When: August 12 · 4:30pm – August 13 · 3:15pm CDT
Where: Prairie’s Edge Casino Resort
Who: Participant organizations for Housing Institute 10 for Southwest Minnesota, 2025-2026
What: Established in 2010, the Housing Institute brings together housing leaders and stakeholders to share their experiences, learn best practices, and develop creative solutions for bringing quality affordable housing to their communities.
Learn more about the Housing Institute here.
Enterprise Community Partners is hosting two days of conversation August 6-7 about Affordable housing development and preservation in Knoxville, Tennessee. This in-person convening is an extension of the Rural Rental Preservation Academy and will focus on policies, funding, and innovative strategies to address rural affordability at the federal, state, and local level. MHP Community Development staff Leah Hall and Jen Oscarson will be presenting on Day One.
Day One’s presentations will be on successful approaches to preserving affordable housing in rural communities across the country, with a particular focus on the preservation of the USDA 515 portfolio. There will be a focus on layering new financing into preservation projects and national policy efforts to support the preservation of the USDA housing portfolio. Day Two will focus on policy, research and programs in the Appalachian region that support affordable housing development and preservation in rural communities. Register by Aug 4, 2025
Congress is drafting the FY26 federal budget, which includes funding for vital housing programs that prevent homelessness and keep families safe at home. Many essential programs are facing cuts, including public housing and rental assistance. The U.S. House has already advanced a bill that makes deep and dangerous cuts to housing programs. Full overview of the federal budget proposals can be found here.
This toolkit was created to make it easier for advocates across the state to speak up for strong federal investments in housing. Inside, you’ll find everything you need to take action—including key talking points, contact information for your members of Congress, sample social media posts, and more. By using a shared message and speaking out together, we can show lawmakers that funding housing is a priority in every community.
Friday, July 18th | 10:00 – 11:00 am
Please join us for a special presentation with Juventino Meza, the New Americans Immigration Hub Attorney with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Juventino will provide an overview presentation with some time for questions.
You are invited to submit questions for our presenter along with your registration – this will help guide the content of the presentation.
Minnesotans want to live near their work, send their kids to neighborhood schools, and feel safe at home. More than 100,000 Minnesota households—seniors, families, people with disabilities—rely on federal rental assistance to afford a place to live. Many more Minnesotans qualify for rental assistance but don’t receive it, due to insufficient funding. Now, proposed federal cuts threaten to take away Minnesotans’ ability to stay in their homes, putting lives and local economies at risk.
Congress is drafting their fiscal year (FY) 2026 spending bills, including those that fund vital housing programs that prevent homelessness and keep families safe at home. While the draft spending bill released on July 13 by the House rejects the extreme dismantling of HUD programs proposed by President Trump in his FY26 budget request, many vital programs are facing cuts. For details, see NLIHC’s complete analysis and updated budget chart.
The draft House bill would cut public housing and rental assistance by millions of dollars, leaving thousands of people without safe access to home. Even a 1% reduction to rental assistance would displace about a thousand Minnesota families—pushing more people into homelessness, straining shelters, schools, rural hospitals, and county safety nets, and drive up costs for our communities.
MHP joins Minnesotans in grief and anguish over the political assassination of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the attempted assassination of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. We wish Senator Hoffman and his wife a full and continued recovery.
Serving as House Minority Leader from 2017 to 2019 and Speaker of the House from 2019 until 2025, Representative Hortman was a visionary and results-driven lawmaker who cared deeply about delivering for the people of Minnesota. She was also known for prioritizing personal relationships across the aisle and within community. Her leadership included securing the greatest investment in affordable homes in the history of Minnesota, during the 2023 Session.
There is no room for threats or violence as we envision, design, and create policy to address the challenges our state faces. The best policies emerge when we approach diverse perspectives with curiosity and respect. MHP is committed to working across geographies and political differences to ensure that everyone has a home that is safe, decent, and affordable. We will continue to work in partnership with bipartisan leaders and coalitions of advocates, to respectfully and rigorously debate and develop policies that advance this goal.
As we grieve, we will honor Speaker Emerita Hortman by carrying forward her determination, humanity, clarity, and focus on results into our own efforts—letting her legacy inspire us to make a meaningful difference in improving Minnesotans’ lives.
