How Urban Homeworks is addressing the need for equitable homeownership options

Greetings, Urban Homeworks supporters! I am Anne Ketz, the Real Estate Development Director at Urban Homeworks. I oversee all existing and new housing developments. I joined the organization in 2017, and this May I celebrate 5 years of working with UHW! 

Over the years, we have experienced many changes at Urban Homeworks, both within the organization and community. Our Real Estate Development work has changed also. 

We continue to improve our designs and the energy efficiency of our homes. We continue to place dignified affordability at the top of our priorities. It has not been easy. 

Market forces have made it challenging to keep up with the need for affordable homeownership options. Competing funding, investor competition, and high costs have caused us to produce fewer new homes than we were ten years ago. The production can feel painfully slow when the demand is so high. However, each new unit still helps a low-income family in our community. I remind myself daily who we are doing this work for and why it is so important.

Urban Homeworks focuses on dignified, affordable rental and homeownership opportunities in majority BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities. Our work focuses on these communities because of generations of racism. Discriminatory policies like redlining, racial covenants, and deed restrictions of the past continue to affect communities today. The impacts are seen today in lower property values, low BIPOC homeownership rates, and high concentrations of poverty. 

Policy change is still needed. I just finished writing to our state lawmakers seeking more funding for homeownership development. Minnesota is among the worst in the nation for BIPOC homeownership. The Twin Cities is the worst metro region for Black homeownership. As of 2018, 70% of white families in MN are homeowners, while only 21% of Black families are. That number has decreased from 30% in 2000. 

A new 2021 report published by the Urban Institute, “Who Owns the Twin Cities,” provides updated data on this issue. This article from MinnPost offers a summary. 

Homeownership is one system where we can pursue racial equity, but lawmakers often overlook ownership when discussing affordable housing needs. Homeownership receives drastically less funding than rental housing. To reduce the ownership disparity rate, we must fund BIPOC homeownership. 

We are working towards these equity goals, along with other non-profit partners throughout the state, by:

• Fighting for needed policy and funding changes
• Continuing to supply and improve access to dignified, affordable rental housing
• Developing a down payment assistance fund for BIPOC households
• Engaging residents in individual housing and ownership goals; and 
• Continuing to develop new ownership units through new construction and rehab opportunities. 

The Real Estate Development program focuses on producing new and innovative homeownership opportunities. In those efforts, we currently have 11 homes in various stages of development. Some of those projects include: 

• A partnership with Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU) on a multi-family townhouse. This development of three 4-bedroom units will follow a cooperative ownership model.
• Two highly energy-efficient, single-family houses with funding from the City of Minneapolis to achieve passive certification. Passive houses are good for the environment and lower utility costs for future homeowners.  
• A donated single-family home rehab – the first property donation we have received in years. The donor family has owned the house since the 1930s.

We have other exciting work ahead and look forward to keeping you updated as projects develop. We hope you will continue to follow along and support this critical work to address housing justice and racial inequities in our communities.

Please donate, volunteer, and call your lawmakers to fight for housing justice.

Sincerely,

Anne Ketze
Real Estate Development Director
Urban Homeworks

Community Partnerships!

Urban Homeworks is more than a housing organization. We seek to center the voices of our community and innovate in ways that create equitable solutions for our residents and neighbors.  

That innovation always begins with listening to the needs of our community.  Over the past year, the overwhelming need we heard again and again from our residents was a need for safety.  

After attempts to work with public officials and local police, Urban Homeworks decided to formally partner with Brothers EMpowered, a community safety organization committed to neighborhood peacekeeping through relationship building and consistent presence. 

We invite you to learn more about our partnership by watching this quick clip from an interview between Urban Homeworks Executive Director AsaleSol Young and Brothers EMpowered founder Charles Caine.  

Click below to view the teaser clip:

Click below to view the full interview:

Our work calls us to learn hidden truths…

Urban Homeworks staff went on a Sacred Sites Tour led by Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs from the Mohican Tribe. We visited Pilot Knob Trail or Oheyawahi, Fort Snelling State Park, and Dakota Internment Camp following the Dakota-US War.

As we approach the end of the year and continue to work towards a more just and affordable housing space, our work calls us to learn about BIPOC communities and the root of their true meaning. Amid racial disparity, we wanted to take time and space to learn about historic sites within our state that hold a more profound truth than what lies above.

Our staff was eager to visit a sacred place for the Dakota people in Minnesota, the Oheyawahi or Pilot Knob trail, which is truly a place to reflect on the Many Stories of the indigenous people who for centuries used this space as a sacred gathering and burial ground. Oheyawahi or Pilot Knob is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and comprises public and private land.

