The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability (the Alliance) recently announced a new grant to advance housing stability in the Twin Cities. The Housing Stability Grants will fund organizations that support systems/policy change, community engagement and organizing efforts with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities, people with disabilities, and low-wealth communities. Grants will enhance the capacity of community-based organizations to partner with…

In honor of the late Esther Wattenberg, the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) and the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) will host the 2019 Inaugural Esther Wattenberg Policy Forum. We invite you to join us for this special event honoring Esther's dedication to critical dialogue and policy reform for improving the lives of Minnesota's children and families.

As part of this special event, we will introduce the inaugural Esther Wattenberg Policy Award which recognizes exemplary policy work impacting children and families. The 2019 Esther Wattenberg Policy Award recipient…

Come learn from local leaders and national experts about Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA) at the next CURA Housing Forum. TOPA allows residents of a building a fair chance to purchase their buildings when the owner decides to sell, giving tenants a say in the future of their housing. 

We will hear of successful examples of implementing this policy in Washington, D.C., as well as local efforts to create a similar policy for Minneapolis.

Speakers

Dominic T. Moulden is a longtime resource organizer at Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE…

Single Black mothers face the highest risk of evictions in the United States. In Hennepin County, close to 50% of all eviction filings take place in two zip codes in North Minneapolis, despite the fact that they contain just 8% of all rental units in the city. Driven by community feedback, The Illusion of Choice: Evictions & Profit in North Minneapolis project aims to answer the question of why and how evictions are taking place from the perspectives of tenants and landlords themselves. CURA believes this is central to the successful development of public policy solutions and new programmatic interventions for those tenants negatively affected by evictions, as well as…

Please join the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) for the first Thomas Scott Seminar.

The Urban Displacement Project: Urban Data Science for Policy Change 
presented by Karen Chapple, Ph.D.

About the seminar

The overheating of the housing market, as well as the planning of new infrastructure systems, has led to new interest in understanding neighborhood change, specifically in the form of gentrification and displacement. Researchers have devised online “neighborhood early warning systems,” interactive maps that describe change processes and even predict future transformation. In 2015, we launched the…

Keith Mayes, associate professor of African-American and African Studies, University of Minnesota

Spike Moss, civil rights activist

For three nights in July 1967, the North Side of Minneapolis along Plymouth Avenue erupted in rebellion. Police and National Guard units were called in to occupy parts of the neighborhood in response. The so-called "urban crisis" of the 1960s produced similar events in many other cities in the U.S. This crisis and the conditions behind it that…

Lower income households have always faced the threat of involuntary displacement, but that threat is becoming more acute in the Twin Cities Metro area as the perfect storm of low vacancy rates, escalating rents and upscaling of naturally occurring affordable apartments drives families from their homes. What can local governments do to protect people? The Housing Justice Center will talk about a report it just issued discussing six areas where local policies and strategies can help preserve the affordability of at-risk housing, can keep low income residents in their homes, or at least protect…

Tommie Shelby, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University

Ghettos are metropolitan neighborhoods marked by racial segregation and concentrated disadvantage. To reduce the unfair disadvantages that the ghetto poor face, some have proposed residential integration. I argue that while such measures, when voluntary, may help the ghetto poor, justice does not require residential integration but rather egalitarian pluralism. I highlight the limits of the integrationist solution and explain the virtues of the egalitarian pluralist alternative.

African American communities, enclosed and excluded by discrimination and disinvestment, are now being dismantled by gentrification in many of our cities. In the face of impending erasure, communities of color are organizing to demand not only mitigating anti-displacement policies, but de-gentrification and the right to stay in place.

Addressing this demand requires more than just a gesture towards equity concerns, but analyzing and correcting for the unjust distributional impacts of investments. How can we grapple with these issues of housing and neighborhood revitalization in our cities in ways that…

Edward G. Goetz, Director of CURA and Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Minnesota

How can we use housing policy to achieve greater racial and regional equity in American cities? Professor Ed Goetz discusses his new book, "The One-Way Street of Integration" and contrasts two housing policy approaches, integration initiatives and community development, and their prospects for achieving racial justice. He maintains that fair housing advocates have adopted a spatial strategy of advocacy that has increasingly brought fair housing concerns into conflict with community development efforts. Goetz argues that integration efforts focus on the spatial…