Affordable Housing and Homelessness – Minnesota

More and more Minnesota renters just a heartbeat from homelessness, By Bob Shaw, June 26, 2011, Pioneer Press: “For many Minnesotans, home has never been so hard to pay for. The number of people who can barely afford a place to live has reached an all-time high, creating a new kind of client for homeless shelters – the almost-homeless. ‘I am not a failure,’ said ‘Lovie’ Robinson, 22, as he slumped at a table in the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul. ‘It’s just that there are not a lot of jobs for people like me.’ Like many of the near-homeless, he goes to the shelter for food and supplies so he can pay his rent. His monthly income is $795, and he pays $600 rent for himself, his 1-year-old daughter and a roommate. ‘I eat a lot of pasta and rice,’ he said. Robinson is one of a growing number of Minnesotans paying more than half their incomes in rent or mortgage payments, regarded as the point at which housing is not affordable. That number spiked to 14 percent in 2009, after decades of hovering near 8 percent…”