Historic Rehabilitation Grants Help Homeless Native American Women and Children in Duluth, MN
Minnesota
YWCA-Duluth, MN
The American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHP) of Duluth was recently awarded a grant of $100,000 for the purpose of supporting housing creation and the American Indian Community Center. The AICHO will develop 29 units of affordable permanent supportive housing and an American Indian community center that will provide a variety of services including a gym, auditorium, an art gallery and a day care facility for the American Indian population in Duluth, in an urban (downtown) and historic building.
The development will be named Gimaajii Mino-Bimaadiziyaan , an Ojibwe phrase meaning "together we are beginning a good life." This will be the first American Indian community center in Duluth and believed to be the first of its kind in the country.
The vision of AICHO is to honor the resiliency of Native American people by strengthening communities and centering indigenous values in all aspects of work. AICHO grew out of the collective vision of Native American women in the community who saw a need for a culturally specific organization to respond to the issues facing Native people in and around Northeastern Minnesota. Homelessness, domestic violence and poverty are the key issues AICHO works to address.
YWCA-Duluth, MN
AICHO's grant was one of nine rehabilitation projects that will help transform older and historic communities that received $663,000 from the National Trust Loan Fund. The National Trust's Transformative Grant program provides funding to developers of older and historic real estate projects that have high community impact but are stalled or hampered by insufficient funding. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation supports the program, which focuses on preservation-based community development in the 26 communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers as well as Pontiac, Michigan, and Gulfport, Mississippi. The grants go to recipients across the country, with the exception of the southwestern U.S., where there are no Knight cities. Knight Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation share a commitment to support reinvestment in older and historic properties as a means to stimulate community development. Each project supports the adaptive reuse and preservation of existing historic assets and in many cases include a green building component.
"The high quality of these projects, the historic resources they return to productive use, and the impact these projects will have on their respective communities is truly remarkable," said Lauri M. Michel, Vice President of Community Revitalization for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "The projects exemplify core values of the National Trust: that the reuse of historic buildings and reinvestment in existing communities to meet modern needs are key principles of sustainable development."
"These projects have the power to create a new sense of place and life in historic areas," said Damian Thorman, National Program Director for Knight Foundation.
