Whether anything more will come out of the federal investigation into voter fraud is anyone’s guess; the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI remain tight-lipped.
I came to this story last spring when a source tipped me off about a curious trend going on in local real estate. Homes were being sold twice on the same day. The second sale—the flip—always came at a higher price than the first sale.
I teamed up with Jessica Lussenhop, a local reporter for ProPublica, to investigate. It turns out the homebuyers in these second sales weren’t using a conventional mortgage, but an unusual payment method called a contract for deed. And sellers were pitching the deals specifically to Somali families.
A contract for deed is an alternative way to buy a house. They don’t require banks to check the credit history of the buyer, nor an appraisal of the home being bought. They also lack consumer protections that come with traditional mortgages. For example, a buyer who defaults on their payments through a contract for deed can be evicted from their home and lose everything in just a matter of weeks.
We found this practice proliferating in Minnesota. In 2021, investors sold more than 1,800 contracts for deed in Minnesota’s 11 most populous counties. It’s not clear how many went to Somali families, but one local advocate estimates that about 100 Somalis have recently bought homes through contracts for deed.
Many of these contracts involved newly constructed, multi-bedroom homes that sold in the middle to high six figures. They’re located in attractive suburbs with good schools. Jessica and I spoke with five Somali homebuyers who bought homes this way in the past year. All said they signed contracts that they didn’t understand. One called buying his home this way the biggest mistake of his life.
4. Muslim workers say they suffered religious discrimination at Worldwide Flight Services. After the employees protested, they say supervisors assigned them extra tasks like cleaning bathrooms. For the past half-decade, workers at several Amazon and Amazon-affiliated warehouses have staged periodic walkouts to protest working conditions.
In 2022, several employees at Worldwide Flight Services, a global company that handles air freight for Amazon, told Sahan Journal that they were being let go for their roles in two December 2021 walkouts. The walkouts at the Eagan warehouse came after a supervisor allegedly made a flippant comment in response to a group of female workers who were on a prayer break.
By the summer of 2022, a dozen of these employees had been either fired or suspended. Worldwide Flight Services denied retaliating against them, instead telling Sahan Journal in a prepared statement that “on occasion, some disgruntled employees decide to take job actions outside of our established processes for resolving conflicts or issues.”
The following fall, employees at an Eagan Amazon facility staged a protest in response to the company eliminating their day shifts. About 30 employees at this facility couldn’t change their hours, according to several employees who spoke with Sahan Journal, and were therefore laid off. In response, an Amazon spokesperson said the company tried to retain the employees and worked with them “to identify other shifts at the facility or nine other sites across the Twin Cities region.”
Both the Worldwide Flight Services and Amazon employee actions came with the support of Awood Center, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that supports East African workers in warehouse jobs. Minneapolis Congresswoman Ilhan Omar mentioned the Amazon walkout at a congressional hearing in November .
5. Mary Davis uses medical cannabis for chronic pain. But Section 8 rules prohibit her from using the medication at home. What happens when you can’t take your prescribed medicine in the comfort of your own home?
For Mary Davis, it means sneaking to your car throughout the day and discreetly inhaling medical marijuana from her vape pen. In doing so, she risks neighbors or passers-by thinking she’s doing something illegal and calling the police on her.
But because her Section 8 federal subsidies are part of a federal program, and because federal law prohibits marijuana, Davis is caught in a legal Catch-22. Her landlord, the Metropolitan Council, told her she cannot use marijuana in her home. And workers at her dispensary, where she purchases medical marijuana, told Davis she cannot use it in public.
Federal housing authorities ultimately have discretion over whether to enforce the federal law banning marijuana. In some cases, housing authorities decided not to enforce marijuana laws.
While Minnesota lawmakers are expected to legalize recreational adult use of marijuana next year, that still would not change Davis’s situation. Only action at the federal level would do so.
In 2022, President Joe Biden ordered the federal government to review marijuana’s federal Schedule 1 status, which defines it as an illegal controlled substance with no medical properties. Reclassifying marijuana into a lower schedule status could make it easier for people like Davis to avoid bureaucratic tangles when it comes to using marijuana. But advocates say the easiest way to ensure reform on the federal level is for Congress to pass a law—which doesn’t appear likely for the foreseeable future.
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