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…

CURA’s Artist Neighborhood Partnership Initiative (ANPI) provides small grants to artists of color and Native artists working in neighborhoods in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs. ANPI grants recognize the valuable role that artists and the arts play in the work of fostering neighborhood wellbeing, and are intended to support the leadership of artists in these efforts. This grant program is particularly focused on directly funding individual artists or groups of artists working to build a more equitable Twin Cities.

We are now accepting proposals for one-year support of artist driven projects.…

The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) is pleased to announce the competition for the 2021–2022 Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs, and invites interested faculty from across the University of Minnesota to apply for this award.

The Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs provides one year of support for the research activities of a University of Minnesota faculty member on a project related to urban and regional affairs in Minnesota. Previous holders of the chair have used this support to complete projects on population changes in Minnesota, employee turnover and retention rates at Minnesota companies, and the impact of…

The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) invites proposals for our Faculty Interactive Research Program (FIRP). University of Minnesota faculty are critical resources in exploring issues and concerns important to Minnesota, such as the criminal justice system, demography, state or local economic development, education, employment, energy, the environment, health, housing, state and local government, welfare and poverty, human and social services, transportation, or land use and development.

The FIRP encourages University faculty to carry out…

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…

CURA senior research associate Dr. Brittany Lewis and graduate research assistant Molly Calhoun’s North Minneapolis evictions research was recently published in “Collaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice.” 

Abstract: Single Black mothers face the highest risk of eviction in the United States. In North Minneapolis, a community manufactured to contain undesirable populations through housing discrimination, decades of urban disinvestment, and unfair lending practices, the situation has become further exacerbated by the rise in distressed-property investment and disproportionate…

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…

Minnesota’s English Learner student population has consistently grown in recent years and is growing at a faster rate than the total student population. A complex web of funding streams intends to support English Learners; however, concerns have been raised over whether designated funding is reaching English Learners and whether it is providing adequate support. This report aims to address those concerns through the following study aims: 1.) Provide a clear understanding of English Learner funding streams and how the funding is spent, 2.) Get a sense of whether the current funding is meeting students’ needs, and 3.) Offer suggestions of how English Learner funding could be improved.…