Community Conversation: Affordable Housing

Community Conversation

December 12, 2013

Honey Burg, Assistant Vice President and Branch Manager at U.S. Bank in Mankato was able to allocate considerable time and resources to invite the community to come together to explore the possibilities and identify the opportunities to impact affordable housing in our region. #

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Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, the City of Mankato, and the USDA Rural Development staff joined in the conversation. What happened next is laid out for you in this document; a “harvest” that summarizes what happens when we work together better…

Community Conversation!

Exploring possibilities and creating innovating opportunities for affordable housing in the Mankato area On Thursday, December 12th over 20 professionals from economic development, housing development, nonprofit, state and federal agencies came together. We explored what possibilities exist for our region to create innovative opportunities to meet the current housing challenges we are facing. When we face complex challenges like this, it provides us the perfect opportunity to come together to identify local opportunities and solutions. !

• Mankato is the fastest growing MSA in the nation, we’ve experienced 10% growth in 20 years!

• We currently have .07% vacancy rate, meaning that this is the total amount of rental units that are currently unoccupied or not rented out at this time !

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• 38% of households pay 30% or more of their income on housing in Blue Earth County

Hosted and Harvested

by Sowelu Institute

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Community Conversation !

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“Change begins from deep inside a system, when a few people notice something they will no longer tolerate, or respond to a dream of what’s possible.”

-Margaret Wheatley

December 12, 2013

What is it you bring?

What do you hope to achieve?

I’ve brought my cape

my superhero powers

living and working here

its because I care

its a safe place for youth

to call home

to light the path back - a bridge

a symbol of hope

a happy home

no matter who you are

what can we do

in these challenging times

when every heart needs a home

its what we build

its real simple

when we work as community

together

to support growth

of what works well

connecting and

understanding whats available

putting the pieces together

consensus and direction

moving forward in

collective action

working outside the walls

balancing justice and strength

no matter where I’m at

I’m connected deeply

creating doorways

I’m seeing changes

I’m looking for understanding

of what I can do and

what we can do when we

all come together…

in community

we turn to one another

we discover how to work

better together

I bring my plans to the table

its when great minds

come together

we can see much better

I bring ideas and resources to the table

to help bridge the gap

bringing the pieces together

aha!

let’s make an impact here

I’ll support you

let’s see what else is here

what an WE do?

Give people a chance

to experience a normal life

in creating

not only more housing but

more homes

We gathered in circle and began with a check-in, stating our intentions, who we are, what we do and what we hope to contribute and take from our time together… !

We started to build a social network.

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Community Conversation

December 12, 2013

World Cafe!

We gathered at tables in groups of 4 to explore questions that matter. We did three rounds exploring one question per round, below were the questions we explored and a summary of what happened in the conversations.

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What is working well in the affordable housing market in our region?!

• What we have is working, people who want to help are passionate and serving the needs and when people are connected to support they succeed • Community networking - conversations are happening, action is moving towards better understanding, smarter planning and implementation - we are acknowledging the need for affordable housing • Bringing us together helps us build our understanding as a network, this benefits the community

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What are the barriers to the affordable housing market working better than it does now? !

• There is a lack of resources for affordable housing and a lack of income for those seeking

affordable housing - wages do not support the housing costs • We need more specialized housing options (mental health, disability, single, etc.) and more creative housing options - when people want to buy there is bad credit or background checks that prohibit their access to resources, criteria and regulations are too tight • There is a lack of awareness and understanding of the service providers as a whole - still a lot of silo-ing of services, lack of shared information, and shared communication. There is no central intake or database or coalition to collectively work on these efforts

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What are the possibilities and opportunities that we can explore together today to create the affordable housing that is needed in our region?!

