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When we moved into our Dominium apartments, we both thought we were settling into our forever homes. Freshly retired and eligible for very low income, we were grateful to see the large signs on the sides of newly constructed buildings in Columbia Heights and Coon Rapids that boldly promised “Affordable Housing” and “Senior Living.” We never foresaw that, just a few years later, we would picket out those same buildings, fight so hard to raise our steady income to stay in the lodgings, the neighbors bearing signs saying, “I paid my rent so I have a place to roost.”
Like many taxpayers, we assumed that when the government offers housing provider subsidies or tax credits, renters are protected from high rents and exorbitant fees. We were wrong.
Dominium, based in Plymouth, is one of the largest developers of affordable private housing in the nation, with more than 40 buildings in Minnesota alone. To create their own affordable housing projects, they rely on low-income federal housing tax credits and a variety of state and municipal subsidies. Portraying themselves as doers of good dealing with the affordable housing crisis, they advocate hardships to obtain huge sums of money from the public coffers. But, as a population that has been manipulated and manipulated, we know that they are concentrated cause of that crisis-Seize every opportunity to extract more money from tenants.
This is simply wrong. And our state legislators agree. Sens. Jim Abler (R-Anoka) and John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) have introduced a bipartisan bill in the legislature that would place reasonable limits on private developers, such as Dominum, who receive government subsidies. In the closing weeks of the 2023 cycle, we need action from the Legislature and Governor Tim Walz to stabilize rents for low-income housing residents in order to protect taxpayer interests and protect our most vulnerable neighbors.
Over the past six years, Dominium has raised our “reasonable” rents by about $500—a devastating increase when your income is consistently under $25,000 a year. We might understand these costs if there was evidence that our money was being well used, maintaining and improving our dwellings. But it is not. Instead, we’re living in shabby conditions already a few years after Dominium funded our buildings with millions of taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, more and more of our neighbors are receiving deliveries from local food shelves. More and more of our neighbors skip essential medicines or their rations and end up in the hospital because it is the only way they can earn rent. And without lawmakers getting involved, we know things will only get worse.
While other Minnesotans eagerly embrace the onset of spring, we get more anxious each day as we await the release of new Area Median Income (AMI) data. Why? Because this action is what Dominium uses to justify a rent increase – sometimes by hundreds of dollars a month. According to federal and state rules, affordable housing providers are required to keep their rents at 30% to 60% of the area median income. This means that as the economy recovers and working people in our region get richer, it is somehow expected that older people on steady incomes will come with more money. Last year, when the AMI rose, Dominium’s rents rose 12.5%. To be clear, there is no mandate to raise the rent. They choose to do so. They limit us to the maximum amount permitted by law.
When we first moved in, we signed lease agreements that were 32 pages long. After a few years, our renewal contracts had ballooned to 52 pages. Within those legalities, Dominum tucked in provisions that allowed them to increase our rents in the middle of the lease. Just imagine it. You sign a lease for a year, but in the month of May, you may notice that your rent goes up $20 or $200 a month. How do you budget or plan for it? We know from personal experience how this uncertainty destroys your daily life, both physically and emotionally.
That’s why we’ve come together with other Dominium tenants to push our policymakers at all levels to change the rules so that developers who take public money have to act in the public interest, not private gain. While corporate executives and community managers tried to undermine our efforts—banning tenant meetings, removing flyers we posted on neighbors’ doors, infiltrating private meetings with local officials—we rallied bipartisan support for measures that would decouple our housing costs from ever increasing AMI, stabilizing Increases at 3% or 5% annually and create reasonable regulations that will make sure that Dominium puts in important repairs to our buildings before maximizing their revenue.
In the final weeks of the session, we need state legislators to act on these crucial policies — and we need the governor to be prepared to step in if lawmakers fail to take these urgent steps. The stability of thousands of low-income seniors — and hard-earned tax dollars for every Minnesota — hangs in the balance.
Jan Pragelman and Julie Zap are top affordable renters Living It is owned and operated by Dominium.
