Hope Community CI Report – Interim

What has been most instrumental to your progress?

Initial outreach: We had to be creative about community input and outreach given the realities of Covid-19. In place of in-person listening sessions that Hope is known for, we developed a survey in three languages to collect input virtually from Hope’s tenants about their housing goals and barriers and potential interest in the project. We also distributed flyers door to door in one of our properties and advertised the program on social media. This phase was key in getting the word out about the program. One-to-one meetings conducted by the Project Coordinator helped potential participants understand the program and helped us understand people’s interest, goals, and hesitations.

Pilot cohort: Launching the pilot cohort was a huge success this year, especially because we had to pivot to a virtual training. Developing and presenting a strong curriculum was key. The training was five weeks long with a different component each week. We tapped into existing resources/partners (CLCLT, HOME Line, business trainer) to feature in those weeks, and utilizing the Zoom platform allowed us to conduct the training during the pandemic. The curriculum we presented was accessible and easy for anyone to follow even if they had not yet taken any other home ownership trainings. Because we broke it up into five sessions presented over the course of five weeks, it was more manageable and digestible for participants than many of the existing trainings that are one full day session, which can be overwhelming. The feedback – both post-training survey and in-person interviews – we received from participants afterwards confirmed that the structure of the training was conducive to their learning and gaining both realism and excitement about the owner-occupant model. Eleven participants registered for the training and four completed it.

Expanding our work through partnerships: We have seen a great deal of interest in this project throughout its pilot phase from local and national funders as well as other organizations and partners who are interested in working in the small multifamily building and wealth creation space. This has taken the work in some exciting yet unexpected directions. Hope partnered with the Family Housing Fund on a successful application to the JP Morgan Chase Advancing Cities Challenge. With this funding, we have been able to form partnerships with other nonprofit community developers (PPL, Urban Homeworks) who are interested in converting their small multifamily properties to community ownership and see this as the next phase in the project. We’ve also worked a coalition that includes the Frogtown Neighborhood Association and Model Cities of St. Paul to respond to a RFP to improve and preserve an affordable rental property in Frogtown and create affordable ownership opportunities for the building’s current tenants.

Key lessons learned

An important learning from this pilot is that our training resonated with participants. People are interested in this owner-occupant model; while many were initially resistant to the land trust idea, they warmed to it as they learned more about it. Participants said they liked the opportunity to earn passive income and/or to live with extended family, and that the affordability investment the land trust provides makes this feel more attainable. We learned about the support that might be needed for graduates after the training in order to help them be successful. Most training participants are still far from being able to move forward on purchasing and need time to repair credit, search for ideal neighborhoods, etc. We were surprised to hear from the graduates that they were all looking to buy outside of Phillips. As we move forward, this creates other questions to consider: how tied do people feel to their neighborhoods? How do they conceive of community stability, and what does it mean to them? What are the non-negotiables for people as they look to purchasing a home and how do those relate to neighborhood conditions? Is this a trend or is it unique to the first cohort?

We failed to figure out a way to do the listening sessions remotely. Once the pandemic hit, we pivoted to recruit exclusively from our properties for the training and didn’t dedicate much time trying to figure out how we could have held a listening session despite COVID protocols. We do plan to conduct community listening sessions in 2021. However, running the pilot cohort before the listening sessions did give us some insights that will help shape and add to the questions we ask in learning sessions, particularly around ideas of community stability, what makes for desirable neighborhoods, and potential barriers to accessing trainings online. We know we had participants who were unable to complete the training due to phone/internet access issues or technical abilities.

Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving

Being resourceful has been important this year. This project in and of itself is a resourceful approach to community wealth building as we strategize around how to preserve existing affordability and get multifamily housing stock into the hands of community. We have been able to tap into existing partnerships, build upon trusted relationships, and ultimately work together in new ways. For example, Hope has worked with the City of Lakes Community Land Trust for some time. As we came together in a more formal partnership, we were able to use CLCLT’s affordability investment specifically towards duplexes. While we hope to create new solutions that address gaps in the system, a large part of the project this year and of our work going forward will be understanding what resources and options already exist, what barriers there might be for participants in accessing those resources, and helping them move through those barriers. Our project coordinator has established many relationships in the community. Without those relationships – had we been trying to build trust from scratch – it would have been nearly impossible for us to continue making progress during the pandemic.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

Understanding the problem

From the first cohort, we now understand a little more about what people are looking for through this program: ownership opportunities; the choice of where to move/live; opportunities to live with/near extended family; neighborhoods that feel safe, walkable and connected; and the chance to earn some passive income through owning a rental unit. None of those learnings came as a shock to us, but they do help confirm that this innovative project we are undertaking has resonance within the community. We also know even more at this point about what it will take to help people achieve these dreams – investment in these aspiring owners through training and support, financing mechanisms that don’t add piles of debt to people who are trying to build more stable financial futures, and meaningful subsidies into this affordable housing approach that can help open up real housing choices for people whose incomes might otherwise leave them with little choice of how and where to live.

If you could do it all over again…

First, be prepared for a global pandemic 😊. More seriously, we would probably have told ourselves to think about how this program would look if it did not meet in person. We would think about how we might envision conducting the training, how we could engage potential aspiring owners, how we could carry out a meaningful listening opportunity, and ways to build a support network among cohort members– all remotely. We know now that this would become important because we have all had to live in this remote work and connection reality since March. Beyond that though, we have learned so much from being forced into working this way about what is possible to do remotely and how we can better make use of available tools to support folks whether or not they can make it in person to a specific meeting time. It has – and can continue to – open all kinds of possibilities for scaling this work into the future and connecting with interested parties across geographies and in multiple formats.

One last thought

From the outset, our exploration of this community ownership model has been about building power through community control of land, not just at an individual level, but at a community scale. This first successful year has demonstrated that there is great potential in this model to build stability and wealth for families, create community connections among renters and owner-occupants, invest in long-term affordability, provide an alternative to gentrification, and create new pathways for building a more equitable region.

We also were heartened this year to see opportunities emerge to scale up and out the impact of the project. A next phase of the project will be to work with other nonprofits such as PPL and Urban Homeworks to explore transitioning their small multi-family buildings to resident ownership. Significantly, we are now formally partnering with the Family Housing Fund to help inform a larger scale project around small multi-family ownership in Minneapolis and the larger region, connecting to and informing the larger housing system to help create pathways for people to succeed in this endeavor.