. The soaring foreclosure rate on the North Side is already the highest in the city. Middleton sees evidence of that every day as he makes his rounds: emptied-out homes with lawns that look like wheat fields. He knows additional financial burdens—in the form of a new roof or paint job or personal crisis—can push low-income homeowners beyond their limits.
"You got a lot of people here living on the edge," he says. "I get calls where people tell me, 'I don't have the property anymore. It belongs to the bank now.' And sometimes people know they're going to lose it, so they just walk away."
Of course, Middleton avers, none of that is his business. His job is to follow department policy—and that policy calls for him to enforce the rules, curb to alley, with no exceptions.
But the eagerness with which Minneapolis is now pursing code enforcement on the North Side does raise a question: Is that chipped paint on the garage on Knox Avenue contributing to North Side crime—or just the municipal coffers?
Joy Harris-Jones has lived in north Minneapolis her whole life, mostly on the 500 block of Newton Avenue. At 65, she's seen a lot change over that period. These days, her neighborhood—which extends from Penn to Lyndale avenues and Olson Memorial Highway to Cedar Lake Road—is known as Harrison. When she was a kid, everyone called it "Finn-town" in reference to the Finnish immigrants who'd settled here. "I might be the last full-blooded Finn left and I ain't leaving," Harris-Jones cracks in reference to the shifting demographics of her neighborhood.
One thing has remained constant in Harrison: It still draws a lot of working-class immigrants looking for a toehold in a strange land, with most of the recent influx coming from the Hmong and Somali populations. Harris-Jones bought her current home in 1972, a modest one-and-a-half-story stucco built in 1927. Harris-Jones, who gets by on Social Security and a small pension, says she maintains it as best she can. It's her house, after all. "I'm going to live in this house and I'm going to die in this house and I'm going to be buried in the house," she says with a laugh. "And then I'm going to haunt the next person to live here."
In her decades in Harrison, Harris-Jones has had scant trouble with the city inspectors. About 10 years ago, she received her only citation: a painting order. She complied and, after taking photographs to court, managed to avoid a fine. Like a lot of people who own older homes, she's regularly been hit by unexpected expenses. In the past five years, she has shelled out for a new roof and a new cement walk. After burglars drove a tandem truck into her backyard and unloaded many of the contents of her house, she also had a new chain-link fence installed.
In June, Harris-Jones received a citation from Regulatory Services that nearly sent her into a panic. According to the order, her home was in need of fresh paint on all the trim. That was a daunting task, considering that she has 26 windows. In addition, she was instructed to paint the garage and replace the crumbling asphalt driveway. She says she knew she needed to do some painting. The driveway order puzzled her; it had been in lousy shape for decades and never aroused the city's ire before. But it was the August 1 deadline that really stuck in her craw.
A lifelong resident of the Harrison neighborhood, Joy Harris-Jones wonders why deadlines for making repairs were so tight
Photo by Mike Mosedale
Harris-Jones, who has both asthma and diabetes, knew she couldn't do any of that work herself. Nor, she says, could her husband, Michael, who last year quit his job as a custodian at Block E because of physical disabilities. Since his unemployment benefits ran out in April, the household finances have become tighter. So when Harris-Jones started tallying what the work would cost to contract out, she nearly gave up hope. A while back, she had gotten an estimate of $3,200 to replace her asphalt driveway. Such a sum was out of reach, which is why she decided to cover the bare patches with plywood. "That was the only thing we could afford," she says.
Harris-Jones was hardly the only homeowner in her neighborhood rattled by the city's get-tough approach. Just down the block, Jean Coste, a retired widow, received an order instructing her to paint her garage by August 1.
"I admit it's in bad shape. If my husband was still alive, we would have gotten it painted," Coste says. But like Harris-Jones, the 68-year-old Coste was in no shape to do the work herself and, like Harris-Jones, doesn't have much in the way of disposable income. Coste, who made sandwiches at Peter's Grill for 20 years, says she lives just above the poverty line. But it was the tight deadline—coupled with the prospect of punitive fines—that bothered her most.
