Black Hills Area Community Foundation
Report date
May 2022
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The partnerships that have been developed over the past four years of this work have been critical assets. During this grant period, we were able to connect with legislators outside of our area during the legislative summer study and share our plans with them. The awareness that they gained about our work helped to shape the successful housing legislation that passed this year. Our State has allocated $200 million to the SD Housing Development Authority to invest in infrastructure for housing. We don't know yet how these dollars will be deployed from the State level but we have developed a good working relationship with the SDHDA leadership. The Strategic Housing Trust Fund Advisory Board regularly brings public, private and philanthropic leadership together to discuss projects and policies that could help our region make progress in addressing our growing housing needs. This group of mixed voices and challenge grants from two foundation funders were leveraged in December and January to promote our VISION fund request of $5 million from the City. These VISION funds were approved by City Council on January 10th 2022 and the grant agreement was approved on April 21, 2022.
Data collection. Our housing work has been relying upon a study that was released in 2018. We know that we have more people moving to the area currently and in the past few years and a very limited supply of housing stock and skyrocketing housing costs. We have partnered with Elevate Rapid City, the John T Vucurevich Foundation, the City of Rapid City and with our remaining Bush CI Grant funds have commissioned a new study through MSA Professional Services. In the meantime, Elevate Rapid City staff has been providing brief updates through CoStar. (attachment). The new study will be finalized by November with initial data being available in July. This in-depth review will be shared with the SD Housing Development Authority and will help us to support and will inform our own decision making for trust fund investments.
Homeless outreach - Progress is being made in addressing the assistance of houseless residents and connecting them to resources. A new native led organization, Journey On! is providing street outreach. In December of 2021, the City of Rapid City contracted with Native-led nonprofit, Journey On, to provide street-level proactive and response support to members of the houseless community. Since December, Journey On has been dispatched by 9-1-1 to 48.7% of all low-level calls for service involving the houseless. This dispatched and proactive support has focused on addressing social service needs, often getting folks to immediate housing, food and medical support. These efforts have also prevented many from becoming victims of crimes, suffering severe medical ailments or death due to exposure. The work of Journey On! has provided a much needed piece to the puzzle in addressing these needs. In January, 2021, we provided $16,000 from our Bush Foundation grant to provide a bridge in funding for their work during our South Dakota winter. The BH Regional Homeless Coalition has developed a business toolkit to help connect and direct transitory citizens with the correct resources.
Key lessons learned
Although a charitable foundation needs to avoid political engagement and lobbying, we can and do need to advocate and educate our public policy makers on critical issues and needs. Relationships that have been developed over the past four years have helped to influence decision makers at the local and the state level. We need to increase the voice of philanthropy with the business community and through public policy.
Patience and open-mindedness is needed in housing work. There are no quick fixes, it is a long, slow, process that needs to have consistent leadership to continue to bring the issue forward - repeatedly. This work is never done.
Local government processes and departmental leadership continues to be noted as a roadblock for development. We hope that the housing study currently underway will reveal processes that are ripe for change that would help to streamline development.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The collective understanding of the issue is a moving target and we need to continuously gather data, gather new ideas and resources, and include multiple stakeholders at the table. This work requires consistent leadership to continue these conversations and move the needle.
Progress toward an innovation
We are there. We are positioned to implement the Strategic Housing Trust Fund and strategically invest multiple very low interest loans in several multi-family housing developments. We are excited to be working with several new developers who have been successful in creating and sustaining housing for residents with incomes 80% of average meeting income or below; CommonBond Communities from St Paul, Blue Line from Missoula, MT and Lloyd Companies of Sioux Falls are all working with us for potential funding. The limitations I see now are 1) Funding for the Strategic Housing Trust fund. As our current pool of funds are deployed, it will be several years before they have come back to replenish the fund. We will need to fill this gap with additional resources. and 2) Capacity. Our Foundation will be exploring staff additions, the possibilities of creating supporting organizations as a CDFI or LLC or both. Our Foundation may want to become a partner in ownership and management of affordable housing properties in the future.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
I feel like we have planted the seeds for success. Now the work really begins to create more infrastructure within our Foundation and/or within partner organizations to continue to cultivate data, resources and collaborations and increase our capacity to manage this work.
What's next?
We are working with Elevate Rapid City to refine the role of the new Housing Coordinator position, beyond managing the implementation of the new housing study. We are discussing the severe childcare needs in our area and exploring models and ideas that could be integrated with new multifamily housing. We are working to increase funds for the Strategic Housing Trust Fund. Our Board of Directors will be exploring possible long range expansions in our capacity. The Strategic Housing Trust Fund Advisory board will continue to encourage development and deploy low interest program related investments to projects that increase the inventory of rental units at the lower income level.
If you could do it all over again...
This work is enormous, complex, and important.
And the time required to push this boulder up the hill is infinite.
These truths are also reasons that many conversations have taken place over the years but change did not happen.
We needed a new approach, consistent leadership and collaborations, new tools and continuous data.
And the time required to push this boulder up the hill is infinite.
These truths are also reasons that many conversations have taken place over the years but change did not happen.
We needed a new approach, consistent leadership and collaborations, new tools and continuous data.