In Ramsey County, home to Minnesota’s capitol city, St. Paul, the lack of affordable housing is a critical issue and the need is great. In 2015, there were nearly 1,200 people experiencing homelessness over the age of 18, and nearly half were on a waiting list for subsidized housing. Of people experiencing homelessness, 51% have chronic physical health conditions, 58% have a serious mental illness, and 19% suffer from a substance abuse disorder.
To address this need, the Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis (Catholic Charities) had a vision to bring much needed affordable housing and community based services to the St. Paul community.
Catholic Charities set out to build the Dorothy Day Place and the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation St. Paul Opportunity Center, an innovative, mixed-use complex consisting of supportive housing and a range of on-site services focused on connecting people experiencing homelessness and deep poverty with the housing and services they need, all in one location. By integrating housing and services at the same site, Catholic Charities can provide the support necessary for people experiencing homelessness to achieve self-sufficiency and create pathways to thrive. This mixed-use building is the second half of Catholic Charities Dorothy Day Place complex, which includes the Higher Ground St. Paul Emergency Shelter.
Finding both the financing and support for such a project can be both complex and challenging. Enter CSH.
CSH (Corporation for Supportive Housing) is a national nonprofit with the mission to advance solutions that use housing as a platform for services to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people, maximize public resources and build healthy communities. CSH advances our mission through systems change, technical assistance and training, policy and advocacy, and lending as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that helps communities create, model, and finance cost-effective supportive housing to address many challenges, including chronic homelessness and poverty. CSH provided $12.4 million for the construction of Dorothy Day Place and the St. Paul Opportunity Center through federal New Market Tax Credits (NMTCs), a unique financing vehicle that allows banks and other entities like CDFIs to more easily invest in the non-housing components of mixed-use projects that serve the community and/or low-income individuals.
Investing NMTCs in Dorothy Day Place provided the necessary funding for the Opportunity Center and in the fall of 2019, Catholic Charities celebrated the official opening, realizing their vision of providing co-located housing and services for St. Paul and Ramsey County.
As a comprehensive housing and service center, the Dorothy Day Place and the Opportunity Center is a unique community asset providing 177 units of supportive housing along with on-site services like adult education and workforce development; financial counseling; housing placement; meals; primary health care; dental care; and mental and behavioral health services to residents and community members. Overall, Dorothy Day Place serves more than 1,000 people every day.
Between construction and hiring of on-site staff, the Dorothy Day Place and St. Paul Opportunity Center project also fueled the local economy, creating more than 150 jobs.
Key Learnings
Dorothy Day Place is an example of how federal dollars can be leveraged to address homelessness and poverty through a unique partnership model. CSH’s mission is to advance solutions that use housing as a platform for services to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people, maximize public resources and build healthy communities. In support of this mission, it uses NMTCs to finance supportive housing projects in communities across the country.
For more information, contact: Leah Rhea, Senior Program Manager, Upper Midwest-Minnesota, leah.lindstrom@csh.org, (612) 910-4865, Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) https://www.csh.org/.
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