MHP Connect

Created: 07 March 2011

Minnesota’s Community Action Programs (CAPs) provide important housing-related services such as energy assistance and weatherization to low-income families, among many other services, but both state and federal funding cuts threaten the vital services that these agencies provide.

In 2010, Minnesota community action agencies served more than 616,000 people and nearly 222,000 poor or low-income families. Nearly 110,000 Minnesotans received housing related services through CAPs.

Read more: Federal and State Cuts Threaten Community Action Programs

Created: 04 March 2011

Housing advocates and organizations have been busy this month, releasing reports, launching new services, and creating resources.  Here’s a peek at what you can find from HousingLink, HOME Line, Minnesota Home Ownership Center, and Minnesota Housing.  (And don’t forget MHP’s next 2x4 Report, due for release soon.)

Read more: Minnesota Organizations Release Flurry of Useful Housing Resources

Created: 03 March 2011

Minnesota Housing’s February board meeting was Mary Tingerthal’s first meeting as Commissioner. She took time to discuss the state’s budget situation with a still depleted board, with Governor Dayton yet to fill two vacant positions. Other items of note: a lengthy follow up discussion on how transit preferences impact rural communities’ ability to compete for funding, and approval of a spending plan for the third round of foreclosure recovery funds.

Read more: February Minnesota Housing Board Meeting

Created: 02 March 2011

Photos: This snow fort wasn’t built by neighborhood kids, but by a man with nowhere else to turn. In the parking lot of a church in Minneapolis, in the middle of a fierce Minnesota January, a man burrowed out a hole in a snowbank to sleep in.  

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

What Can You Do? Please take one day to tell legislators that 13,000 homeless each night is enough. 

Read more: MN Coalition for the Homeless Day on the Hill - March 15!