"It's ridiculous," Coste says. "This city just wants to penalize those who can least afford it." Like many of her neighbors, Coste is also puzzled by the timing of the sweeps. "Things are looking better around here than they have in a long time," she says. "So why now?"
J. Kevin Flagg started getting calls from area residents practically from the day the inspectors hit the alley. Flagg, who works as a housing coordinator with the Harrison Neighborhood Association, figures he received 12 to 15 calls the first week alone. Mainly, he heard from people who worried that they wouldn't be able to pay for the repairs.
"You have to look at the people who live in Harrison," Flagg says. "The average household income—not personal income, household income—is $26,000 a year. We're talking about people working minimum-wage jobs. I know poverty is no excuse for not taking pride in where you live. But some things take precedence over other things. You prioritize. Are you going to pay the light and water bills or are you going to paint the garage?"
As Mayor R.T. Rybak tells it, the impetus for the North Side sweeps is a simple one: "We're sending a message that we will not accept lower standards in north Minneapolis than in any other part of town." In his second-term inaugural address, Rybak talked about the importance of "closing the gap" on the North Side. Disparities in public safety, education, employment, and housing, he says, have persisted too long and "problem properties" are an important part of the equation.
"After that speech, I called all the department heads and said, 'You're all doing a lot of work and you're going to have to do a lot more," Rybak says. In late winter, the mayor recalls, he attended a neighborhood meeting in Jordan in which residents, frustrated by rising crime, suggested stricter code enforcement as one strategy to turn things around.
Assistant City Coordinator Rocco Forte, who was also at the meeting, echoes the mayor's account. "We listened to neighborhood perceptions of what was happening on the North Side and one of the issues they brought up was that they didn't think the inspections department was being aggressive enough," Forte says.
Previously, Forte explains, inspections on the North Side were mainly complaint-driven. After the meeting in Jordan, Forte settled on a new and unprecedented approach: a curb-to-alley sweep of the entire Third, Fourth, and Fifth wards. He also made another significant policy change: Extensions on work orders, which used to be granted at the discretion of individual inspectors, would henceforth be routed to his desk. "I thought we were way too liberal on that," Forte says. "Most inspectors gave extension after extension, so in some cases the problems never got resolved."
Since the sweeps began, Forte estimates he's given fewer than 100 extensions. Typically, he says, he only hands them out when a property owner can demonstrate that they've made significant progress, hired a contractor, or applied for a loan to fund the improvements. (Deputy Director of Inspections JoAnn Velde, meanwhile, pegs the number of extensions at closer to 200.)
Like Rybak, council member Samuels, who represents much of the North Side and is a robust supporter of the sweeps, acknowledges that the city's punctilious approach is a hardship for some residents. But he says the North Side has long been "underserved" by housing inspectors. He contends the lack of vigilance from inspectors has contributed to a downward cycle in which homeowners, dismayed by the "ambient blight," have sold their properties to landlords who don't care whom they rent to. That dynamic, Samuels says, has fueled North Side crime.
Reprinted from City pages.
In the name of restoring order on the North Side, Minneapolis housing inspectors are issuing citations at a record pace. But is that flaking paint on Jean Coste's garage contributing to North Side crime—or just the city coffers?
Story and photos by Mike Mosedale
It's about 6:30 a.m. on a hot July morning when Harold Middleton starts looking for involuntary customers. Middleton doesn't use that term, "involuntary customers." It comes from the business plan devised by his bosses at the Minneapolis Department of Regulatory Services and it describes violators of the city's housing code. These days, that typically means residents of the North Side, where Middleton and his co-workers have been swarming the streets.
After a quick smoke in the big, empty parking lot at the Bean Scene, a coffee shop on West Broadway and Penn avenues, Middleton settles into the air-conditioned comfort of his office—a city-issued Chevy Malibu. He reaches into the big plastic bin in the back seat and extracts a thick stack of files. He then sorts the papers by address and affixes them to his clipboard.
