The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability (the Alliance) are excited to announce the recipients of the Housing Stability Grants. The grants will enhance the capacity of community-based organizations working with BIPOC communities, people with disabilities, and low-wealth communities to build power and advance systems and policy changes to gain access to safe, healthy, affordable, and reliable housing. 

Housing Stability Grants recipients

Lead Organization: Community Stabilization Project
Partner Organization(s): Neighborhood House; Minnesotans Standing Together to End Poverty and Homelessness (MnSTEP)
Project description: Three Saint Paul organizations serving low-income, people of color, indigenous people, new immigrants, and other historically marginalized communities combine their powerhouse spectrum of resources to advance housing stability policies and practices through collaborative organizing, educating, coaching – and providing access to stable housing for – people experiencing homelessness or precarious housing.

Lead Organization: Envision Community
Project description: To create truly affordable housing for people who face housing instability, Envision Community involves people with lived experience of homelessness every step of the way. With this underrepresented community driving our project's design and evaluation, we aim to build not just a place to live, but a place to lead.

Lead Organization: Frogtown Neighborhood Association
Project description: Frogtown Neighborhood Association’s Development Without Displacement (DWD) project is a community driven effort by and for the residents of the Frogtown community – a unique multi-racial, multi-ethnic haven for newly immigrated communities. We are rising up and lifting each other up to solidify the narrative around displacement and to stop the potential loss of culture and affordable housing that would result without our efforts.

Lead Organization: Harrison Neighborhood Association
Project description: The Harrison Neighborhood Association seeks to combat displacement, ensure equitable development, and achieve housing stability for both Harrison renters and the broader Minneapolis low-income renter community by supporting emerging tenant leaders in their efforts to impact the redevelopment of Olson Townhomes, create a public housing Scattered Site Tenants’ Council, and begin a campaign for universal rent control in Minneapolis.  

Lead Organization: Hope Community
Project description: Hope will produce a Community Ownership training program to support renters to become owner/occupant landlords of existing small multi‐unit buildings. We have undertaken extensive community engagement of primarily low‐income renters in the Phillips community, the target participants, and used these learnings to shape program curriculum.

Lead Organization: Hopkins Housing Team (ICA Food Shelf and ResourceWest)
Partner Organization(s): Blake Road Corridor Collaborative, MoveFwd, and Shepherd of the Hill Church 
Project description: The Hopkins Housing Team is a multicultural group of renters, homeowners, and nonprofit leaders with history and trusted community networks. This project builds off our past engagement work to organize a power base to advance policies that protect tenant rights, preserve and produce affordable housing, and open pathways to wealth.

Lead Organization: Juxtaposition Arts
Project description: Juxtaposition Arts will advocate for housing and evictions policy change. JXTA’s youth apprentices will use an empathy-building simulation and youth participatory action research methods to demystify policy, influence key decision makers, and advocate for procedure change within Hennepin County’s Emergency Assistance program as related to housing instability and eviction. 

Lead Organization: Urban Homeworks, Inc. 
Project description: Urban Homeworks will facilitate the organization of our tenants in partnership with our neighbors to learn about renters’ rights, negotiate, and demand just and dignified housing from landlords. This project is driven and led by the voices of low-income Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

Lead Organization: West Side Community Organization 
Project description: Through our Equitable Development Scorecard and other housing justice work, the West Side Community Organization will use community organizing and engagement to create systemic change that leads to greater housing stability for people of color, immigrants, and lower-income residents across our West Side neighborhood.

More about the Housing Stability Grants
Too many people in the Twin Cities region do not have access to safe, healthy, affordable, and reliable housing. In particular, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities, people with disabilities, and low-wealth communities face barriers to these critical resources. Market conditions have shown that the housing market does not work for most low-income people, so solutions may require questioning long held assumptions, creating innovative solutions, and attempting new ideas to address housing stability.

To address these challenges and identify solutions, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability (the Alliance) are issuing Housing Stability Grants to support BIPOC communities, people with disabilities, and low-wealth communities working to build power and advance systems and policy changes at the local level. These grants are intended to support organizations that have demonstrated capacity for systems/policy change and community engagement or organizing efforts in their communities. Grants will enhance the capacity among community-based organizations to partner with key decision-makers and institutions, while identifying strategic opportunities to leverage their power for better community outcomes.

Read more about the Housing Stability Grant application process