About
Hennepin County’s housing work is tailored to our region, supporting residents along a spectrum of housing needs. We play a unique role as both a funder of affordable housing and a provider of human services, helping to create housing opportunities and guide people into those opportunities.
Hennepin Housing overview 2023(PDF, 1MB)
Funding by activity
Our housing strategy
We work to support a range of affordable housing options and services across income levels. We call it the affordable housing spectrum, and it’s the heart of our housing strategy at Hennepin County.
Our goal is to make it easier for people to transition out of homelessness and move their way up the spectrum to increasing levels of housing stability.
Making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring
Our work helps to keep people in their homes or help them find new housing options. We often help people take the first step out of homelessness, acting as a guide through intensive case management and support. Once they have stable housing, it’s easier for them to receive medical treatment, pursue educational or job opportunities, and maintain a steady job.
Through programs like our supportive housing program, we work to provide wraparound services to help people gain, maintain, and build on housing stability.
Increasing affordable housing opportunities
It’s getting harder and harder to access affordable housing with rising rents and stagnating incomes. To help bridge the affordable housing gap, we provide capital support to create and preserve affordable housing for individuals and families whose incomes aren’t keeping up with housing costs. We focus our efforts on financing housing for households below 50% of the area median income (AMI), while leveraging other funding to preserve single family homes and reduce disparities in homeownership rates. This is where we can have the biggest impact.
Everyone can be housed. By meeting people where they’re at and helping them take the next steps along the housing spectrum, we are working toward the goal of making stable, affordable housing possible for all in Hennepin County.
Our post-pandemic response
The county received pandemic recovery funds that helped us to respond to emergency needs, accelerate affordable housing developments and strengthen housing strategies that had already been in place. Because of a strong strategy and vision for housing, we were able to benefit from these one-time investments for years to come.
