Raise Your Voice

We advocate for housing policies at the national level through action alerts and by attending the annual Habitat on the Hill D.C. Here are our current national priorities:

• HOME Investment Partnership (HOME) and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG ) are resources accessed through partnerships with local communities to develop new homes and ensure housing affordability for Habitat clients. With increasing land and construction costs and stagnating wages, these resources are vital in providing access to homeownership for working-class families.

• AmeriCorps has a long history at Twin Cities Habitat, and the service of AmeriCorps members is vital to our mission. We seek increased funding to recruit and support members as they serve onsite and within the Habitat office to engage volunteers, build and renovate homes, and share Habitat’s work with communities across the Twin Cities region.

• The Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (NHIA) would provide a federal tax credit to build and rehabilitate homes for lower and middle-income families. Twin Cities Habitat could utilize the NHIA to support the financing of new construction or rehab. New solutions like this one are badly needed to contend with skyrocketing housing costs and the affordable housing crisis.

Learn more about our federal priorities here.

We advocate for housing policies at the state level through action alerts, hosting Habitat on the Hill MN, Red Blue Build, meeting with legislators, and more. During the 2024 Legislative Session, we advocated for:

• The Establishment of a working Group for Homeowners Associations

  • HOAs create and enforce rules for the communities in which they operate, and while they provide benefits to residents, they can also cause challenges. There is a need for more transparency, better regulation, and better communication to resolve these issues.  

  • We successfully secured funding to create a working group that will compile data, track trends, and help inform future recommendations and policy priorities to better regulate HOAs. 

• Funding for the Heights

  • Alongside Sherman Associates and JO Companies, we advocated for $73 million from the state in housing infrastructure funds for the development of The Heights, and will continue to pursue funding in the future.  

  • Funding would be used to support the creation of over 1,000 new housing units, of which Twin Cities Habitat will build 147.  

• We also support:

  • Reducing barriers to building more homes by improving development processes and diversifying the kinds of housing that can be built statewide.

  • Adopting a constitutional amendment for housing that will provide a dedicated, ongoing stream of funding to address our state’s affordable housing crisis.

  • Increasing funding for housing infrastructure bonds to develop housing across the entire continuum.  

We also spend time building on successes from past years as new programs are implemented and invested in. Check out what our team pursued and accomplished last year: 

• The creation of a First-Generation Homebuyer Downpayment Assistance Program 

  • Implemented with a $100 million investment, this program supports down payment assistance for 3,000 grantees who are first-generation homebuyers whose parents do not or did not own a home.  

• Investment in the Homeownership Education, Counseling, and Training (HECAT) Program  

  • This program helps organizations like ours provide financial coaching, pre-purchase counseling, homebuyer education, and foreclosure prevention assistance, particularly for households of color.  

  • This received an increased investment of $2 million to be distributed over the next 2 years.  

We advocate for housing policies at the local level through targeted action alerts, events with coalition partners, local grassroots advocacy support, speaking at hearings, and more.

During Twin Cities Habitat's 2025 Budget Cycle, we are advocating for:

• Investment in the Affordable Homeownership Preservation Grant

  • In partnership with Minneapolis’s Regulatory Services, our A Brush with Kindness home repair program helps resolve open housing citations for low-income homeowners.

  • Our main priority this year is advocating for $295,000 in ongoing funding to continue this partnership in order to preserve affordable housing and prevent displacement of homeowners.  

We also advocate for: 

• Investment in city-funded programs that support new development. 

• • Programs like Minneapolis Homes Financing provide Twin Cities Habitat with essential funding to support the development and affordability of newly constructed homes. 

• Investment in foreclosure prevention funding. 

• • Cities and Counties are valuable partners in providing counseling resources to families experiencing financial hardships. 

• One-time investment requests for large developments such as The Heights in St. Paul. 

• • Learn more about our work at The Heights.

Check out what our team pursued during past budget cycles and what they achieved: 

• Read about the 2023 City Budget Outcomes 

• Read about Twin Cities Habitat’s 2022 Local Priorities