Somali American renters asked their Minnesota landlord to repair hazardous electrical problems. The property managers commented on the womens English…

The hallway on the second floor of Jamilo Husseins apartment was always dark: The ceiling light, for some reason, didnt turn on. Then one night her children plugged their phone chargers into a nearby outlet, and the light began to flicker.

My kids used to say we have a ghost in our home, Jamilo said.

Jamilo has lived at the Pondview Townhomes in Woodbury for eight years with her husband and five children. She reported the strange, flickering light to Northstar Residential, the landlord, who sent a technician to change the lightbulb. I told them, Thats not the problem, the problem is electrical, Jamilo said.

A flickering light may call to mind the evocative atmosphere of a horror film. But in a modern home, it may be a sign of an electrical hazard.

Ever since a Northstar technician tried to fix the problem, Jamilo said, the light no longer turns on when her children charge their phones. The light still flickers, though, so the family still cannot use it.

Pondview is home to a small, close-knit Somali community that has lived with a host of electrical and appliance problems for years, residents say. Lights flicker. Stoves do not work. At least three units have had waterleaking from the floor abovepool in a light fixture. Residents say they have reported the problems to the landlord, but many persist.

On December 6, a fire broke out in an upstairs bedroom closet of a Pondview apartment and quickly spread to two adjoining units. No one was injured, but three families were forced to relocate. Theres no evidence that an electrical problem caused the Pondview fire. Residential electrical fires are rare, and the cause of the Pondview fire has yet to be determined by investigators. Nevertheless, the fire caused scared residents to come forward and speak out about electrical problems at the complex.

Even before the December fire, several frustrated residents approached the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to discuss problems in their units and their landlords failures to address them. Since then, CAIR-MN has worked with residents to publicize their concerns, including allegations of racism.

The landlords employees at the property, they say, treat maintenance requests with hostile dismissals and have blamed some tenant problems on a lack of English proficiency. One tenant reported that when she requested a repair, a company representative asked why she had so many children.

In other cases, residents report that they have received bills for maintenance requests that should be paid by their landlords. Some charges are for hundreds of dollars.

Sahan Journal heard accounts from 12 current and past residents from different Pondview units; four gave tours of their homes to demonstrate their housing problems. Sahan Journal also reviewed 10 years of inspection reports from the Washington County Community Development Agency, which documented numerous problems, including electrical deficiencies.

Taken together, these accounts and reports indicate widespread and potentially hazardous electrical problems in the Pondview Townhomes.

Pondview was built in 2004 by Duffy Development Company, which has developed and continues to own 23 properties including over 1,000 units in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Duffy, which is based in Minnetonka, still owns the property and manages it in-house through a related company, Northstar Residential.

The Pondview complex comprises 40 units in 8 rowhouses standing just off Interstate 94 in Woodbury. By Jamilos informal count, Somali families live in 28 of these units.

In a phone interview, Northstar president Jeff Von Feldt said the company was not aware of any large-scale electrical problem in the buildings. (Von Feldt is also the CEO of Duffy Development Company.)

Von Feldt added that investigators have told him they are not looking at electrical problems as a cause of the December fire. In an email to Sahan Journal, Woodbury Fire Marshall Rick said that his office did not determine the immediate cause of the fire through a preliminary investigation. The case has been handed over to the Woodbury Police Department due to the nature of the possible cause of the fire, though he declined to elaborate.

Whatever the cause of the December fire, it has alarmed residents, who feel a renewed urgency for Northstar to repair their homes.

Jamilo immigrated to the United States from Mogadishu, Somalia, in the early 90s to escape the civil war. She lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for a time, and in Pennsylvania and Ohio after coming to the US. Eventually, she settled in Tennessee. She met her husband there, and they started a family.

Back then, there was not a lot of Somali stores, Jamilo said of Tennessee. Finding halal meat was a particular struggle.

But Minnesota already had a vibrant Somali community. I had family in Minnesota send me Somali clothes, she said, The culture is strong here.

Minnesota also offered more jobs and better public schools. Family and friends encouraged them to move, and in 2013, they came to Minnesota.

Jamilo had friends who lived at Pondview, so the family toured their apartment on a scouting trip to the state. The 1,000-square-foot, three-bedroom unit was already in poor condition back then, Jamilo said, but she didnt care. It was in their price rangethey pay $1,300 nowand the landlord promised to replace the musty carpets before they moved in.

