Scott Vargo is the Hennepin-University Partnership's new Director

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

UMN Community Fund Drive

For the 2018 University of Minnesota Community Fund Drive, the University collectively raised $1.35 million for local charities. CURA did several fundraisers over the course of the drive and raised just under $3,000 through those sales and individual donations by staff with 85% participation.

Neighborhoods Now!

The Neighborhoods Now! Fall 2018 session wrapped up in early December. Each participant attended four extensive day-long classes designed to…