PRIORITIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

 Housing | Community Safety and Police Reform | Economic Inclusion

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The Importance of safe affordable Housing

Housing is a right. Every single person in our city deserves a safe place to call home — a place to rest their head at night and rejuvenate for the next day. Affordable housing has been at the heart of Mayor Frey’s career in public service, and he has made housing a priority for our local government.

Over the last four years, the mayor has helped build record levels of affordable housing throughout Minneapolis, strengthened renters’ rights, and boosted homeownership opportunities for residents of color. His administration has more than tripled investment in critical areas related to housing – which makes the city a better and stronger place for all of us to call home.

building and preserving affordable Housing

Minneapolis has faced an affordable housing crisis created and perpetuated by a lack of available affordable housing options. Mayor Frey has significantly expanded the city’s supply of available affordable housing through new policy and investments in both affordable housing production and preservation.

  • Minneapolis has built or preserved nearly 3,000 units of affordable rental housing, including 1,350 deeply affordable units, between 2018 and 2020. Our local government has never done so much, so quickly for affordable housing.

  • Boosted the pace of building deeply affordable housing by 7x the previous average rate, a significant increase. Deeply affordable housing is that which is available to households earning 30 percent or less of the Area Median Income.

  • Launched 4d, a program which helps preserve existing affordable housing by granting tax relief to building owners who keep 20% or more of their units affordable. This has effectively kept thousands of affordable housing units in our city.

  • Allocated over $4 million in city funding for the Minneapolis Homes program to redevelop more than 450 city-owned vacant building properties into affordable units, providing new pathways for homeownership and generational wealth-building in BIPOC communities.

Stable Homes, Stable Schools

In his first year in office, Mayor Frey brought together nonprofit partners and neighboring government agencies to launch the award-winning Stable Homes Stable Schools initiative. The program connects Minneapolis Public School students and families directly with the resources they need to prevent homelessness or find safe, secure housing.

  • After proving the program in a $3.3 million pilot, Mayor Frey has now made the program a part of the city’s ongoing budget, extending its reach and impact.

  • The program stabilized homes for 3,000 students from 900 different families.

Adressing Homelessness

Addressing the root causes of homelessness – economic equity and affordable housing – is the long-term solution, but Mayor Frey knows we also serve Minneapolis residents well by addressing immediate housing needs. That’s why he’s partnered with, community, county and state officials to expand and improve shelter options in Minneapolis.

  • Worked closely with the Native community to establish culturally-sensitive outreach programming for neighbors experiencing homelessness.

  • Developed a new shelter model promoting safety and community needs to address the reasons shelters are underused, which helps people get off the street.

  • Within new shelter model, placing an emphasis on stability and personal space — not just a bed for a night — to give residents a foundation on which they can build a new life.

  • In contrast to candidates who promote leaving encampments unmanaged, Mayor Frey is committed to ensuring public health and safety within and around homeless encampments. He is partnering with neighboring jurisdictions like Hennepin County and St. Paul to do so in a manner that respects the dignity of residents while simultaneously seeking to address root causes of homelessness.

Supporting Renters’ Rights

Between issues of affordability and risk of eviction, Mayor Frey understands the challenges facing too many renters in Minneapolis and has taken decisive steps to help address them.

  • Allocated $3.5 million in aid for immediate rental assistance for Minneapolis renters and families regardless of citizenship status amid the economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Created the More Representation Minneapolis initiative which provides pro-bono representation for Minneapolis renters facing eviction or seeking to enforce their legal rights against landlords.

A Both/And Approach to Community safety and accountability

Throughout his term, Mayor Frey has consistently advanced a both/and approach to community safety by working to ensure both effective and just policing and delivering on deep structural reforms. The mayor has launched a host of new safety beyond policing initiatives and piloted alternative response systems. He has also fought to ensure that Chief Arradondo has the staffing he needs for core public safety work and partnered with the chief and leaders throughout Minneapolis to rebuild and strengthen police-community relations.

