Giving Back to Heroes

MACV, Lennar and Housing First Minnesota Foundation are building four new transitional homes in North Minneapolis Housing is a basic necessity and essential to a person’s well-being, especially for those that have endured trauma. The Foundation has partnered with Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans (MACV) and Lennar to build transitional housing for veterans who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

This partnership has resulted in building seven veteran-based transitional homes in North Minneapolis within the past five years and home number eight is almost complete with three more new construction homes in the works to be finished in 2023.

Each home will feature four bedrooms, plus an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) with an additional bedroom, bathroom, and small living area. When completed, the home and ADU will be handed over to MACV. MACV will own and operate the home, providing wraparound services that help bring veterans back into a stable environment.

“This one project could serve up to 640 veterans over 50 years,” said Jessica Ryan, Housing First Minnesota Foundation Executive Director. “These Housing for Heroes homes will change the lives of veterans and will be a place of peace and healing.”

According to the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors’ annual report, Minneapolis home prices are not keeping up with the rest of the metro. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the popularity of the urban core subside as buyers opted for more square-footage, work from home space to accommodate the hybrid-work model that’s clearly here to stay, and less of a need for proximity to a downtown. It turns out that trend is continuing as we saw the median sale prices in the central part of Minneapolis fall by 4.5% in 2022. Minneapolis is not undesirable though, with median sale prices still up 21% over the past five years and 1.6% in 2022. But they are failing to keep pace with the larger metro area, where the median sales prices increased by 7.4% in 2022.

Huber Engineered Woods, a North-Carolina based, has pulled the plug on the massive $440 million mill project just days after a state court ordered the city of Cohasset to reconsider its environmental review of the project. When plans to build the mill in Cohasset were announced in 2021, it was celebrated by legislators on both sides of the isle, including Governor Walz. The project would provide over 100 job opportunities in northeastern Minnesota and provide a bump to Minnesota’s dwindling forest products industry. The 750,000 square foot facility was scheduled to break ground in the spring of 2022 but has run into roadblock after roadblock, even after receiving over $50 million in incentives from the state Legislature and two state agencies, Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation and Employment and Economic Development. “Due to delays that jeopardize our ability to meet product demand deadlines, we will pursue development of our sixth mill in another state,” said Huber Engineered Woods President Brian Carlson in a statement. A cautionary tale as Minnesota makes it more and more difficult to move new projects like this forward due to an excess of regulatory burdens and backstops. “Whether it be local, state, or federal compliance, it is too hard to permit a project,” Congressman Pete Stauber told MPR.