Star Tribune
Donate to Minnesota affordable housing programs and enjoy the tax benefit
Affordable housing is as big of an issue in the Twin Cities, where housing and rental costs have increased dramatically in the past decade, as in greater Minnesota, where limited availability of affordable housing is considered a central obstacle to economic development.
Minneapolis has one of the worst housing shortages in the country, according to a Zillow report earlier this year. And among economic development experts in greater Minnesota, it’s almost become a cliche: The problem isn’t a lack of rural or small-town jobs. It’s a lack of places for workers to live.
“It doesn’t matter where I travel in the state of Minnesota,” said Minnesota Housing Commissioner Jennifer Ho. “Everyone everywhere is talking about the fact that housing is a challenge. And this (tax credit program) is a really concrete way for people to participate in investing in more homes. This is a way for those who are saying ‘what can I do to help?’ to have a really significant and tangible way to invest.”
After the six-year program was passed by the Legislature, the program kicked off in October 2023. Taxpayers contributed some $7 million last year, which went to 23 projects statewide. More than a third of the projects were in greater Minnesota, and the vast majority of those were in towns with fewer than 2,500 people.
After a press conference Monday, Paul Williams, the president and CEO of Project for Pride in Living, led a tour of a 60-unit affordable housing complex, mostly workforce housing, in St. Louis Park that will open next month. It’s one of the two projects that Wernz had raised $165,000 for to purchase solar panels through the tax credit program.
A 24-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a car along a highway in Maplewood on Monday morning.
The crash occurred on southbound Hwy. 61 near Hwy. 36 at 5:45 a.m., according to the State Patrol. The agency did not detail how the crash happened in a news release and did not immediately return a request for more information.
The driver of the vehicle was a 30-year-old man from Maplewood, the state patrol said. No arrests were announced.
Star Tribune
Court filing describes chaotic messaging around attempted $120,000 bribe in Feeding Our Future trial
Text messages flew furiously as the bribe was delivered. The defendants in the Feeding Our Future trial knew what was at stake.
“100 [thousand] for our freedom is nothing bro,” Abdiaziz Farah sent to his co-defendant Mukhtar Shariff, “worth trying everything bro.”
The attempted bribery was in response to the sprawling FBI investigation into the Minnesota non-profit that alleged more than $250 million in federal reimbursements were stolen and spent on luxury homes, cars and other lavish expenses, in what was one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in the United States.
The United States Attorney’s Office detailed dozens of messages between several co-defendants on Monday as it filed a motion to supplement the presentence investigation report for Shariff. Shariff was convicted for his role in the fraud scandal, but has not been charged with bribing the juror.
“The government has learned that defendant Shariff knew about the bribery attempt and destroyed communications he had with his co-defendant Abdiaziz Farah about the bribe,” the motion reads.
As the seven-week trial was coming to a close, several of the defendants targeted a 23-year-old known as Juror 52 to deliver a bribe to try and secure a not guilty verdict. The Attorney’s Office said it was because they believed “she was the youngest juror and the only juror of color.”
One of the defendants, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, reached out to Ladan Mohamed Ali, a 31-year-old Seattle woman who prosecutors say he had a prior relationship with, to deliver the bribe. Nur and Farah conducted research on the juror and her family. They tasked others to conduct surveillance on her, photograph her home and put a tracking device on her car.
Ladan Ali, the Seattle woman accused of giving a bribe of $120,000 in cash to a juror in the Feeding Our Future trial, and her attorney, Eric Newmark, left to right, exit the Diana E. Murphy U.S. Courthouse after a hearing where she plead guilty in Minneapolis, Minn. on Thursday, Sep. 05, 2024. ] ALEX KORMANN • alex.kormann@startribune.com (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Ali flew from Seattle to Minneapolis to help. She then crafted a series of lies. She told Nur that Juror 52 agreed to the bribe and requested $500,000, both of which were not true.
An East Coast couple has been arrested and charged in Ramsey County with being part of a theft operation that is suspected of stealing roughly $1 million in goods across several states from the high-end women’s athletic wear retailer Lululemon.
Jadion Anthony Richards, 44, and Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 45, both of Danbury, Conn., were charged Friday in Ramsey County District Court with organized retail theft in connection with crimes that spanned more than two months until their arrests Thursday.
Both appeared in court Monday and remain jailed ahead of hearings scheduled for Dec. 16. Richards’ bail was set at $100,000 and Lawes-Richards’ at $30,000. Attorneys for each defendant were not immediately available to respond to the allegations.
The County Attorney’s Office said this the first case it has prosecuted under a state statute enacted into law in May 2023 that is aimed at addressing organized retail theft.
In a nod to the work of the Roseville Police Department and its new retail crime unit, as well as other law enforcement agencies, “these individuals accused of this massive retail theft operation have been caught,” read a statement from Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office. “We will do everything in our power to hold these defendants accountable, and continue to work with our law enforcement partners and retail merchants to put a stop to retail theft in our community.”
According to the charges:
A retail crime investigator learned from police in Roseville that Richards, Lawes-Richards and an unidentified accomplice stole 45 items worth nearly $5,000 on Wednesday from the Lulelemon in Rosedale Center.
Police in Woodbury caught up to Lawes-Richards and Richards at the Lululemon in Woodbury and arrested them. Richards declined to speak with law enforcement, and Lawes-Richards denied stealing anything from the Lulelemon in Rosedale Center.
