We are Marquette Place Tenants Union, formed by tenants living at Marquette Place Luxury Apartments, and we have a filed a group rent escrow action against our landlord, Fine Associates, LLC. Currently, we have 17 units with over $30,000 in escrow, with a significant number of tenants committed to signing on in June and beyond. We have decided to pursue this course of action because we are tired of our homes being mismanaged by an inattentive and out of touch landlord.

Over the past year alone, we have had a laundry list of severe issues arise: multiple flooding events (both within individual apartments and in common areas of the building), numerous major security breaches (unauthorized access of non-functioning security doors, a broken garage door for ease of access, and bypassing the 24/7 concierge directly), significant concerns regarding mold growth (due to extensive and repeated flooding), and many instances of pest infestations across many floors. These are just a handful of the issues we've personally experienced as a community here, but the underlying thing all these have in common is that they are due to our landlord's total dereliction of duty and neglect. Maintenance requests are often delayed our outright ignored, and the repairs they affect are often patchwork and do nothing to address the underlying causes. This is due to a number of factors, including a serious staffing shortage, a lack of resources, and very little communication of any kind, among others.

Residents of this building have been dealing with these and other issues for years now, with increasing frequency and severity. At the start of the year, in response to yet another major flooding incident, the tenants of Marquette Place decided to organize, put our rent in escrow, and try to force Fine Associates to actually address these urgent and longstanding issues. To that end, we have retained legal counsel, to apply tangible pressure. Unfortunately, nothing in life is free: between court filings, legal fees, and expert inspections and testimonials, we expect this entire action to cost around $40,000.

To try and meet this initial cost, we have set up a dues structure for members of our union to pay. However, the cost of this action is significant, and a number of our union members, as well as those sympathetic to us but abstaining, are on a fixed income, and cannot contribute much to our cause financially. As such, we are humbly requesting $30,000. With this GoFundMe, we hope to supplement our dues-paying members and provide the ability for those with lesser means to still contribute.

The more units in our building we can add to this rent escrow action, the greater pressure we can exert on our landlord. We want everyone to be able to participate in this action regardless of their ability to pay. Even now, with this action only in its infancy, we have seen the landlord begin to affect repairs, including most recently fixing one of the building's elevators that had been down for almost a year with no explanation (a safety hazard). We have seen progress towards our goals and have only just begun: what could we accomplish with more tenants joining us?

We are first and foremost bound by our code of solidarity to each other as a community here, but that solidarity extends beyond us to the greater struggle. In the event we are able to receive money in excess of our costs, we will donate that surplus to other tenant legal actions happening in the Twin Cities.

So in short, we the Marquette Place Tenants Union, are trying to raise funds to help pay for the legal fees of our members relating to our group rent escrow action. The donations will be transferred to our business account, which we will then use to directly pay for any and all legal fees, including lawyers, experts, and court filings related to the group rent escrow action.

Thank you for your time,

Marquette Place Tenants Union