Friday, March 10th at 9 a.m. MHP hosted an update directly from lawmakers and community partners about the latest developments in St. Paul.
We were excited to have been joined by Amy Koch of Hylden Advocacy & Law, Annie Shapiro of Minn Cap and Rep. Esther Agbaje (DFL – Minneapolis). Rep. Agbaje serves as Vice Chair of the House Housing Committe, in caucus leadership, and co-chairs the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) caucus.
Watch the update below.
Please contact Libby Murphy at [email protected] with any questions.
We need your help! Join MHP in advocating for critical investments in housing.
With a historic budget surplus, we have the means and now is the time for lawmakers to prioritize desperately needed investments. $2 billion for housing are needed to ensure that people have access to safe, healthy, and affordable housing.
Contact legislative leaders today to ensure housing is a priority as targets are set for committees.
My name is __ and I live at [___address & city___].
With the historic budget surplus, I urge you to support $2 billion budget targets for housing.
With our budget surplus, we can make a substantial impact on mitigating our housing crisis and creating a more just, equitable housing system. Please prioritize housing this legislative session!
While lawmakers and Minnesota Housing have indicated their interest in fast-tracking emergency rental assistance, through the legislative process, we are still waiting to see a bill. Every day we wait is a day that more Minnesota families face eviction. Please contact legislative leaders to let them know emergency rental assistance is needed NOW to help individuals and families remain housed.
Lawmakers must do everything to ensure no family is displaced and unhoused, especially in the coldest winter months. The result of inaction is families facing an increased risk of homelessness and harm to health, educational outcomes, work stability, and more. When families are evicted, children’s education is disrupted in the middle of the school year. Individuals can’t focus on work when they are worried about finding shelter. With a $17.5 billion surplus, we have the resources to prevent evictions and keep families stably housed.
Call your lawmaker too! Find out who represents you: here
Suggested message:
My name is __ and I live at [___address & city___]. Please fast-track a bill to provide emergency rental assistance to Minnesota families. Evictions are happening at historically high rates, with children experiencing some of the greatest harms from housing instability and poverty. From Duluth to Rochester to St Paul, families need ERA to prevent homelessness! Without state ERA funds, Minnesotans have nowhere to go for help.
[tell your story – why is this important, why we need ERA now (we can’t wait)].
The vast majority of evictions are avoidable by providing families with assistance to pay the rent – fast-tracking emergency rental assistance is a win-win for renters and housing providers. Thank you!
On January 11th, Minnesota housing advocates packed the Capitol Rotunda for a rousing rally to launch the legislative session. Government leaders called for housing investment, including Governor Tim Walz, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, Minnesota Housing Commissioner Jennifer Ho, House Majority Leader Jamie Long, Senator Lindsey Port, Representative Michael Howard, and Hennepin County Commissioner Irene Fernando.
We are excited in both House and Senate leadership making a commitment to Bring it Home, of which MHP is an endorser. We are also optimistic that Source of Income Protections, which Rep Her is prioritizing, will get across the finish line. Source of Income Protections will only grow in importance as we advance Bring it Home. People who get a rent voucher need protections to ensure they can use their voucher to access safe, quality homes.
In addition to government officials we heard from people with the lived experience of struggling with housing, including Patrice Kunesh of the Native American Rights Fund and MHP board member, who realized the value of housing stability when she found herself living in public housing with her two young daughters – which was neither safe nor stable. Kunesh decried the disparities in housing in Minnesota, where Native people account for 8 percent of Minnesota’s homeless adult population, though they represent about 2% of the population, the largest disparity of any group in the state. She ended with a call for $2B for housing this year and housing on the ballot in 2024!
Becky Zoubeck and her two children live in a Habitat for Humanity home in Faribault built in conjunction with South Central College. As a Habitat homeowner, Becky has personally experienced both the lack of affordable housing in Greater Minnesota and the transformational effects of housing stability.
Sedia Omar of the New American Development Center addresses housing advocates
Sedia Omar of the New American Development Center, spoke directly to the question of a constitutional amendment for housing: “You may see a home as a four-wall place, but to East African families and the families we serve, a home means comfort, security.” Sedia continued with “These investments need to be at scale and for decades. We need a new approach, as the status quo has contributed to our housing crisis. We need new solutions. Our proposal for a Constitutional Amendment ensures that frontline leaders and grassroots groups and people with lived experience are decision-makers so that solutions are community driven. … A constitutional amendment ensures long-term investments in home.”
Jim Bargmann, a member of the Bring it Home Coalition emphasized the need for solutions as big as our problems: “Bring it Home, Minnesota will not only be life changing, but society changing. Families who can now afford their housing can move forward!”
