Alliance for Metropolitan Stability
Report date
December 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
As the pandemic surged and unemployment soared, the Alliance and our partners pivoted to anti-eviction work, rent stabilization education, and creating a policy agenda that responded to the moment. In the realm of COVID-19 response, we unexpectedly stepped deeply into statewide work to secure the eviction moratorium and to keep it in place as long as legally possible. Working with the Equity in Place coalition, we crafted an addendum to our policy platform focused on maintaining the statewide eviction moratorium through executive order, prioritizing longer term support for renters, and centering community in distributing future housing assistance. See the details of our platform here: http://thealliancetc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EIP-Policy-addendum-2021-v2.pdf. We are now working with coalition members to ensure that there are no evictions for non-payment of rent now that the moratorium is lifted, at least not until the half a billion dollars in emergency rental assistance from the Rent Help MN program is in the hands of tenants who need it.
In both Minneapolis and St. Paul, we are working with on-the-ground coalitions to educate people about the proposed rent stabilization ordinances that are designed to protect vulnerable tenants from predatory rental practices. For years, rising rents have disproportionately impacted BIPOC households, resulting in widening racial disparities in housing cost-burden, housing instability and homelessness. Renters, some of whom have seen their rent increase hundreds of dollars at a time, have shared that something must be done about unreasonable rent growth. In 2021, both campaigns focused on rent stabilization as the next step toward equitable housing in our cities. Voters will decide in November whether the proposals will move forward; the Housing Equity Now St. Paul (HENS) proposal details the specifics of the rent control policy, whereas the Minneapolis proposal gives the city council authority to design a policy should the ballot measure pass.
Beyond the specific policies named above, the Alliance and our partners have focused our efforts on ensuring CARES Act and American Rescue Plan Act dollars are equitably distributed in our communities. MN Housing consulted with us regularly on how to implement emergency rental assistance programs in an equitable way, and we served as a connector for community-based groups across multiple jurisdictions who pushed emergency rental assistance out into BIPOC communities. Some of our Equity in Place partners are now serving as field partners for the state’s CHAP and Rent Help MN efforts. The amount of resources that are flowing into communities could be transformational if implemented with a racial equity lens, and with commitment to long-term changes in how agencies share power with community-based organizations and prioritize resources to BIPOC and low-wealth communities.
Together all the efforts named are focused on keeping people stably housed, which was one of the core goals of our original proposal. We could not have predicted how it would play out, or which policies would have legs, and we hope that we will achieve even more than we set out to a year and a half ago.
Together all the efforts named are focused on keeping people stably housed, which was one of the core goals of our original proposal. We could not have predicted how it would play out, or which policies would have legs, and we hope that we will achieve even more than we set out to a year and a half ago.
Key lessons learned
A lesson that we were reminded of this year was that in the work of organizing, we often have to balance the need for long-term policy solutions with immediate mutual aid. People most affected by housing instability are often experiencing one of the biggest traumas of their lives. And while policy can help them and others in the long term, it is challenging to focus on that in the face of immediate crises. As organizers, we are in a position of asking people to help cure the systemic causes of their problems by speaking into systems that routinely devalue their expertise, while simultaneously trying to connect them to short-term safety nets.
The broad set of skills required and the emotional toll this takes on organizers, especially when we and our families have experienced similar life traumas, is underestimated. And yet our work is essential. Government doesn’t typically have the expertise to ensure policy change efforts are firmly grounded in community-articulated needs and outcomes. The role of community-based organizations in understanding tenant issues is essential in crafting policies that support low-wealth and BIPOC residents in our communities.
The broad set of skills required and the emotional toll this takes on organizers, especially when we and our families have experienced similar life traumas, is underestimated. And yet our work is essential. Government doesn’t typically have the expertise to ensure policy change efforts are firmly grounded in community-articulated needs and outcomes. The role of community-based organizations in understanding tenant issues is essential in crafting policies that support low-wealth and BIPOC residents in our communities.
