MN Renters Get Results via Unions

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Wait, Renters Can Form Unions?!

Of course they can! And in 2024 Minnesota lawmakers made that right explicit. In a time when many landlords don’t live in the state or aren’t even human (hedge funds and investment groups love buying up property), renters' unions can be a crucial bargaining tool.

Journalist Shubhanjana Das details how groups like the South Minneapolis Tenant Union, Brentwood Tenants Union, and the 2119 Pillsbury Tenants Union are helping residents get results and know their rights in this really interesting piece for Sahan Journal. These days, those groups are increasingly helping residents address things like lack of heating, building security issues, and other maintenance problems—you know, things landlords should be doing anyway. 

“It’s much easier for [a landlord] to ignore one person complaining about a thing, but when a group comes together, it’s much harder to dismiss that,” Ivory Taylor, associate director at Housing Justice Center, tells Das.

They can also help with more critical issues, like discrimination and wrongful evictions. 

“These are people that are more susceptible to exploitation, and that don’t have as many resources to access a lawyer to fight their rights being violated,” Taylor says.

Speaking of Unions: Here’s an Update on Vertical Endeavors

In 2023, Racket reported that workers at all five Vertical Endeavors climbing facilities in Minnesota had alerted management of their plans to unionize. A little over two years later, they’ve finally won a first contract while being repped by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Locals 663 and 1189. 

“We formed our Union because we didn’t want to wait any longer for more pay, or for more respect at work,” Minneapolis employee Esthi Erickson says in a statement. “We won the improvements we cared about by fighting for them.”

Under the new contract, 96 employees will be covered at VE locations in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Bloomington, and Duluth. Contract perks include an average 16.67% wage increase over the next three years, plus “paid time off for part-timers, and a minimum of 36 scheduled hours per week for full-timers.” Congrats!

MN’s School-Based Mental-Health Model? It’s Really Good!

Studies over the past 10 years have shown that depression and anxiety are on the rise in kids ages 3-17, while the CDC reports that 20% of adolescents ages 12-17 say they have “unmet mental health care needs.” One way to combat this? Back in the early '00s, Minnesota started putting licensed mental health care providers in public schools. Today, it’s a $20 million program serving nearly 7,000 students a year.

“Making mental health treatment as easy as going to the school nurse is a key component of Minnesota’s decades-long goal of providing low- or no-cost mental health care to all public school students,” Andy Steiner writes for MinnPost.

Advocates note that programs like these help kids who might not have access to mental health care get help.

“There is a piece of research that says for kids from low-income families, if they need mental health care, there is only a 13% chance they will access services,” says Jill Johnson, executive director of Change, Inc. “But when mental health care is available in schools it is something like a 96% chance.” 

The program isn’t perfect, of course; there are big gaps in coverage in rural areas of Minnesota, for example. But the model is gaining national attention as other states mull over the benefits of having therapists be part of a school’s ecosystem. 

“It helps with their mental well-being to have me here,” specialist Yolonda Rogers tells Steiner. “I’m part of the community, and many of them find it easy to talk to me about what’s on their mind.” 

Happy Transit to Work Day! Buses Are Being Rerouted.

Now that some downtown employees are being forced back into the office three days a week, Move Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Public Works Department are hoping to reduce car congestion in the area by encouraging more frequent biking and bus-taking. Enter today’s Transit to Work Day, which includes transit tours and bike rack demos.

Well, downtown Minneapolis apparently didn’t get the memo, as buses that normally travel along Nicollet Mall are being rerouted today between Seventh and Eighth Streets due to free concerts and a car show. Oops!

(That might seem like NBD, but as a regular bus-taker myself, I can tell you that rerouting—even if only for a block—usually adds major minutes to your ride.)

Pedestrian advocate and blogger Walking Minnesota captured a bit of what’s happening today and shared it on Bluesky: