South Minneapolis tenants declare rent strike

Crescenciano Veronica moved into a modest south Minneapolis apartment in March, pleased to find the unit refurbished with all-new cabinets. Then he began to see the mice and cockroaches roaming throughout the building, he said.

Veronica, who pays $1,025 a month for his one-bedroom, isn't getting a rent increase this year. But some of his neighbors are facing rent increases of about $100 a month, despite complaints of roaches and rodents, broken fixtures and leaky faucets. He has joined tenants in five other units in a September rent strike, demanding the landlord either make repairs or freeze rent.

"Because the conditions in which we're living are not optimal, it's all the more important that we have affordable housing," Veronica said through a translator.

As Minneapolis residents prepare to vote on a ballot measure that would allow city leaders to explore rent control, organized groups of renters are rallying from the steps of City Hall to the stoops of their apartment complexes in protest of what they see as a growing disconnect between rising rents and deteriorating living conditions.

"We are living in a palpable crisis of housing. You can see it around us," said Vanessa del Campo Chacón, an activist with Sky Without Limits Cooperative, at a news conference Thursday evening. A dozen renters with the advocacy outfits Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia (Renters United for Justice) and Unidos Minnesota gathered outside 3215 21st Ave. S., a squat, 11-unit apartment building wrapped in yellow brick. Advocates have been working with some of the building's longer-term renters for years because it was once owned by the notoriously negligent landlord Stephen Frenz, whose real estate empire crumbled after a protracted fight with tenants.

The city revoked Frenz's rental license in 2017. The building changed hands. It was last purchased in June by Starfish 3215 21st Ave S LLC, whose owner is Genevieve Coffey of Brooklyn Park.

In addition to the apartment building, Coffey owns a fourplex and two duplexes. She hired the Rental Management Guys as site managers. They have been gradually making repairs in her buildings, which came with many upfront costs, she said.

Since Coffey bought the building, she has spent thousands of dollars in bedbug and roach extermination, according to invoices she provided to the Star Tribune, and is now in the process of upgrading electrical fuses to circuit breakers at a cost of more than $8,000. Including her monthly mortgage, her records show she operates on slim margins.

Coffey expressed sadness and frustration when approached with the tenants' allegations of other unmet repairs, including broken refrigerators, stoves and air-conditioning units, carpets in need of cleaning and at least one theft of a catalytic converter from a resident's car. She promised to install a security camera for the back parking lot, and asked that tenants remember she has owned the building for less than 90 days.

"To get a good start in life I really believe that people need dignified housing," she said. "It's actually really heartbreaking. … I don't know these tenants, but it's really hard for me that they are looking at me as less than what I'm trying to be."

Coffey said she will suspend rent increases and continue to make repairs as her budget allows. Inquilinxs Unidxs and five tenants sent letters to Coffey and the Rental Management Guys detailing maintenance problems on Aug. 3. Records show the package arrived Aug. 16, and management responded in English and Spanish a few days after that.

"With the owner's approval, we committed to completing the majority of the requests," said Scott Ficek of the Rental Management Guys in a statement. "Most of these items were completed last week. The few remaining work orders are related to appliances where our vendor was onsite to repair the appliances but needs parts which are back-ordered like many items during the pandemic."

Some tenants of the building, who have experienced various owners over the years, have come to equate new management with an inevitable rent hike and persistent maintenance problems.

"We've been living in this building, in these conditions for a long time, and the moment has arrived that our voice be heard," resident Heyler Sales said through a translator.

He has lived there for four years with two children. They pay $975 a month for the building's only two-bedroom apartment in the basement, where it can get so cold in the winter that it's hard to sleep through the night, he said. Sales' unit hasn't been renovated in some time — there are undulating wood panels on the walls and black spots growing in the corners of the bathroom. The closet doors have broken off their hinges. He also has roaches. "We're living in these terrible conditions. … The building gets sold, and then it's very easy for the new landlord to just raise the rent again," Sales said. "I can't have that anymore. It's not working."

Susan Du • 612-673-4028