The Minneapolis suburb of Anoka sits where Minnesota’s meandering 150-mile (241-kilometer) Rum River ambles into the mighty Mississippi. Like other communities, it touts itself as an agreeably placid place to live.
But last year, a federal investigation found Anoka illegally discriminated against residents with mental health disabilities, saying the city gave landlords weekly reports over five years revealing personal medical information of renters who received multiple emergency calls to their homes.
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.
Laws like Anoka’s, one of hundreds enacted across the U.S. since the 1990s, have long drawn criticism for unfairly targeting poorer neighborhoods and communities of color. 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?”
AN AMBIGUOUS AND ‘PRETTY AGGRESSIVE’ LAW
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. Jeff Weaver, who still sits on the council and did not respond to requests for comment, described the problem then as “some dirtbag landlords.”
“It’s like a cancer on these neighborhoods,” he said at the 2016 meeting shown in an online video.
Reported crimes in Anoka dropped by 57% from 2016 through 2022, according to FBI statistics, though crime rates were falling before then. The city’s annual financial reports show that by 2022, police had seven full-time employees, 16% of its staffing, on the team enforcing the ordinance.
Among other things, Anoka’s ordinance requires landlords to screen potential tenants, respond to resident complaints and attend a course on property management. It allows the city to suspend a landlord’s rental license if police answer four or more “nuisance” calls in a year. Before that, a landlord can be fined up to $500.
The ordinance says a nuisance call involves “disorderly conduct,” such as criminal activity and acts jeopardizing others. It also covers “unfounded calls to police” and allowing a “physically offensive condition,” but doesn’t define those further, allowing for wide discretion.
According to the DOJ, Anoka used that discretion to give landlords details about the adults and children involved in emergency calls, their diagnoses, medications and names of individuals’ medical and psychiatric providers.
Sue Abderholden, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Minnesota chapter, called Anoka’s ordinance “pretty aggressive” and said if a tenant suffered a heart attack or other medical emergency, first responders aren’t likely to say the tenant sought services “one too many times.”
“Why would we do it when somebody has a mental health issue?” she said.
Minnesota has had a psychiatric hospital in Anoka for more than 100 years. Anoka Metro Area Treatment Center is its largest hospital, with 110 beds.
Federal fair housing laws bar landlords from asking whether someone has a disability, including a mental health disability, or refusing to rent to them on that basis. Minnesota law meanwhile prohibits landlords from limiting or preventing calls for emergency services and also preempts local ordinances penalizing landlords over such calls.
But many crime-free ordinances, like Anoka’s, direct landlords to screen rental applicants, sometimes by the same officials who decide whether emergency calls will count against them or a tenant.
Following its investigation, the DOJ directed Anoka to revise its ordinance and exclude all medical or disability-related information for individuals from its reports, something the city is working on. Public records show city council members met last month in executive session with Scott Baumgartner, the city’s private attorney, to discuss a “draft remediation agreement,” but provided no further details.
Baumgartner confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the city is “discussing a resolution” with the DOJ, but said he was unable to discuss it further “prior to its final resolution.”
AN ISSUE ACROSS THE COUNTRY
Anoka’s ordinance and the backlash are neither unique nor new.
In recent years, communities in California, Ohio and elsewhere have faced — and settled — federal lawsuits related to their “nuisance” laws.
In Illinois, Tina Davies and her five school-aged grandsons were evicted from their Peoria home in 2015. At the time, Davies’ oldest grandson was on probation for vandalism and often stayed out late. Davies, following instructions from his probation officer, reported to police if he wasn’t home. She later learned the calls ran afoul of Peoria’s nuisance ordinance.
The HOPE Fair Housing Center later cited Davies’ case in a lawsuit against Peoria, alleging her family was wrongly accused of fighting and having loud parties. Davies believes the city decided that, because her grandson was in trouble at school, he was the source of any problem on their block.