Today, Middleton explains, he is doing re-inspections—checking properties that have already been cited for violations that range from such minor offenses as flaking garage paint and missing storm windows to big-ticket stuff like worn-out roofs and crumbling driveways. If Middleton finds that a problem hasn't been adequately addressed, the property owner faces the prospect of a $100 re-inspection fee and a $200 "administrative citation." In case of uncorrected environmental violations—inoperable vehicles, tall grass, rubbish in the yard—Middleton will make a note in the file and a contractor will be summoned. The next communication from the city will come in the form of a bill.
On this morning, Middleton is starting out in Jordan, one of the North Side's poorest neighborhoods. Middleton used to live in Jordan and has worked the North Side for most of the past seven years. He says he hasn't noticed the housing stock declining in recent years. If anything, he ventures, conditions have improved because of new buyers who have moved into the neighborhood and spruced up long-neglected properties. That fact notwithstanding, the sweep that Middleton represents is unprecedented in both scope and pace. Under the so-called "North Initiative," the exterior of every property in the city's Third, Fourth, and Fifth wards will be inspected by the end of October.
It is a daunting task: There are approximately 23,000 parcels in the three wards, which are mainly located on the North Side, but also include parts of Northeast and downtown. Since the program kicked off in mid-May, inspectors like Middleton have been pulled from other duties to focus exclusively on the sweep. And they've been busy. By the end of July, the inspectors had already paid a visit to some 20,628 properties and issued a staggering 20,378 citations. Along the way, they've served notice to the owners that they face escalating fines if they don't correct the problems promptly—a policy that could net a few million dollars for the city's general fund.
Once his day's paperwork is in order, Middleton throws the Malibu into gear and rumbles down the alley. Overall, Middleton estimates, compliance rates have hovered around 50 percent at the properties he has re-inspected. Some of the property owners who received multiple citations have only half-satisfied their work orders.
On the prowl: Housing inspector Harold Middleton
Photo by Mike Mosedale
Middleton quickly spots an example. "We had a big motor home here that was not properly licensed," he says as we rumble down an alley. "It's gone now. But they still didn't get the painting done on the trim of the dwelling." So Middleton steps out of his car, snaps a picture of the offending house with a city-issued digital camera, and scribbles the JPEG number on his clipboard. In the event the property owner contests the citation before a hearing officer, Middleton explains, the digital pictures will be used as evidence.
Dressed in a loose-fitting, untucked AFSCME T-shirt and blue jeans, Middleton doesn't look the part of the stickler or the zealous enforcer of city code. He's low-key and personable and takes no apparent pleasure in issuing citations. Still, he accepts the city's stated rationale that the crackdown is a benefit to the North Side. "I guess the whole idea is to get people to take pride in their property, keep the properties looking good," he offers.
In the view of the initiative's biggest boosters, among them mayor R.T. Rybak and Fifth Ward councilman Don Samuels, the sweeps aren't just about maintaining the housing stock. They argue that tougher standards on property can help restore social order and, in so doing, stem the rising tide of crime that is now swamping the North Side.
Middleton does not make such grand arguments. He is mindful that enforcement can come at a steep cost, especially for poor homeowners. The soaring foreclosure rate on the North Side is already the highest in the city. Middleton sees evidence of that every day as he makes his rounds: emptied-out homes with lawns that look like wheat fields. He knows additional financial burdens—in the form of a new roof or paint job or personal crisis—can push low-income homeowners beyond their limits.
"You got a lot of people here living on the edge," he says. "I get calls where people tell me, 'I don't have the property anymore. It belongs to the bank now.' And sometimes people know they're going to lose it, so they just walk away."
Of course, Middleton avers, none of that is his business. His job is to follow department policy—and that policy calls for him to enforce the rules, curb to alley, with no exceptions.
But the eagerness with which Minneapolis is now pursing code enforcement on the North Side does raise a question: Is that chipped paint on the garage on Knox Avenue contributing to North Side crime—or just the municipal coffers?
Joy Harris-Jones has lived in north Minneapolis her whole life, mostly on the 500 block of Newton Avenue. At 65, she's seen a lot change over that period. These days, her neighborhood—which extends from Penn to Lyndale avenues and Olson Memorial Highway to Cedar Lake Road—is known as Harrison. When she was a kid, everyone called it "Finn-town" in reference to the Finnish immigrants who'd settled here. "I might be the last full-blooded Finn left and I ain't leaving," Harris-Jones cracks in reference to the shifting demographics of her neighborhood.
