After winning the Ward 2 election on Nov. 3, Robin Wonsley Worlobah sat down with the Minnesota Daily to discuss her preparations for office and the excitement of election day.

Wonsley Worlobah won the race by 19 more votes than challenger Yusra Arab. Incumbent Cam Gordon was eliminated in the second round of tabulation.

Previously, Wonsley Worlobah worked for several Twin Cities activist groups and advocated for the passage of the rent stabilization question. She will take office Jan. 3. Ward 2 spans seven neighborhoods, including Prospect Park and parts of Marcy-Holmes, Cedar-Riverside and Southeast Como.

What are you doing to prepare to take office?

“I think right now, the most immediate [action] is connecting with my new colleagues, other Council members and new Council members, the mayor … also looking to connect with key stakeholders, like specifically Cam Gordon.

One of our key community commitments was setting up a Ward office, and right now we’re spending a lot of time figuring out how we can do that. And that is something that we want to honor. We know that’s going to be a big piece of what it means to actually have Democratic Socialist politics.”

How do you plan on supporting students?

“As a mission, [getting] our community office set up is our first priority. Part of our commitment to that office is figuring out a way to fund it so that we can hire … two staff people that can actually help a Council member support the needs of their wards …

It’s very important that [students] have a direct seat at the table of how we start to shape policy. That means … making sure that we’re setting up regular meetings with student groups on campus. And also making sure the grassroots organizing [continues], like rent control and some of the issues happening around public safety or exploring how we can move forward with public safety.

By doing petitions and canvassing at the dorms … we’re getting direct input from students and also creating an avenue for them to be engaged and participate in the decision-making processes around these issues.”

When did you find out you had won and what was your first reaction?

“I was at brunch at a Spanish cafe over in south Minneapolis with my family. They were just about to leave and go back home to Chicago and other parts where they traveled from and one of my campaign members who have been tracking the election results hit me up right when we were finishing with, ‘Robin, I think we won.’ I was like, ‘Wait, what? What do you mean you think we won?’

I just completely lost it in this cafe, like legit it’s 10 in the morning on a Wednesday. We were shouting, everyone started clapping, some people didn’t know that was happening and they were singing happy birthday. So that was really beautiful …

And then I think around two o’clock, that’s when the city published [the official results], like we are the official winner … There were so many tears.”

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Ten years ago, walking down Fourth Street in Prospect Park was a different experience.

There were empty lots, run-down warehouses and a “forest of grain elevators,” according to Prospect Park Association (PPA) member Richard Gilyard. The abandoned buildings invited teenagers seeking adventure and not much else.

Today, there are new apartment buildings and restaurants, all located north of University Avenue in Prospect Park. Much of the development was prompted by the addition of the Metro Green Line in 2014.

This conglomeration of new housing and businesses wasn’t a random happenstance from developers — it was created by residents who saw a chance to revitalize the neighborhood.

Community-driven development

When Gilyard heard the Green Line was going to be installed, he knew the land around the station could be developed fairly quickly.

“We thought it was the most asset-rich location in the entire metropolitan area, primarily because it’s next to the University of Minnesota,” said Gilyard. “We felt that if left to market forces, the area could develop as a kind of a stretch version of Stadium Village, [with] more student housing.”

Gilyard created the Master Planning Committee within the neighborhood organization to help determine what types of housing and businesses would be there.

“We formed a Master Planning Committee to think about what was the opportunity here,” Gilyard said. “Out of that came the vision of an urban village around the light rail station.”

Currently, there are mixed forms of housing, including elderly, student, luxury and affordable, and new businesses and restaurants.

There was also hope for district-wide resources, such as energy and storm-water management, which inspired the creation of Towerside Innovation District in 2013. Towerside members have completed a storm-water management system and renewable energy source that will be put into use in 2023.

Questions on affordability

Robin Wonsley Worlobah, Ward two city Council candidate, said six years ago she rented out a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate for a little over $800 a month. When looking into moving back into Prospect Park, she could not find an apartment that was affordable for her.

“Looking now, all the one-bedroom [apartments] were $1,300 plus,” said Wonsley Worlobah.

