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Alternative homeownership options

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This week, the Minnesota Homeownership Center looks at two alternative homeownership options that can help those with very low income get started on a successful ownership and wealth-building journey–namely, community land trusts and housing equity coops. These options involve sharing the home’s equity with a sponsoring entity or with other owners, and thus the cost of entry for buyers is significantly reduced. It’s very important to note, that as a result of the shared equity, these options facilitate reduced wealth-building when compared to traditional homeownership. They are best utilized as a stepping-stone toward full ownership as the buyer continues to improve their financial situation from a stable housing vantage point.

Community land trusts

In the world of homeownership, a community land trust is typically a plot or plots of land administered by a nonprofit on behalf of the community. Such income individuals to purchase them. When the occupants sell, they retain a portion of the increased property value of the this alternative model keeps land trust homes deeply affordable for future generations.

According to Grounded bership granted via purchase of a share in the cooperative. Each shareholder is granted the right to occupy one co-op tain a portion of the increased property value of the unit. The increased value of the building as a whole is retained by the coop, again allowing the deeply affordable ownership cycle to continue.

Cloud, and Greater Metropolitan Housing Corporation and Rondo Community Land Trust here in the Twin Cities.

According to Cooperative Housing International, there are about 6,400 housing cooperatives in the United States today. A partial list of housing equity co-ops in Minnesota is available on the locally based Shared Capital Cooperative’s website at SharedCapital.coop. Shared Capital is a funder of business coops of all types, all across the country.

It’s worthwhile to state again that these options offer significantly lower potential for wealth building when compared to traditional homeownership, as the equity of the home or unit is being shared with the sponsoring organization in order to perpetuate deep affordability. They are best utilized as steppingstones toward full ownership as the buyer continues to improve their financial situation from a stable housing foundation. The Minnesota Homeownership Center’s Homeownership Advisors are well-equipped to navigate these options with you, and help you to determine if they are the right path for you. Homeownership is possible.

For more information on the Minnesota Homeownership Center and its advisor and education services, visit www.

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White students to be exposed to [how the] racial underpinnings of our society and culture have, in some sense, frustrated democracy, created pockets of inequality and injustice and remain impediments to the realization of the founding fathers’ well-articulated but not fully realized values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, particularly for African American and Black folks,” Williams said.

Williams is the founder of the Racial Justice Initiative and specializes in supporting racial justice education. The University of

Education

Continued from page 1 more than their peers for absences or missed assignments due to the pandemic.

Crosson noted that even with the increase in graduation rates this year, Minnesota still

St. Thomas launched the Racial Justice Initiative in June 2020 to drive reform that reduces racial ranks the lowest of any state in graduation rates for Latino students, and second worst for Asian and Black students. While graduation rates increased in several metro area school districts, Crosson said math and reading proficiency in Minnesota is decreasing faster than anywhere else in the nation.

Class Of 2023

Name: Wakan Austin

Age: 18

Thomas Edison High School, Minneapolis

GPA/Honors: 3.01

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in the third quarter of his freshman year, Wakan Austin says he still got the full high school experience.

“I don’t feel like I missed out on my high school experience. I just think my high school experience was drastically different than most,” Wakan said. “I don’t think I’ll miss anything [about high school.] I think everything happened at the right time and the right place.”

Name: Ali Adem

Age: 18 FAIR School Downtown, Minneapolis

GPA: 3.37

Ali Adem fell behind in his freshman year after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“I didn’t have any in-person classes, and that pulled me away from socializing with people,” Adem said. “I began to feel separated from everyone I knew. Once we returned during my junior year, most of my friends had moved to different schools and I was left with only a few.”

Adem bounced back his sophomore year when

Name: Brandon Arroyo

Galeana

Age: 18 Harding High School, St. Paul

GPA/Honors: 3.64, cum laude inequity in the Twin Cities.

Brandon Arroyo Galeana did middle school at a bilingual charter school. Harding was the first public school he attended. Although nervous at first, he says the teachers really helped him along. He credits counselor Katie Kovacovich and his Spanish teacher Mary Crosby with helping him prepare for college. Arroyo Galeana was accepted at Dunwoody College, where he won a scholarship to study architecture.

In May, Williams and other scholars from across the country convened in St. Petersburg, Florida, for a 24-hour “Teach-In for American Democracy,” a public statement against attempts to “silence truth in education” hosted by the Institute for Common Power. During the teach-in, professors lectured about Black history and related topics via livestreams accessible to the public as a counter to policies like the Stop WOKE Act. The lectures remain available on Common Power’s YouTube channel.

