To amplify the work of our partners, Prosperity’s Front Door supports projects that further the recommendations of Minnesota’s Housing Task Force.
Prosperity’s Front Door is pleased to support the following organizations through grants or sponsorships in their efforts to advance our housing goals across the state. We will share reports and key learnings as the grant periods end.
zAmaya Theater will mount a Twin Cities performance of “A Prairie Homeless Companion” in regional centers and the metro area. This performance will lead audiences to confront the real experiences of rural, suburban, and urban homelessness within what we imagine as our idyllic Minnesota lives. The audience will be a part of the show as the “live studio audience” and zAmya will host a talk-back at the end of the performance. Record 1-hour podcast. Produce seven 90-second messages on play. (This work is in progress and has adapted its approach due to Covid-19.) View the Homeless Newz Network (HNN), a zAmya Theater Project dedicated to shining a light on homelessness during the COVID-19 Epidemic.
MN NAHRO will engage The Theater of Public Policy (Danger Boat Productions, LLC, to develop four podcasts that will help tell the story of housing in Minnesota and beyond at a pivotal moment for housing affordability. Each episode will focus on one aspect or stage of the continuum of housing: how policy shapes what housing is and isn’t built, how individuals seeking housing make decisions, what builders consider when deciding whether or not to build affordable units.
Neighbors for More Neighbors (Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association) Neighbors for More Neighbors will bring its interactive, 2-hour ‘Game of Zones’ to conferences and suburban communities and non-housing groups to learn what zoning is, how it impacts communities’ ability to build homes needed. The project will create a durable game kit; conduct outreach and hire interns; co-host 5 Games of Zones events with 20-40 players at each. (This work is in progress and has adapted its approach due to Covid-19.)
Homes for All Minnesota is working to expand new organizations and deepen engagement with current organizations and elected officials with a focus on “lived experience” around housing instability to impact positive changes in the housing system in Minnesota. Regional Leads will work with their communities to build strong relationships with their elected officials and facilitate relationship building opportunities and events. This will facilitate engagement of potential new organizations from business, education, health and other non-housing sectors and local, regional elected officials. (This grant was funded by Greater Minnesota Housing Fund.)
ULI MN is leveraging its expertise in building civic trust among public and private sector for informed learning and action. The focus, in part, will include the Minnesota Mayors Together project on how to use innovative technology to build new affordable housing without subsidy. The work will help determine where communities get stuck in their ability to build innovative housing types, what is not happening in the industry and why. The process will identify 3-5 strategies/actions focused on land use, finance, and legal/insurance practices to allow the construction of more innovative housing that would be affordable to the missing middle. This will include short- and long-term recommendations.
Construction Revolution September 19th 2019 Summit is bringing together leaders from across Minnesota to explore emerging breakthroughs and innovative construction techniques in residential development and construction, including the use of modular and panelized elements, and to develop an action plan to accelerate the use of these approaches in Minnesota.
Update: Read the Executive Summary and Full Construction Revolution Summit Report and Action Plan issued in June, 2020. Minnesota faces a significant housing shortage – 300,000 homes needed by 2030 (identified as part of the Minnesota Housing Task Force Goals) – yet the residential construction industry faces major obstacles to meeting that demand:
• Housing costs are rising, driven in part by construction costs
• Construction industry productivity has been nearly stagnant since the 1970s
• 90% of builders report difficulty finding skilled labor, a challenge expected to worsen
Offsite construction has long been viewed as a transformative innovation, and there are reasons to believe that its time has come. Around the world, the use of offsite techniques has begun to unlock significant benefits in residential construction. Early benefits are proving to be substantial:
• Schedule compression
• Cost savings
• Sustainable design opportunities
• Workforce development opportunities
Adopting offsite construction in Minnesota will require shifts from all sectors, Offsite construction is an integrated model of production and the transformation to offsite will require shifts from every sector. At the Summit, participants explored key barriers to overcome:
• Offsite manufactures
• Developers and contractors
• Architects and engineers
• Lenders
• Local officials
• Labor and workforce
Next steps for a system-wide revolution To reduce the cost of housing, the Construction Revolution has set an ambitious vision: By 2025, 10% of multi-family residential developments in Minnesota will meaningfully use advanced, offsite construction techniques.
At the Summit, participants contributed to an action-planning workshop and identified five cross-sector actions to make this vision a reality:
1. Launch multi-sector innovation cohorts to explore the potential and challenges of offsite construction techniques in actual projects.
2. Develop and promote learning opportunities to highlight Minnesota’s progressive building standards and inspections process for offsite construction.
3. Foster local collaboration to develop a fast-track or pre-approval process for projects using offsite concepts.
4. Incentivize a series of pilot projects using offsite construction through a public-private partnership request for proposals.
5. Attract new modular manufacturers and investors to Minnesota through a robust economic development campaign.
Many of these recommendations are already underway. Contact CR at info@constructionrevolution.io to get involved, or check out their website (constructionrevolution.io) for updates and resources.
ULI MN’s June 2nd 2020 Annual Housing Summit shifted the topic focusing on Missing Housing for Middle Incomes to Housing Choices and Market Impacts in a Disruptive Economy due to the Covid-19 crisis. Adam Ducker from RCLCo has been monitoring the impacts on the housing market in real time. In addition, our multi-disciplinary work group who met over several months to identify the barriers and options for building missing housing for middle incomes will share their learnings from this work and perspectives on the impact of the recent economic disruption. They will be reporting out on the work that Prosperity Front Door funded in 2019. We believe by shifting to a virtual platform we will be more accessible both geographically and economically for people to learn and share. This visibility of the webinar will also be available to ULI’s 45,000 global members since the session will be recorded and shared through ULI’s global network.
Prosperity’s Front Door is not accepting new grant applications at this time.