Franchise Opportunities in Minneapolis, MN

The state’s financial community marked a milestone Tuesday morning as the first ever Black-owned Minnesota bank opened its doors in Minneapolis, vowing to address the state's income and wealth disparities head on.

A handful of the state's biggest banks even helped out, in a rare show of cooperation aimed at diversifying Minnesota's financial services industry.

Detroit-based First Independence Bank opened the doors of its first expansion outside of Michigan, in a former Wells Fargo Bank branch near Highway 280 and University Avenue. It is the first time in Minnesota history a bank, with its tellers and loan officers, ATMs and drive-through lanes has had Black ownership.

Bank CEO Kenneth Kelly noted that the expansion may seem counterintuitive for a bank dedicated to diversity and looking for ground to grow on: Minnesota has some of the widest income gaps in the country, and a history of discriminatory loan practices that have long impaired Black wealth.

"Those things are true and that's one reason that it was important to us, to look at seeing how we can help solve those issues,” Kelly said.

Part of the solution, executives say, is to open a bank that looks like the people it seeks to serve. From the branch manager to the security staff to a jazz violinist playing in the parking lot to warm up the opening day crowd, customers will find people of color ready for business.

"You know, we're really going to be a servant to the community and what that looks like is really striving to build stewards of banking,” said Damon Jenkins, a First Independence vice president and head of the new branch who has previous experience as a Wells Fargo executive in the Twin Cities.

"First pillar is financial wellness. We have to get the resources in people's hands, so they can understand banking, but more importantly so that they can trust banking again. And then the other thing is home ownership, you know we're really striving to get more Black people into homes, knowing that here in the state that's our biggest opportunity, with us having the worst discrepancy for homeownership in the nation for Black people."

The new bank is different in other ways as well.

It’s the product of an entire community effort. Banking giant Wells Fargo donated the building to the Twin Cities nonprofit Project for Pride in Living. In turn, they are leasing the bank branch to First Independence.

"We view this expansion as an effort that builds capabilities and muscle in communities of color, in the Black community for the long haul,” said Paul Williams, Project for Pride in Living’s CEO.

Williams hopes the site can even eventually include affordable housing and other amenities.

"Our folks deserve to be here."

The business advocacy group Greater MSP and four other banks, including Bank of America, Bremer Bank, Huntington Bank and U.S. Bank also joined in to help woo First Independence onto their own turf, setting aside their competitive nature to build diversity in the financial community.

Wells Fargo has put $50 million into what it calls minority depository institutions — banks owned and operated by people of color.

“It’s really, really important to understand that to close the racial wealth gap, it’s going to take all of us,” said Danielle Squires, head of diverse segments for corporate investment and banking at Wells Fargo. “It’s not a one-bank solution, it's not a five-bank solution, heck, it’s not a 20-bank solution. So we all need to work together to help institutions like First Independence grow and succeed and thrive. There's enough business to go around."

First Independence is already planning to open another branch at Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue in south Minneapolis in June.

You make MPR News possible. Individual donations are behind the clarity in coverage from our reporters across the state, stories that connect us, and conversations that provide perspectives. Help ensure MPR remains a resource that brings Minnesotans together.

The Department of Health is investigating three cases of children under 3 who had liver inflammation and may be part of a national cluster of hepatitis in kids.

MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Department of Health is telling parents to be on the lookout for signs of inflammation as more cases of hepatitis in children are reported across the country.

The department of health is now investigating three cases of liver inflammation in children in Minnesota under the age of 3 that may be part of a national cluster of hepatitis in kids.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. health officials are currently looking into more than 100 possible cases of the mysterious and severe liver disease, including five deaths.

The cause of the inflammation is still unclear, according to health officials, but may be associated with adenovirus type 41.

There are dozens of adenoviruses, and many are associated with coldlike symptoms, fever, sore throat and pink eye. But some versions can trigger other problems, including inflammation in the stomach and intestines. Officials are exploring a link to one particular version that’s normally associated with gut inflammation.

Signs and symptoms of liver inflammation can include jaundice, or yellowing of the skin or eyes, fatigue, fever, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, dark urine and joint pain.

MDH says one child needed a liver transplant and has since recovered, while the other two cases recovered without the need for a liver transplant. Epidemiologists are aware of at least two other possible cases at local hospitals in children that aren't Minnesota residents.

On April 29, M Health Fairview confirmed to KARE 11 it was treating a 2-year-old from South Dakota for severe hepatitis.

The toddler, named Baelyn, was initially brought to her doctor for an allergic reaction and given Epinephrine, her mother Kelsea Schwab said. After repeated visits to her doctors in South Dakota, Schwab was told something was wrong with Baelyn's liver and that she needed to be transferred to Masonic Children's Hospital in the Twin Cities, where she's awaiting a liver transplant.

About two dozen states reported suspected cases after the CDC put out a call for doctors to be on the lookout for surprising cases of hepatitis. The cases date back to late October in children under 10.

