Community organizers in Prospect Park continue their decade-long fight to get Glendale Townhomes, one of Minneapolis’ first public housing developments, historically designated.
Ladan Yusuf, a co-founder of Defend Glendale & Public Housing Coalition, said their application to get the Townhomes historically designated is supported by Minnesota’s State Historic Preservation Office but has long faced pushback from city government.
“We’ve been fighting for this historic designation for 10 years,” Yusuf said. “The city just didn’t really care.”
The coalition formed in 2014 to protect public housing from businesses looking to privatize the historic Glendale area in Minneapolis and Hennepin County.
Samira Ali, a University of Minnesota graduate student and coalition team member, said preserving the Townhomes is as much about preserving the physical space as it is about preserving the community.
“It’s kind of like an urgent need,” Ali said. “We’re doing this not in the aftermath as an afterthought, but rather in the moment while things are happening.”
The Townhomes were one of Minneapolis’ first public housing developments. Built in 1952 on more than 14 acres of public land, the 184 homes provided affordable housing for World War II veterans, according to the Glendale Townhomes 70th anniversary project. Today, the residents are primarily African-American, East African and Hmong.
The Minneapolis Community Planning & Economic Development Department (CPED) refused to update their 2019 report evaluating the Townhomes’ historic architectural integrity, Yusuf said, despite the State Historic Preservation Office confirming the Townhomes’ social and ethnic heritage significance.
Rob Skalecki, a city planner with CPED who worked on the Townhomes’ most recent evaluation, said the criteria they use to define historic integrity are based on architectural qualities. However, since the Townhomes’ architecture has changed multiple times, the city denied a recommendation.
“The toolbox we have for preserving buildings and sites is limited in some ways,” Skalecki said.
Skalecki said the CPED team acknowledges the Townhomes’ social historical significance, but that does not fulfill the national regulations for historic designation the city follows.
Cam Gordon, the former Ward 2 city council member who originally nominated the Glendale Townhomes for historic designation in 2019, said community interest and the evident historical value of the Townhomes encouraged him to nominate the site.
“I wasn’t really willing, necessarily, to do anything that I didn’t feel like the residents there were interested in doing,” Gordon said.
Bisharo Jama, a resident of the Townhomes, said she loves where she lives and wants the Townhomes and its community protected with a historical designation.
“These homes have history,” Jama said. “It’s public housing for low-income people that cannot pay a market rate rent. The government should be protecting us and protecting poor people and low-income people that cannot find housing anywhere else.”
Gordon said it is important that people in public housing have access to green space and single-family style homes rather than only high-rise apartments.
“My sense was, isn’t it just fair that we also give some opportunities for people to have some choice of housing, whether on public housing or when and if they’re dependent on public housing?” Gordon said.
Many of the Townhomes’ first residents were World War II veterans pursuing a degree at the University of Minnesota while living with their families in the public housing complex, Gordon said.
Gordon said he could not get his fellow city council members to approve a historical designation recommendation before his time on the council ended in 2022, so the site’s nomination expired. He added that the lack of support from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) likely stopped fellow council members from approving a designation.
In June 2024, Gordon’s Ward 2 successor, Council Member Robin Wonsley, re-nominated the Townhomes for historic designation. Minneapolis’ Heritage Preservation Commission voted unanimously to recommend a historical designation for the Townhomes in July 2024.
Mohamed Ahmed, another Glendale resident, said he could not take care of his child or maintain his job without the townhome’s convenient location and low rent cost.
Ahmed said residents like him need the coalition to protect their living space from city government and business disruption.
“People cannot defend themselves,” Ahmed said. “People are weak here, they are disabled, so we need people like Defend Glendale to protect us, to fight for us.”
Yusuf said the Glendale Townhomes need and deserve a historic designation to protect the site’s immense historical value and the livelihoods of the people living there from corporate housing exploitation.
“Why would you want to destroy that?” Yusuf said. “Why should our history be erased?”