Take a look at Mayor Frey’s united vision for community safety in Minneapolis here.

Enacting reform and instilling accountability

Mayor Frey has enacted a litany of policy reforms throughout his term and brought new, data-driven training curricula to enhance accountability and shift police culture. Those changes include:

  • Imposing disciplinary consequences for the department’s body camera policies and ultimately boosting compliance with those policies from 55 percent to 95 percent.

  • Overhauling the department’s use of force policy to make it as stringent as possible under state law.

  • Making MPD the first Minnesota department to implement the Attorney General’s taskforce recommendations on sexual assault investigations.

  • Aligning the department’s trainings with community values by banning warrior style training for both on and off-duty officers, proactively directing a City Attorney review of all future trainings. And most recently, bringing Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) training -- a new, data-driven curricula backed by Georgetown Law aimed at preventing misconduct and promoting peer intervention.

The mayor recognizes that the hard work of reform and breaking down structural barriers to accountability requires our enduring commitment. His administration will continue making meaningful changes at the local level and advocate for state and federal reforms that would empower local governments across Minnesota and the country.

improving community relations and adequate staffing

Mayor Frey is committed to following the data and creating a fully-funded sustainable, and effective community safety system that reflects our values. Minneapolis has seen a historic decline in officer staffing levels and has one of the lowest number of officers per resident of any city in the nation.

The mayor believes that we will improve public safety in all neighborhoods by investing in — not slashing — the work Chief Arradondo is leading, including hiring more community-oriented officers. He’s outlined a plan to not just rebuild the department’s staffing levels but to ensure that our recruitment and hiring processes prioritize bringing in officers grounded in community values.

  • Mayor Frey has consistently pushed to ensure adequate staffing levels. Throughout his budget proposals, the mayor has sought to help improve community relations through a mix of additional recruit classes and funding to hire new community-oriented officers.

  • Mayor Frey and Chief Arradondo revamped hiring and recruitment standards by prioritizing applicants who live in Minneapolis or have a background in social services, mental health work, or volunteering in our city. The shift will be key in the ongoing work to shift the department’s culture.

  • The mayor defeated the Council’s push to permanently defund and slash 138 sworn officer positions during last year’s budget markup and delivered on funding for ongoing partnerships with neighboring law enforcement agencies and officer overtime to help weather the department’s staffing shortfall.

  • Mayor Frey has outlined a plan to bring the department back up to its full capacity of 888 active officers within two years and will continue to assess Minneapolis-specific data in staffing decisions.

safety beyond policing

Mayor Frey firmly believes that not every 911 call needs a response from an officer with a gun and is a strong proponent of safety beyond policing. The mayor has taken the City’s safety beyond policing work to new heights.

  • The mayor put initial funding behind the City’s Office of Violence Prevention through his first budget proposal and has worked to thoughtfully scale the division’s programming and ensure its long-term success.

  • Mayor Frey allocated $2.5 million dollars of funding to the Office of Violence Prevention to create the MinneapolUS Strategic Outreach initiative where community members serve as outreach workers. They use non-physical conflict resolution, mediation, interruption techniques to de-escalate conflict, and then connect them with services that can assist with housing, medical and mental health support, and employment.

  • Mayor Frey expanded the use of the Mental Health Co-responder Unit which deploys mental health professionals to respond to police calls involving individuals who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

  • Under the mayor’s leadership, the City has expanded the successful Group Violence Intervention initiative, which relies on a public health-based approach to curbing gun violence.

economic inclusion is key to bridging gaps

When it comes to economic policymaking, the precision of our solutions must match the precision of the harms that were initially inflicted. For generations, economic decisions across Minneapolis and the country were designed with the purpose of excluding communities of color from the benefits of public investment. The unequal economic effects of last year’s civil unrest and of COVID-19, both of which hit Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) groups and immigrants especially hard, underscored the need to center equity and inclusion in the City’s recovery work.