Our organization, partners, and field experienced—and continue to experience—a time of intense acceleration in the work. We are now collectively trying to catch our breath, reflect, and determine how we can make our work more sustainable for the long haul. There are times, since the start of the pandemic, where we perhaps have not always done the best job of navigating the balance of intense work and given time to pause, reflect, and evaluate. However, the Alliance is being more intentional about making space for this reflection and growth in our coalition work, with our members and within our own organization, even given the elevated pace of our daily work. Former HOME Line Organizing and Capacity Building Director Ivory Taylor (now and Alliance staff member) recently shared with us how helpful this has been, saying, “During a deeply challenging and complex 2020, working with the Alliance gave us space to hold each other in care, strength, and accountability—and center racial equity in our work always.”
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
Collaboration has been the most important element of our progress. We are proud of what we accomplished over the past 18 months especially given the rapid pace and unprecedented challenges. What made all of this work possible were our long-term relationships, which we are intentional about building in ways that are not transactional. The Alliance has deep relationships with partner organizations that enabled us to act quickly when the pandemic hit and brought urgent needs and quick decision-making. Some of the pivots we made in our work would have been impossible or taken significant time had we not built those relationships over time. Since we trusted one another and knew we shared values, we were able to work quickly and effectively to get resources to communities. In turn, this only worked because the community-based organizations we worked with are deeply embedded in their communities, know real people, and understand the needs, ideas, concerns, and wisdom shared on the ground. The organizations with the strongest connections were able to best meet community needs in the face of crisis.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Flexibility. Our plans have not played out even remotely how we outlined them in our initial proposal, but we would argue that because of our flexibility we accomplished even more than we dreamed of in terms of long-term progress to protect renters. We feel that we are in the Overton Window for more progress and we need to do everything we can to push as much meaningful racial equity and housing justice policy through it as we can.
Creativity and long-term vision. The Alliance and our partners must do the work of thinking creatively about a more just future that does not yet exist. Frequently we are told that the goals of our work are not attainable in the short term, yet we have to collectively envision them and work towards them. Over the past couple of years, we have seen our work, and its points of impact, shift in ways that we could only have imagined previously. Rent stabilization passing, a 15-month statewide moratorium on evictions, and hundreds of millions of dollars in rental assistance seemed impossible a few years ago. Our ability to be innovative in our work, was grounded in that creative, long-term visioning work of our coalitions.
Creativity and long-term vision. The Alliance and our partners must do the work of thinking creatively about a more just future that does not yet exist. Frequently we are told that the goals of our work are not attainable in the short term, yet we have to collectively envision them and work towards them. Over the past couple of years, we have seen our work, and its points of impact, shift in ways that we could only have imagined previously. Rent stabilization passing, a 15-month statewide moratorium on evictions, and hundreds of millions of dollars in rental assistance seemed impossible a few years ago. Our ability to be innovative in our work, was grounded in that creative, long-term visioning work of our coalitions.
Understanding the problem
The need for anti-displacement and tenant protection work is much greater now than it was in 2019 when we wrote our proposal—and when there was already urgency to address the housing stability crisis in our region. One area in particular where we have learned a lot is about where we can use state-level education and advocacy to push for change that will benefit our region (our original proposal focused mostly on region, county and city strategies). This is work we haven’t done for some time, and that could potentially open doors to new partnerships with Greater Minnesota stakeholders who understand that the housing crisis is affecting every corner of the state. Our relationships with decision-makers like the governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general’s office are deeper than they were two years ago, and will serve us well as we expand our state-level strategies.
If you could do it all over again...
We would tell ourselves to be fearless in pushing for bold, collaborative solutions to our region’s most pressing housing problems. While the Alliance and our partners are pushing for bolder solutions than ever, we have found that some government leaders were willing to push for policies, investments and partnerships that previously would not have seemed politically possible. In many ways, the public narrative has shifted since the pandemic and the uprisings, with more attention to investing in policies and solutions that specifically and intentionally benefit low-wealth and BIPOC people. The Alliance and our partners are committed to contributing to this ongoing shift through ongoing narrative change and research that complement our policy/practice change efforts.