While scrolling and then mentioned through Facebook the other day I found a sponsored post that piqued my interest titled “Make YOUR Voice heard, Minneapolis!” regarding safe and affordable housing in Minneapolis. The initial concept sounds great, but their whole campaign and turfing is selectively worded so obviously behind their own thinly-veiled manipulation attempts for landlords to continue dividing the public and exploiting renters.
Their new campaign is called Safe and Affordable Neighborhoods Minneapolis, sponsored and paid for by the Minnesota Multi Housing Association (MHA) and based in Bloomington.
Luckily, it didn’t take long to learn from a tweet that I’m not the only one thinking about their obvious pro-landlord bias. Thanks Twitter folks for noting their turfing! If you think you had an influence in this read, you’re probably right.
This image in their tweet right above this reminds me of phone book industry litter, but I digress.
Pro-Landlord Signs
This is my favorite Twitter reply so far by Tom Basgen:
Netflix movie turned into an agenda
MHA has done enough work to prove that they’re in this at least further than their initial seagull droppings and turfing campaign. They registered their domain on May 24th for 2 years.
2-year domain registration
They did register it by proxy which is popular for those who want their identity hidden, but I doubt this is the case. They don’t hide that MHA is behind their efforts and maybe GoDaddy uses domain by proxy by default.
They also have Google Tag Manager in their code. This at least gives them the ability to use a ton of third-party tags to study users beyond analytics.
For seagull dropping and turfing, they’ve hit the main social media channels pretty hard so far. They also have an op-ed from their “news” section on MinnPost and I’m sure there will be more to come. The piece itself talks about Seattle and their extreme rental policy experiments.
I used to live in the Seattle area. Shady landlords ARE the rental regulations problem there. See the new Congratulations for tenant protections across WA State piece for POC renters who have been disproportionately evicted from their homes. The Minneapolis Safe and Affordable Neighborhoods self-lobbyists aren’t too excited about this, and in their PC words:
The latest example of this phenomenon is the “Seattlification” of rental housing regulations. Two City Council members have proposed new ordinances that would substantially disrupt the rental market by limiting property managers’ ability to continue to provide safe and affordable housing.
(AKA) Let landlords continue to provide opportunities to divide.
I really thank Minneapolis champions Lisa Bender and Jeremiah Ellison in their continued efforts to help limit landlords and their screening processes. It helps reduce division, NIMBYism, and even redlining.
Maybe this is all proof that anyone can start a non-profit, using carefully selected words in their campaigns to try to influence smart and sexy users to buy into their own thinly-veiled ideals like landlording.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments!