Minnesota city used anti‐crime laws against people with MI

Abstract

Last year, a federal investigation found that Anoka, a suburb of Minneapolis, illegally discriminated against residents with mental health disabilities by giving landlords weekly reports, over five years, revealing personal medical information of renters who received multiple emergency calls to their homes, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Feb. 4. In at least 780 cases, the city also shared details about mental health crises and even how people had tried to kill themselves, all under the guise of enforcing an ordinance designed to deter crime and eliminate public nuisances, the U.S. Department of Justice said. City laws like those used in Anoka — among hundreds of ordinances enacted across the U.S. since the 1990s — have long drawn criticism for unfairly targeting poorer neighborhoods and communities of color, the AP reported. Now they are under scrutiny as sources of mental health discrimination. “It's horrific,” said Elizabeth Sauer, an attorney for Central Minnesota Legal Services, which serves low‐income people. “Can you imagine having the most intimate details of your life just broadcast to every landlord in the city you live in?” Anoka's “crime‐free” ordinance was enacted in 2016 and at the time, city council members said they were fighting crime and making neighborhoods safer. Reported crimes in Anoka dropped by 57% from 2016 through 2022, according to FBI statistics, though crime rates were falling before then. Last year, Maryland prohibited landlords from evicting tenants over the number of emergency calls to their addresses and prohibited cities and counties from penalizing landlords for emergency calls. A California law that took effect on Jan. 1 greatly limits cities' use of such ordinances and advocates expect a push for similar legislation in Illinois and Minnesota. While proponents of such ordinances have argued that they protect people who live in fear, critics have said that rethinking them is necessary to stem cycles of homelessness that many with mental illness face. Housing advocates point to tenant unions and tenant‐run housing cooperatives as ways to mitigate the issues that nuisance laws are intended to target.