One thing has remained constant in Harrison: It still draws a lot of working-class immigrants looking for a toehold in a strange land, with most of the recent influx coming from the Hmong and Somali populations. Harris-Jones bought her current home in 1972, a modest one-and-a-half-story stucco built in 1927. Harris-Jones, who gets by on Social Security and a small pension, says she maintains it as best she can. It's her house, after all. "I'm going to live in this house and I'm going to die in this house and I'm going to be buried in the house," she says with a laugh. "And then I'm going to haunt the next person to live here."
In her decades in Harrison, Harris-Jones has had scant trouble with the city inspectors. About 10 years ago, she received her only citation: a painting order. She complied and, after taking photographs to court, managed to avoid a fine. Like a lot of people who own older homes, she's regularly been hit by unexpected expenses. In the past five years, she has shelled out for a new roof and a new cement walk. After burglars drove a tandem truck into her backyard and unloaded many of the contents of her house, she also had a new chain-link fence installed.
In June, Harris-Jones received a citation from Regulatory Services that nearly sent her into a panic. According to the order, her home was in need of fresh paint on all the trim. That was a daunting task, considering that she has 26 windows. In addition, she was instructed to paint the garage and replace the crumbling asphalt driveway. She says she knew she needed to do some painting. The driveway order puzzled her; it had been in lousy shape for decades and never aroused the city's ire before. But it was the August 1 deadline that really stuck in her craw.
A lifelong resident of the Harrison neighborhood, Joy Harris-Jones wonders why deadlines for making repairs were so tight
Photo by Mike Mosedale
Harris-Jones, who has both asthma and diabetes, knew she couldn't do any of that work herself. Nor, she says, could her husband, Michael, who last year quit his job as a custodian at Block E because of physical disabilities. Since his unemployment benefits ran out in April, the household finances have become tighter. So when Harris-Jones started tallying what the work would cost to contract out, she nearly gave up hope. A while back, she had gotten an estimate of $3,200 to replace her asphalt driveway. Such a sum was out of reach, which is why she decided to cover the bare patches with plywood. "That was the only thing we could afford," she says.
Harris-Jones was hardly the only homeowner in her neighborhood rattled by the city's get-tough approach. Just down the block, Jean Coste, a retired widow, received an order instructing her to paint her garage by August 1.
"I admit it's in bad shape. If my husband was still alive, we would have gotten it painted," Coste says. But like Harris-Jones, the 68-year-old Coste was in no shape to do the work herself and, like Harris-Jones, doesn't have much in the way of disposable income. Coste, who made sandwiches at Peter's Grill for 20 years, says she lives just above the poverty line. But it was the tight deadline—coupled with the prospect of punitive fines—that bothered her most.
"It's ridiculous," Coste says. "This city just wants to penalize those who can least afford it." Like many of her neighbors, Coste is also puzzled by the timing of the sweeps. "Things are looking better around here than they have in a long time," she says. "So why now?"
J. Kevin Flagg started getting calls from area residents practically from the day the inspectors hit the alley. Flagg, who works as a housing coordinator with the Harrison Neighborhood Association, figures he received 12 to 15 calls the first week alone. Mainly, he heard from people who worried that they wouldn't be able to pay for the repairs.
"You have to look at the people who live in Harrison," Flagg says. "The average household income—not personal income, household income—is $26,000 a year. We're talking about people working minimum-wage jobs. I know poverty is no excuse for not taking pride in where you live. But some things take precedence over other things. You prioritize. Are you going to pay the light and water bills or are you going to paint the garage?"
As Mayor R.T. Rybak tells it, the impetus for the North Side sweeps is a simple one: "We're sending a message that we will not accept lower standards in north Minneapolis than in any other part of town." In his second-term inaugural address, Rybak talked about the importance of "closing the gap" on the North Side. Disparities in public safety, education, employment, and housing, he says, have persisted too long and "problem properties" are an important part of the equation.
