About Hennepin County
Hennepin County is Minnesota’s most populous county, made up of 45 cities, including Minneapolis. The county’s racial and ethnic composition has been diversifying since the mid-20th century, with a White majority alongside Black, Asian, and Hispanic communities. While the median household income is approximately 20% higher than the national average, poverty persists, with 10.1% of the population living below the poverty line.
Community Context
Strengths
Hennepin County is one of the Upper Midwest’s biggest economic hubs and home to several Fortune 500 companies, including Target, UnitedHealth Group, and Best Buy. The county’s most populous city – Minneapolis – is considered to have one of the strongest parks systems in the country, consistently ranking in the top five cities in Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore, determined based on acreage, investment, amenities, access, and equity.
Hennepin County Government has set ambitious goals at the intersection of affordable housing and homelessness, anchored in its seven disparity reduction domains of which housing is a key pillar. In 2019, the county launched a 10-year supportive housing strategy that supports the development of 1,000 new supportive housing units. This is complemented by wraparound services, particularly in support of those overcoming chronic homelessness, or leaving institutional settings. Through the expansion of supportive housing, low barrier shelter, street outreach, and other innovative models, Hennepin has reduced unsheltered homelessness by 33%, functionally ended veterans homelessness, and housed 9,500 people since 2020.
Barriers
Hennepin County has one of the largest racial gaps in homeownership in the country. This persists partly as a result of racial covenants in the first half of the 20th century, which prevented specific groups from residing in or purchasing homes in certain areas of the community.
Questions & Challenges
How do we shift resident voice from input to shared power?
Residents at Emerson Village spoke with clarity and conviction about what they need: safety, mental health resources, and consistent communication with staff. When listened to, they shared actionable ideas and solutions. More than eliciting feedback, shared power means embedding resident voice into decision-making structures that shape operations, partnerships, and policy. This makes residents co-creators of the systems intended to support them.
Supportive housing risks isolation without external connections
Participants stressed that permanent supportive housing should not become an island. Transportation barriers, limited nearby gathering spaces, and a lack of partnerships with neighborhood institutions can isolate residents from the broader community. Intentionally building bridges with schools, recreation centers, faith groups, and other civic spaces so that supportive housing strengthens both resident well-being and neighborhood life.
What does a balance between flexible and fair policies look like?
Participants wrestled with the tension between accountability and compassion. Residents expressed frustration when lease or other house rules are applied unevenly, too broadly, or fail to consider individual circumstances. At the same time, they noted that inconsistent enforcement, or non-enforcement of community guidelines can undermine fairness and safety. Designing and applying policies that are enforced transparently and adapatable to context can uphold shared expectations without exacerbating inequities.
Partnerships need structure to survive change
While cross-sector collaboration has sustained supportive housing for decades, participants acknowledged that it often weakens without clear roles, accountability, and coordination. Participants called for dedicated organizers to manage relationships across agencies and sectors, noting that health and social supports are particularly vulnerable to fragmentation. This paves the way for collaboration structures that are “sticky” – ones that are able to adapt while maintaining trust and continuity among residents and staff alike.
Promising Initiatives
Supportive Housing at Emerson Village
Emerson Village is Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative’s newest permanent supportive housing (PSH) community in North Minneapolis providing 40 housing units for families overcoming homelessness who make less than $30,000 per year. The model pairs deeply affordable homes with onsite services and robust neighborhood partnerships to strengthen stability, belonging, and opportunity.. In partnership with on-site service provider Project for Pride in Living (PPL), Emerson brings together housing with wraparound services related to health, employment, education, and more. Funding for the project came from a wide range of sources, including Minnesota Housing, Hennepin County, the City of Minneapolis, and donations from community members.
Trusted Messengers Program
Recognizing that community leaders have the strongest relationships and most trust with residents, Hennepin County operates a Trusted Messengers program that engages local leaders representing diverse communities as Consultants, Communicators, Conveners, and Connectors. Through these roles, the program explicitly recognizes the power of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital by leveraging existing relationships within community groups, creating communication channels between the community and the county, and connecting community members to resources.
Sacred Settlements
Sacred Settlements are small communities of tiny homes built on land owned by religious institutions (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.), intended to provide permanent housing for people who are unhoused or very low-income, especially those who have experienced chronic homelessness. Alongside homes for those who have been unhoused, the model includes “intentional neighbors” who have not been homeless but live in the settlement to help build community, provide support, and foster relationships to re-create the social connection that many unhoused persons have lost. A law enacted in 2024 allows religious institutions to use their land to host these settlements for homeless or very low-income people without being blocked by existing zoning restrictions or regulatory hurdles.