Mary McGovern, president of the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council (MHRC), the city-wide public housing high-rise tenant organization, representing over 5000 residents living in the city’s 42 public housing highrises also spoke about the need for investment in housing.
Housing investments are an excellent strategy for deploying our state’s historic surplus to leverage long-term, generational benefits for Minnesota. Every corner of Minnesota needs more homes that are affordable to families and seniors and ensure local businesses can recruit the growing workforce they need to expand and thrive.
Each year, there are at least three requests to Minnesota Housing for housing project funding for every one that can actually be funded; these projects are shovel-ready right now and once built, will offer safe, decent, stable homes for generations of hard-working Minnesotans.
Communities around the state—from Greater Minnesota’s rural areas to cities like Duluth and St. Cloud—are feeling the squeeze of rising costs that have put homes out of reach of too many families. Our state leaders have an opportunity to come together to ensure that all our neighbors have homes from which to build their future.
Everyone needs a home – this is a bipartisan solution that can provide a fundamental building block of our State’s success. We need housing stability for all aspects of life: to maintain our health, to hold a job, for our kids to get their homework done. A stable home makes anything possible.
It’s time to raise expectations for the level of investments we need in homes for every Minnesotan. Tell your state leaders why housing is so important to you and your family today!
MHP hosts a virtual meeting series, Federal Focus on Housing, on the fourth Friday of each month, from 10:00 -11:00 a.m. CST. You canregister for the meeting series here. Special guests from national and state organizations regularly join our call, including from the National Council on Nonprofits, National Low Income Housing Coalition, National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders, Minnesota Office of the Attorney General, Minnesota Housing, and many others. Join us to learn the latest on federal appropriations, legislation, rulemaking, and other issues of interest.
On Tuesday, September 20, the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development, chaired by U.S. Senator Tina Smith, held a hearing on rural housing issues titled “Examining the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service: Stakeholder Perspectives.”
The committee included testimony by Elizabeth Glidden, Deputy Executive Director of MHP, which focused on rural rental housing needs, specifically related to the Section 515 program, and recommended policy solutions.
MHP is one of a small number of organizations that have provided technical assistance with grant funds from USDA’s Multifamily Preservation Technical Assistance (MFTA) program, which supports preservation of affordable homes through the transfer of Section 515 properties from current owners to nonprofits or public housing authorities. MHP’s efforts, led by Community Development Manager Jill Henricksen, have helped preserve eighty-two units as affordable properties in Minnesota and Illinois, including securing $18.5 million in funding for preservation. As well, MHP’s research on Section 515 properties in Minnesota has caught the attention of housing advocates, cities and counties, and lawmakers.The Senate committee also featured testimony from Marcia Erickson ofGROW South Dakota, Tonya Plummer of Enterprise Community Partners, and David Battany of Guild Mortgage Company. Ms. Plummer’s testimony included advocacy for support of the Native American Rural Homeownership Act (S. 2092, H.R. 6331), a bill endorsed by MHP, would authorizing the USDA Secretary to use $50 million of existing 502 single family housing direct loan appropriations for a national relending program so that Native CDFIs across the country can increase access to affordable home loans in rural Native communities.
A webinar on the importance of candidate engagement during the 2020 election, with a focus on housing. Learn about the 2022 Candidate Questionnaire on Housing Issues, tips for non-profits engaging with candidates, social media engagement, and hosting candidate forums. You can find presentation slides (PDF) here, and a video recording here.
MHP hosted a virtual learning opportunity on the new MN Affordable Housing Tax Credit (AHTC) on Thursday, July 14, 2022. This new housing tool invests $10 million annually to affordable and workforce housing. Passed in 2021, it will go into effect in 2023. It is the only new and on-going investment in housing development from this legislative biennium. MHP led the effort to enact this program and we want to ensure that as Minnesota Housing designs a program that works.
This webinar helped inform comments MHP prepares for Minnesota Housing.
Hear from the bill’s chief author Senator Carla Nelson, Jennifer Henderson the Planning and Housing Development Director from North Dakota Housing Finance Agency, which ran a similar tax credit contribution style program, and Dan Madler from Beyond Shelter who developed multiple projects with ND’s program.
Watch the Full Recording: here, and view Presentation slides (PDF): here, Meeting Chat (PDF): here, AHTC Summary: here.
Minnesota Housing, MHP and MCCD are hosting an in-depth engagement session on the to the 2024-2025 Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) and Self-Scoring Worksheet Tuesday, June 14. Minnesota Housing’s Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) describes how Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (HTC) are distributed to multifamily rental projects. Minnesota Housing will present an overview of proposed changes to the QAP and answer questions. Participant input will be utilized by Minnesota Housing, as one of several engagement sessions, and will also inform MHP’s comments on the 2022 QAP.
Summary of the proposed changes can be found here.