This week, the World Health Organization officials said they had reports of almost 300 probable cases in 20 countries.

In the U.S., 94% of the children were hospitalized and eight received liver transplants.

Watch the latest local news from the Twin Cities in our YouTube playlist:

A first-of-its kind electric vehicle carshare network received its official launch in St. Paul and Minneapolis on Friday.

The EV Spot Network is the first 100% renewably-powered, city-owned carshare in the nation.

The initial roll-out is ongoing with 101 electric vehicles already in service since February, according the City of St. Paul. An additional 70 vehicles will be added as supply chain allows, and over 280 public charging stations are available in the network.

The stations are available to any electric vehicle user and scattered throughout a 35-square-mile area with 90% placed in census tracts noted as an "area of concern for environmental justice."

Mayors Melvin Carter and Jacob Frey, of St. Paul and Minneapolis respectively, joined U.S. Sen. Tina Smith to announce the new service Friday, arriving at the podium in an Evie car.

During the announcement Friday, Carter highlighted the EV Spot Network's aim to serve those who have limited transportation options and are at higher-risk of being negatively impacted by the climate crisis.

"We're blazing a trail that we believe others will absolutely see the need to follow," he said.

Funding for the project included $4 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation, $3.65 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, $4 million from Xcel Energy, $750,000 from the City of St. Paul and $350,000 from the City of Minneapolis.

The project also received significant support from private foundations.

How it works

Evie Carshare is providing the fleet of Chevy Bolts and Nissan Leaf+ models to the City of St. Paul under a lease. The carshare service itself is operated for the city by HOURCAR, a local nonprofit.

Vehicles may be driven beyond the EV Spot Network service area, but all trips must end with the vehicle parked back within the network's boundaries.

Over 3,000 subscribers were already registered before Friday's announcement event at the Union Depot in St. Paul.

Subscriptions cost between $0-$30 a month, and $6 a month for students.

Users can register at www.eviecarshare.com, via the HOURCAR/Evie Carshare App, or by calling HOURCAR at 612- 343-2277.

I’ve worked on housing affordability since 1997. That whole time, the Twin Cities has been losing ground, with homes becoming steadily less affordable. Rents have been rising — sometimes very rapidly. The portion of people paying more than 30 percent or even 50 percent of their income in rent (the definition of “housing cost burden”) is stubbornly high, especially for Black households. While we increase public funding for Affordable Housing — the subsidized kind — the number of unsheltered people grows.

The first step in turning that around is to stop losing the most common kind of affordable home, “Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing” (NOAH) apartments. The Twin Cities population grew by 314,000 more people between 2010 and 2020, and we haven’t built enough homes to shelter everyone. As a result, people looking for a place to live unknowingly bid up rents on the homes that exist. In Minneapolis, and across the Twin Cities, we’ve seen owners flipping NOAH properties, pushing out renters and jacking up rents.

But, recently, it seems like something has started to shift.

Each year, I revisit the rents in the fourplex I own. For a while, the rents in similar apartments were inevitably higher. A couple of years ago, I noticed they weren’t going up anymore. In fact, they were a little lower — and when I renewed leases, I dropped my rents (even though my property tax and insurance costs increased by thousands of dollars).

Then there was the story of my longtime neighbor. He mentioned to a couple of the other owner/managers on the block that he wanted to move. A few weeks ago he told me that he’d signed a lease just up the block for $300 less per month than what he’s paying next door.

Is something shifting or is it my own wishful thinking? Are we on track with Policy 1 in Minneapolis 2040: Access to Housing: Increase the supply of housing and its diversity of location and types? Has visible support for building homes and the tax base resulted in a net gain of homes? Have early 2040 zoning reforms made it more predictable to build the homes we need?

In 2018, streets.mn writer Anton Schieffer asked, “How many homes does Minneapolis need?” He showed we need to build roughly 4,000 homes per year. That makes up for Minneapolis’ shortage of homes and accommodates our growing population. Alex Schieferdecker tracks the number of homes approved by the Planning Commission. Last year he shared that Minneapolis leaped from 2,600 unit approvals in 2015 to 5,077 approvals in 2020. HUD data on construction permits pulled shows 14,960 units permitted between 2018 and 2021. That averages 3,740 per year. It is plausible that owners and managers are having to lower asking rents to find renters.

The best Minneapolis data on rent changes is HousingLink’s monthly Minneapolis Rental Housing Brief. Other sources are for the seven-county metro area or are self-reported rent paid for buildings with 20-plus units (per this MinnPost article). That misses many people’s experience, given that one in three renters in Minneapolis lives in one- to three-unit buildings, licensing data show.

HousingLink’s Rental Housing Brief uses advertised rents by apartment size. That is what renters see when looking for a new apartment, although we can’t know if owner/managers find renters willing to pay those prices. Each month is shown compared with one year prior. But smallish sample sizes and outliers skew the monthly data. What I really want to know is how things have changed over the past five years.

