Regional housing partnership receives $2,500 ECE grant

Posted 6/22/01

Regional housing partnership receives $2,500 ECE grant

The Central Minnesota Housing Partnership (CMHP), a regional housing development corporation working to assist under-served communities by preserving, improving, and increasing affordable housing for low and moderate income families and individuals, is being aided in its efforts through a $2,500 grant from the East Central Energy Operation Round-Up fund.
According to CMHP Community Development Manager Lisa Graphenteen, CMHP is a non-profit regional agency serving 16 Minnesota counties, including the east central Minnesota area. It is funded through a combination of administrative fees, grants, state and federal resources, and public and private funds.
CMHP helps to coordinate a wide variety of services and projects related to affordable housing, including home ownership opportunities, home buyer education, single family home development, new rental housing development, property management of rental housing, and housing preservation. CMHP is also involved in housing planning in various communities.
Although CMHP doesn't directly serve many homeless individuals (though the organization does operate some transitional housing services), it does work with many different agencies which do, such as Volunteers of America, local housing redevelopment agencies, and other non-profit groups. CMHP's focus is to develop a continuum of care for homeless individuals within its region, identifying a range of services that can be accessed by those who find themselves without a place to live.
The continuum of care plan is required by the federal government's Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which provides much of the funding for projects facilitated by CMHP. The plan must specify how the region will provide emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent housing. CMHP also works to identify gaps in available services, and then works with agencies to try to fill those gaps.
The $2,500 Operation Round Up grant from ECE will help CMHP develop that continuum of care plan, said Graphenteen, by researching services and working with area groups to develop potential housing projects.
CMHP also has a role in ranking various proposed housing and homelessness projects in its region, helping to prioritize projects submitted by various groups for HUD funding.
For example, one project that CMHP is ranking high in its list of priorities is the potential development of a day center in Cambridge, Minn.
The day center is being proposed by Volunteers of America and would provide area homeless individuals with a place to go during the day for resources regarding homelessness, chemical dependency services, job training programs, and other resources. At night, local churches and volunteers would take turns providing homeless individuals with a bed and a meal.
The project is being looked at carefully by many rural communities in CMHP's region, as homeless individuals in rural areas are typically very under served, and this day center option is being regarded as a potential cost-effective way of providing those much-needed services.
Operation Round Up is a charity program offering ECE customers an opportunity to contribute locally through their monthly electric bill.
Funds are raised by rounding customers' bills up to the nearest dollar. A trust board reviews applications from charitable organizations and considers approval of grant requests.