Over the past several months, CURA has completed research projects lead by CURA Director Dr. Edward Goetz and Senior Research Associate Dr. Brittany Lewis. Each project is related to affordable housing. An excerpt from “Seeking Closure: The Lowry Grove Report” by Dr. Goetz starts the roundup, followed by three projects lead by Dr. Lewis, “The Brooklyn Center Housing Report,” “Searching for Stability,” and finally “The Brooklyn Park Housing Project.”

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Seeking Closure…

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. We match the research and technical needs of organizations with student research assistants to carry out community-defined and community-guided projects. CURA works with organizations selected for the program to create shared…

Below is a roundup of project descriptions and partner organizations for the Fall 2022 semester Kris Nelson Community-Based Research Program projects. The projects will run from early September to mid-January. If you want to be informed about upcoming deadlines for the Kris Nelson Program, make sure to subscribe to CURA’s newsletter.

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. We match the research and technical needs of organizations with student research assistants to carry out community-defined and -guided projects. CURA works with organizations selected for the program to create shared understanding…

A Building Capacity with Black Women Action Research Project

Author: Principal Investigator, Dr. Brittany Lewis, Senior Research Associate

Contributing Authors: Dr. Shana Riddick, Arundhathi Sasikumar, Sophia Margaret Manolis, Carolyn Szczepanski

Introduction

Black women in Minneapolis have experienced economic crisis and housing shortages for far too long with little reprieve. Expected to be tirelessly ‘resilient,’ these women have to navigate not only their own daily experiences with racism but also have to navigate the complex systems established by the…

CURA is pleased to announce the recipients of this year′s Faculty Interactive Research Program grants: 

• Amanda L. Sullivan (Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education and Human Development) Using Multisystem Data to Understand the Intersections of Housing Insecurity and Disability among Minnesota Children and Youth
• Di Zhu (Geography, Environment and Society, College of Liberal Arts) Sensing Geospatial Communities in…

Researcher: Amanda L. Sullivan (Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education and Human Development)

Efficiently, effectively identifying and supporting multiply minoritized P12 students with educational difficulties is increasingly challenging for educational systems nationally, and in Minnesota in particular, given complex issues related to our racial and economic disparities. This project will explore the intersections of two especially vulnerable populations: students who experience housing insecurity and students with disabilities. Research underscores a number of challenges related to the identification of both groups, and these difficulties…

Researcher: Di Zhu (Geography, Environment and Society, College of Liberal Arts)

The geography of a community is not constrained by administrative boundaries. It is in essence, comprised of residents who routinely move around and interact with others, often beyond their local spatial context. One of the most challenging problems in community planning is understanding how fine-grained local regions are irregularly and dynamically organized by human movements. In partnership with MN Compass, Move Minnesota, and local planning agencies, this project will propose an integrated data-driven analytical framework to sense dynamic community structures within the Twin…

CURA’s Public Policy Design Lab worked with Restaurant Opportunities Center of Minnesota (ROC-MN) and Minneapolis-based artist Gina Pena to create a visualization of The Rice Activity: Contextualizing the Working Class. This activity was developed through an earlier research project conducted by a UMN Graduate Research Assistant (supported by CURA’s Kris Nelson Community-Based Research Program ) working with ROC-MN.

This visualization is based on a hands-on version of the…

The Hennepin-University Partnership (HUP) graduate assistants will work with the Program Director on a variety of tasks related to the mission of HUP. HUP represents an innovative model of collaboration between local government and academia. The goal of HUP is to produce shared value for both the University of Minnesota and Hennepin County around areas of mutual interest. This is achieved through the promotion of joint community-based research, the sharing of academic and practitioner expertise, and providing students with real-world experience. HUP does not actively conduct research, but we catalyze, support, evaluate, and communicate collaborative…

Last Friday, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter announced the formation of a 41-Member Rent Stabilization Stakeholder Group. The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) has been selected to convene this group with CURA Director Edward Goetz and CURA Director of Community Based Research C Terrence Anderson acting as lead facilitators. The group will meet February through May to consider improvements and enhancements to rent stabilization in St. Paul. A final report will be completed by this summer. The rent stabilization ballot measure was approved by voters 53% to 47% in the election last November.

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Contributing Authors: Dr. Shana Riddick, Arundhathi Pattathil, Keelia Silvis, Peter Schuetz, Yue Zhang, Justin Baker

Project Funders: Brooklyn Park Economic Development Authority, City of Brooklyn Park; Hennepin County; and State of Minnesota, Minnesota Housing Finance Agency.

In July of 2016, the Minneapolis Innovation Team, in partnership with HOME Line, published a report on Evictions in Minneapolis, which was inspired by Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted. The Innovation Team’s report found that 50% of tenants in the 55411 & 55412 zip codes were evicted…

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…