Minnesota

National campaign to Stamp Out Hunger is Saturday, May 10!!  It is the nations largest single-day food drive.  If you’d like to participate, just place bags of non-perishable food next to your mailbox or bring them in to your local post office.  The postal service will take care of delivering them to your local food shelf.

 To learn more go to http://www.helpstampouthunger.com/ 

How to plan and build sustainable affordable housing and communities in Minnesota. 

Minnesota Green Communities is a statewide collaboration of the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, the Family Housing Fund, and Enterprise. The National Green Communities initiative is a five-year commitment by Enterprise to build more than 8,500 healthy, efficient homes for low-income people and make sustainable development the mainstream in the affordable housing industry.

They are having a statewide conference on May 21-22.  There’s a link below were you can access their conference website.

Featuring keynote speakers: Mark Fenton and Van Jones.

Both days include expert workshops and a luncheon keynote address on a wide array of affordable, sustainable development topics, including residential green building, Minnesota Housing funding requirements, energy conservation and climate protection strategies, equitable green economic development, and healthy homes and communities.

 http://www.mngreencommunities.org/gbd/index.htm 

Please click on the link below to access the meeting summary

May 5 Call Summary 

Thanks to a colleague here at Extension, we were recently alerted to the availability of home repair and home purchase loans available through the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Program. After a bit of research, we’ve determined that ALL 9 Horizons communities are eligible. These loans are an excellent deal for home buyers in small communities, and the repair loan program can be a big help to current homeowners. There are different flyers for each region, so I’ll post them here according to the Horizons communities served:

Hokah & Elmore Repair Loans

Hokah & Elmore Mortgage Program

St. James and Mountain Lake Repair Loans

St. James and Mountain Lake Mortgage Program

Eveleth, Floodwood, and Chisholm Repair Loans

Eveleth, Floodwood, and Chisholm Mortgage Program

Fertile Repair Loans

Fertile Mortgage Program

New York Mills Repair Loans and Mortgages (info coming soon - sorry for the delay!)