News

As reported By Emma Nelson in the Star Tribune on 3/28/2017. When an affordable housing complex comes up for sale in Minneapolis, buyers who want to keep rents low could soon have access to loans from the city. The 2017 city budget includes $1.5 million to preserve “naturally occurring affordable housing,” and pending City Council approval, that money ...

As reported in the Spring 2017 issue of Affordable Housing News. For the first time, real estate buyers who wish to preserve affordable housing properties in the Twin Cities metropolitan area will have access to a $25 million fund to help them do so. The NOAH Impact Fund is the result of a partnership between Greater Minnesota ...

GMHF staff had the opportunity to tour one of the latest achievements in affordable housing and serving homeless individuals: Higher Ground Saint Paul, the new shelter and supportive housing development in downtown Saint Paul developed by Catholic Charities, under the leadership of Tim Marx, CEO. Higher Ground is an incredibly inspiring development in its scale of ...

On March 2, 2017 the Family Housing Fund and Greater Minnesota Housing Fund hosted a forum with leaders of the affordable housing network. The forum covered the new realities that impact availability of federally authorized tax-exempt bonds in Minnesota. The discussion centered on a new proposal from Housing Advocates for Vitality and Equity Now (HAVEN) and ...

Too many Minnesota students are struggling with homelessness. Housing instability keeps students from attending school consistently and diminishes their likelihood of achieving key measures like reading proficiency, a predictor of future success. With approximately 10,000 Minnesota children struggling with homelessness, Lt. Governor Tina Smith, state legislators, and education and child advocates highlighted the importance of the ...

Star Tribune reporter Emma Nelson reports that the election of Donald Trump has introduced great uncertainty as to the future of the critical low income housing tax credit program, a keystone in how affordable housing is financed today. Financing for low-income housing across Minnesota has dried up in recent months, leaving developers scrambling to fill gaps or ...

As reported by Shannon Prather in the Star Tribune in January 2017, the Otto Bremer Trust, the charitable foundation that owns 92 percent of Bremer Bank, gave away a record $47.3 million in 2016 — the largest annual amount since bank founder Otto Bremer created the trust in 1944. The funding, in the form of grants and program-related ...

They’re already planning to return in about a year to celebrate the end of a project so extensive it will replace virtually everything but the property’s concrete shell – and even that will be covered by a new contemporary metal skin. “We’re really happy to make an intervention to protect the building,” said Jeff Corey, executive ...

After years of watching the Twin Cities’ affordable housing market grow increasingly tight, a group of affordable housing advocates, nonprofits and private companies has decided to take the problem into its own hands. The Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, a nonprofit affordable housing lender, is developing the nation’s first regional pool of money to help buyers who ...

Joined by Minnesota Housing Commissioner Mary Tingerthal and community leaders, Governor Mark Dayton today announced $80 million in funding to create and preserve 1,831 affordable housing units throughout the state. These investments will leverage private and local resources to support $300 million in total development costs and support more than 2,800 jobs. “This funding will stimulate jobs and ...

The idea for the 48 new homes and supportive services for low-income individual and families, as well as formerly homeless and disabled individuals came out of the 18-month Housing Institute co-hosted by GMHF and the Minnesota Housing Partnership. Itasca County HRA worked closely with a close-knit group of project partners which included the Minnesota Department of ...

The midrange and luxury rental housing markets are hot in the Twin Cities — largely driven by demand from those earning $50,000 or more a year. They have the means to live in the new and renovated, amenity-filled buildings that are quickly rising across the metro area. Yet as more upscale rental buildings open, fewer affordable units ...

It’s a scenario that plays out again and again, in every corner of The Corridor: a developer announces plans to create affordable housing units outside “those” neighborhoods where such units already are relatively plentiful, and neighbors start complaining. The torpedoing last month of a 45-unit, mixed-income housing complex along Edgewood Road in Cedar Rapids was only ...

Crossroads at Penn in Richfield and Meadowbrook Manor in St. Louis Park were middle-aged apartment complexes that offered a large supply of what has become known as naturally occurring affordable housing, NOAH for short. They aren’t public and they aren’t subsidized, but their owners did accept state and federal housing vouchers that helped low-income tenants pay ...

Apartment sales in the seven-county metro increased 165 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the report, which analyzed data from Marquette Advisors, CoStar and Finance & Commerce’s Twin Cities Apartment Sales Tracker. Many units – often in Class B or Class C buildings – are being refurbished, rebranded and leased for more than the ...

Gabriel Corbesia works as a security guard and recently graduated from Summit Academy near the top of his carpentry class. Corbesia, a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa who grew up in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, has wrestled with alcoholism and homelessness. Today, he is a thankful, productive citizen who also ...

It seems not a week goes by lately without news about low-income tenants forced to move when their landlord sells their apartment building to investors. A new report offers numbers behind those anecdotes, illustrating a major shift in the local rental market. In “Sold Out,” released this week, the Minnesota Housing Partnership found that sales of ...

Meet this family whose lives have been changed for the better thanks to our development and investment partners. Not long ago, Tammy Jacka and her three sons were living in a drafty manufactured home in Thief River Falls. By spring 2014, Tammy realized she was paying almost 300% of what most people pay to heat their ...

For full story and radio news coverage, visit the WTIP website. Housing forum at North House builds framework for action Mary Tingerthal is the Commissioner for Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, an organization that strives for safe, decent and affordable housing across the state. During a forum held Monday, Sept. 19 at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, ...

Donna Kimura, deputy editor of Affordable Housing Finance magazine, presents efforts from Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C. to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). She includes a feature on GMHF’s NOAH Impact Fund. Rescue Mission: Community strategies emerge to preserve affordable housing By Donna Kimura The Bronaugh Apartments is one of the oldest rental housing developments in Portland, Ore. ...