Rashad Williams, a CURA Research Assistant and Public Affairs PhD Candidate at the Humphrey School, was recently selected by the City of Burlington, VT to co-lead a study on the extensive history of anti-Black racism within the state of Vermont and to develop racial reparations proposals for Burlington. Rashad has previously written on what he has termed “reparative planning”–a normative planning theory that centers the demands of corrective (or reparative)…

Too many people in the Twin Cities region do not have access to safe, healthy, affordable, and reliable housing. In particular, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities, people with disabilities, and low-wealth communities face barriers to this critical resources. Market conditions have shown that the housing market does not work for most low-income people, so solutions may require questioning long held assumptions, creating innovative solutions, and attempting new ideas to address housing stability.

To address these challenges and identify solutions, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and the …

We are excited to announce Scott Vargo as the new Hennepin-University Partnership Director. Scott is taking over for the recently retired HUP Director Kathie Doty, HUP’s founding director who led the partnership for over 15 years and grew it into a nationally recognized model for cross-sector collaboration. With new leadership HUP will continue to coordinate partnerships that reinforce the mission and goals of both the University of Minnesota and Hennepin County. 

Scott most recently worked at Hennepin County’s Center of Innovation and Excellence. He is committed to supporting…

Program Time Frame: January 2021 - January 2022

Desired Start Date: Late December 2020 to early January 2021

Compensation: Negotiable

Proposal due date: December 18, 2020 on or before 10:00 a.m. Closing date for all questions: December 04, 2020 before 10:00 a.m.

Pre-proposal conference: if Applicable

For more information, questions, or concerns, please contact Laurel Lilligren (llilligren@peopleservingpeople.org; 612-252-4027).

RFP Background

People Serving People,…

The Hennepin-University Partnership, a strategic alignment between Hennepin County and the University of Minnesota, has coordinated several recent projects and events bringing these two institutions together around pressing contemporary issues:

• Between May and September, the HUP hosted 8 webinars in our Summer Webinar Series featuring 15 presenters from the University (faculty, staff researchers, and graduate students) reaching more than 325 Hennepin County staff. Attendees shared positive feedback about the range of timely topics including a presentation from CURA Director Ed Goetz and PhD student Rashad Williams…

The Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing program wishes to congratulate recent graduates of our Fall 2020 Neighborhoods Now! cohort. Neighborhoods Now! is an innovative community educational series to strengthen the work of individuals and organizations working in neighborhoods so they can organize to win issues for people and places, build power to change systems for racial equity and economic justice, build organizations whose leadership is reflective of the community, and build…

A team of researchers from CURA will produce a study of the potential impacts of a rent stabilization policy for the City of Minneapolis. The study will examine market trends and existing conditions in the city's rental housing stock, population and income trends over the past 20 years, and the city's rent affordability gap. The CURA team will also produce an analysis of the potential economic impact of different types of rent stabilization policies.  CURA will provide a summary of the experience of other cities who have enacted rent stabilization. The research team is led by Edward G. Goetz, and includes Tony Damiano, Jeff Matson, Peter Brown, and Patrick Alcorn. The report will be…

The City of Minneapolis is moving to initiate a “community preference” policy, to give residents residing within certain neighborhoods preference to receive assistance for specific city affordable housing programs or projects. Such preference policies have been adopted by other cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Seattle in order to mitigate the displacement of residents from neighborhoods experiencing rapid increases in housing costs. 

CURA researchers Edward G. Goetz and Aaron Sepulveda modeled several different kinds of preference policies for the City of Minneapolis to estimate the impacts of different policy choices available to the city. The…

The Kris Nelson Community Based Research Program at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) builds the power and capacity of community-based organizations to create social change through partnerships with the University of Minnesota. The research needs of organizations are matched with students to carry out community-defined and guided projects.

The deadline for Spring 2021 projects proposals is November 20, 2020. The projects will run…

updated December 15, 2020

A team of University of Minnesota graduate students and Resilient Communities Project (RCP) Fellows was a finalist for this year’s MetroLab Student Cup. The Student Cup is intended to recognize exceptional student civic research projects, and create pathways for careers and partnerships in the civic research and innovation domain. The competition was sponsored by the MetroLab Network, an international collaborative of cities, counties, and universities focused on…

Hennepin County and the University of Minnesota are partnering to reach the ambitious goal of having every University student count in the 2020 Census.

The Hennepin-University Partnership at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs connected Hennepin County's Census team with Kendre Turonie, Program Director of UMN Off-Campus Living. Hennepin County is providing funding for a student worker to help implement innovative tactics to ensure a complete count of the off-campus student community who, unlike their peers living in the dorms, are not automatically counted by the University.

“On one call in particular, the person was not a citizen, and so…

People Serving People, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), Research in Action, and Hennepin County, are pursuing a pilot program to grow family stability by demonstrating sustainable alternatives to self-pay for families experiencing homelessness. We are further pursuing the goal to build family financial power and make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring.

Families directly impacted by homelessness and self-pay know what is best for themselves, and we must center their experience, voices, and choices. As people impacted by system decisions, they should inform and influence them.

…

We are again sharing a statement from CURA Director Ed Goetz on the murder of George Floyd at the top of this message. The fundamental issues of justice that Mr. Floyd’s murder surfaces for our community and for the entire nation dominate our conversations about what is next for CURA. 

Following that statement, we share a message about CURA’s work in a COVID-19 world.

Statement from the Director of CURA

Our community witnesses again the violence of police brutality ending in the death of a Black man. It is well past the time for people in power, those who can impose…

CURA Senior Research Associate Dr. Brittany Lewis is a 2020 Bush Fellow. She is one of 24 Fellows and will be given up to $100,000 over 12 to 24 months to pursue formal and informal learning experiences. Dr. Lewis will use her Fellowship to help elected leaders, government officials and community members better understand how to use data as a tool for positive change. Specifically, she will seek coaching skills and study new ways to use data visualization to demystify complex ideas. Also, Dr. Lewis was recently honored with the “History Makers at Home Award” by the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department and named one of the “Top 100+ Leading Black Women” by the Minnesota Black…

Our community witnesses again the violence of police brutality ending in the death of a Black man. It is well past the time for people in power, those who can impose change on a police department with a history of such violence, to take real action. It is time for all levels of the criminal justice system to bring justice to those responsible for the death of George Floyd. White supremacy is not just the actions of ‘one bad cop’. It is also the culture that produces and tolerates the actions of that officer. It is the history of implicit and explicit permission that gives the officer confidence to act as he did in broad daylight, on a busy, populated street, knowing he is being filmed.…