Stakeholders, Labels, and the Future of Uptown
Today’s story is the third in a series about the potential permitting of a 24/7 homeless respite shelter at 918 West Lake Street. Our focus will be to analyze whether opposition to the facility falls under what is colloquially termed NIMBYism, or “Not in My Back Yard.”
Additional Background
More background will be useful when weighing the pros and cons of this situation. Here are a few items we’ve learned about Lakeshore Care Inc.:
- Abdi Warsame (who we’ve been told is not the same Abdi Warsame that is CEO of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority) owns the NPI registered to Lakeshore Care Inc.
- NPI stands for National Provider Identifier, used by every doctor and medical facility for billing. Without this number, they cannot bill for services or receive payment. If a doctor or medical facility is found to be committing fraud, this number is flagged to prevent further payments to the owner.
- Lakeshore Care Inc. was established in March of 2024 with no registered owner.
- Abdi Warsame was listed as the NPI Owner in March of 2024.
- The application to the City Planning Commission was filed by Tim McLaughlin of West Lake Colfax, LLC. This company owns the property, and the manager of West Lake Colfax is Bob Grootwassink, a real estate broker and developer in Eden Prairie who employs Tim McLaughlin. The yearly property taxes and fees are $34,704.10.
- The contact for Lakeshore Care listed on the application is Zakaria Suleman, whose contact information the City Planner has yet to provide.
- No information is available through the MN Department of Health for Lakeshore Care Inc., Abdi Warsame, or Zakaria Suleman.
- Given that the clientele for this care center will be homeless, it’s a safe assumption that the owners, whoever they might be, intend to bill Medicaid for services with the intention of earning a profit.
- Lake Shore Inc. and its known associates have no documented history of providing, or being licensed to provide, recuperative and supportive care for people recovering from illnesses or medical procedures.
- The request for a permit has been delayed until September.
Labeling
Before we assign labels, let’s compare the stakeholders:
- On one side, there is a suburban property owner with the city’s ear, sitting on a $1.1 million property and paying $35,000 a year on a vacant building. This owner is willing to represent a company of obscure origin intending to bill Medicaid for services for which no record of licensure can be found.
- On the other side are existing homeowners and struggling small businesses, such as a salon, insurance broker, vintage store, phone repair shop, bakery and café.
The project is a 24/7 emergency recuperative center for 24 homeless individuals. The surrounding small businesses and residents are on the front lines of drug overdoses, dumpster fires, and assaults amid a massive reconstruction project. They are concerned the center could further deteriorate the neighborhood. Their efforts to prevent the city from approving the business permit have been labeled as typical NIMBY behavior.
If the situation were different—if we were talking about a halfway house being established east of Bde Maka Ska and the surrounding homeowners were screaming about their property values dropping—the NIMBY label would be more applicable. However, that’s not the situation. We are hearing businesses and residents talk of having to revive people with Narcan, frequent calls to the police for vandalism and other property crimes and having to lock their doors to keep the unhoused out. That is the situation now, prior to the shelter being approved. It isn’t difficult to understand how adding the shelter to the mix could make an already poor situation worse.
In Conclusion
The businesses involved are not Apple, North Face, or Victoria’s Secret. Those businesses have the money and clout to ensure a similar project would never even be considered by city planners. It is because these are small businesses with meager resources that the shelter location is even under consideration. When they started their businesses, they agreed to pay a specific amount of rent based on factors such as safety and foot traffic. What they’ve seen is a reduction in both. Unless they have generous and understanding landlords, their rent has not decreased. The NIMBY label does not fit poorly organized and funded opponents who are working feverishly to prevent their businesses from going under. They deserve to be heard because if they fail, it jeopardizes revitalization of the Lake Street corridor, and it would be yet another obstacle for Uptown to overcome.
Part 1 – Uptown 2040
Part 2 – Dumpster fire: Uptown 2040
Part 3 – NIMBYism: Uptown 2040
Part 4 – Building a Better Uptown: Uptown 2040
This piece has been edited from its original publication in the Better Minneapolis newsletter.
