Not This Time
25
Do-Good
THE PROBLEM with the tenants’ union didn’t go away over- night. Just as I suspected, I discovered that Briggs had incorporated a non-profit and was still trying to recruit local residents to join his ‘class action’ lawsuit. The actual substance of the suit was still vague. Jim was fuming, but there was nothing he could do until someone actually lodged a formal action. I’d spiked any major motivation for the neighborhood to actually pursue a lawsuit. We continued with the renovation of the units that were permitted, some of which were conversions and one of which was intended to stay rental apartments.
Jim, Gordon, and I met to go over our long-term and short-term plans and to look at how things were shaping up.
“Technically, you’ve succeeded in converting more than the number of units you originally projected,” Gordon said. “We originally proposed the conversion of 500 units over five years. Well, it’s been five years and two months. You’ve converted 620 units. In addition to that, you’ve opened a completely new 180-unit building on the north side of the river and are over sixty percent sold. What else do you want?”
“I thought this was only going to be phase one and we’d determine the plan for the next five years.”
“It’s phase one and two,” I said. “You have almost double the original projections.”
“Okay, then what is phase three? When you speak ex cathedra like you did at the tenants’ union, you leave me no choice but to follow what you’ve said or fire you. You’re so smart about this, what’s next?” Jim demanded. I sighed.
“Cut the condos loose,” I said. “Sell your interest in the land and the management company to an independent investor and get the hell out. We’ve got time right now to liquidate. When the market goes to hell, we won’t have time any longer.” It was Gordon’s and Jim’s turn to sigh.
“Why is it that every time you make predictions about the future, I believe you?” Gordon asked. I laughed.
“You don’t. Your pocketbook does.”
“That’s an unarguable position to take,” Jim said. “I’ve been thinking about making an investment in an Internet company I heard about.”
“What company?” I asked.
“Two guys out in California are looking for capital for what they call an Internet indexing application that lets you look stuff up on the World Wide Web. They haven’t got a name yet.”
“Hmm. That sounds good. Just make sure they are really doing what they say they are.”
“Okay. No more condo conversions in Loring Neighborhood. What about renovations and new property acquisitions?”
“How do the property values compare to what they were when you started twenty years ago?” I asked.
“Those were the days. I could pick up a derelict and get a bunch of college kids to do all the work. When it was renovated, I could quadruple the rent and fill it as fast as the units were finished. Problem now is everyone thinks he’s sitting on a gold mine and wants a premium for the units.” I looked at him. “Yes. I see what you are asking. Apartment renovation isn’t profitable any longer. Fuck.”
“HUD,” I said.
“What a rip-off. Once you let your property go into Section 8 housing, you are stuck. People just tear them up and you can’t even evict them,” Jim said.
“So, don’t own or manage the buildings. Just renovate them. Get a government grant to improve the housing that is already on the market. Let current owners compete for the privilege of upgrading their properties. Regain your white knight image by giving back to the community. I’ll bet you can even get it written into the grant that all work will be done by minority and women-owned businesses with right-to-work labor. You’ll be a hero again.”
“She’s got something there, Jim,” Gordon said. “I might even be willing to join up with you on that.”
“So, what are you going to do, little lady?”
“I’m thinking I might retire and move to the country,” I said. “Maybe I’ll become a gentleman farmer.”
“Gentlewoman?”
“Oh, there’s nothing gentle about the woman,” I quipped.
A fairly sedate and timid committee from ‘The Real Loring Neighborhood Alliance’ came to their appointment with me. I loved it. They had the signatures of over two hundred tenants on their membership roster. Of course, that accounted for only about 120 out of close to 3,000 household units, but it was more than Briggs had been able to attract and it made them interesting enough to spend time with them. If they had two hundred, they could get a thousand and that investment was worth our effort to support.
“We really don’t want to be in an adversarial role with our landlord,” Tim Emerson said. “That was never the intent of our meeting. We were really concerned about the lighting in the park. None of us want our neighborhood overrun by druggies and homeless again, but we didn’t want to be lit up like a shopping mall, either.”
“Well, what do you think of it?” I asked.
“It’s beautiful,” Tina Williams said. “And it’s so nice to have the music piped in at dusk. It’s soft enough that no one notices until they are actually in the park.”