A one-bedroom apartment at HERE Minneapolis, which advertises itself as student housing, can go for about $1,500 a month. The only grocery store in Prospect Park is Fresh Thyme Market.

Between the apartments, grocery store and restaurants, Wonsley Worlobah does not see the new developments as friendly for working class residents.

There are affordable housing units in Prospect Park, such as Glendale Townhomes, with plans for more affordable housing to be added in 2023.

Glendale residents have been increasingly worried about privatization, as there have been plans to tear down and rebuild a mix of market-rate and affordable housing in the past 10 years.

Residents are worried that these plans would displace them across the city and destroy their current family-style townhomes. Although the plans have included affordable housing units that residents could move back into after construction, it is unsure if units would remain affordable.

The start with Surly

The shift in the neighborhood began with Surly Brewing Company. It was one of the first new developments to make its way into Prospect Park, opening in late 2014.

“We didn’t become cool until Surly’s got built,” said Jerry Stein, a PPA board member and nearly lifelong resident of Prospect Park.

At the time, it was one of five breweries within a few blocks of the Green Line, making it a spot that people could easily brewery-hop to. Surly attracted more customers into the neighborhood.

The Fresh Thyme grocery store was built in 2018. O’Shaughnessy Distilling Co. and the Malcolm Yards Market have opened this year in Prospect Park.

While some businesses came in, others got pushed out.

Tina Rexing, owner of T-Rex Cookies, used to own a shop in the Arts and Architecture building on Bedford Avenue in Prospect Park. She opened her cafe in 2015 after doing $150,000 worth of renovations to the space.

In December 2018, her shop closed down so that Vermilion Development could build apartments at the Arts and Architecture building. The developer agreed to keep a space open for Rexing’s business to move into after construction was finished, but after a year of waiting, Rexing decided to move her business outside Minneapolis.

“I think the new development could do nothing but good things to the neighborhood,” Rexing said.

In the upcoming city election, there are five Ward two candidates on the ballot, something that has not been seen for over 40 years.

As Minneapolis approaches its first municipal election since George Floyd’s murder and the following unrest, it is clear that there has been an increase in civic engagement in Ward two. These five candidates come from a wide range of backgrounds, but all are looking to help Minneapolis through a period of immense change.

The last time there were five candidates was in 1977, with most of the following elections drawing two candidates. Current representative Cam Gordon was elected in 2005, and has not seen tough opposition since his election year.

The candidates are Gordon, Yusra Arab, Robin Wonsley Worlobah, Tom Anderson and Guy Gaskin. Gordon represents the Green Party while Wonsley Worlobah is part of the Democratic Socialist Party. Arab is a DFL candidate and advocate for Ward two’s East African population. Anderson is a DFL candidate with a background in teaching. Gaskin is the lone Republican candidate running in a neighborhood that tends to vote progressively.

City finds itself at a turning point

Wonsley Worlobah, Arab and Anderson said they decided to run for city Council after Floyd’s murder and the subsequent disarray of the city.

“The world is really looking at Minneapolis after the uprisings,” Wonsley Worlobah said. “How do you actually go about changing the conditions that drive apartheid conditions in your city?”

Currently, the city Council is dealing with how to reform, or replace, the police department, solve the racial disparities among several city systems, such as the Black-white homeownership gap and create more affordable housing.

When the Minneapolis City Council vowed to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department in June 2020, Arab said she felt they did this without a concrete plan.

“I haven’t seen the Council step up and actually implement a significant plan that includes communities that are most impacted by these decisions, which is one of the promises that they made on stage,” she said.

When Arab worked as a policy aide for the Ward six City Council member, she said she noticed a disconnect between city hall and its constituents. She watched city officials who didn’t know much about the East African community struggle to communicate with them.

“The East African community is a traditionally oral society, so by just spreading the community with flyers about resources, they would never get traction and they were wondering why,” Arab said.

Ward two creates room for independents

Currently, Gordon is the only independent party member that exists within the city Council. Every other Council member is in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party.