In many ways, the move has been positive. Her husband found work, Jamilo has focused on their children, and the family has created a community with their neighbors.

(One thing she misses about the South? Tennessee had better weather, she said with a laugh.)

But the housing problems began almost immediately. When the family arrived to move in, they discovered the carpets had not been replaced. Jamilo tried for a year to get Northstar to swap them out. It took a note from her doctor that the carpet might be impacting her childrens health to get Northstar to act, she said.

Over the years, the family also became concerned about the electrical problems, beginning with the flickering light. In December, Jamilo gave Sahan Journal a tour of her apartment and several others to show what she identified as some of the worst issues.

Walking into Jamilos unit is like stepping from day into night. The windows are covered in heavy, colorful curtains to do what the windows cannot: keep out the cold. Glancing back at the front door, a crack between the door and the jamb lets in a wide ray of winter light. Jamilo said the family cannot use the living room in the winter because of the cold, even though the heat is on.

A month after Jamilo showed her apartment to Sahan Journal, a Washington County housing inspection found that water leaking from the upstairs bathroom was pooling in the living room light fixture.

Aside from these problems, the apartment looks like a modern single-family home, with an open floor plan. That day, her young son had a small trampoline set up in front of the living room TV, where he jumped while watching cartoons. Her high schoolage daughter sat at the dining room table doing homework.

In the kitchen, Jamilo demonstrated her electric stove, where only three of the four burners worked. Above the stove, the fan is missing its cover, leaving bare blades exposed.

On the upstairs landing, Jamilo demonstrated the light. When she flipped the switch, the light flashed, then went dark.

Inside the breaker box (the main electric panel in the house), one breaker trips when the air conditioner fan turns on.

The apartment also has extensive discoloration from mold and water damage. Yellow-orange splotches and dissolving particle board can be found inside kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Trim is rotting in the upstairs hallway, right outside the bathroom. A hole in the bathtub has been repaired with some kind of tape. Directly below it, on the living room ceiling, yellowed paint and drywall is peeling off around the light fixtures in palm-sized chunks.

They dont want to repair anything, she said of the buildings management, Northstar.

After finishing the tour of her home, Jamilo walked across the parking lot to another of Pondviews rowhouses, where her friend Fadima Ali lives.

At Fadimas house, two boys shoved past their mother, laughing. A little girl sat on the couch, skeptically eyeing the journalist who had come into their home carrying a large, silver voice recorder. A teenage boy did homework at the dining room table, seemingly accustomed to the noise around him.

Neither Fadima nor her husband Mohammad speak English, so Jamilo translated.

Fadima also left Mogadishu for the United States during the civil war. She and Mohammad lived at Pondview for two years with their 10 children, aged 1 to 16. Several weeks after they spoke to Sahan Journal, they bought their own house and moved out of Pondview.

During the visit, the family said they struggled to get Northstar to make basic repairs, even though they paid more than $2,000 a month in rent for a three-bedroom unit.

Fadima said that the familys garage door would open by itself. Unlike Jamilos stove, where one burner wont turn on, one of the burners on Fadimas stove got extremely hot and occasionally sparked, she said.

The problem that alarmed them the most, however, waited in the basement.

Jamilo, Fadima, and Mohammad walked down a flight of stairs to a dark room. Aside from the light trickling in from upstairs, the only illumination came from the harsh glare of a phone and a computer screen, which glowed on the faces of two of Fadimas children. Otherwise, they sat in the dark.

Mohammad pointed out a ceiling light fixture that housed the remains of a lightbulb. Fadima said that two weeks prior, it just exploded. Another light on the same circuit flickered when Mohammad turned it on.

The other one did the same exact stuff before it exploded, one of their children said from somewhere in the dark. Fadima and Mohammad said the family reported the blowout weeks earlier, first to Northstars on-site property manager, then directly to the maintenance technician.

Several days later, Jamilo brought Sahan Journal to her neighbor Farhiyo Maalins apartment, which is a mirror of her own. Jamilo and Farhiyo lived in the same Kenyan refugee camp for a time after fleeing Mogadishu, though they only met at Pondview.

Utange Camp was better than here, Jamilo said, laughing.

Farhiyo demonstrated her stovewhich got very hot, like Fadimasand her water heaterwhich didnt work properly and had to be turned off and on multiple times a day.

Jamilo watched the community grow in the years after she moved in, beginning with Farhiyo, who arrived shortly after Jamilo. But few people stay at Pondview longer than they must. Almost all the neighbors who lived at Pondview when Jamilo came have since left.