Anne Mavity, Executive Director
MHP
Join fellow housing advocates, MHP, and co-hosts from 3:30-5:30 pm on June 12th at Lake Monster Brewing as we recognize, celebrate, and toast the hard work done by housing champions and lawmakers during the 2025 Legislative Session.
Co-hosts include the MN ERASE Campaign, Family Housing Fund, Habitat for Humantity Minnesota, Greater Minnesota Housing Fund (GMHF), Minnesota Consortium of Community Developers (MCCD), Minnesota Housing Stability Coalition, Our Future Starts at Home, Twin Cities Habitat for Humantity, and Yes To Homes MN.
The President’s “skinny budget”: has been released and, as anticipated, makes deep cuts to non-defense discretionary spending by $163 billion, representing a cut of 22.6% from FY25 budget levels. The President’s budget makes devastating cuts to HUD and housing programs in other agencies. A list of spending cuts and other spending proposals, including to HUD, are here. The President’s full budget proposal will be released in the coming weeks.
President Trump’s budget proposal includes a 44 percent reduction to HUD’s housing programs. The proposal calls for eliminating vital programs, such as the HOME Investment Partnership program (HOME), Community Development Block Grant program (CDBG), Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Fair Housing programs, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (NeighborWorks America) and the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). It also includes significant cuts for homelessness prevention, Native American programs, resilience and utility efficiency, and rural development programs, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund).
Rental Assistance
The President’s budget proposal would slash rental assistance by more than 40%, or $26.72 billion, and combine all remaining funds and block grant them into one program, State Rental Assistance Block Grants. It would be up to states to continue to provide housing assistance to the millions of people who rely on it. The programs eliminated and replace with the block grant would include Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs), Public Housing, Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA), Section 202 Housing for the Elderly, and Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities. In addition, the President’s budget would impose a two-year time limit on receiving rental assistance for “able-bodied adults.”
Supportive Housing
The President’s proposal would eliminate the Continuum of Care Program and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) and move them into the Emergency Solutions Grant Program, with a cut of $532 million. The ESG program cannot be used for long term housing, but rather only funds short-term shelters and housing limited to two years. See NYTimes coverage – impacts to supportive housing
USDA Rural Housing Programs
President’s preliminary budget would eliminate U.S. Department of Agriculture single-family housing direct loans (section 502), self-help housing grants, and rural housing vouchers, arguing these programs “are duplicative, too small to have macro-economic impact, costly to deliver, in limited demand, available through the private sector, or conceived as temporary.“
House Reconciliation Bill and Tax Provisions
The House of Representatives is expected to review all or portions of the reconciliation bill during the week of May 12. Republican goals for a reconciliation bill, which can avoid the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, including extending tax cuts, expanding border security and defense, and cutting federal spending. The Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Agriculture Committees are responsible for determining key provisions of the bill, including tax cuts and extensions, cuts to Medicaid and healthcare assistance, and cuts to food assistance.
While housing assistance has not been identified as a potential target for cuts, cuts to anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), both named as targets for potentially large cuts, would negatively impact economic stability and housing stability for families and people with low incomes.
House Tax Bill Expands Tax Credit
The House Ways and Means Committee, on May 12, released legislative text for the House tax reconciliation bill, which includes an expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit), and expanding the Opportunity Zone tax credit. The bill would:
Take Action:
The House Ways and Means Committee, on May 12, released legislative text for the House tax reconciliation bill, which includes an expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit), and expanding the Opportunity Zone tax credit. The bill would:
Right now, leaders in the House and Senate and Governor Walz are negotiating joint budget targets. It’s not too late to influence Minnesota’s FY26-27 budget. The stakes are high, and state housing investments are more important than ever. President Trump just released his “Skinny Budget” last week. The proposed cuts to HUD would have devastating impact on Minnesota families. We need state leaders to prioritize housing. The Minnesota House’s initial budget proposal invests $75M in one-time appropriations and $100M in Housing Infrastructure Bonds. We need leaders to support the House’s position.
Governor Walz’s Telephone Number: 651-201-3400
My name is [name] and I live [address]. Support $75M in appropriations to housing and $100M in Housing Infrastructure Bonds. Safe, stable, affordable homes are the foundation of a thriving state. Minnesota does poorly when Minnesotans don’t have homes that they can afford.
Thank you,
[name, org, contact]