"After that speech, I called all the department heads and said, 'You're all doing a lot of work and you're going to have to do a lot more," Rybak says. In late winter, the mayor recalls, he attended a neighborhood meeting in Jordan in which residents, frustrated by rising crime, suggested stricter code enforcement as one strategy to turn things around.
Assistant City Coordinator Rocco Forte, who was also at the meeting, echoes the mayor's account. "We listened to neighborhood perceptions of what was happening on the North Side and one of the issues they brought up was that they didn't think the inspections department was being aggressive enough," Forte says.
Previously, Forte explains, inspections on the North Side were mainly complaint-driven. After the meeting in Jordan, Forte settled on a new and unprecedented approach: a curb-to-alley sweep of the entire Third, Fourth, and Fifth wards. He also made another significant policy change: Extensions on work orders, which used to be granted at the discretion of individual inspectors, would henceforth be routed to his desk. "I thought we were way too liberal on that," Forte says. "Most inspectors gave extension after extension, so in some cases the problems never got resolved."
Since the sweeps began, Forte estimates he's given fewer than 100 extensions. Typically, he says, he only hands them out when a property owner can demonstrate that they've made significant progress, hired a contractor, or applied for a loan to fund the improvements. (Deputy Director of Inspections JoAnn Velde, meanwhile, pegs the number of extensions at closer to 200.)
Like Rybak, council member Samuels, who represents much of the North Side and is a robust supporter of the sweeps, acknowledges that the city's punctilious approach is a hardship for some residents. But he says the North Side has long been "underserved" by housing inspectors. He contends the lack of vigilance from inspectors has contributed to a downward cycle in which homeowners, dismayed by the "ambient blight," have sold their properties to landlords who don't care whom they rent to. That dynamic, Samuels says, has fueled North Side crime.
posted by Bob at Wednesday, September 20, 2006
6 Comments:
And who was it that said that St. Paul was not making money as aleged in the RICO lawsuits. I bet St. Paul is making a ton of money off the corruption they are involved in.. They all belong in jail.
what else is new? st. paul has been waging war on the poor for years now! it's not ever gonna change. there is too much money involved in screwing the poor and the best thing for the city is that the poor keep coming back for more!
Hi All,
I'm sorry to learn of news like this.This is bad news!
I'm not one to sit on my duff our back down from an over whelming task,and the Watchdog News isn't either. We have much work to do to head this stuff off.
The Watchdog News is evolving, we are working on ways to increase distribution.The outlook is real positive.
We intend to expand our door to door distribution to Mpls. We will increase overall distribution of the Watchdog News Paper.
The only solution it seems is to educate the public.
Everybody should flood the welfare building. Go down and apply for everything they have, whether you qualify or not! Its what the city is forcing some people into (Poverty). Maybe if enough people went to apply for assistance they would take another look at what they are doing to the working class citizens. St.Paul wants to take everyones homes let St.Paul pay your rent where they think you should live then, get medical, food program, etc... Get every penny you can from the system!Then see how well they like it by having to support everyone. Then when taxes go up high enough on the snobs that are left they can see what they have cost themselves.
First time here. I'm a friend of Bobs. He's been talking about this stuff non stop since last Febuary.
I really didn't know what to think about this issue. I live in Woodbury and I don't have alot of money. I have a neighbor who I just don't get along with no matter how hard I try.
He called housing enforcement on me often in the past. All it has gotten him is my house fixed up free with programs refered to me by the enforcement inspector.
I guess the only difference I can see is the concentration of poverty and the big cities ambitions to remove it.
Good thing I didn't buy my home in St. Paul. I did look at the market there.
Do you know what could happen in the future if the global warming proponents get their way. Every homeowner will have to install energy efficient furnaces and other gadgets in their homes. St. Paul, I'm sure will have their own ambitious set of rules to get inside every home and inspect all utilities and condemn those that don't cooperate with the new guidelines. And it will be easy to get inside because they will be granted permission through the state as well as the federal government to do these inspections. I fear for St. Paul.
If they can condemn a home for being shut off from excel, they will condemn for anything they will find or make it up themselves. What about windows and insulation. What if everyone had to upgrade all these things. That's the scary thing here and some people will applaud these measures.
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