Williams calls the racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd an “emancipatory moment” that follows similar piv- otal moments marking breakthroughs in the pursuit of racial equity in American history, including the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

“But we know that if people don’t know that history, this simply becomes one of these moments where the argument for why it didn’t work will simply be, “Well, this didn’t work because Black folks didn’t work hard enough or weren’t prepared,’” Williams said.

He stressed the importance of supporting teachers, running for local school board positions, pushing back against book bans, and taking interest in schools’ curriculums.

In January, Dylan Saul, then managing editor of the Minnesota Law Review, noted in a piece published by the journal that critical race theory (CRT) is not actually being taught in K-12 schools, despite the urgent politicization of the issue.

“Anti-CRT crusaders, nevertheless, have primed the American public to equate CRT with perceived anti-White bias. These activists allege CRT is being used to indoctrinate school children into hating the United States and feeling discomfort over their own race,” Saul wrote, ultimately concluding that critical race theory deprives students of their First Amendment rights.

Niara Savage welcomes reader comments at nsavage@spokesman-recorder.com.

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Austin plans to attend the University of Minnesota (U of M) to study sociology in the fall. Austin feels like the pandemic and 2022 teachers strike left him academically behind, so he plans to do a summer STEM program and join the U of M’s “President’s Emerging Scholars” program to help him gain academic success.

Austin said he is “100 percent optimistic” about his future at college and beyond. “I’m really excited to go to college. I’m really excited to have control over my education and decide what I want to study and actually do homework on things I find important.” he began taking collegelevel courses. He credits his friends and teachers for helping keep him on track. He scored an internship at Target, even getting to meet the company’s CIO. He says he plans “on working [his] way up to meeting the CEO.” Adem plans to study computer science at Augsburg University and to continue his internship at Target throughout his college years. Adem said he is optimistic about the future, quoting rapper J. Cole: “I always feel like it’s two key ingredients when it comes to following your dreams. Making something happen that the average person deems difficult,

“With the help of Ms. Katie, I found the opportunity. I applied for the scholarship that Dunwoody was giving called P2C (Pathways 2 Careers), which was $10,000 each year,” said Arroyo Galeana. “I wrote my essays. Around April, I found out that I got the scholarship, which was a really exciting moment for me.”

He has already been offered an internship at Mortenson, where he will work on construction projects at Allianz field, a stadium where Arroyo Galeana played during his time as captain of the Harding varsity soccer team.

Arroyo Galeana recalls the match at Allianz field fondly, saying he was nominated for

“The gap between who can read a diploma and who is getting a diploma is growing.”

Crosson pointed out that the Robbinsdale area schools saw significant increases in gradua-

Name: Dontae Willis

Age: 18 Humboldt High School, St. Paul GPA: 3.91

Dontae Willis played four sports during high school— floor hockey, softball, soccer, and adaptive bowling, where he took fourth place at the state tournament. Now Willis, who has Down Syndrome, has his eyes set on competing in the Special Olympics, where he hopes to compete in floor hockey, bowling, and flag football.

Willis enjoyed being on his tion rates for Black students this year, but Black students in the district had a lower reading proficiency rate and half the math proficiency of Black students statewide. Crosson referred to how graduation rates can be rising while academic proficiency rates are plummeting as ‘the million-dollar question.’ high school’s sports teams so much that he said sports were the thing he would miss most after graduating.

Willis plans to attend Focus Beyond, a transitional school, until he is 21. He also plans to grow his social media accounts on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch, where he streams Fortnite, a popular battle royale video game.

Willis says he is optimistic about his future.

“We’re here to help him all the way,” said Shanika White, Willis’s mom. “He has a good support system.”

“We’re still failing students at an abysmal rate in this state,” Crosson said “and the students that we’re failing have been historically underserved and under-resourced.” if you truly believe it, that’s step one. Step two is, you know, the hard work that goes along with it.”

Cole Miska welcomes reader comments at cmiska@spokesman-recorder.com.

Austin is excited to see the changes his generation will make when they graduate and eventually gain political power.

Brandon Arroyo Galeana

player of the night and won a trophy for the match.

Arroyo Galeana says the thing he will miss most about high school is playing on the sports teams.

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