News
Andrea Palumbo recognizes the fear in the voices of tenants. In her attorney role at HOME Line, she has the expertise to explain the legal process of eviction. But she also has the lived experience of potential displacement. “I was in the same position,” she says. “I got behind on rent and was terrified I…
Like thousands of other St. Paul tenants, Lee Lucas, a board member for Community Stabilization Project, isn’t just worried about rent when it comes to his monthly housing costs. “I’m a fixed income individual and I’m supposed to pay 30 percent of my income for housing,” he said. “But in actuality, due to poor weatherization…
Our AREA: The Alliance Regional Equity Agenda is a strategic document centered around the needs and aspirations of people of color, indigenous, immigrant, and low-income communities. It highlights the strategies Alliance members and partners are using and calls for further collective action to heal communities, stimulate regenerative power, dismantle structural racism, and end the displacement and…
The Alliance partnered with more than a dozen community-centered local organizations to create the Equitable Development Principles & Scorecard, which helps communities ensure that the principles and practices of equitable development, environmental justice, and affordability are available to all residents. Intended to be a living document, adapted by communities to meet their needs, this case…
On January 17, the Alliance co-authored and signed-on to a letter from a coalition of organizations working to ensure true community engagement and co-creation at the Upper Harbor Terminal — a development happening on 48 acres of publicly owned land. Read the full text below! Mayor Frey and Council members: We write today to express…
In January, Nelima Sitati Munene, Executive Director of African Career, Education and Resource, Inc. (ACER) and Alliance leader / board member, featured in Shelterforce reflecting on the work of Equity in Place and its impact on local housing narratives. The stories we tell ourselves matter. Narrative plays an important role in defining whose voice gets heard, how issues are…
For Fresh Energy, a new program and organization-wide focus is giving power a double meaning. Since its inception in 1992, the St. Paul-based environmental organization has worked to flip the switch on a clean energy economy for residents across the state. But more recently, its new Energy Access and Equity program is igniting an intentional…
Days after the passage of an inclusionary housing framework in Minneapolis, Alliance member leaders Nelima Sitati Munene, Executive Director of African Career Education and Resource, Inc. and Aaron Berc, community organizer at Jewish Community Action, shared their insight on the importance of such ordinances across the region in a Community Voices piece published in MinnPost. The Twin…
As stakeholders throughout the Twin Cities explore tools to address the affordable housing crisis, the Alliance’s Russ Adams weighed in with a commentary in the Star Tribune on December 4, countering the narrative from developers’ that an inclusionary zoning policy in Minneapolis could hinder production of affordable housing. In his Nov. 28 commentary, “Mpls. considers…
The Equitable Development Principles & Scorecard helps communities ensure that the principles and practices of equitable development, environmental justice, and affordability are available to all residents. As we have worked with local communities of color and low-income communities to pilot the Scorecard, a number of groups have chosen to adapt it to serve their communities’…