Day in and day out, A Vue helps get MPHA families connected to resources to career training and empowerment, homeownership education and financial tools, and even rental assistance, if needed. That work is rewarding as she sees families get stable housing and equipped with tools that can provide upward mobility. But the work is also deeply personal for A, as her own life was stabilized by public housing and helped her become a homeowner.
Raised by a single mom along with her five younger sisters, much of A’s childhood was lived in public housing right here in Minneapolis. Public housing provided a stable, quality home for her family in both a public housing development and later, a scattered site home. Recalling what life looked like for her as a child living in a public housing development, A noted the community that existed among its residents and the safety it brought.
“It was such a safe community. We were always outside. I remember we would just play outside all day with the neighbors,” said A Vue, MPHA’s Housing Stability Coordinator. “Life was great as a child.”
The community offered on-site study groups for school-aged kids to encourage educational engagement and support. At one point, there was even a radio station headquartered on the property. The development had a dynamic culture and created a community for the families. A noted that kids would play together outside until the sun went down, clearly benefiting from the physical closeness of the other families and the safety that the community offered.
Once A moved out of her family home and had started a family of her own, she found herself interested in working for the agency that had helped stabilize her childhood housing.
“Growing up in public housing, I’ve always been really interested in how the agency worked,” said A Vue.
In 2017, A got hired as an eligibility technician at the agency. In that role, she monitored the family housing wait list, processed applications, and signed leases as units became open and ready for new tenants. In other words, A was the point of contact for families throughout their initial wait list sign up and processing of application, which could last years.
“It was really nice to work with families from the very beginning to when they move in. Even after moving in, they would sometimes still reach out to me with questions because we had built that relationship.”
More recently, A has transitioned into a new role working with existing MPHA families—further nurturing those same relationships with families she aided in the application process—offering them resources for emergency rent assistance, career development, and homeownership education.
In that time, A also became a homeowner herself through MPHA’s lease-to-own program. She now owns a home in the same area she lived in public housing growing up. Being a new homeowner herself, she is learning everything it takes to own and maintain a home—an experience that helps her be an advocate of the growing homeownership education program.
A is a living example of the power of stable housing on a person’s life—allowing her to reach life milestones she may not have been able to otherwise reach if dealing with the stress of housing instability.