Southeast Como Improvement Agency President Ben Brummel said he wouldn’t be surprised if Wonsley Worlobah does well in Ward two given the fact that it already elected a progressive independent. Historically, Ward two has been run, like much of the city, by DFL party members. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was strong competition from independents, but DFL members usually won.

This changed when Gordon ran for the first time in 2001. Although he was not elected that year, he came in a close second, losing by about 100 votes. In the terms before he took office, Gordon said there were Green Party members on the Council, but when he was elected, he was the only one.

Within Ward two, there is a large student population living in Prospect Park, Southeast Como and Cedar-Riverside. Younger generations, including Millennials and Gen-Z, tend to vote more liberally, according to the Pew Research Center.

There is not a strong Democrat vs. Republican debate happening in Minneapolis at the local election level, Gordon said.

“I think people also see that City Council is nonpartisan, and party connection maybe isn’t as important as it might be when they’re thinking about the state legislature, or Congress where it seems like that majority parties are really important,” Gordon said.

Gordon’s 15 years in Ward two

Through the last 15 years, Gordon said he helped create the Dinkytown Greenway, which is the trail system running along the train tracks in Dinkytown. These trails connect to others along West River Parkway and continues to run near downtown Minneapolis. He also helped get protected bike lanes along the Franklin Avenue Bridge near Seward.

He said he has been a part of getting rid of parking minimums and overall, transitioning Minneapolis into a walkable city.

“[As city Council member], you really have an opportunity to help people and improve people’s lives,” Gordon said. “A lot of people think about politics and they think about it at the national and the federal level, but it’s at this local level where you can really partner with folks and … help people solve problems.”

Guy Gaskin did not respond to the Minnesota Daily’s requests to interview.

The Minnesota Daily emailed six mayoral candidates about what issues they plan on tackling first and if they support or oppose the three city questions.

For the city questions, the first one on the ballot is to redefine the mayor’s role as the chief executive officer and the city Council as the legislative body. The Yes 4 Minneapolis question will ask voters about shifting funding from the Minneapolis Police Department to a new Department of Public Safety. The third question addresses whether the city Council or civilians could vote to place a cap on rent increases.

Jacob Frey (incumbent)
Party: DFL
Background: Frey is the current mayor of Minneapolis after being elected in 2017. Before that, he served on the City Council as the Ward Three representative.

What issues do you plan on tackling first? “Two overarching issues remain of foremost importance: enacting a comprehensive, accountable safety system and recovering from the global pandemic and resulting economic downturn while maintaining inclusion at the center of our policies. As for safety, I have been consistent in supporting a both/and approach to public safety, including a deep culture shift within our department, expanding safety responses beyond policing and ensuring adequate staffing of community-oriented officers. Economic recovery must include opportunities for ownership in communities of color.”

Frey supports the executive mayor-legislative council structure.
Frey opposes the Yes 4 Minneapolis city ballot question.
Frey supports authorizing the city Council to enact a rent control ordinance.

Sheila Nezhad
Party: DFL
Background: Nezhad received her master’s degree from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, helped draft the Yes 4 Minneapolis ballot question, worked as a policy analyst for Reclaim the Block and helped create the Office of Violence Prevention in 2018.

What issues do you plan on tackling first? “I will take bold action to improve our public safety system by increasing violence prevention funding, youth programming and expanding our options of who we can call for help … I will prioritize starting participatory budgeting so residents have a say in how our city dollars are spent to meet community needs. Finally, I will work with BIPOC environmental justice organizers to facilitate a just transition of the Roof Depot and Upper Harbor Terminal sites.”

Nezhad opposes the executive mayor-legislative council structure.
Nezhad supports the Yes 4 Minneapolis city ballot question.
Nezhad supports authorizing the city Council to enact a rent control ordinance.

Nate Atkins
Background: Atkins received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. He is currently a customer service and warranty manager at CentraHomes.
Party: Libertarian

What issues do you plan on tackling first? “Require police carry professional liability insurance, decriminalize all drug use & possession, end qualified immunity, end civil asset forfeiture and end no-knock warrants.”

Atkins supports the city question that would implement the Executive Mayor-Legislative Council structure.
Atkins opposes the Yes 4 Minneapolis ballot question.
Atkins opposes authorizing the city Council to enact a rent control ordinance.

