Sep 12, 2019
In 2018, My Pit Bull Is Family volunteers called over 300 supposedly dog friendly apartments in the Twin Cities. What they found was that only 12 of them accepted dogs regardless of what they looked like.
The reality is that when people surrender their dogs because they’ve moved, it’s not necessarily because they are heartless. It’s more than likely because they have nowhere to go that will accept their pet. The Twin Cities encompasses Minneapolis and St. Paul, plus several surrounding suburbs. That’s a large area with a big population of individuals. Individuals who cannot simply pick up and move to a completely different geographic location.
The lack of pet owner accessible housing is a real issue and when we talk about why dogs are being surrendered to shelters, this is one of the main issues that we need to address. We need to not shame the owners. We need to look at how we can work with landlords and property managers, as well as communities, to fix what is broken.
On top of that, Shannon mentions that many of the pet owner accessible apartments are not affordable. We all know that there is a huge shortage of affordable housing across the country. That number shrinks even further for people who have pets.
For Shannon, and also for us at AFF, the way to address these issues is to work together. In the podcast, Shannon talks about the importance of building a community with organizations and individuals to help you achieve your goals.
Along those lines, we talk about something we discussed in our previous housing podcast, property managers and landlords aren’t the enemy. Most people are reasonable. When we view individuals as allies rather than adversaries, we get a lot farther in bringing dogs and people together to end discrimination.