{"id":3971,"date":"2025-12-31T18:58:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T18:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/?p=3971"},"modified":"2026-07-14T19:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T19:02:24","slug":"mayor-jacob-frey-on-legacy-land-and-the-cost-of-exclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/2025\/12\/31\/mayor-jacob-frey-on-legacy-land-and-the-cost-of-exclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Jacob Frey on legacy, land, and the cost of exclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey<\/a> took the stage at the Black Men\u2019s Legacy Summit<\/a>, he did not arrive as a ceremonial guest or a distant political figure. He arrived with an argument: that the success of Minneapolis is inseparable from the economic success of Black men in the city, and that legacy, when stripped of slogans, comes down to ownership, land, and the ability to pass wealth forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am not here for my health,\u201d Frey told the room. \u201cI am here because I\u2019m in charge of this city, and I realize that this city does not succeed unless you are all a tremendous success yourselves.\u201d He framed the audience not as future leaders but as present ones, entrepreneurs, creatives, and business owners already shaping Minneapolis\u2019 economy. From there, he turned to equity, deliberately reframing the term away from abstraction or moral appeal. \u201cI want to talk about equity,\u201d he said, \u201cbut not equity in the social justice sense. I want to talk about equity in terms of money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A City Designed to Exclude<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frey anchored his remarks in Minneapolis\u2019 own documented history. He referenced early twentieth-century housing maps that explicitly labeled North Minneapolis a \u201cslum for Blacks and Jews,\u201d a designation that guided public policy, investment, and neglect for decades. These maps did not exist in isolation. They worked alongside restrictive covenants, deed clauses that legally prevented Black and Jewish families from buying property in large parts of the city. Even after such practices were outlawed by civil rights legislation, Frey argued, exclusion did not disappear. It adapted. \u201cWhen you couldn\u2019t do those things explicitly anymore,\u201d he said, \u201cthey still happened. They just happened implicitly, through zoning codes.\u201d Zoning laws, infrastructure placement, and land-use decisions continued to separate communities from vital assets, riverfronts cut off by highways, neighborhoods boxed in by industrial corridors, wealth routed elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frey placed this local history within a national framework by referencing the GI Bill, the post\u2013World War II program that expanded homeownership and higher education for millions of Americans. While often celebrated as the foundation of the American middle class, he noted that Black veterans were largely excluded through discriminatory lending and housing practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When these forces are layered together, he argued, they explain why today\u2019s wealth gaps are not accidental but cumulative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When growth pushes people out<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frey then turned to the present-day consequences of that history. He described a familiar pattern in North Minneapolis and other historically Black neighborhoods: business owners invest their savings, time, and labor into revitalising corridors, only to be displaced once those areas become desirable. \u201cI see people in this room right now,\u201d he said, \u201cpeople who have invested their blood, sweat, tears, time, and money into starting great businesses.\u201d As foot traffic increases and property values rise, rents spike, and those same owners are often forced out of the spaces they helped make viable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not fair,\u201d Frey said plainly. \u201cAnd it\u2019s also just bad for our city.\u201d In his telling, displacement is not only a moral failure but an economic one. Cities lose stability, continuity, and community-rooted growth when ownership remains out of reach for those doing the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ownership as a policy choice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a response, Frey highlighted Minneapolis\u2019 Ownership and Opportunity Fund<\/a>, a city-backed initiative that provides gap financing, public funding used to bridge the difference between what buyers can afford and actual property costs. The goal is not just to help business owners operate, but to help them own. \u201cSo that business owners don\u2019t just own the business,\u201d he said, \u201cbut own the property, the land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ownership, in Frey\u2019s framing, transforms growth into equity in its most literal sense. When values rise, owners gain wealth instead of losing access. They gain control over their future and the ability to pass something tangible to their families. \u201cEquity in the social justice sense,\u201d he said, \u201cbut also equity in the sense that they reap the benefit of their work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shared histories, shared stakes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frey also drew a personal connection to the moment, referencing his Jewish background and his grandfather\u2019s stories about restricted land ownership. He spoke of how, historically, Jewish and Black communities were often barred from the same neighborhoods and institutions, and how survival sometimes depended on working together. \u201cThe only person who would sell to a Jew was a Black person,\u201d his grandfather told him. \u201cThe only person who would sell to a Black person was a Jew.\u201d For Frey, that shared history underscored a broader point about solidarity in a moment of rising division. He referenced contemporary political pressures, including criticism from federal officials over Minneapolis\u2019 refusal to cooperate with deportation efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re staying rock solid on that,\u201d he said, drawing applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a time of heightened polarization, Frey framed legacy not as nostalgia, but as responsibility. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a mission,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, we\u2019ve got a legacy that we all have to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legacy as structure, not symbol<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time Frey concluded, his message was clear: legacy is not built through rhetoric or recognition, but through policy choices that determine who is allowed to stay, own, and accumulate. He thanked the room for their commitment to Minneapolis, their families, and their neighborhoods, and emphasized partnership as the mechanism through which cities either repeat inherited harm or begin to repair it. In Frey\u2019s narration, wealth is never neutral. It reflects the rules that govern access to land, capital, and opportunity. Change, therefore, is not a matter of charity, but of redesigning those rules so that growth finally benefits the people who have carried the city forward all along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey took the stage at the Black Men\u2019s Legacy Summit, he did not arrive as a ceremonial guest or a distant political figure. He arrived with an argument: that the success of Minneapolis is inseparable from the economic success of Black men in the city, and that legacy, when stripped of slogans, comes down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2501,2582,38],"class_list":["post-3971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-black-mens-legacy-summit","tag-jacob-frey","tag-minneapolis","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Insight-News-Website-Images-5-2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3973,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions\/3973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}