AJ Awed
Party: DFL
Background: Awed received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. He currently works as an attorney at the American Arbitration Association and is the Executive Director of the Cedar-Riverside Community Council.

What issues do you plan on tackling first? “The first thing this city needs to address is public safety and what the future of the police department is going to look like. This city is at a crossroads. If elected, I want to make sure that whatever choice is made is put into action
and that the people of Minneapolis can start to feel safe and heal no matter what.”

Awed supports the ballot question that would implement the Executive Mayor-Legislative Council structure.
Awed opposes the Yes 4 Minneapolis ballot question.
Awed supports authoring the city Council to enact a rent control ordinance.

Clint Conner
Party: DFL
Background: Conner worked as a lawyer for Dorsey & Whitney, has provided legal services to those who could not afford a lawyer and worked with Walter Mondale. He’s also served on a handful of community organizations, including the Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association.

What issues do you plan on tackling first? “The mayor’s primary responsibility is public safety. Our city charter gives our mayor ‘complete power over the establishment, maintenance and command of the police department.’ The mayor is the city’s ombudsman and top advocate. The mayor must participate in civic activities, meet with community leaders, and do what is necessary to hear and understand the concerns of city residents. In my view, the mayor should prioritize giving voice to the voiceless and advocating for those in the community who have been marginalized.”

Conner supports the ballot question that would implement the Executive Mayor-Legislative Council structure.
Connor opposes the Yes 4 Minneapolis ballot question.
Connor supports the question that would authorize the city Council to enact rent control ordinances.

Jerrell Perry
Party: For the People
Background: Perry is currently the director of operations at Arnold P. Williams Community Outreach Center.

What issues do you plan on tackling first? “We have no choice but to act on multiple fronts all at one time, bringing all hands on deck and assembling an entire team to tackle what lies ahead of us. We are used to saying we don’t have the money, but we received $135 million last May and are set to receive another $135 million this coming May, in addition to our regular city budget, and God has blessed our city with a unique opportunity to do so many things to change the lives of so many people and families around our city to secure the future of our children. We will tackle investments in public safety, education, housing and homeownership, youth/young adult outreach, small business reconciliation and ownership, as well as public health, including environmental protections.”

Perry opposes the ballot question that would implement the Executive Mayor-Legislative Council structure.
Perry supports the Yes 4 Minneapolis ballot question.
Perry supports the question that would authorize the city Council to enact rent control ordinances.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. The Minnesota Daily reached out to all other mayoral candidates but they did not respond. Caleb Hensin contributed to this report.

For the upcoming municipal elections in November, residents of Minneapolis will be voting on a number of candidates, including mayoral, city council and the park board. But what is the park board and why do we vote on it?

Minneapolis is unique in that it has a park board and not a parks department. The park board is a semi-separated body of government in charge of maintaining the parks system.

District 1 park commissioner Chris Meyer said it’s like a school board, but for the parks. Citizens elect park commissioners and the board has more decision-making control over the parks than a city department would have.

What does the park board do?

The park board handles everything that has to do with parks. From maintenance to reserving a baseball field to organizing youth sports, if it happens on park property, it’s their business.

There are nine park commissioners total, with six district representatives and three at-large commissioners. The Minneapolis parks are split into six districts. District commissioners are who the public goes to alert officials about a problem or give feedback on an area park. At-large commissioners focus on Minneapolis as a whole.

Park commissioners elect a superintendent who is in charge of most departments within the system, including the independently-run park police department. There is also a deputy superintendent in charge of a handful of departments.

District one is in charge of parks around the East Bank campus and District three oversees the West Bank. Recently, District one commissioner Meyer created plans to redo Marcy Park, taking out the playground to make it more student-oriented.

What makes a good park commissioner?

Someone who is easy to get in contact with, according to Robin Smothers, the park media relations and social media manager.

“[A good park commissioner is] someone who listens to their constituents, is open to phone calls and emails and is involved with their communities,” said Smothers. “The other thing would be, in my opinion, a candidate who can give you a straightforward answer about what they support and why.”