“You make it hard for anybody who is struggling and trying to keep things going — you know, trying to keep the kids under control and making sure they go to school and they’re minding their manners,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m trying to give him stability, and this is the thanks I get?”
Critical studies, including a 2018 report from the American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union, further show enforcement of “no crime” laws is often most vigorous in poor and heavily minority areas. Other lawsuits, including one brought by the DOJ against Hesperia, California, also indicate some communities enact such laws after an influx of new residents of color.
Lawsuits also have argued such ordinances hurt victims of domestic violence by penalizing them for calling police or other help, even in life-threatening situations.
While the DOJ’s investigation didn’t disclose identifying information about the individuals whose information was shared by Anoka with landlords, 2023 U.S. Census data indicates that roughly 20% of its population are people of color.
A MOVE TO RETHINK AND REPEAL
In response to growing criticism, many cities and states are rethinking such policies.
Last year, Maryland prohibited landlords from evicting tenants over the number of emergency calls to their addresses, as well as prohibited cities and counties from penalizing landlords for emergency calls. A California law that took effect 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 argue they protect people who live in fear, critics say rethinking them is necessary to stem cycles of homelessness that many with mental illness face.
“Policing doesn’t make them safer or better, and then you add to this, this threat to destabilize their housing, to displace them from their family,” said Kate Walz, assistant litigation director for the National Housing Law Project, a fair housing and tenants rights group.
Housing advocates instead point to tenant unions and tenant-run housing cooperatives as ways to mitigate the issues nuisance laws are intended to target.
Jose Cruz Guzman, who serves on the board of Minneapolis’ Sky Without Limits Cooperative, said emergency calls to an apartment would prompt support from fellow residents.
“Because the relationship between neighbors is so much better … if there’s a problem, I can go in and talk to the neighbor,” he said, speaking in Spanish through a translator.
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This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Hundreds of communities across the U.S. have for several decades tried to reduce crime, fight gangs and tackle noise and other neighborhood problems through the use of “crime-free” or “public nuisance” laws encouraging and allowing landlords to evict renters when police or emergency crews are repeatedly called to the same addresses.
Long the subject of criticism that such policies are ineffective and enforced more harshly in poor neighborhoods and against people of color, the ordinances are now under scrutiny as sources of mental health discrimination.
Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice issued what it called a first-of-its-kind finding, telling a Minneapolis suburb that its enforcement of a crime-free law illegally discriminated against people with mental health disabilities.
Other cities and jurisdictions are joining a growing movement to rethink, rewrite or repeal such laws as criticism and lawsuits escalate.
WHAT ARE LOCAL ‘CRIME-FREE’ OR ‘NUISANCE’ ORDINANCES?
Anti-crime and nuisance ordinances have been around for years and are widespread in their usage. More than 2,000 cities nationwide have enacted such policies since the 1990s, according to the Chicago-based Shriver Center on Poverty Law. The International Crime Free Association says at least 3,000 international cities also use them.
Under such ordinances, landlords can be fined or lose their rental licenses if they don’t evict tenants whose actions are considered a public nuisance, including those selling drugs or suspected of other crimes. They also can be required to screen potential tenants and limit the number of people living in a home or apartment.
But every ordinance is different: unique in what it targets, how it is enforced and what kind of consequences are levied for violating it. Many also are vague about who and what is considered a public nuisance.
In Anoka, Minnesota, the Minneapolis suburb scrutinized by the DOJ, the “Crime Free Housing” ordinance covers excessive noise, “unfounded calls to police” and allowing a “physically offensive condition.” While the ordinance says a nuisance call involves “disorderly conduct,” such as criminal activity and acts jeopardizing others, it doesn’t define unfounded calls or physically offensive conditions.
Critics, and courts, say those subjective ambiguities have allowed discrimination against certain groups of people.
WHAT PROBLEMS CAN THESE LAWS POSE?
