A century-old home in Minneapolis' Windom neighborhood sits empty. Its five bedrooms go unused.
Patches on the roof are aging. Water leaks damaged the plaster ceilings inside. The structure needs to be stabilized. The Minneapolis Public Housing Authority estimates it would take roughly $200,000 to bring the home back into livable condition.
Local housing officials hope new proposed funding from the city of Minneapolis could help them bring the home on Blaisdell Avenue back online. While they welcome the prospect of new funding, they say far more is needed to help address a multi-million dollar repair backlog that is expected to compound in the coming years.
"These homes are at risk because of the chronic underfunding from the federal government that we have received," Tom Hoch, board chair for the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, said in a news conference held outside the home late last month. "Just as you know with your house, it's hard to maintain your home if you don't have money."
The house on Blaisdell is part of the housing authority's scattered site program, which runs about 700 single family homes, duplexes and fourplexes throughout the city. The program provides the bulk of the authority's housing for families with children and currently serves about 3,100 people. More than 7,500 additional people remain on the agency's waitlist for housing.
Inside, the floors are scuffed and stained. The bathroom needs an upgrade. A hole is exposed in one of the ceilings. The home is one of five that have gone unused for years because they require some of the most extensive repair work.
Costs add up
In total, the housing authority estimates it needs $31 million to fix the repair backlog in its scattered site housing program. It estimates that figure would grow to nearly $85 million by 2032, absent "a significant investment."
Local housing officials say those backlogs have ballooned in part because federal funding has lagged behind their needs for decades. This year, MPHA received about $20 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to use for capital projects. It estimated it had $164 million in capital needs across all of its programs.
"We've only been able to, with our past dollars, just do band-aid repairs, small fixes along the way, and had to make these hard decisions about taking units offline that we couldn't get repaired in time to make them habitable for our residents," said Brian Schaffer, assistant director of planning and development for MPHA.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey unveiled a budget proposal last month that includes $3.7 million for MPHA over the next two years, about $2.7 million of which is new funding aimed in part at helping MPHA bring those five unused homes back into livable condition. It's a small part of a roughly $3.3 billion spending plan that he'll negotiate with the City Council in the coming months.
'Come to the table'
For a small number of families on MPHA's waitlist, that funding "will be lifechanging," said Abdi Warsame, the agency's executive director and CEO, who previously sat with Frey on the City Council. Warsame said 88% of the people who receive help through the scattered site program are Black and 85% of the families are led by women.
Still, he and Frey acknowledged the money will not be enough to cover all of the agency's needed repairs. "This is an invitation to our state, county, and importantly — most importantly — federal partners to say we want to come to the table with you to solve this backlog," the mayor said at the news conference.
In a visit to Minneapolis last week, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge said federal authorities are working on a proposal to increase funding for housing programs across the nation.
President Joe Biden's budget proposal includes nearly $72 billion in discretionary funding for HUD, which works on a variety of programs aimed at reducing homelessness, increasing homeownership and increasing energy efficiency, among other efforts.
It is too early to tell how much of that money might go toward helping public housing authorities reduce their repair backlogs. Biden first needs to negotiate the spending plan with the U.S. House and Senate.