Park commissioners are obligated to attend park board meetings twice a month. Meyer said it’s important to look for a commissioner that attends those meetings regularly.

“A first filter would be looking at basic competence and interest in the job,” Meyer said.

He said to look for candidates that want to finish “missing parts” of the park system, such as the unfinished Grand Rounds walking path and bringing more riverfront parks to North Minneapolis.

Why is it important to vote for parks commissioners?

There’s over $120 million in the budget, District one candidate Billy Menz said. “A lot of our taxpayer money goes to the park,” he said.

The parks department is the greatest landowner in the city of Minneapolis. It owns nearly 7,000 acres of land, 102 miles of walking and biking paths and 22 lakes.

The Trust for Public Land named them the third best city park system in the country. Meyer said he attributes the park board to the fact that Minneapolis has amazing public parks.

“A major part of the reason Minneapolis has a great parks system is because it has an independently-elected park board,” Meyer said.

On Friday, the Minneapolis City Council approved a $2 million loan for the Towerside Innovation District to build a renewable energy source that could save 500 thousand tons of carbon.

Towerside Innovation District, a nonprofit located in Prospect Park, will use the Jordan Aquifer as a “thermal battery” to heat apartment buildings near Malcolm Yards, said Vince Netz, Towerside board member. The Jordan Aquifer is a body of underground rock that water can move through easily, located underneath several Midwestern states.

Currently, the aquifer will power over 350 apartment units, with the possibility to heat more, said Wall Companies project manager Jeff Ellerd in an email to the Minnesota Daily. The aquifer will hopefully be in use within 18 months, Netz said.

The aquifer thermal energy system (ATES) works by using the aquifer as a “thermal battery.” It can store heat in the summer to use in the winter and likewise with the cold. It will be the first of its kind in Minnesota.

“It [saves 500 thousand tons of carbon] by not having the apartment buildings build natural gas heating and cooling. Buildings would otherwise have had magic packs, as they’re called, so each apartment could get a natural gas heating system,” said Netz. “It mitigates the carbon by providing a carbon free way of heating and cooling.”

In 2019, the city council declared Minneapolis to be in a state of climate emergency that “demands a massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse, and address the consequences and causes of climate change.” The ATES will help Minneapolis with its goal to reduce carbon emissions.

Heating and cooling is one of the leading causes of carbon gas emissions in Minnesota, according to the Great Plains Institute.

The system will cost $14.2 million and is funded by city loans, municipal bonds and a partnership grant from the McKnight Foundation. Towerside worked with the McKnight Foundation and Ever-Green Energy for several years in order to develop this type of energy.

A new type of renewable energy in Minnesota

Towerside has been interested in creating district-wide energy since its creation in 2013. Around 2016, with a grant from McKnight and a partnership with Ever-Green, Towerside started looking for potential energy sources in the area.

After several years of planning and decision making, Towerside landed on using ATES as a form of renewable energy. Ever-Green ran several tests to make sure the aquifer would work.

“[Ever-Green] had to measure the water flow and we were a little worried that the flow would be too fast because if the aquifer flow was too fast, then it would never store energy so the system wouldn’t work,” Netz said. “We didn’t know technically up until last year that it would be possible.”

This type of energy, although new to Minnesota, is currently used in San Francisco and parts of Europe.

ATES is unique because it’s a renewable form of energy that will work in Minnesota’s cold climate, said Robin Garwood, aide to Ward Two City Council member Cam Gordon. It will work efficiently when covering a large number of apartments and will resist price shocks, which is when energy prices increase dramatically.

“This project shows a way to heat and cool buildings that can be run completely on renewable energy that cannot have any fossil fuels involved in any way,” said Garwood.

On July 15, Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order that created new rules about conversion therapy across Minnesota.

The order is not a law, meaning it cannot ban conversion therapy across Minnesota. Instead, it prevents deceptive practices and takes away public funding, which helps block the “torturous” practice from happening in mental health clinics.

Only a governor can overturn an executive order, so these rules will remain in place unless Walz or another governor overturns them.

