Why Housing Remains Out of Reach for Black Families in St. Paul
Despite extensive affordable housing programs in Minneapolis and St. Paul, housing remains out of reach for many families, particularly Black families. A recent Minnesota Demographic Center report highlights persistent racial wealth gaps, declining Black homeownership rates, and structural barriers that continue to limit access to housing, even as cities rely on nonprofit partners to help close the gap.
Despite extensive affordable housing programming in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, housing remains out of reach for many families, especially Black ones.
A Minnesota Demographic Center report published this March found that the Black homeownership rate is less than half of the overall statewide rate — 26% versus 72% — and has decreased by double-digits since the 1980s. While newer Black immigrant communities have made some gains, according to the report, those gains have not been made by U.S.-born Black communities or Somalis.
St. Paul Housing Director Jules Atagana pinned the city’s housing issues on longstanding racial wealth gaps, with mean housing costs taking up higher percentages of Black household incomes. “The median income for white families in Minnesota is $101,000. For Black families, it’s $53,000,” Atagana said.
“An average mortgage payment in St. Paul is $1,800, and average rent for a three-bedroom apartment is $3,000. The issue stems from longstanding wealth gaps, education level, unemployment, and those structural factors.”
However, Atagana added that city housing programs receiving federal funding can no longer explicitly center race, instead more broadly targeting “low income” families. This comes after the Trump administration’s slew of Executive Orders earlier this year rescinded federal funding from diversity, equity and inclusion-centered programs, including housing programs.
Centering Black communities
At this junction, the city of St. Paul works with local nonprofit organizations that can more explicitly center Black communities to help build generational wealth, access housing, and ultimately achieve homeownership.
Atagana listed Rondo Community Land Trust (CLT), Neighborhood Development Alliance (NeDA), the Frogtown Neighborhood Association, and the East Side Neighborhood Development Company (ESNDC) as organizations the city partners with.
According to Atagana, credit issues are a major factor preventing Black families from accessing housing. As reported in the Minnesota Star Tribune, DeKevia Cole lacked knowledge on credit and mortgages while living around fellow renters until she took a first-time homebuyers’ class and worked with a mentor from PRG, Inc., a Minneapolis housing nonprofit. Cole and her family now own a home in North Minneapolis.
Rondo CLT states on their website, “Rondo CLT deeply understands the historical role property ownership has played as a means to build wealth and exercise decision-making power,” and acknowledges how “economically marginalized” communities still face barriers to housing access.
Rondo CLT’s Homebuyer Initiated Program (HIP) assists households at or below 80% AMI to buy and fix up a single-family home or duplex in Ramsey County. Furthermore, the organization uses the land trust model to hold the land houses occupy in community trust while lowering the purchase price of the houses themselves.
Rondo CLT itself is named after Rondo Avenue, the storied Black community in St. Paul that was fractured by the construction of Interstate 94.
NeDA, which largely serves St. Paul’s West Side, provides one-to-one financial counseling and workshops to help people create plans to buy their own homes.
Development without displacement
Frogtown Neighborhood Association details on their website how, amidst ongoing development in the neighborhood, “friends, family and establishments that have called our community home for decades [are] disappearing.” In that light, the Association’s Housing and Land Use Plan is meant to ensure the community has a seat at the table, utilizing policy recommendations, concrete site plans, and research-backed statistics.
Currently, the Association is pushing for a moratorium on the development and sale of public land, inclusionary zoning, and developing its own community land trust, which requires 501(c)3 nonprofit status.
The Association urges residents to share their stories to invigorate its housing plan and is also seeking volunteers. “With your help, we won’t be yet another community dismantled, white-washed, and reimagined by people who know little to nothing about the legacy of Frogtown and Rondo or the sacredness of the ground they’re digging into,” the website states.
What can St. Paul do?
Atagana also said, “We plan to restrict all affordable housing to 30% AMI or below.” He added that Mayor-elect Kaohly Her’s heavy focus on housing in her campaign makes him optimistic that the city will be able to do more to address housing issues.
In the meantime, according to the 2023 Minnesota Homeless Study by Wilder Research, people in families make up 48% of the Twin Cities population experiencing homelessness, which was 6,176. The same study found that 43% of unhoused people in the Twin Cities 7-county metro area identified as Black or African American.
Whether the Twin Cities are properly equipped to address these issues, and if nonprofits can shoulder the leftover burden, remains to be seen.
Sommer Wagen welcomes reader responses to swagen@spokesman-recorder.com.