• Leverage GMG’s relationships with employers to increase private sector capital for investing

in more creative and affordable housing options (mixed-use, multi-family, workforce housing) • We need more units of all types, and need to get better clarity of what is needed for affordable housing options (large family, single person, multi-family, using tax-credits, workforce employer supported housing) • We need better shared communication, information, data, to help support the network of service providers and professionals so that we can bridge and integrate our efforts to better support the community

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Community Conversation

December 12, 2013

“FOR NOW I HAVE DECIDED TO GET STARTED. WHILE I DO NOT COME WITH SOLUTIONS OR THE WAY FORWARD FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY, I DO COME WITH THE BELIEF THAT TOGETHER WE CAN FIGURE IT OUT. THE ANSWERS THAT PEOPLE NEED ARE IN THEIR MIDST, AND IF WE COME TOGETHER WE CAN DISCOVER THEM.” ~MARIANNE KNUTH, KUFUNDA LEARNING VILLAGE

OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY We opened up the marketplace, calling questions we wanted to explore with others and trusting the process. We honored the 4 principles of Open Space, the Law of 2 feet, and recognized the roles of the butterflies and bumblebees. The process worked and we got to work exploring the questions that mattered most. !

• What steps should a builder take?!

• What type of planning is needed for regional solutions?!

• How important is one central, neutral intake?!

• What is the Chain Gang?!

• How do we determine the specific demographics of households needing affordable housing?!

• Who’s going to take the lead?!

• We know the need, let’s build some buildings!

• How invested is the community?!!

• Community Health Workers!

On the next page, you’ll see summaries of the conversations that were explored. You’ll notice themes from the World Cafe that spilled into the conversations we continued to explore together throughout our afternoon of Open Space.

Many of these conversations helped surface new ideas, strategies and partnership to move forward with. We discovered opportunities to work together better as a community. This is a new way of doing community and regional planning.

Hosted and Harvested

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Community Conversation

December 12, 2013

How important is one central intake process?!

• By having one place for people to go, it helps capture the need and increase opportunities for support from the state level!

• It isn’t a perfect system, people are interested in helping with this and we have to keep in mind all the needs of doing this!

• Changes with HUD are increasing the need for a central intake, which in turn requires us to work together better

What is the Chain Gang?!

• Was something the service providers and private industry leaders did in the past!

• It works like a community response team, sharing information and communications as a network !

• It doesn’t require a new 501c3, it is an opportunity to connect folks on a monthly basis and think about what we can do to create community impact

How can we determine demographics of households needing affordable housing?!

Who is taking the lead?!

• When this group met, they were not aware of the Housing Study that the City had put together capturing this kind of data!

• It was a great learning opportunity that highlighted the need to improve communications and share information among the city and the service providers so that no one has to reinvent the wheel

• The importance of sharing common goals and concerns as a system!

• The need for a lead organization to help bring together diverse service providers, funders, developers, and employers to figure out priorities and narrow focus to what has the best chances to work well in the community

Let’s build some buildings!

• The group identified the opportunity for employer assisted housing developments!

• Learned from each other on how units get built !

• Recognized the need to get employers educated and invested in affordable housing

How invested is the community?!!

• The group explored how invested local businesses are and there is a need to reach out!

• Identified the need to remove hurdles like rental licenses and get unoccupied homes rented out!

• Rental assistance and shelters are needed

Community Health Workers!

• This group came up with new ideas, how CHW could be a central model, a hub!

• Needs for agency to be neutral!

• Explored the social enterprise model for what this could look like Hosted and Harvested

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Community Conversation

December 12, 2013

List of Participants Name, Organization 1 Rachel Johnston, The Reach (LSS) 2 Beth Moshier, The Reach (LSS) 3 Chuck Phillips, USDA Rural Development 4 Julie Hawker, Lloyd Mgmt and Tapestry Project 5 Anne Ganey, South Central College 6 Faith Solano, Homecrafters, Inc. 7 Patti Ziegler, City of Mankato EDA 8 Sarah Kruse, Open Door Health Center 9 Lisa Wojcik, Open Door Health Center 10 Andrew Pietsch, BEC Human Services 11 Carrol Meyers-Dobler, Partners for Afford. Housing 12 Margaret Kaplan, MN Housing Finance Agency 13 Rick Goodman, SW MN Housing Partnership 14 Honey Burg, U.S. Bank 15 Sandra Newbauer, Ombudsman - State of MN 16 Julie Scmillen, Habitat for Humanity 17 Kelly Simmons, Visiting Angels 18 Nicole Griensewic, Region 9 19 Keith Luebke, MSU 20 Kris Wuller, Manpower 21 Mohamad Alsadig, Entrepreneur Doorway Proj.

22 George Komaridis, Psychologist Your hosts for the gathering: Katie Boone, Sowelu Institute Dave Ellis, Dave Ellis Consulting

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