The new rule will apply to mental health practitioners and public insurance companies. Walz asked private insurance companies to no longer cover the practice, but without a law change, he cannot force them to, said James Darville, the policy organizer for Out Front, an LGBTQ rights group.

These restrictions mainly use prohibited practice laws, which include preventing health practitioners from misrepresenting their services. Although these laws have been able to include conversion therapy, no lawmaker had given directions to do so until now, Darville said.

Working with existing laws

The order defined conversion therapy as “any practice by a mental health practitioner or mental health professional that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” It lists several examples that do not count as conversion therapy, including counseling to help someone accept their sexuality or gender identity.

Gov. Walz changed the use of prohibited practice statutes to include conversion therapy. Minnesota statute states that “no health maintenance organization or representative thereof may cause or knowingly permit the use of advertising or solicitation which is untrue or misleading, or any form of evidence of coverage which is deceptive.”

When a licensed therapist performs conversion therapy, they may not code it as such, Darville said. Coding is how medical staff let insurance companies know what services they performed on a patient. For example, a transgender minor may have a conversion therapy session, but their therapist will code it as a regular therapy visit.

“Any licensed health care practitioner out there that [is] providing something akin to conversion therapy [is] probably masking it under a false claim … which is fraudulent,” said Scott Dibble, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor state senator for the 61st District.

Because conversion therapy is “outside of the accepted national standards,” Dibble said many insurance companies do not see it as a practice that should be covered, so often times therapists may not code it as conversion therapy.

Many health organizations, including the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, as well as professional education organizations, have said they do not support conversion therapy because of the harm it causes children. Dibble said that licensed practitioners may not want to admit to using conversion therapy because it is looked down upon in a multitude of communities.

Walz’s executive order also clarified that conversion therapy is not medically necessary. Under Minnesota statute, for a mental health practice to be considered a medical necessity, it must “help restore or maintain the enrollee’s health” or “prevent deterioration of the enrollee’s condition.”

Conversion therapy often results in trauma that follows a person through life. The Trevor Project reports that youth who went through conversion therapy are more likely to attempt suicide and more likely to have multiple suicide attempts.

The governor’s executive order protects minors and vulnerable adults, said Out Front’s policy organizer Darville. Adults have the autonomy to choose conversion therapy, while minors and vulnerable adults do not, Darville said.

The future of conversion therapy in Minnesota

Darville has been working on the Minnesota Mental Health Protections Bill, which would ban licensed practitioners from practicing conversion therapy on minors and vulnerable adults. He said Out Front and other legislators wanted to present the bill during the 2021 session but ran out of time. Because they were unable to pass any legislation, Walz put out the executive order.

The Minnesota Mental Health Protections Bill has been brought up several times since 2017, but has yet to pass due to a lack of Republican support. Darville and Dibble are hoping that hearing testimonies from people who have undergone conversion therapy will change legislator’s minds.

“The most important thing for the public to know is that conversion therapy is dangerous and discredited,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. “There’s nothing wrong with being an LGBTQ person. The best way to support LGBTQ people is just let them thrive.”

The University of Minnesota is working with Minneapolis and St. Paul through the fall to research pedestrian safety by tracking the number of cars that stop for pedestrians.

Nichole Morris, the director of the HumanFIRST research lab, is leading the traffic study. She said there has been an increase of pedestrian-related crashes over the past 10 years which prompted her to start this study.

“Often pedestrians are struck in lots of different places but we tend to take special notice when pedestrians are struck in crosswalks because they have the right of way,” Morris said. “It really speaks to an overall failure of the system.”

Minneapolis and St. Paul staff picked out various crosswalks for Morris to study. Half of the crosswalks have no pedestrian signs or lights, and half include signs, lights and road markings. Ethan Fawley, the Minneapolis Vision Zero program coordinator, said he picked out crosswalks in Minneapolis that had high rates of pedestrian crossing and a history of crashes.

Minnesota crosswalk law states that if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk, which is any intersection, that vehicles must stop or drivers face a misdemeanor.