The “All Are Welcome” Van
Stocked with free books to give away, art supplies, games, and more, Hennepin County is bringing the library to the people through its library van. Partnering with grocery stores frequented by the community’s ethnic groups has helped the county introduce the library to people who may not be familiar with what it has to offer. The van also offers Wi-Fi, bringing Internet access to residents across neighborhoods. From visiting parks to community centers, the library van is a model for going to places where residents already gather to connect them with local resources.
Gatherings
Our Local Advisor in Hennepin County is Chris LaTondresse, a former Hennepin County Commissioner who now serves as CEO at Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative.
When we approached him to co-plan gatherings, he suggested a full-day event at Emerson Village, a supportive housing community in North Minneapolis as a “third place” for residents and civic leaders to learn, connect, and act together in shared exploration of a bold idea: permanent supportive housing (PSH) works, in part, because it builds social connection (bonding, bridging, and linking capital).
At Beacon’s recommendation, we designed a full-day gathering at Emerson Village in North Minneapolis to center resident connection in the morning and invite the broader civic community into the same space over lunch to experience PSH as social infrastructure in action.
Morning: Resident connection (bonding) Twenty residents gathered in a restorative circle in Emerson Village’s Community Room. Using public narrative/storytelling, participants named shared values, acknowledged tensions, and began building empathy, trust, and accountability. Some voiced skepticism about “one more process,” while many articulated clear hopes for themselves and building community, directly advancing the goal of strengthening the social fabric within the building.
Afternoon: Community convening (bridging & linking) The afternoon brought residents together with 20+ leaders from community organizations, local government, philanthropy, and housing. After an overview of the evidence on social connection from F4SC, a cross-sector panel connected the research to PSH and to Emerson’s on-the-ground practices. Small-group “World Café” conversations then provided input on F4SC’s social capital framework and surfaced ideas for addressing housing challenges through stronger relationships and aligned policies.
Momentum & next steps Several residents asked to learn and lead restorative circle and storytelling practices going forward, signaling an appetite for continued connection. Based on this interest and the day’s outcomes, Beacon is exploring how to extend restorative circles and public narrative across other residences, using Emerson Village as a pilot for building the connection infrastructure that underpins housing stability, opportunity, and social mobility.
Individual and collective goals are often intertwined and simultaneously addressed through connection.
Findings
Shared spaces need sustained operations, not just capital.
Announcing new infrastructure projects may make for splashy announcements and appear to have an impact, but participants expressed an equal – if not greater – importance of allocating funding to maintain and update existing infrastructure over time. In the case of Emerson Village, residents named the Community Room, outdoor areas, and children’s spaces as essential third places inside the building. Leaders emphasized that operating support for and maintenance of these spaces are what keep them safe, staffed, and welcoming – where connection actually happens. Just as people come to rely on physical infrastructure to get around, have access to clean water, etc., so, too, do they come to rely on social infrastructure as places where they can regularly interact with others and build relationships in the community. Financing infrastructure projects must account for this.
Social infrastructure deserts can exist within a community, often along existing divides.
Assessing the state of social infrastructure at a community-wide level can leave out important nuances about which residents specifically have access to such infrastructure and which ones do not. Zooming in to the neighborhood or block level can shed light on disparities that are not apparent at the aggregate level. This is particularly important given that these differences can mirror racial and/or economic divides. For example, participants at the gathering noted few low-barrier opportunities within walking distance to connect (libraries, recreation centers, youth programs, etc.) and called for intentional partnerships with Northside institutions to close these gaps.
Individual and collective needs are not mutually exclusive – if anything, they’re interdependent.
Safety was a recurring theme in conversations at Emerson Village, with residents expressing a strong desire to live in a place that is safe for their kids. Lacking such a sense of safety made it difficult for residents to think beyond their immediate family’s needs. Through connecting with each other in a restorative circle, residents got to know each other and developed trust, increasing their familiarity with their neighbors. These outcomes illustrate how individual and collective goals are often intertwined and simultaneously addressed through connection. In the case of community safety, residents individually benefit from collectively being familiar with each other and looking out for each other’s children.
