Best of Neighborhood News 7/19: Corcoran tenants rally for renters’ rights, affordable housing

By |

Recently, tenants of buildings in Corcoran organized a block party and rally to advocate for housing rights and the formation of a tenant-owned co-operative building. Tenants renting with The Apartment Shop, owned by Stephen Frenz, experienced neglected building maintenance, including pests like roaches and mice, mold, and indoor winter temperatures as low as 45 degrees that led to health problems. At the rally, the tenants spoke out in favor of rent control and a tenant bill of rights. “Gentrification is happening all over,” said Bonnie Beckel, a Corcoran resident at the block party who lives just south of the apartments. “There’s no question that they’d do a better job of taking care of their buildings.”

Get full details at MinnPost. Amidst opposition from Native nations, Public Utilities Commission approves Line 3 pipeline route

In a unanimous decision, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted to approve the Certificate of Need for Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, an oil pipeline that would run from Canada through Minnesota. Continue Reading

Settlement with Northern Metal Recycling offers no reparations for Northside community

By |

“We are still out here dying. My son still has asthma. That thing is still in our backyard,” said Felicia Perry, a fashion designer, activist, mother and North Minneapolis resident.

It’s a sentiment that could have been said by any other resident in North Minneapolis. Perry, along with her colleague and fellow activist Roxxanne O’Brien, live in the Northside’s 55411 and 55412 zip codes, an area with a population of over 70,000 people – of whom more than 70 percent are people of color. The community is home to more than a dozen schools, parks and a growing business corridor, as well as the unwelcome industrial polluter Northern Metal Recycling, situated just off of Broadway Avenue on the west side of Interstate 94. Continue Reading

CV | Alan Muller: Every contaminated site in Minnesota needs to be reviewed

By |

Decades of disregard leave families exposed to toxins.One of the best elected officials I know of is Cam Gordon of the Minneapolis MN City Council. Gordon is a Green Party member, one of a relative handful of official Greens holding office in the United States. I don’t agree with all Gordon’s positions, of course, but he shows an impressive ability to maintain independent and thoughtful positions while seeming to maintain working relationships with his colleagues. In March, 2014, Gordon posted this commentary (below) on one of the more consequential environmental scandals to surface recently in Minnesota.Some background(Disclosure: I have not done anything like a full file review of this, and nobody has asked my opinions on it. But the patterns shown–patterns of negligence–are consistent with patterns of inadequate “cleanup” and overdone coverup seen at contaminated sites nationwide. Continue Reading