In order to test how often cars stop for pedestrians, Morris’s team heads out to crosswalks and tests them. At least one researcher will step into the crosswalk and see how many cars stop while another keeps tally. Morris said they make sure to step one foot into the crosswalk, when cars have enough distance to stop.

At the intersections used for research, Morris has also put up blue signs that show drivers the percentage of cars that stopped for pedestrians. For the last week of July, the signs in Minneapolis showed that 28% of drivers stopped for pedestrians during the week prior and the record number of drivers stopping was 36%. In St. Paul, 46% of drivers stopped the week before and their record is 59%.

Along with the blue signs, Morris created a pledge for drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists. It asks them each to take five steps to create safer streets. Morris’s team sent the pledge out to various neighborhood groups, and it is linked on the Minneapolis and St. Paul city websites.

“This is really important because when people make a plan of how they’re going to behave or what they’re going to do, it makes it easier to follow through with that intended behavior,” Morris said.

In 2018, Morris conducted similar research in St. Paul. Local police officers worked with her research team to pull over cars that did not stop for pedestrians.

Morris said police are not included in the current study. She said it is important to determine how much the past effect was the result of enforcement or engineering or both and that she wants to test how often drivers stop without enforcement.

“There are a lot of conversations going on about what the role of traffic safety is. When it comes to police, do we need police enforcement to achieve public safety goals?” Morris said.

St. Paul city traffic engineer Randy Newton said Morris’s research is important for engineers.

“It’s great to have the human factors element included in research,” Newton said. “This [research] is helping to educate engineers like myself in terms of what treatments we can put out on the street to be more effective in our work.”

Other examples of pedestrian safety tactics include putting up signs, installing traffic posts and giving pedestrians walk signs before cars can go, Fawley said.

Morris said it is still too early to tell if the signs and pledge have any impact on drivers’ decision to stop, but they’ll see results after the study ends in the fall.

“For about the last decade we’ve seen pedestrian related crashes going up and this is becoming a growing concern in the traffic safety community,” Morris said. “We really have to start to become innovative, looking at new solutions and giving better guidance to cities and counties in the state about what may actually work.”

Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized why the police are not involved with the study. The police are not involved because the study aims to test how often drivers stop without enforcement. 

At the end of June, on a rainy Saturday, Anna Schmitz, the community manager at Fair State Brewing Cooperative, was helping with a pop-up event. The line of people ran out of the store, and when she could, Schmitz popped outside to let customers know how the event worked.

On one trip outside, she found a man sitting next to the line wondering what was going on. She said he had trouble holding a conversation and needed help walking. Schmitz said she wanted to assist, so she called 311 and St. Stephen’s Human Services, both with no response.

She felt her only other option was to call the police, but she said the situation did not require an armed police response. Schmitz helped him grab food from Holy Land nearby and ordered him a Lyft to head home, but the ride was cancelled halfway through, with Schmitz not knowing why.

“I felt frustrated that we have such a lack of options right now and that there wasn’t more that I could have done,” Schmitz said.

Schmitz said that after the murder of George Floyd, she teamed up with over 100 other businesses in Minneapolis asking the city to provide an alternative to police response. In August, they will be one step further to their goal.

At the beginning of July, Minneapolis authorized $6 million for Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, a majority Black-owned business, to service the 24/7 mobile behavioral health crisis response teams for the next two years. The mobile behavioral crisis response will be an addition to 911 calls.

Canopy declined to comment and said they will wait until plans are finalized with the city to speak on record.

Black men are disproportionately killed by police, according to a Washington Post database. The database also shows that over 20% of people killed by police in 2020 had a mental illness.

Ward 3 Council member Steve Fletcher said the city is training Minneapolis 911 responders to know when to send out mental health professionals instead of the police.

“If someone is behaving as though they’re confused or they’re yelling or they’re being disruptive in a way that isn’t violent but it’s disruptive and disconcerting … [911 is] going to be routing mental health calls or behavioral health calls to this mobile behavioral team,” Fletcher said.

Police will still be sent out if someone appears to be a threat to themselves or others. If police or other first responders get to the scene and decide they are not equipped to respond to a mental health crisis, they can call for a mobile behavioral team to take over.