“I’d like to take credit for that, but the idea actually came from the bus stops on Nicolette Mall,” I laughed.
“I’ve personally taken my wife dancing in the park,” Les Bryant said. “One of the best nights of our marriage.”
“Too much information, Les,” Tim said. “But it’s true that the park has become a real center of our community in the evenings. We’re actually recognizing people and talking instead of just using it as a shortcut from one block to the other. We do have some other concerns, though.” I didn’t think this was just an apology meeting.
“Tell me about it.”
“They fall into two categories,” Tim continued. He was apparently the designated spokesperson. “The first is what inflation is doing to our rent. When I moved into the neighborhood five years ago, my rent was thirty percent lower than it is now. It seems like everything has been targeted toward making rent too expensive to live there so we’d move out and the building could be converted.”
“You don’t have to worry about that any longer. We’re not doing any more conversions.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Tim said, “but our rent increases are still outstripping inflation. We’d like some kind of control put on it to protect current residents.”
“We’ll have to give that some careful consideration,” I said. “We’ve seen what rent control has done to property in both California and New York. I understand the concern and would like to work toward a mutually agreeable solution, but I’m not the person to commit to any kind of controls at the moment. My role in the company is strictly limited to condo conversion and sales.”
“Does that mean you are out of a job when these last units are converted and sold?” Tina asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I still have a year or more to finish the sales of our reconstruction on Main Street. But I’ve not committed to Loring on any other projects. Doesn’t mean there won’t be any, just that I haven’t committed to being involved.”
“I wish you luck on that,” Tim said. He nodded to Les.
“Our other concern is of a social nature,” Les said. “There are a number of us who have a conscience, believe it or not. What was done in the Loring Neighborhood over the past twenty years was amazing. A new urban revival. A neighborhood rescued. We’re proud of our neighborhood. But walk three blocks south of us and you immediately see the downside. Property is being run down. Pimps and addicts frequent that park. A friend who runs each morning picked up a needle in his shoe a few days ago. Fortunately, it didn’t puncture all the way through. All the problems that were in the Loring Neighborhood twenty years ago have simply moved south to the next neighborhood in line. The pressure of increasing numbers there is going to start pushing back into the edges of Loring within the next five years. We need to do something to solve the problem that doesn’t simply move it farther south or closer to the U District or Uptown.”
He was right, of course. Urban improvement was a game of Whack-a-Mole. You hit a problem on the head and it pops up in another neighborhood. Councilwoman Carla had actually talked to me about it at our last holiday party.
“I take it you have some ideas,” I said.
“Yes and no. I’m a social worker,” Les said. “I see addicts, hookers, homeless, and destitute on a daily basis. As a result, I don’t believe in a ten-year master plan to end homelessness in Hennepin County, like was proposed by that group in Edina. That’s just privileged white people trying to assuage their consciences for being privileged white people. But there are services that could be offered, shelters could be created, needle exchanges and condoms to stop the spread of AIDS and other STDs. It’s just such a big project that none of us have the skills to fully manage. We need someone—someone like Loring Properties—to lead us.”
Wow! I never even considered that.
Les had given me something to think about. I met with Jim and gave him the substance of our conversation and after he’d groused about damned tenants’ unions, he agreed that things had gotten out of hand in terms of rents in the area and that he’d been keeping pace with them instead of leading them. That was pretty stupid since he was the second largest landlord in the area. Since we’d converted a quarter of his inventory to condos, there was another group that had more rental units than Loring Properties. They were real slumlords and kept raising their rents because the neighborhood was getting better and better.
Unfortunately, their apartments weren’t. In fact, they were letting them run straight into the ground. The bulk were just south of our central neighborhood and bordered on the new center for drugs and prostitution that Les had just been talking about. Jim saw the sense in setting our rents just slightly lower than what the slumlord was charging, but enforcing a much more rigid qualifying system before leasing an apartment. Regardless, that was his problem and not mine.
My problem was figuring out a way that I could help clean up the neighborhood just to the south without displacing the entire population. I started meeting regularly with Les and people from his office. They were a non-profit that focused on social services for people who couldn’t pay. They provided counseling services, a clinic, and a shelter. Unfortunately, the shelter was out in St. Louis Park and people who wanted to take advantage of it had to be on a bus by six o’clock. Les explained that it was the closest that they could find where they could afford the rent and didn’t have neighbors constantly complaining.