Still, the community is strong. Neighbors visit each other in the hospital when one falls ill. Many of their children attend the same school, so the parents exchange car rides. Jamilo knows English better than many of her neighbors, so she helps her friends read and write their mail.

Though many of the families came from different regions and backgrounds in Somalia, she said, We are the same community and we help each other.

While Sahan Journal visited Farhiyos apartment, several other neighbors came to talk about the problems in their own apartments. One of these women was Safiyo Yonis, who also shared her experiences at Pondview.

Safiyo has lived in Pondview for five years with her seven children. She said her husband does not live with them because of the occupancy limits on their apartment.

Safiyo was initially excited to move into Pondview. At three bedrooms, it was a larger apartment than the family had been living in, and the manager promised to paint and replace the carpets before they moved in. Again, though, Safiyo said they never did.

Like Jamilo, Safiyo got a letter from her sons doctor explaining that the carpet might be impacting his health. When she showed it to the manager, she said, the manager told Safiyo she could move out if she wanted.

As she was speaking, the evening call to prayer played over a speaker in the house. But Safiyo didnt stop talking until Jamilo gently scolded her, Safiyo!

When the prayers were finished, Safiyo continued to explain how a heating coil on her electric stove catastrophically failed in her apartment last year.

Safiyos 14-year-old son was cooking noodles on the stove. He walked away to sit with his mother at the table. We didnt see fire, didnt see anything, then all of a sudden, BOOM. Safiyo pantomimed an explosion with her hands.

There was a loud crack, and a shower of sparks and hot water rained down in the kitchen, she said. In the aftermath, Safiyo found a hole in the bottom of the pot and a fissure that split the heating coil in two pieces.

Imagine if my son had been right there, she said.

Safiyo said she threw away the damaged heating coil and pot. She reported the problem, but, after a month of waiting, she bought and installed a new heating coil herself.

Just how common are electrical problems in rental units like Pondview? Sahan Journal asked Eric Hauge, the executive director of Home Line, a nonprofit that provides free and low-cost legal advice and representation to tenants in Minnesota. The organization works with more than 1,000 households statewide each month, and Hauge said repairs are the most common issue on which they advise tenants.

The organization does not track detailed data about specific repair issues. Households typically face multiple issues, so comparing the prevalence of different housing problems is difficult. But water damage, mold, bedbugs, and insufficient heat are among the most common complaints. Home Line does receive complaints about electrical and appliance problems, though they are not common things that we hear about, Hauge said.

But government housing records suggest electrical and appliance problems are widespread at Pondview.

Any unit subsidized through the federal Section 8 housing voucher programwhich provides rental assistance to low-income tenantsrequires an annual inspection. This process is meant to ensure that government-subsidized rentals meet the housing quality standards of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Sahan Journal obtained 10 years worth of these inspections for the Pondview Townhomes from the Washington County Community Development Agency.

Only 26 units were inspected each year, and officials redacted unit numbers and tenant names. But the reports echo tenant complaints.

In January, Jamilo asked Washington County to conduct an emergency inspection, hoping to force Northstar to make repairs. The unit failed. The report lists nine reasons, including an inoperable stove burner, a malfunctioning water heater, and a ceiling falling in because of water leaking from above.

One unit failed because water was leaking from the bathroom and pooling in the living room light fixture. One unit listed three appliances that didnt work: It actually failed because of a broken oven, which prompted the note, tenant advise [sic] it sparked then stopped working. Two other units listed inoperable stove burners.

Others failed because of an inoperable light, an inoperable bathroom vent, or a fridge not cooling properly. And some failed for reasons that may have been caused by tenants, such as one report that reads, in part, looks like toothpaste put in electrical outlet.

From 2010 to 2016, 3 out of 27 inspections failed because of electrical or appliance problems. From 2017 to 2019, 4 out of 13 inspections failed for these reasons. In 2020, 3 out of 4 did.

Looking at all sources for failed inspectionsincluding things like mold and water damage30 percent of Pondview units failed Section 8 inspections between 2010 and 2020.

In each instance, the unit eventually passed after a reinspection or after Northstar certified the repairs had been completed.

Pondviews 30 percent HUD inspection failure rate appears to exceed the norms for other Section 8 rental units in the area, according to Ann Hoechst, the housing assistance and administrative services director for the Washington County Community Development Agency.

Between 2 and 5 percent of Section 8 inspections fail in Washington County depending on the month, and across a landlords entire portfolio.

