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.

…

In the coming decades, Minnesota is poised to lose nearly 10,000 units of rental housing in the United States Department of Agriculture's Section 515 Program. This housing currently exists in nearly every county in Greater Minnesota, and comprises a substantial proportion of rental housing for very low-income households. In partnership with Minnesota Housing Partnership (MHP), a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul that supports the work of affordable housing and community development organizations, I propose a mixed-method research project focused on the Section 515 Program in Minnesota. Through analysis of secondary data maintained by USDA and primary data collected from interviews…

This project aims to better serve students in Minneapolis Public Schools who speak a minority language, which is currently 32% of district students. As is true of monolingual English-speaking students, a subset of these bilingual students experience significant language impairment. This negatively impacts their social and academic success. Because most standardized assessments used to identify students with language impairment are English-based, alternative approaches are needed to assess the language skills of students whose home language is not English. Thus, the current study will develop a new assessment approach that uses a test-teach-retest dynamic assessment format to assess…

Researcher: Lindsey Weiler (Family Social Science, College of Education and Human Development)

Representing one of the highest rates in the country, one in every 42 children in Minnesota is identified with autism spectrum disorder. Without intervention, adolescents risk a sharp decline in social support, stalled neurological progress, and a marked increase in depression and anxiety. Often shut off from educational and social supports that were available in childhood, adolescents experience significant roadblocks as they strive for independence. Similarly, young adults with autism can feel isolated and undervalued as members of our community. This project seeks to…

CURA’s Community GIS team created this map of Census 2020 return rates in Minneapolis and is updating it regularly through the 2020 collection period. Here is a St. Paul Census 2020 return rate map.

Click on an area to see the percentage of households who have responded to the census so far. Each area is a census tract. Click on the right arrow at top of the pop-up window to see how the current return rate…

Kaysone and Sunny live in and/or have roots in Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center and North Minneapolis, where some of Minnesota's largest populations of South East Asians (SEA) live. The team will focus on engaging community members to explore the feeling of being stuck between two worlds - neither here nor there - and highlight the narratives of the diaspora voice and whether a sense of belonging can be found in their neighborhoods.

The artist team will engage communities in telling their stories through outreach of interviews, conversations, and gatherings. The project will conclude with a street theatre performance with the artist team and community members in…

The West Side of Saint Paul is a community that was able to create itself in its place, integrating and feeding the social, economical and cultural dynamics with new practices. And within that evolution the people have not lost their identity matrix. This identity is also a multicolored mosaic of identities of diverse regions of Central and South America that add and juxtapose each other to create the new reality of Saint Paul. In the face of anti-immigration policies of the present administration that attack basic humanitarian principles and break the community, the immigrant and the native communities of Saint Paul make efforts to transform their reality into a more positive…

The Frogtown and Rondo communities have two of the most well established identities in the City of Saint Paul. In the words of the artists, "We are known for being a largely working class, scrappy, artistic, incredibly diverse bunch of humans who have roots all over the planet. We brought the history, stories, tastes and smells to the heart of St. Paul to be shared, explored, and celebrated."

The story of these neighboring communities – two communities divided first by freeway, then by arbitrary district designation, and finally by train, is a story that must be told and preserved. Mychal and Tou Saiko will be creating a colorful, music - poetry - and dance-centered,…

Coalition of Asian American Leaders (or CAAL) has proactively led a campaign urging our government and private institutions to collect and use disaggregated data that more accurately reflects Asian American experiences. This way, solutions crafted to achieve equitable social, economic, and health outcomes will be more responsive and relevant.

This winter, CAAL staff, designer Khou Vue, and CURA worked together to create a visual snapshot of The Factors Impacting the Economic Wellbeing of Asian Minnesotans. The infographics in this brochure-poster are selected from a CURA…

Building on the 2019 edition of this tool, Parks and Power, artist Cori Lin (www.corilin.co and @cori.lin.art)and CURA have made a 2020 Minneapolis Park Board Budget and Funding Explainer: a graphic guide to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's budget.

Cori also created The People's Money: a million dollar bill that Parks and Power organizers can use in workshops around participatory budgeting and the MPRB budget.

View and download: