Renters seek help from Minneapolis City Council members

Spanish-speaking renters packed a room at Minneapolis City Hall on Tuesday, telling two council members and several city officials that they want help taking on landlords who raise rents while refusing to clean up such problems as bedbugs, cockroaches and mold.

In a listening session organized by Council Member Abdi Warsame, the renters — most of them women who brought along their children — shared stories of being evicted on short notice and with no explanation and living in apartments with broken windows, holes in walls and flooded plumbing.

Some said they'd been threatened with retaliation by their landlords when they spoke up or tried to organize their neighbors.

Veronica Marquez said the apartment she shared with her husband and young son had poor heating, hallways without electricity, a cockroach infestation and a refrigerator that didn't work. Her landlord eventually told her she had to be out in 30 days.

"It was really tough because we had to look for a new place to live, and they never told us why," she said. "They said they were going to sell, and they ended up vacating 12 families."

One speaker said he didn't want any favors from the city, but wanted fair treatment.

"We don't want to be abused," he said. "Just because we don't have the documents that maybe we should have doesn't mean we're not worth anything."

"The circumstances that you, and in many cases your families, are facing are not acceptable and we here at the city, collectively, want to make sure that we are doing absolutely everything we can to improve your troubles," Frey said.