As summer construction season starts in Minnesota, so too is MPHA kicking off its own $10 million-dollar effort to improve its portfolio of more than 700 deeply affordable family homes. One of the largest-ever repair efforts to MPHA’s family housing portfolio comes as a direct result of the agency securing new state and local funding last year to help address the capital backlog for the agency’s most sought-after type of housing – a top agency priority. The agency estimates that nearly 125 family homes will be repaired or upgraded as a part of this effort.
“The scale of this capital work on MPHA’s family homes is one of the largest single efforts in the agency’s history,” said Abdi Warsame, Executive Director/CEO of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. “This 10-million-dollar repair effort is a testament to the power of state and local partnership in addressing decades of federal disinvestment in public housing. Together, we are making real progress towards stabilizing the lives of hundreds of families currently living in these homes while also ensuring thousands more families can access the life-altering force of stable, deeply affordable housing for generations.”
Through the agency’s wholly controlled non-profit, Community Housing Resources (CHR), the agency owns and operates more than 700 deeply affordable single-family, duplex, fourplex, and sixplex homes spread across nearly every neighborhood in the city, serving more than 3,100 people. These homes account for more than 80 percent of the MPHA housing available for families with children. Of the residents who call CHR properties home, 88 percent are black, 86 percent are female-led, and nearly two-thirds are households of five or more—families with children. On average, families stay in their home for six years before moving to new housing. And since 2020, 16 percent of those leaving CHR homes have gone on to purchase their own home.
With most homes being at least 70 years old, extensive rehabilitation is required at some to ensure continued livability. Major work includes exterior enveloping like replacing leaky roofs, drafty windows, damaged foundations, or outdated siding. Additionally, the new state and local funding will allow for the agency to perform more extensive “deep turns,” which is work done following family move-outs and before the next family moves in. This work includes kitchen and bath renovations, furnace and water heater replacements, and electrical, plumbing, and mechanical repair work. More cosmetic repairs like floor refinishing or replacement, replacing doors and trim, and painting walls is also done at this time to ensure the homes are maintained to serve future generations of MPHA families.
Last year, MPHA received a direct one-time cash grant of $5 million as a part of the legislature’s billion-dollar housing budget and a one-time $1.3 million grant from Minnesota Housing’s Stable Housing Organization Relief Program (SHORP) to fund repairs to its family housing portfolio. Combined with funding from the City of Minneapolis, state and local support totaled $10 million that MPHA is beginning to deploy in an effort to tackle a $33 million capital backlog in its portfolio of deeply affordable family homes. This new funding will help the agency overcome decades of federal disinvestment and get the portfolio closer to self-sufficiency, whereas the annual federal subsidy MPHA receives for owning and operating these homes will cover the annual capital needs.