Federal fair housing laws bar landlords from asking whether someone has a disability, including a mental health disability, or refusing to rent to them on that basis. But many crime-free laws direct landlords to screen rental applicants, sometimes by the same officials who decide whether emergency calls for help or about an individual’s demeanor will count against a tenant or the landlord themself.
Some jurisdictions also share detailed information about those calls with landlords, which housing activists say is often further shared among landlords when discussing why they don’t view a past tenant as a good rental prospect.
One such law in Hesperia, California, spawned a federal lawsuit after a resident was forced to leave her home and move into a motel after calling for assistance when her boyfriend had a mental health crisis. The town’s ordinance required landlords to have potential tenants’ applications screened by the local sheriff’s office. The agency, according to the lawsuit, then shared with landlords a list of people it flagged as potentially troublesome renters.
Advocates say reluctance to rent to people previously hospitalized for mental health issues, as well as city policies that discourage renting to people who have been arrested, exacerbates the situation.
People face being homeless or “forced to cycle from an institution to a homeless shelter,” said Corey Bernstein, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network.
A lack of community services often means jails serve as “de facto psychiatric centers” for people with mental illnesses, said Devon Orland, litigation director at the disability rights Georgia Advocacy Office.
“We’ve seen people on street corners yelling or getting upset,” Orland said. “That locality doesn’t want them around and then they reappear or they don’t leave immediately and they get arrested for criminal trespass.”
WHERE ARE THE LAWS MOST OFTEN ENFORCED?
Critical studies and lawsuits indicate enforcement of nuisance laws frequently occur in poorer neighborhoods and communities of color.
An August 2018 report from the American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union said data from Rochester and Troy, New York, showed the most vigorous enforcement of “no crime” and “public nuisance” laws occurred in poor and heavily minority areas.
A 2017 federal lawsuit against Peoria, Illinois, similarly plotted three years’ worth of data on a map of the city and found almost all nuisance citations were issued in neighborhoods with larger percentages of residents of color.
Other studies and lawsuits indicate such ordinances are typically in response to an influx of residents of color, often from larger communities such as Cleveland or Los Angeles.
When the DOJ sued Hesperia, a city of about 101,000 residents about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, in 2019, the agency said officials there had made it clear their ordinance was a reaction to an increasing number of residents of color.
The lawsuit quoted one council member saying “those kind of people” coming from the Los Angeles area were of “no value” and “I want their butt kicked out of this community as fast as I can possibly humanly get it done.”
Other lawsuits have concluded crime-free policies hurt domestic abuse victims for repeatedly calling for help from police.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development filed a complaint in 2013 against the Philadelphia community of Norristown, Pennsylvania, over an ordinance it said allowed the town to sanction landlords over “domestic disturbances that do not require that a mandatory arrest be made.”
A Black resident had filed a federal lawsuit over a series of 2012 incidents involving an abusive boyfriend. She was told by police that she faced eviction over the emergency calls and later did not call police after her boyfriend stabbed her in the neck. A neighbor called police and the woman was airlifted to a hospital for emergency care, the lawsuit said.
WHERE ARE THESE LAWS BEING CHALLENGED?
At least a few states are trying to limit the reach of such ordinances.
Maryland last year prohibited cities and counties from penalizing landlords and now prevents landlords from evicting tenants over the number of police or emergency calls to their addresses. At the start of this year, California greatly limited cities’ use of crime-free policies. Advocates expect a similar push for such legislation in Illinois.
Housing advocates and civil liberties groups also have challenged ordinances in multiple states, including California, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, forcing cities to rewrite or repeal their ordinances in legal settlements.
Some communities have backed off on their own.
In the Minneapolis area, the communities of Golden Valley, St. Louis Park and Bloomington repealed most or all of their ordinances starting in 2020.
Other area cities have rewritten their ordinances, including Faribault in 2022 as it agreed to pay $685,000 to settle a federal lawsuit over the law.
