Marjorie Wood, who is 81 and relies on an oxygen machine to breathe, feels pangs of anxiety each time she contemplates her imminent move to a smaller apartment.
Richard Johnson, 77, is a former business owner and U.S. Army veteran who never imagined asking for a handout. Now he’s visiting an emergency food shelf.
And Darlene Blodgett, 86, has given up on plans for retirement. She rises at 4:30 a.m. each weekday to drive children with disabilities to school, in part because she needs the money.
Their lives have been thrown into disarray by a steep increase in rent at a sprawling senior community in Coon Rapids — River North Senior Apartments — that long has touted itself as affordable for seniors. This summer, one of the state’s largest affordable housing developers, Plymouth-based Dominium, raised monthly rent by 12% at River North and more than a dozen other senior apartment buildings in the Twin Cities, which together provide housing for more than 2,500 low-income seniors.
Persecution Live 