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2018 marked the first year of the Foundation’s strategic giving focus on housing stability.  Grants were awarded to organizations responding to the Hiawatha homeless encampment, for work on the redesign of the emergency response system in Hennepin County, and to affordable housing capital campaigns, among others.

Organization: Ain Dah Yung Center
Grant amount: $200,000
Program/project summary: For a new permanent supportive housing facility and services for 42 Native youth coming out of foster care or chronic homelessness.  The first youth-specific Native supportive housing in the Twin Cities.

Organization: Amherst H. Wilder Foundation
Grant amount: $300,000
Program/project summary: The support is two-fold.  1. Campaign for Families to stabilize and strengthen families through direct assistance at one central St. Paul location.  2. Triennial Minnesota Homeless Study, which provides critical data on the state of homelessness in Minnesota that informs policy, practice and awareness efforts.

Organization: Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative
Grant amount: $179,000
Program/project summary: Support a campaign to provide homes and services for residents of their Great River Landing project, a new 72-unit supportive housing development in downtown Minneapolis that serves men who have been homeless, incarcerated and unemployed.

Organization: Bridging Inc.
Grant amount: $15,000
Program/project summary: To purchase furnishings for residents transitioning from the Hiawatha encampment to permanent housing.

Organization: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota
Grant amount: $100,000
Program/project summary: To support community-led participatory research with low-income black women in North Minneapolis, who are disproportionately affected by the eviction crisis. Participants will create actionable solutions and best practices to housing instability based on personal experience of the eviction process.

Organization: City of Lakes Community Land Trust
Grant amount: $500,000
Program/project summary:  1. To develop 6-10 homes and rehab 20-25 homes in Minneapolis at any given time. Through the land trust model, homes will be affordable in perpetuity, allowing families to build wealth and create neighborhood stability.  2. To facilitate the purchase, rehab and maintenance of affordability of six homes from the portfolio of a predatory North Minneapolis landlord.

Organization: City of Minneapolis
Grant amount: $150,000
Program/project summary: For the hiring of a Hiawatha encampment project manager to coordinate all aspects of encampment response.  The position is critical to the success of opening and then moving unsheltered residents to the Navigation Center.

Organization: Foster Advocates
Grant amount: $50,000
Program/project summary: To track data for youth aging out of foster care.  It is estimated that 50% of youth who age out of foster care will become homeless, but little is known locally about long-term results for these youth as there are no mandates to track this information.

Organization: Friends of the Hennepin County Library
Grant amount: $20,000
Program/project summary: Fees associated with a public speaking engagement with author Matthew Desmond.

Organization: Heading Home Minnesota Funders Collaborative
Grant amount: $100,000
Program/project summary: HHMFC is a collaborative of 14 foundations and the United Way to align philanthropic efforts to prevent and end homelessness in Minnesota. Funds to support operations and collaborative-supported programs, including Homework Starts with Home; an initiative focused on homeless and highly mobile students, Heading Home Together: Minnesota’s Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, and the Leadership Circle.

Organization: Hennepin County Health & Human Services
Grant amount: $433,000
Program/project summary: To assist to redesign the way Hennepin County emergency assistance is administered and provide funds for direct assistance for families. The redesign will lead to a streamlined, centralized way for families and individuals to seek direct financial assistance during a housing crisis, effectively eliminating “the social service run-around game,” improving access, speed of response, and customer service to people in housing crisis.

Organization: Hennepin Healthcare Foundation
Grant amount: $50,000
Program/project summary: Funds will allow Street Voices for Change participants (people with lived experience of homelessness) to test their ability to recruit professional volunteer labor and conduct cost analysis of a unit of housing based on real-world construction costs.

Organization: Institute for Community Alliances
Grant amount: $100,000
Program/project summary: To support infrastructure improvements to Minnesota’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), including user interface and reporting capacity.  HMIS is Minnesota’s database for all publicly funded homelessness programs, capturing trends and outcomes for over 20,000 homeless shelter utilization statewide. HMIS data is used to track Minnesota’s progress on preventing and ending homelessness, including goals tied to reduction in episodes of homelessness, duration of episodes, and recidivism rates.

Organization: Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless
Grant amount: $50,000
Program/project summary: General operating support.

Organization: Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless
Grant amount: $7,500
Program/project summary: Support for a keynote speaker at MCH’s annual conference.

Organization: Minnesota Engagement on Shelter & Housing
Grant amount: $100,000
Program/project summary: To support the Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities (SPARC) initiative.  SPARC is a national initiative challenging current practices and policies that create and perpetuate racial inequities in homelessness. Through Minnesota-specific research and action, SPARC will engage national and local equity experts to: 1. increase their capacity to understand, measure and respond to racial inequities; 2. develop structural change; 3. implement and evaluate strategies to reduce the number of people of color experiencing homelessness; and 4. address disparities in the urban and reservation Native community.

Organization: Minnesota Host Home Network
Grant amount: $25,000
Program/project summary: To support research on youth “couch hopping” and their hosts.  Research will identify benefits and challenges of informal host homes and ways that these networks could be supported to help stabilize youth who would otherwise become homeless.

Organization: Minnesota Housing Partnership
Grant amount: $50,000
Program/project summary: General operating support focused on systems change impact on affordable housing availability for extremely-low-income households in the Twin Cities and across Minnesota, including policy advocacy and related research and communications.

Organization: Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center
Grant amount: $75,000
Program/project summary: A contribution to a discretionary fund to benefit Hiawatha encampment response and Native-led nonprofits who are providing culturally-specific response and longer-term planning.

Organization: Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness
Grant amount: $100,000
Program/project summary: To support a data analyst position for the System Wide Analytics & Projections (SWAP) tool.  SWAP is a tool developed in partnership with the National Alliance to End Homelessness that helps communities plan and prioritize changes that will most effectively lead to reductions in homelessness.  An evidence-based best practice, SWAP is designed to help states use local data to understand the performance of their current system, and model what happens when system and program-level changes are made.

Organization: Perspectives, Inc.
Grant amount: $100,000
Program/project summary: Contribution to the Seed the Change campaign to expand and renovate a Family Center that serves at-risk women and their children experiencing homelessness.

Organization: Project for Pride in Living
Grant amount: $650,000
Program/project summary: Contribution to the Building Ladders campaign, which helps preserve and develop 800 units of affordable housing over five years, to establish a new and expanded Employment and Training Center, and support program innovation and adapt technology infrastructure.

Organization: Project SUCCESS
Grant amount: $3,600
Program/project summary: Direct rental assistance.

Organization: Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation
Grant amount: $50,000
Program/project summary: To increase homelessness outreach and shelter opportunities in response to a growing unsheltered population in Saint Paul.  Funds support outreach workers, cold weather shelter, overflow shelter staffing, and housing referrals and support services.

Organization: St. Stephen’s Human Services
Grant amount: $5,000
Program/project summary: Stipends for people with lived experience of homelessness assisting in the redesign of the homelessness response system in Hennepin County.

Organization: The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library
Grant amount: $10,000
Program/project summary: To support the Read Brave program, a multi-generational book project focused on the importance of housing stability.  The program includes book distribution, housing-related community service projects, lectures, community discussions and development of digital resources.

Organization: University of Minnesota Design Center
Grant amount: $50,000
Program/project summary: Support for Community First, a pilot project to increase low-income housing in the Twin Cities at a new price point using underutilized land currently not considered for housing.

Organization: Urban Homeworks
Grant amount: $150,000
Program/project summary:  1. Direct support to residents of properties managed by Urban Homeworks after a predatory landlord lost his rental license.  2. Capacity building through support for a new property management position.