A good failure rate for a normal year would be in the 5 percent range, Hoechst wrote by email.

However, Hoechst added that high failure rates dont necessarily bother the agency. If the landlord will make repairs to meet HQSHUD housing quality standardsand the tenant is satisfied, then it is not a concern.

Derrick Atkins is training director at the Minneapolis Electrical JATC Training Center, which trains union electrical apprentices. He currently serves on a panel of experts who help update the National Electric Code, which serves as the basis for electric codes in all 50 states.

Sahan Journal shared the tenant accounts with Atkins, along with selections from the Section 8 inspection reports. He couldnt definitively diagnose the problems without more direct information, but he offered several possible causes for each issue.

Its almost too broad to list everything, said Atkins.

Some of the problems, however, were consistent with a loose neutral.

Most homes get their electricity through two hot wires. The hot wires run through the house, providing either 120 or 240 volts of electricity to outlets and light fixtures, depending on whether one or both wires are connected. A third wire, the neutral, carries electricity back to the breaker box to complete the circuit. A fourth wire, the ground, is a failsafe in case of a short circuit.

When the neutral wire is not securely connected to the lead in an outlet or light fixture (its loose), the wire may jostle, causing flickering lights as the wire connects and disconnects with the lead. It can also cause excess voltagewhich should be directed down the neutral wireto flow across the circuit. In extreme cases, the problem can cause lights and even televisions to blow out.

Under state law, all electrical work in rental properties needs to be done by licensed electricians (or under their supervision). The president of Northstar said the company does not employ certified electricians.Yet residents report that Northstar employees have done electrical work in their homes.

Loose neutrals have also been known to cause electric stoves to malfunction, Atkins said, though that is more likely a problem with the appliance itself.

Jamilo recalled that a Northstar maintenance technician told her the flickering light in her apartment was caused by a loose neutral.

Atkins pointed out that residential electrical fires are rare because modern homes have many failsafes built in to the wiring. Buildings constructed as recently as the Pondview Townhomeswhich were built in 2004would have been inspected to ensure these failsafes were present.

Ive seen loose neutrals burn up, but it was contained in the electrical equipment. I have never seen a loose neutral cause a home fire, Atkins said. But, he added, Thats not to say it couldnt happen.

Atkins repeated that hed need to see the wiring himself to identify potential issues. But his takeaway about electrical work was clear: It needs to be installed and maintained properly, and it sounds like this is not.

The properties should be inspected by a licensed electrician immediately, Atkins recommended. Otherwise, You could, potentially, have a fire hazard.

Under state law, all electrical work in rental properties needs to be done by licensed electricians (or under their supervision).

Von Feldt, the president of Northstar, said the company does not employ certified electricians.

Yet Jamilo and other residents reported that Northstar employees have done electrical work in their homes.

Northstar Residential said by email, It is not uncommon in the property management industry to have maintenance technicians, not a contracted vendor, perform minor electrical work such as replacing light fixtures or outlets.

Jamilo and other residents said they have reported problems to Northstar staffboth the on-site property manager and maintenance technicianswith inconsistent results. Residents say a new property manager who was hired last year has reacted to repair requests with hostility that residents characterized as racism.

Once, when Jamilo went to the office to request repairs, the new manager complained that some of the residents didnt speak English, Jamilo said. Some of us dont speak English, yes, but we live here and we pay the rent, Jamilo replied.

Fadima said she and her husband repeatedly tried to report problems to the manager. Neither speaks English, so they took their children to translate.The manager yelled at them and their children, Fadima recalled. They stopped reporting problems, Fadima said, because they were scared of the manager.

She reminded the manager about the electrical problems (which she had already reported) and said she was worried they were dangerous. She was screaming, and she told me Dont come to my office, Jamilo said.

Speaking through a translator, Fadima said she and her husband repeatedly tried to report the problems in their apartment to the manager. Neither speaks English, so they took their children to translate.

The manager yelled at them and their children, Fadima recalled. They stopped reporting problems months before they left Pondview, Fadima said, because they were scared of the manager.

Speaking through a translator, Farhiyo said that when she reported a washing machine breakdown last year, the manager told her to go to a laundromat. Farhiyo said that wasnt an option: She had to watch her children and couldnt take everyone to the laundromat. She said she needed her washing machine fixed.

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Somali American renters asked their Minnesota landlord to repair hazardous electrical problems. The property managers commented on the womens English...