Northside tenants battle corporate landlord to make their homes safe, dignified
Arianna Anderson has dealt with a host of problems in her home, including a kitchen floor that has been repaired three times.
Text and photos by David Pierini, Editor
A surprise awaits the person who walks into Arianna Anderson’s kitchen. The floor slants and the otherwise attractive laminate is spongy to the step.
That’s after the third “repair,” and a court order for the property management company to resolve that and other problems with her rental home on Colfax Avenue North.
“When I have the attention of the city or state, they come out, but as soon as that attention goes, they go back to their neglectful ways,” Anderson said.
She is among a growing group of Northside tenants battling the same corporate landlord – a New York investment firm that owns the homes – over surprise fees and long-neglected issues with leaky basements and roofs, mold, rodent infestation, failing floors and suspect electrical outlets to name a few of the issues.
Many of the HavenBrook homes in North Minneapolis at one point had more than 500 violations of city housing codes, according to city inspection records. Pressure from the tenants and city inspectors on property managers over the last couple of months has owners scrambling to close violations. Of the 215 homes in Wards 4 and 5, 66 had 378 open violations as of Jan. 19.
Tenants, after a long campaign to get repairs, remain skeptical.
The HavenBrook home in which Rachel Jones lives has a crumbling foundation and a basement that leaks with rain and snow melt.
Kelly Jones, the city’s director of inspections, said some of HavenBrook homes could face Tenant Remedy Actions on any violations that impact livability. TRA’s are a type of lawsuit where the city asks a housing court judge to order landlords and property managers to immediately make repairs.
Last fall, the city deployed five inspectors to review the HavenBrook homes. So far, inspectors have reviewed 75 homes, Jones said.
Scott Beck, who is the designated property manager, told city officials HavenBrook has had staffing issues and COVID-19-related delays. Beck did not respond to requests for comment by North News.
“That’s not an excuse. The owners have to be able to manage their property,” Jones said. “(HavenBrook) says they now have enough people in place. We get it. The tenants have a right to dignified, quality housing.”
The city of Columbia Heights on Jan. 20 announced it had revoked the rental licenses on 21 HavenBrook homes for not correcting violations in a timely manner. Violations there included broken or missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, shoddy electrical wiring, leaky plumbing, mold, locks that did not function and holes in walls.
North News reached out to Pretium Partners, the New York investment firm that purchased the HavenBrook portfolio,
some 600 single-family rental homes around the Twin Cities. The company did not make anyone available for questions, but released a statement saying it does “more each day to enhance the resident experience, set higher standards of care for the industry and have a positive impact on community.”
“Pretium is committed to ensuring residents across its portfolio have access to quality, affordable rental housing and are fully supported with consistent, dependable and attentive service,” the statement read. “Pretium had dedicated significant resources to HavenBrook, including doubling its local maintenance team and investing approximately $50 million in renovations and maintenance to address pre-existing conditions.”
Long Road to Repairs
Tenants complain of an unresponsive property manager, poor workmanship when contractors do make fixes, and fees tacked onto the rent.
Part of their fight has been a journey through a maze of corporations and investors just to figure out who exactly owns the HavenBrook homes and if anyone will respond.
Corporate ownership of rental properties became lucrative following the housing crash in 2008 when investors scooped up foreclosed and neglected homes at bargain prices and converted them into rental properties.
A Virgin Islands company, Front Yard Residential, purchased more than 600 single-family rental homes in poor neighborhoods around the Twin Cities, including the 215 in North Minneapolis. Front Yard created HavenBrook Homes to provide property management. In January 2020, Front Yard Residential and its thousands of homes nationwide were purchased by Pretium.
Pretium is one of the largest corporate landlords in the U.S. with some 54,000 single-family rental homes, according to Minneapolis nonprofit United Renters for Justice/ Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia. Pretium purchased the homes in 2020 and Pretium, according to its statement, did not acquire the homes until last year.
The Northside tenants, organized by United Renters for Justice, have been tenacious in their demand for secure housing. They’ve testified before a Congressional committee, met with U.S. Senator Tina Smith, and, recently, attended a Minnesota State Board of Investment meeting, asking a board that includes Gov. Tim Walz and attorney general Keith Ellison, to withhold business from one of Pretium’s investors.
The board voted in favor of the investment but said it was willing to rescind the deal if Pretium did not begin to address the many code violations of the HavenBrook homes.
“My office is aware of the complaints and we take them seriously,” Ellison said during the December meeting. “From the standpoint of my office, our bread and butter is consumer protection and tenants are consumers. It’s nothing I can ignore... I will stop right there.”
Tales from tenants
As the city continues its inspections, tenants say they are starting to hear from HavenBrook to schedule repairs. They say that until they see significant change, they will continue to apply pressure.
When Rachel Jones, a single mother of two and no relation to Kelly Jones, signed a lease with HavenBrook to rent a home on Irving Avenue North three years ago, she noticed the kitchen cupboards had no shelves. She said she was told by a HavenBrook employee to buy her own cut wood to install herself.
“My office is aware of the complaints and we take them seriously. From the standpoint of my office, our bread and butter is consumer protection and tenants are consumers.
It’s nothing I can ignore.”
There was also a small hole in the floor, but otherwise, she felt good. She had found a large enough place in a tight rental market for herself and her children.
But the real problems surfaced one spring when there was big snowmelt and later a heavy rainstorm.
“That’s when I got several inches of water in my basement,” she said. “It seeps through the walls and the cracks.”
There were no gutters at the time and the home’s foundation continues to crumble.. When she guided a North News reporter to her basement to show how one wall seemed to be buckling, she discovered a new chunk of the wall had crumbled.
A city inspection last October revealed 23 different violations in her home.
HavenBrook installed gutters and did some landscaping to create a slope to steer water away from the house. A repair person brought in fans to dry the basement and spray a cleaning solvent to remove an outbreak of mold, which has since returned.
“With that situation, I was calling HavenBrook over and over and over again,” she said. “I finally got through to their corporate office and they basically told me it’s a non-emergency. You can call and call and you might get a response, but it’s obviously not solving any of these problems.”
One of the most vocal tenants, Shanika Henderson, has lived on Girard Avenue North in a HavenBrook home for eight years. It was an ideal place for her and three children. It had just been remodeled, and now has a nice large main bedroom and fenced-in backyard.
Shanika Henderson has been one of the most vocal tenants at rallies and meetings, trying to bring attention to the conditions of HavenBrook homes.
But problems eventually surfaced, she said. Door knobs started falling off, the porch began to sink and cracks emerged in the walls. The bathroom started leaking, lights were flickering, and the old furnace made the house dusty all the time. The basement leaked and items she stored there became damp and moldy.
Then there are the fees. She says HavenBrook charged her $275 for not being at home when repair crews showed up. She said she had not been notified. There were also extra charges for not resigning her lease. She has decided to go month-to-month in hopes she can find a nice place.
She now has a new furnace and knows she won’t be in the home long enough to see future improvements.
“I have gotten to know a lot of the other tenants who are struggling and some people are worse off than me,” Henderson said. “Everybody’s situation is different but we are all human and we deserve to be treated like that.”
“There are people who are scared to stand up for themselves and I will continue to fight for them.”