St. Paul Chapter Report - December 2021
MICAH, HENS, St Paul Renters win historic victory for rent stabilization at the ballot box!
Strongest rent control protections in the nation voted in by healthy majority
People power vs corporate money results in grinding defeat for multi-million dollar “anti” campaign
On Tuesday, November 2, 2021, nearly 31,000 St. Paul voters supported the black, brown, and white renters of the City of St. Paul by limiting the power of corporate and predatory landlords to price them out of their housing. MICAH was there every step of the way, from forming the policy to getting it on the ballot to providing the truth to congregations, countering a veritable storm of disinformation and propaganda. Our work with the Housing Equity Now St. Paul (HENS) coalition was critical to getting this passed. The coalition together made nearly 250,000 voter contacts, and in the end, St. Paul voted strongly that renters are a valuable part of our community.
The community campaign was centered in some very important messages and directions. In the campaign, called “Keep St. Paul Home,” renters are held to be fully vested residents of St. Paul. It says that renters are already here and we need to keep them, and the homes of renters are homes just as much as those of resident owners. The campaign also adopted a “Race-Class Narrative” – that there is a base economic issue (renters being abused by greedy powerful landlords) that is explicitly race-based as well. The campaign’s message -- “Black, Brown, or White – from the East Side to the North End, from Frogtown to the West Side – we need to keep our renters’ home” -- made race explicit and tied it to housing. The referendum limits rent increases to 3%, and as the campaign made it clear, research over the last 20 years has shown that rent increases average 2% to 2.5% EXCEPT for BIPoC renters, who have been much more likely to be subjected to predatory rent increases used by gentrifiers and corporate buyers flipping apartment complexes.
The Keep St. Paul Home campaign succeeded for a number of reasons. We had some political support. We had a housing market that had been failing moderate- and low-income people for years. We had particularly bad discrimination against BIPoC folks. We had the George Floyd uprising, a huge flexing of people power and of poor BIPoC residents. And we had the ham-handed stock photo flyers of the anti- campaign. Run out of the Chicago area by a company that also does extensive work for conservative politicians and the national realtors, the anti- campaign influenced official media coverage but not, apparently, enough voters. A very strong voter outreach effort, with particular credit to ISAIAH, was good enough to get the positive message to enough people.
After the passage, which was a huge surprise to many (including several councilmembers who had not supported it), the big money folks began a fear and intimidation campaign to undermine it, starting with announcements that some construction projects would not go forward because (faceless) outside investors were leaving, and then pushing to limit the protections by exempting new construction. Ryan Companies, who are the master developer for the old St. Paul Ford Plant site in Highland Park, announced they were ‘putting some projects on hold’ (something they said they were going to do before the election.) Another developer (Exeter) said they had one project that was called off – no idea which, or what stage it might have been in.
This anonymous ‘capital strike,’ where investors silently pull their money from projects, is anti-democratic and could be just posturing. Margaret Kaplan of the Housing Justice Center has said in a meeting that Ryan will build out the Ford site. They’re not actually serious. But these threats, and the sense of compelling impending urgency are being used on a political level to weaken the case and get political figures (like Mayor Carter) to publicly state they are in favor of weakening the law (by excluding new housing.)
There is a simple way to make sure this does not happen, but it is not necessarily easy. Lower-income renters will benefit the most by this law, but lower-income renters must be organized and supporting it. There will be legal challenges, and lawyers will be helpful. There will be political challenges, and talking to the political system will be helpful. But to balance against the pull of large piles of money – the corporate class, the free market fundamentalists, Wall Street – we will need organized power in the neighborhoods. The kind of power that Black Lives Matter has manifested. Movement power.
The HENS coalition was made of non-profits -- advocacy groups, neighborhood associations, faith groups, legal groups. Will non-profits feel that they must remain genteel and polite, and let hard money power have its way? Or can we organize a power-from-within movement of renters who can keep the pressure on? These are the questions we must answer.