The 2025 Minneapolis Budget: A Win for Affordable Homeownership Preservation

Every year, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity engages in advocacy at the local levels as Minneapolis and St. Paul go through their budget cycles. For Minneapolis, this cycle just wrapped up with some decisive outcomes for the biennium, many of which impact affordable housing and our work. Read below for what the budget process looked like, our asks, and how we rely on our partnership with the city to advance affordable homeownership.

The Lay of the Land

As Council Members and the Mayor were heading into this process, the environment in which they were to build consensus was marked by a few challenges. The most significant is that Minneapolis is facing a budget deficit of over $20 million for this upcoming year, with a larger one expected in the following year. This landscape made spending decisions harder, as elected officials worked to balance much needed investments with limited funds, and we worked to ensure vital housing programs were prioritized. Nevertheless, the budget has been approved, and we are grateful for the city’s commitment to being a leader in affordable housing this year as they’ve done in the past.

Our Priorities

There are multiple programs in Minneapolis that help our work, from the development of new units to education and counseling resources for new buyers and those facing foreclosure. This year, there was one program we highlighted the most in our advocacy efforts, the Affordable Homeownership Preservation Grant, which helps fund our critical home repair work.

Through a partnership with Minneapolis Regulatory Services, low-income homeowners who have open housing orders and citations from the city are referred to Twin Cities Habitat’s A Brush With Kindness Program. Our team assesses the areas of the home that need maintenance to create a plan, then completes all necessary repairs, which can range from painting to more involved repair projects. This program has profound impacts on homeowners and the community, and for many can be what stands between staying in their home and becoming unsheltered. Most of the residents in this program live on extremely limited incomes that would be unsustainable in the current housing market. As such, it is our priority to ensure these houses are livable and safe so that residents can stay in their homes, and we can preserve our current housing stock for future generations.

The Outcome

Despite the effectiveness of this program, we knew that it needed ongoing funding as our contract ends December 2024, and more funding to better address the level of need we are seeing. We were grateful to see an inclusion in the Mayor’s proposed budget. But seeing that the city currently has over 500 open housing orders for maintenance issues, we asked City Council to increase funding for the Affordable Homeownership Preservation Grant from the original allocation of $100,000 to $295,000. In a 9-4 vote, they did just that.

This achievement would not have been possible without the help of advocates like you and homeowners who shared their support with Council Members. Throughout the past few months, we had dozens of supporters write in to City Council. Also, a homeowner who benefited from the A Brush With Kindness Program delivered a powerful testimony at a Budget Committee hearing. Ms. Pat, a North Minneapolis resident of over 25 years, reflected on how often conversations of safety, repairs, and affordability come up in conversation with other seniors, and how this program can help alleviate those concerns. She shared her appreciation with committee members, saying “sometimes as you get older…we become invisible, as if we don’t count, as if we no longer have a voice. So, I thank you for this process that we have in Minneapolis to be heard”.

We are incredibly appreciative to Council Members for their support in continuing this program, their leadership in advancing and preserving affordable homeownership, and their commitment to ensuring racial equity in housing. As this is one-time funding, this will continue to be our priority in next year’s budget cycle, and we look forward to building upon our partnership with Minneapolis in the future as we continue to expand upon this work.

Want to get involved in advocacy? You can start by thanking Council Members who voted in favor of our amendment by sending a quick, pre-drafted letter. This helps maintain the strong relationships we hold with Council Members and ensure we can rely on them in the future. You can also sign up for action alerts to stay up to date on other initiatives as the local budget cycles wrap up and we head into the state legislative session.