Healthy Community Initiative

By Emily Culver as a Guest Columnist for the Northfield News

Writing this, I have had the pleasure of supporting the efforts of the Northfield Racial and Ethnic Equity Collaborative (NREEC) Housing Work Group for nearly one year. This group includes representatives from Habitat for Humanity, Three Rivers Community Action, Community Action Center, Northfield Union of Youth, Neighbors United, Healthy Community Initiative, Northfield Public Schools, city of Northfield staff and elected officials, and Rice County HRA and elected officials. Recognizing that safe and stable housing underpins educational success, these partners came together formally in 2021 to review local housing data and to work collectively to improve housing options for youth and families.

That same year, the NREEC Housing Work Group began receiving technical assistance from Enterprise Community Partners, a nationally recognized housing nonprofit. Enterprise further assessed Northfield’s housing conditions and brought together small teams to discuss solutions to the identified housing challenges. Participants represented various stakeholders including nonprofit leaders, housing developers, and community members with lived experience of housing challenges. Together, these teams brainstormed 23 distinct solutions, which Enterprise compiled and presented in a report to the NREEC Housing Work Group.

In October 2024, the NREEC Housing Work Group narrowed down which of these community-identified solutions to tackle first. The five solutions they decided to focus on collectively were language accessibility, an inclusionary housing (zoning) ordinance, financial and homebuyer education, eviction prevention, and manufactured housing repair and replacement. Over the last ten months, partners have been working collectively to breathe life into these solutions, with some notable highlights I will outline below:

Rice County Family Services Collaborative, Community Action Center and Healthy Community Initiative collaboratively hosted a Housing Webinar Series this spring. Multiple partner organizations from the NREEC Housing Work Group participated as expert panelists in this series of free virtual webinars that focused on key housing topics. The webinars are recorded and dubbed in Spanish and Somali to address a wide audience. Recordings are accessible here.

A group of local partners is participating in a nine-month community of practice, hosted by Enterprise and Impact Tulsa, focused on student eviction prevention strategies. The team is exploring ways to leverage public eviction data to support appropriate service delivery for students and families facing eviction.

The Mobile Home Rehabilitation Initiative, which was developed collaboratively by partner organizations from the NREEC Housing Work Group, now has a new home with Three Rivers Community Action. Additionally, after months of thoughtful and sometimes discouraging conversation, a small group of NREEC Housing Work Group members and partners expressed enthusiasm about a possible program structure to replace dilapidated manufactured homes in the community.

These advances represent only a snapshot of the good work happening locally around housing issues. Despite much uncertainty, I have witnessed community partners remain steadfast in their commitment to continuously improving the availability of safe, affordable, energy efficient housing for youth and families over the last year. As students and families prepare for the new school year, I hope these efforts inspire conversation and creativity around housing solutions to continue.