Case Study: JCA and the Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition (SHHC)

Between 2016-2023, I helped to guide and supervise a decentralized, interfaith and multi-sector housing justice campaign with Jewish Community Action (JCA) and many partners. JCA convened several dozen members from the west metro suburbs of Minneapolis, and created local housing teams with JCA members, local social service agencies, church-based volunteers and immigrant & housing justice organizations.

We provided some guidance, training and advocacy support, and periodic gatherings of the full group (named the Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition, or SHHC), but we made room for JCA lay leaders and their local partners to determine the course that each team took. They doorknocked apartment buildings in their areas, worked with social service agencies to engage low income clients and invite them into organizing and advocacy, and partnered with supportive city council members and mayors to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances, tenant protection ordinances, and affordable housing trust funds.

In 2019, the coalition came together to support ACER and a tenant council in Brooklyn Center in stopping mass displacement of several hundred working class tenants; in 2020, the coalition was invited to join CTUL and ACER in a campaign to stop wage theft and labor trafficking, especially on affordable housing construction projects. SHHC housing team leaders were invited into the organizing process, and in February 2020, over 100 suburban housing advocates, city council members and mayors, clergy, workers’ center organizers and members, and ACER staff and tenant leaders gathered at Shir Tikvah synagogue to learn together about the exploitative intersection of affordable housing and labor abuses.

While Covid and the uprising after the police murder of George Floyd would dominate our attention, and the attention of the nation soon after, CTUL and the building trades unions continued the work, forging ties with the local elected officials and SHHC leaders and passing ordinances in many suburban cities, before passing a bold worker protection policy at the state legislature in 2023. Housing team members continued to be involved with the campaign, joining marches and actions, and in August 2023 JCA organized an interfaith clergy delegation to several construction sites, led by CTUL and Carpenters’ Union staff.

In 2019, we learned that the owner of a massive, low-income apartment complex, Huntington Apartments, had put the complex up for sale. 800 “naturally occurring low income housing” units in several buildings, many providing home to large families or multiple families, were slated to be flipped as private investors lined up to purchase and upscale the complex. Our immigrant justice partner, ACER, had begun working with the tenants to form a tenant council, and was calling for a meeting with the owner to discuss ways to safeguard their rights in the coming transition. The owner, Dominium Housing, refused to meet with ACER and the tenants’ union.

In coordination with ACER, JCA organized our members at each of our housing teams to get involved. We created a sign on letter from the housing team leaders, calling on Dominium to meet with the tenants; several dozen clergy, housing team leaders, social service agency directors and others signed the letter. Crucially, the letter was also sent to the city council members and Mayors at 7 or 8 suburbs where our teams were based - we knew that Dominium regularly went before these and other cities, asking for public subsidies to build affordable housing, and their reputation was critical and vulnerable, especially to appeals to city leaders from trusted and credible local advocates and service providers. Dominium proposed a meeting with housing team leaders, and we stipulated that the meeting would have to take place at Huntington Apartments, and with ACER and tenant leaders present as well.

The meeting was dramatic. SHHC leaders turned out in numbers, with clergy collars and kippahs in place. So did tenant leaders and ACER organizers. SHHC leaders simply introduced ourselves and the cities where we lived, advocated, preached or served, and then we said nothing more. After what was meant to be a reassuring presentation by Dominium executives, the tenants spoke up. The stories they shared of unhealthy conditions, management abuse and disregard, and clear safety violations would be shocking to anyone unfamiliar with tenants rights organizing. At least one lawsuit was filed by legal advocates following the meeting, but more important, Dominium backed down from a sale to a private investor, and began working with the city to arrange a sale to a local housing non-profit, AEON. Ultimately, the complex was sold to AEON, and mass displacement was averted.

A year later, JCA was approached by ACER and a Minneapolis based immigrant workers’ center, CTUL, to join their campaign against labor trafficking and wage theft in non-union construction sites. It was reported to us that affordable housing construction, by putting pressure on contractors to underbid each other and squeeze labor costs, more often led to the hiring of “labor brokers” on non-union sites who in some cases withheld wages, fired workers who sustained injuries, and even physically threatened or assaulted workers and kept them in unsafe “company housing” barracks. CTUL and its partners had already uncovered and prosecuted a notorious local labor trafficker in the south suburb of Richfield.

This victory was a significant step in CTUL’s transformative vision to move developers to sign on to a code of conduct known as the Building Dignity and Respect program. SHHC housing team leaders were invited into the organizing process, and in February 2020, over 100 suburban housing advocates, city council members and mayors, clergy, workers’ center organizers and members, and ACER staff and tenant leaders gathered at a progressive Minneapolis synagogue to learn together about the exploitative intersection of affordable housing and labor abuses. Less than two weeks later, Covid would shut down a great deal of organizing and economic life, followed by the police murder of George Floyd and the uprising and attacks by white nationalists that followed.

But CTUL and their labor allies continued their campaign, forging ties with the local elected officials and passing ordinances in many suburban cities, before passing a bold worker protection policy at the state legislature in 2023. Housing team members continued to be involved with the campaign, joining marches and actions, and in August 2023 JCA organized an interfaith clergy delegation to several construction sites, led by CTUL and Carpenters’ Union staff. The differences between a union and non-union work site were dramatic, particularly in terms of worker safety precautions and equipment, and the group stumbled on a team of immigrant women and their manager; two quick thinking clergy distracted the manager while the organizers spoke in spanish with the women, who whispered that they had not been paid for 2 weeks and were afraid to speak up.