Although a place of reverence, this landscape has been altered throughout history within the last few hundred years, yet its stories remain suspended in time. As we learned during our visit, We learned that for the native people, stories are not part of a chronological construct; stories live within the space of their origin. It was powerful to hear these stories on the very land that they took place.

Within our responsibility of fighting for racial equity, we must learn the truth of our history. Today we challenge you to invite your circles to embark on a Sacred Sites tour, whether a group of friends, your family, or your workplace.

As we reflect upon the neglected, we invite you to Take Action and continue to be bearers of the truths that have been ignored. It is within these actions that we can start to repair the damage some of those stories hold.

To schedule your tour, contact Jim Bear Jacobs at jimbear.jacobs@mnchurches.org.

You can also learn more about Sacred Sites tours at

http://www.mnchurches.org/what-we-do/healing-minnesota-stories.

Perpetuating Hope

Hope. In 2020, our notions of hope were challenged beyond measures previously defined. We witnessed, without blinders, the ways our systems of health care, housing, policing, and education fail the most vulnerable in our communities. We were faced with ourselves and our capacity to move systemic injustice to a place of balance, a place where all humans have space and opportunity to live life to its fullest.

In 2020, we witnessed human greed, corruption, xenophobia, racism, and ableism prevail over the greater
good. When the state, and eventually the world, went into lockdown, we were forced to wrestle with the outcomes and health disparities of our elders, of our educators, our healthcare workers, and our houseless. As things shut down within our city, the reality that North Minneapolis is a food desert struck hard. Folks worried about their capacity to pay rent and worried about feeding their children as work hours became limited or they were laid off. We experienced the collective worry around how much wider the gap in student education would grow and the impact of our already entrenched housing crisis. The weight was unbearable. And yet, there was hope.

Other parts of the world encouraged us to remain steadfast in our lockdowns with tender songs and Facebook messages (like these). Healthcare workers determined to continue their efforts, even as depression spiked in the field. We found hope in these sparks. We found hope in their light. We had hope that we would be together again, hope that we would slow the rate of lost lives, hope that our young people would somehow thrive and grow and learn and hope that our elders would be safe.

We held tight, as a moratorium on evictions went out nationally, and as nonprofits, food shelves, and independent neighbors began providing food within communities that had lost their already limited access. Hope. Hope leads us to see abundance in crisis. Hope leads us to acknowledge our excess.

At Urban Homeworks, we slowed our development work, eventually bringing it to a halt as we responded to the immediate needs of our communities. And we looked to you, our donors and supporters, to stand with us with contributions as we shifted to that “innovative community development” that is responsive to community need because we have Hope that the human capacity to neighbor overcomes our capacity for avarice.

For many of us, the world ended again when we witnessed the torture and death – the public lynching – of George Floyd. Our breaths grew shallower as we tried to fathom the unnecessary and inhumane stealing of life amidst a year of already so much useless human loss. The year, once again, forced all of us to reckon with the impacts of systemic racism, injustice, and white supremacy. We were required to examine ourselves and the oppressions we have allowed to persist. And yet, we continued fighting for justice, fighting for the humanity of all people to be recognized because we held tight to Hope. A hope that the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech would finally ring true. A hope that our communities sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. A hope of Jubilee for all.

In 2020, we struggled and fought alongside those most impacted by system failure. We continue to fight so that survival will no longer be the baseline for anyone living in our Minneapolis and St. Paul communities. We fight because we believe, as Christ did, that each and every one of us was created to live a full life. A full life is a life that is valued enough to be protected and not targeted, no longer viewed as disposable chattel, but held up as worthy and deserving of love. At Urban Homeworks, we believe that means a life uplifted by a place to call home, nutritious food that nourishes our bodies, and quality education that nourishes our minds.

Some have balked at our determination to speak truthfully about the roots of systemic oppression – at our clear and defined use of the words white supremacy. As we continue into 2021, we commit to acknowledging the heinous truth of white supremacy at work in this country and our community, and to remain in the societal tensions that that truth inevitably bears. We are resolved because we know that if we do not speak truthfully, if we do not acknowledge the roots of housing injustice, the roots of poverty and disinvestment, the roots of crime and violence – nothing will change.

The path of justice has never been an easy road, but we fight on. For we all have a right to shalom, a right to thrive. There is abundance. There is enough.

Thank you to all of those who stood staunchly alongside us in 2020. To the residents and homebuyers, the volunteers, community organizers and partners, the funders, and supporters – thank you for standing with us in Hope.

In solidarity with gratitude and love,

AsaleSol

Celebrate Juneteeth!

Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States nearly 2 1/2 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on June 19th, 1865. Check out the list of activities organized by the Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board and Juneteenth Community Board commemorating Juneteenth:

More ways to learn about Juneteenth: