State announces almost $88 million in housing grants

An infusion of $87.5 million will create and preserve 1,700 units of affordable housing across Minnesota, state officials announced Thursday.

Minnesota Housing Commissioner Mary Tingerthal said the investment will spur additional local and private funding totaling $364 million and support more than 3,600 jobs. She said the funding will help bolster the state's housing stock.

"We need to build more than 10,000 more homes a year than we're building right now, and so, three-quarters of the houses that will be financed with the dollars today are going to be new construction," Tingerthal said.

Tingerthal made the announcement at the Jeremiah Program facility in St. Paul, a previous recipient of state funding, and which provides supportive housing to single mothers. It received funding this year to open a new site in Rochester.

Former Jeremiah Program resident Brittany Block said the program changed her life.

"Just having a safe place to go to every night, it relieved a lot of pressure, so I could focus on getting my education, healing my wounds from my traumatic childhood so I didn't perpetuate that stuff onto my son," Block said. "Really I wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for this building."

Over the past eight years, Minnesota Housing has spent more than $1.7 billion on affordable housing leading to the creation and preservation of 35,000 units.