We toured the neighborhood and the huge park together and I saw, first hand, how far down it had sunk. As we walked through the center of the park in broad daylight, a fellow on a broken park bench called out several suggestions of what he’d do with me if we were together. Some of them I didn’t know were even physically possible. Les, of course, was apologetic, but it wasn’t his fault and there was really nothing he could do about it. He walked me back to the comparative safety of my office and shared a cup of coffee as I calmed down. I was surprised at how profoundly the walk and the taunts had affected me.
“There can’t be any women living in that entire neighborhood,” I finally said. “They couldn’t possibly!”
“They do,” Les affirmed. “And not all of them are prostitutes or addicts. The Washburn Neighborhood costs about half what Loring Neighborhood does to live in. It’s not far from the College of Art and Design and there’s a bus to the University. There are places where three or four college girls live together because it is what they can afford. One out of every four will be raped each year.”
“My God! We have to do something!”
Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it?
I had some options. I could stay hands-off and just give money to Les’s group. That was the safe thing, but in spite of how well I’d done in real estate commissions, I wasn’t wealthy enough to endow the organization and once I’d given away my money, I’d be unable to do anything more. I could volunteer in the clinic. I could become a campaigner and try to raise people’s awareness. I could try to fund specific projects or become a fund raiser.
“How can you even contemplate going there?” Lily gasped. “You have a family! How would we survive if something happened to you?”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?” Bruce asked. “Are you seriously saying it wouldn’t be safe for you to walk across a city park in broad daylight?”
“Bruce, it isn’t safe for a woman to walk anywhere, in daylight or at night. You don’t understand how it is,” I snapped.
“Gently, honey,” Lily said softly. “How can we expect him to know? We’ve always protected him from reality. After all, we were aggressors in our relationship. He assumes that’s the way the world works.”
“What do you mean, you’ve protected me?” he demanded. “Protected me from what?”
“From knowing how afraid we are all the time,” I said. “From knowing why I worry about Emily whenever she is out of my sight. From all the fears that women live with day in and day out.”
“We have a wonderful home in a safe neighborhood,” he said. “We all have good jobs. Emily is in a good school. I don’t get what’s to be so afraid about.”
“Of course you don’t,” Lily said. “Erin O’Malley, three doors down—you remember the redhead you were lusting over last summer?” Bruce rolled his eyes and nodded. It had all been a tease of Lily and me when he’d suggested that she looked like we should get to know her better. “Her purse, with her cash, credit cards, and ID was stolen on Labor Day.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Where was she?”
“In the bathroom.” He looked at me blankly. “She’d run out to 7-Eleven to get some beer and chips because friends called and were coming over. She had to pee when she got home and rushed from the garage to the bathroom. She dropped her purse, the beer, and the chips on the kitchen counter on her way through. It took her several minutes after she got back to the kitchen to realize something was wrong. The case of beer had been opened and a bottle was missing.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all,” Lily added. “Her purse and one bottle of beer were gone. Someone had followed her right into her home while she was in the bathroom.”
“Thank God he left!” Bruce exclaimed.
“Thank God she discovered he also took her house key,” I said. “Her friends found her a shaking wreck when they got there. They went to Menards and bought new locks for her doors and changed them out. She was still too afraid to stay there for the rest of the week.”
“This was right here in our neighborhood?”
Lily and I both nodded. We started reciting the list of what was happening in South Minneapolis. Yes, we lived in a ‘safe’ neighborhood compared to Washburn Park. But women were still accosted. Three twelve-year-old boys had followed a fifteen-year-old girl home from school and raped her. A college student had jumped on a bus ahead of a male assailant and the driver had slammed the door closed to protect her until police arrived. Some of the assaults were thwarted and some weren’t. It was not beyond belief that one out of four women in the Washburn Neighborhood were raped each year. Most instances went unreported. After all, they knew the risks when they moved there.
“You don’t know what it is like to look at every man you see with suspicion,” I said. “Did he cross the street to get behind you? Was he trying to see down your blouse? Did you lock your car? Are there enough lights in the parking lot? Will he just rape you and leave or will he kill you? Which would you prefer?”
Bruce was shaken. A guy just never considers what it’s like to be a woman, even when he lives with three of them.
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