Understanding Residents’ Experience with Investor Owners in North Minneapolis

Investor-owned single-family rentals have increased nationwide since the foreclosure crisis, which has caught the attention of researchers, media outlets, and advocacy organizations. Researchers have developed methods to unveil investors’ portfolios masked with a complexity of LLCs and LPs and have examined the effect of investor-owned rentals on eviction filings and code violations. Family Housing Fund, in partnership with the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota, an applied research center with a focus on community partnership and a partner in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, (NNIP), is centering tenants’ experiences to better understand how large-portfolio investor landlords affect residents’ quality of life. Family Housing Fund and CURA surveyed tenants of single-family rentals in Minneapolis’s Northside, neighborhoods with residents who are predominantly people of color and that have a concentration of investor-owned single family rentals, using CURA’s local parcel database on Hennepin and Ramsey counties. This first survey provides a foundation for Family Housing Fund and CURA to expand the survey to obtain more responses in North Minneapolis and in other communities in the region to solidify their understanding of tenants’ experiences and to inform policies.