Tenant Union Holds Sit-in Over Neglected Maintenance, Demand Property Manager Be Fired

Minneapolis, MN – Maya arrived at 2200 Blaisdell Ave. in Minneapolis on November 25. Her one-year-old daughter was waiting in a car down the street with a relative. The prospective renter had received multiple text messages from Investment Property Group, confirming a 3:30 p.m. appointment with manager Tina Johnson, who has built a reputation among tenants for not returning phone calls or answering her office door.

“They messaged me twice,” Maya, who asked not to be identified by her last name, told Unicorn Riot later that day. “Can you please come?”

When Maya approached Johnson’s office, she found the door locked with various signs posted on the door by protesters. One demanded, “REPAIRS YESTERDAY.” What she didn’t expect was to walk into a hallway filled with members of the Investment Property Group, or IPG, Group Tenant Union who had scheduled a 2 p.m. meeting earlier that afternoon.

“I’m a single mother. I can’t be doing this,” Maya said before banging on the door.

Through the mail slot a security staffer was spotted seated in a chair, seemingly glued to his phone. A stuffed toy cockroach left by tenants symbolized long-running pest issues. Music blasted from a Bluetooth speaker as tenant union members and their marshals remixed a 1960s Ray Charles classic.

“Hit the road Tina, don’t you ever come back. No more, no more,” the crowd chanted.

MORE: IPG-Owned MPLS Apartment Properties Rack Up 104 Major Safety Violations, Leaves Residents in Disarray – October 2025

Farhan Badel had scheduled a meeting hoping Johnson would agree to a conference call with her boss, Laura Rivera, IPG’s Vice President of Affordability and Compliance. In advance, he and tenant union members decided that if Johnson simply opened the door and agreed to the call, they would stay outside and avoid a sit-in.

“I have been asking IPG for months to address the urgent health and safety issues affecting our housing,” Valerie Mack, a resident, said when the union staged their sit-in. “All we have gotten in response is retaliation from our office staff and security, specifically Tina Johnson. Our emails and calls to IPG leadership are ignored and the office door is locked at all hours of the day.”

*Residents walk from 2119 Pillsbury Ave. to 2200 Blaisdell Ave for a meeting with property manager Tina Johnson. Image contributed by Clint Combs.*

“Can you wait?” Asked a security staffer who eventually opened the door and told the tenants that she would meet with them. “No, she’s an hour late,” Linnea Cavitt said on behalf of the group in the hallway. This exchange broke into a solidarity chant.

The apartment complex where Mack lives at 2119 Pillsbury Ave still has 64 unresolved major safety violations classified as “Tier 3,” according to the city’s rental property dashboard, along with seven outstanding pest extermination orders at the time this article was published.

“I want y’all to know that the tenant union sector of Greenway Apartments stands in solidarity with you,” Klyde Warren said. Tenant Union Members at both apartments attempted to submit petitions to property managers demanding a conference call meeting between their members and property manager Johnson and IPG VP Rivera. “We have submitted a copy of this petition to the Greenway leasing office and they tried to fast talk us out of dropping it off. We refused.”

By that point, tenants said they no longer believed the relationship with Johnson could be repaired. After months of missed calls, a locked office door, and repeated threats to call 911, activists have called for her to be fired.

“We are treated poorly,” Yasmin Isse said through a translator. “She calls the police on us. Tells us to leave. If we don’t leave, that she will call the police on us. She tries to intimidate us.”

As the sit-in continued, property management called 911 in an effort to disperse the demonstration. MPD had already received word earlier in the day that a staged sit-in was possible. Mack told UR that Tina Johnson pulled the fire alarm from inside her office in an effort to compel MPD to help escort Johnson away from the residents.

*IPG Property Manager Tina Johnson speaks with MPD before officers escorted her out*. *Image contributed by Clint Combs.*

The confrontation underscored tenant frustration with the city’s oversight systems. Director of Regulatory Services Enrique Velasquez told reporters days earlier that response times hinge on complaint severity.

“There are priorities, priority one, priority threes, with their own designated response time which we need to respond. It doesn’t mean necessarily that we’re going to address that specific issue within 24 hours,” Velasquez said. “However, we will respond within 24 hours. If it’s two days or three days, then that’s the agreed response time. It’s my knowledge we’re not delayed in providing a response.”

But council members representing the city’s most diverse neighborhoods voiced doubt about the system’s effectiveness in September. Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowdhury rented from a landlord whose property fell under Tier 3 violations.

“I’m really fortunate now to be living in a Tier One apartment,” Chowdhury said. “At a time in my life, I lived in a rental unit where I woke up in the morning and I saw mice running across my room, and then at the same time, my ceiling was leaking.” Chowdhury said that, like some other tenants at Blaisdell and Pillsbury, she had problems with her heating and refrigerator.

“We’ve called 311, called the city,” Taylor Kohn said in September. “And made IPG aware of the mice, bugs and mold that contaminate our living spaces.”

“Let me just say this: 311 is not a solution,” said Ward 6 Council Member Jamal Osman. “It’s an option for folks.” Ward 6 includes Cedar-Riverside — home to the Twin Cities’ largest East African community and an ever-growing migrant population. “They have no idea what 311 is, because of language barriers,” said Osman. “Even reporting to 311, there’s retaliation to them.”

“We are not seeing those 311 calls translate into the type of enforcement that’s needed to get these landlords to provide quality housing and meet our current housing code,” Ward 2 Council Member Robin Wonsley said.

Wonsley also told council members that 407 rental units in her ward have been operating without a landlord license for five years. “It’s unclear how this occurred and I am awaiting to see regulatory services’ next steps in responding to this,” Wonsley said. “We, as a council, may need to do more to build off of this in the upcoming term. I absolutely expect that we will need to do more.”

At the sit-in, Mack delivered the union’s message.

“We are here to deliver a single unified message to Laura Rivera: we are the IPG tenant union, and we demand recognition. We didn’t organize out of anger. We organized out of love for our homes,” said Mack. “Repairs go unaddressed for months. We dealt with a property manager that is disrespectful, unresponsive, [and] negative.”

One by one, tenants in the hallway called Rivera on speakerphone. Each call went to voicemail — mirroring the silence they said they had been getting from Johnson for months.