To address racial disparities in income, wealth, and employment, Mayor Frey has launched new targeted investment and development policies that prioritize small business owners and workers of color. As the City continues working to recover from the pandemic and subsequent economic downturn, the mayor has consistently directed funding to help first those who have been impacted most.

Supporting bipoc businesses

Economic inclusion starts with business owners and their employees – especially small businesses rooted in their communities. Mayor Frey has focused special attention on serving BIPOC-owned businesses by:

  • Launching the City’s Commercial Property Development Fund to promote BIPOC ownership and prevent displacement by providing capital for small businesses and developers in historically disinvested areas of Minneapolis, and strengthening the new fund with $18 million in investment since its creation.

  • Designating seven cultural districts in consultation with community groups to direct funding and resources to historically underserved neighborhoods. Mayor Frey recently allocated $2.5 million to support everything from grants for facade improvements to internal building renovations.

Building a resilient workplace

Equity starts with access to resources and opportunity. Mayor Frey’s administration has worked with trusted community partners and employers to ensure more people in our city have access to training, education, and high-demand jobs.

  • Mayor Frey has doubled down on the City’s successful MSP TechHire program, which provides scholarships to support low-income Minneapolis residents seeking a career in our growing tech industry. Through the initiative, the City partners with employers from across Minneapolis and has effectively increased the talent pool for local businesses. On average, TechHire participants have seen a wage increase of $16,000, annually. In a tech industry that is woefully unrepresentative of our communities nationally, TechHire graduates are 30 percent people of color and 40 percent women.

  • Under the mayor’s leadership, the City is collaborating with the Minnesota Career Center and Summit Academy OIC to provide hands-on instruction and experience in energy-efficient equipment installations to trainees from the Minnesota Career Center and Summit Academy OIC.

  • As part of his initial federal relief spending proposal, Mayor Frey allocated new funding to expand the City’s workforce ambassador program. Ambassadors are dedicated to helping residents secure important job skill training assistance and breaking down barriers to access in Minneapolis neighborhoods with lower workforce participation rates.

Investing in Green Business development

Everyday we must seize the opportunity to tackle climate change, grow our economy, and invest in inclusive outcomes. Mayor Frey has developed innovative new policies to further environmental justice and partner with community to take local climate action.

  • Last year, Mayor Frey put Minneapolis on a path to becoming the first Minnesota locality to officially adopt a Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) – an approach to budgeting that takes into account the real world financial consequences of climate change and the financial benefit of reducing emissions. Under the City’s plan, the SCC is set at $42.46 per ton and the mayor’s 2022 budget includes funding to operationalize the City's use of a SCC and carbon pricing.

  • Mayor Frey established a new funding stream supported by fees imposed on polluters in Minneapolis that support the City’s Green Cost Share program. The program has already helped offset the Carbon Dioxide emissions of over 8,000 passenger vehicles, saved enough energy to power 3,700 average Minnesota homes annually, and generated an estimated $60 million in lifetime energy savings.

  • Building on the success of the Green Business Cost Share program, Mayor Frey launched a new initiative, tailored to supporting small businesses recovering from 2020, Rebuild Resilient in November 2020. Under Rebuild Resilient, small business owners are eligible for up to $40,000 to make energy efficiency upgrades, and the initial $1.2 million invested in Rebuild Resilient has already helped dozens of small businesses damaged during civil unrest small businesses invest in cost-saving infrastructure like solar panels and is projected to generate millions in savings city-wide.

In 2019, Mayor Frey worked with the Minneapolis Foundation and the McKnight Foundation to establish a new fund that supports local action on climate change and racial equity. The Minneapolis Climate Action and Racial Equity Fund has provided over $300,000 in funding to local organizations that are doing innovative work throughout the city, particularly in diverse, low-income neighborhoods where residents are often disproportionately affected by climate change.