The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota is looking for a skilled full-stack developer with a background in data science to create a web application that empowers communities, researchers, and advocates.

This tool will make it easier to understand rental property ownership, eviction patterns, and housing code violations in Minneapolis. By combining interactive maps and visualizations of ownership networks, it will shine a light on the connections between property owners and provide actionable insights to support housing equity and transparency.

What you’ll build:

A new study by CURA Research Associate Anthony Damiano and CURA Director Edward Goetz examines how investor size and type influence outcomes in the single-family rental (SFR) market in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Comparing institutional players like REITs and private equity firms to smaller local landlords. Spatially, private equity firms were hyperconcentrated in lower income communities of color while REIT-owned homes were more concentrated in middle-income suburbs. They also found differences in terms of eviction rates by owner type. Among local landlords, the smallest landlords had the lowest average eviction rates and eviction rates rose as…

The Anti-Displacement Assessment Tool

Led by the Initiative on Cities at Boston University, Loretta Lees (Boston University), Kenton Card (University of Minnesota and Boston University) and Andre Comandon (University of Southern California) developed a new tool to be implemented by the Louisville Metro Government to guide decisions about residential investments. The tool is the result of a collaboration…

 

Download a PDF of the "Exploring the Impacts of the RealPage Antitrust" presentation

Presenters: Lawrence McDonough, Policy Attorney for HOME Line and Senior Fellow for the National Housing Law Project, and Jordan Ash, Housing Campaign and Research Director for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), will speak on this month’s Housing Forum panel.…

Presenters: Representatives from Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia (United renters for Justice)

The concept of social housing is beginning to gain traction in various jurisdictions around the United States. While there is no one set definition, social housing is usually marked by permanent affordability of rental units, public ownership or control of those units, affordability for a wide range of incomes, and some level of democratic control for residents. 

In some counties across Minnesota, this type of housing already exists, separate and apart from HUD-…

The CURA Housing Forum is back. This month’s forum will feature CURA researchers Dr. Anthony Damiano and Professor Edward Goetz, who will present their research on the single-family rental market in Hennepin and Ramsey counties.

The growth of investor-owned, single-family homes has become a major issue for renters in the Twin Cities and across the country. Private equity firms, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and so-called “rent-to-own” companies have come…

Executive Summary

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is less efficient with public subsidies than other subsidized housing development programs in the State of Minnesota. Public subsidy is lost at the very beginning of tax credit deals when developers must sell the credits to investors. Historically, the market has resulted in credits being sold for 87 cents on the dollar, a loss of 13% in the value of the credit at the outset. We are unable to estimate the full cost in dollars of this leakage due to lack of data. Second, administrative costs are higher for tax credit projects than for non-LIHTC projects. We estimate a cost of up to $1.…

Community Based Research Graduate Student Project Spotlight

Fact sheet: Housing and Race in Minneapolis

Through the Kris Nelson Community-Based Research Program, Jack Gramlich (MPP '24) has supported the research and advocacy goals of the Make Homes Happen Coalition over the last year. Together, Jack and his community partner worked to produce a fact sheet that visualizes key insights on racial disparities in the Minneapolis housing market, which supports the project's broader research goal of evaluating the City's progress on meeting its housing goals.

My community partner, the Make Homes Happen Coalition, focuses on racial disparities in the…

Report submitted to the Minnesota ERASE Campaign (End Rental Arrears and Stop Evictions). ERASE is an effort to ensure that the historic aid enacted by Congress reaches the lowest-income and most marginalized renters it is intended to help. We are working to eliminate rental indebtedness caused by the pandemic, prevent evictions, and create support for long-term policy changes to end housing instability and homelessness. Co-convenors of the campaign include ACER (African Career Education Resource); Housing Justice Center, and MHP (Minnesota Housing Partnership).

Introduction…