Late last month, the Minnesota Housing Board of Directors approved awarding MPHA $1,351,500 in Publicly Owned Housing Program (POHP) General Obligation (GO) bonds to replace aging electrical components at the 630 Cedar Avenue high-rise, including electrical load centers that are beyond their expected useful life and do not comply with today’s city code requirements, along with replacing the building’s emergency generator.
Nearly 200 residents call 630 Cedar high-rise home. Sixty-nine percent of residents are Black/African American, 79 percent are elderly (62+), 53 percent are disabled, and only 10 percent of households have earned income (averaging $13,000 annually).
“This award enables MPHA to make comprehensive building system upgrades benefiting nearly 200 public housing residents,” said Abdi Warsame, Executive Director/CEO of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. “While we still have a long way to go, MPHA’s ‘all-of-the-above’ approach in securing one-time and ongoing financial support from state and local partners is helping turn the tide on decades of federal disinvestment. Thank you to the leaders at Minnesota Housing for awarding these funds and for the continued partnership to address the needs of public housing residents in Minneapolis.”
Historically, HUD has only provided about 10 percent of the funding necessary for major building improvements. That means each year the agency is forced to choose band-aid options to triage leaky roofs, repair and maintain brick façades, replace inefficient 60-year-old windows, or improve decades-old high-rise electrical and plumbing systems instead of more comprehensive—albeit more expensive—solutions. Over time, this problem has only compounded, creating the agency’s current capital backlog of $229 million in needs.
In recent years, agency staff have pursued and maximized just about every tool possible to address this funding gap. This includes seeking special budget permissions from HUD to develop localized solutions, creating new public-private partnerships to leverage debt financing for major renovation projects (while maintaining strong guardrails to protect residents and public ownership), accessing project-based funding supports at every level of government, and pursuing one-time and ongoing financial supports from state and local governments, like this newly awarded POHP GO funding.
In 2023, MPHA secured more than $11 million in state and local support for its preservation and production activities, supplementing the $20 million in capital funding the agency received from HUD—a 55 percent funding boost for critical capital improvement work.
Recent state and local support includes a $4.9 million investment in the City of Minneapolis’ 2023 budget, a one-time cash grant of $5 million as a part of the state legislature’s 2023 billion-dollar housing budget, and a one-time $1.3 million grant from Minnesota Housing’s Stable Housing Organization Relief Program (SHORP). Agency leaders also reached a long-term funding agreement with city leaders last year to resuscitate a long-dormant housing tax levy at $5 million annually, with the first disbursements set to begin in summer 2024.