This behavioral team is a result of years of work. In 2018, Fletcher said the city started sending out mental health professionals with police.

A 911 work group also started monitoring calls that required a first responder other than police officers, Fletcher said. The group reported that police often respond to mental health calls, although officers may not have the training to deal with those situations.

“Improving the response in our communities requires a lot of collaboration, it requires a lot of testing and learning,” said Leah Kaiser, the Hennepin County senior department administrator for behavioral health.

When the program begins in August, the city will be watching closely to see how it can be improved in real time, said deputy city coordinator Andrea Larson at a Public Health and Safety Committee meeting. Ward 2 Council member Cam Gordon said that he thinks 911 calls will increase when this program begins.

“We’re really hopeful that this will be a great resource for folks for situations where folks are experiencing mental health crises and really need an unarmed and trained professional response,” Schmitz said.

A new study found that between 2005 and 2020, the percentage of single family rentals increased by over 10% in North Minneapolis, Southeast Como and parts of St. Paul, with Southeast Como’s rentals changing due, in part, to an aging homeowner population and localized investor landlords.

The Urban Institute researchers published a report titled “Who Owns the Twin Cities?” in which they investigated who owns homes across the metro area and how property ownership has changed over recent decades. They found there has been a growing number of investor landlords, or landlords who own more than three properties, and an increase in single-family rentals. As a result, poor and BIPOC residents have been displaced.

Some investor landlords in Southeast Como are Go Gopher, Miles Group and Elmwood Properties.

“One thing we definitely know is that investors like to concentrate their focus,” said Yonah Freemark, senior research associate on the project. All three companies condense their rentals to the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Minnesota, including Southeast Como.

The increase in investor landlords

The report found that investor landlords are concentrated in North Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center, Central St. Paul and Como.

“Of these rental homes, an increasing number are owned by major corporations, typically incorporated outside of the Twin Cities,” the report said.

Tony Damiano, a University of Minnesota post-doctoral research fellow who helped with the project, said the foreclosure crisis in the late 2000s impacted North Minneapolis heavily. He said that in their research, the project team mainly focused on North Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“The foreclosure crisis disproportionately impacted communities of color through predatory lending practices, which then resulted in huge amounts of foreclosures that took place on the north side,” Damiano said.

Banks and governments ended up with many foreclosed houses that they did not know what to do with.

“This often resulted in bulk sales of multiple homes, oftentimes below market value to large institutional investors,” Damiano said.

These investors then either sold them or rented them out. Southeast Como sees this same pattern of investors buying homes to rent, but in a different way.

In Southeast Como, investor landlords tend to buy houses from the aging homeowner population, said DeWayne Townsend, co-chair of the Southeast Como Improvement Association Land Use and Development Committee.

“What’s concerning is that when you have a senior citizen who’s been living in a house on a fixed income for 60 years and now has to go to a nursing home, the family is left with this house. They just want to get rid of it,” Townsend said. “They don’t want to have to update it or bring it up to code or any of that stuff. They just want it out of their hands.”

Townsend watched this happen to the property next to him. After his elderly neighbor sold his home to a corporation, the house changed. Townsend said before, it was a single-family house that had potential to be a starter home, but after construction, it had tons of bedrooms which catered to UMN student renters.

Another difference between investor landlords in Southeast Como and North Minneapolis is where they live. In the student-heavy neighborhood, the majority of landlords live within 25 miles of their rental properties, meaning they’re within the Twin Cities area, according to Townsend.

In contrast, the three largest investors in the Twin Cities are nationally owned corporations based elsewhere in the country, according to the report. The fourth largest is based in Bloomington, but works nationally.

With the rise in investor landlords, there is potential for exploitation of tenants. “Who Owns the Twin Cities?” included research on investor-owned single-family rentals in Southern California that found many tenants experience poor management, increased rent and higher rates of eviction.

Miles Group, a local investor landlord, has had problems maintaining their properties, with multiple rentals having city code violations.

“To some degree [investor landlords provide] more opportunities for people to live in neighborhoods that historically required people to own,” Freeman said. “At the same time, they may have some negative attributes like reducing the number of homes available for purchase.”