This spring, I pulled all the median advertised rent information from the Minneapolis Rental Housing Brief into a spreadsheet. I didn’t adjust it for inflation. I used three-month rolling averages to smooth out the monthly noise. Check out these results.

The actual advertised median rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments are lower — in actual dollars — in 2022 than they were in late 2018. Three-bedroom rents went up 2 percent over the four years, while inflation went up 11 percent over the same time. These shifts started more than a year before the pandemic. “Post” pandemic increases look big due to the atypical and extremely low rents during summer 2020. But trends show that Minneapolis rents have simply returned to pre-pandemic levels.

This is a notable shift, diverging from national trends that show spiking rents (shown in the graph above), and it’s promising for renters.

We have a regional housing market, so I pulled the data for St. Paul, too. Until voters passed rent stabilization by a comfortable margin last November — the ordinance became effective earlier this month, on May 1 — new housing construction had been growing in St. Paul, with permits pulled for 6,369 units from 2018 through 2020. I hoped that the pattern would hold in both core cities.

Median advertised one-bedroom rents in St. Paul are flat. But two-bedroom rents are up a little, and three-bedroom rents increased twice as much as in Minneapolis. St. Paul rents are trending in the opposite direction from Minneapolis.

There’s always been a rent premium to live in Minneapolis or, put another way, a discount offered to people willing to rent in its smaller twin city. Has that changed over the past four years?

No matter the apartment size, while renters likely can save a bit by living in St. Paul, the median savings has shrunk from hundreds of dollars per month to $50. In a surprising shift, median advertised rents were actually lower in Minneapolis than St. Paul for one-bedroom and three-bedroom homes both in February and March 2022.

These trends suggest that owners have less ability to flip more NOAH properties, increase rents and still find renters. Most NOAH owners will have to keep their rents flat, or maybe even drop them, to keep them filled. If we’ve staunched the loss of NOAH units, building new subsidized homes can help shrink the number of people who need a place that fits their budget. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of people currently need an affordable home.

But building affordable homes will never be enough. This problem has no single solution. We also need more tenant protections, like just-cause eviction and rent stabilization. We need to ensure that every person has the income to afford a home whether from increased wages, making housing subsidy an entitlement or social housing. Minneapolis minimum wage hasn’t yet reached $15 per hour, and $15 is a long way from the NLIHC-calculated $17.27 housing wage needed to afford just a studio apartment in the Twin Cities.

I’m left with more questions: Why are advertised Minneapolis rents dropping compared with St. Paul rents? Why are Minneapolis and St. Paul rents flat compared with national trends?

Median rent trends hide what’s happening for people in the toughest situations: people with very low incomes, those who are facing discrimination or who need accessible homes. There’s plenty we can’t see here.

What do you see in these data? What questions do you have?

Photo at top of story courtesy of MPR News

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Video (01:05) : Twin Cities morning weather forecast for Thursday, May 12

Severe weather brought a mix of hail, tornadoes and heavy rain to Minnesota, causing widespread power outages, flooding and dangerous traveling conditions.

Tornado sirens went off across the metro area, including in Minneapolis, on Wednesday evening. Widespread power outages were reported, with about 80,800 Xcel Energy customers without service. Heavy rain flooded streets and parts of highways across the Twin Cities, stalling cars and hydroplaning vehicles.

A National Weather Service warning told residents in affected areas to beware of "destructive" winds of up to 80 mph and to seek shelter.

In Minneapolis, a flash flood warning was issued, and cars were stalled and partly submerged in Minneapolis at 50th Street and Nicollet Avenue, 28th Street and Lyndale Avenue and 42nd Street and 38th Avenue. Flooding at the Mall of America also caused the light rail to temporarily stop service, and Metro Transit temporarily halted Green Line service due to high winds.

Some traffic lights and streetlights were also out across the metro area. The soccer field at Allianz Field in St. Paul also flooded, suspending Wednesday's game between Minnesota United and Colorado. The Bloomington Fire Department tweeted that firefighters responded to numerous incidents, including removing trees from roadways.

Near-record highs of 90 degrees and humid conditions will likely fuel more storms Thursday when most of the state will be under an enhanced risk for severe weather — including another possibility of tornadoes, hail and high winds.

"We're expecting severe weather [Thursday] — strong damaging winds, large hail and possible tornadoes," said Melissa Dye, meteorologist at the Weather Service.

Earlier Wednesday, storms dumped more than 3 inches of rain near Waseca, Minn., and hail 1 inch in diameter or greater was reported in Plainview, Kasson, Pine Island, St. Michael and Cottonwood. The largest stones — 2½ inches in diameter or the size of a tennis ball — fell in Oronoco, just north of Rochester, the Weather Service said.

Some Xcel Energy customers lost service in the St. Cloud area after morning storms rolled through Stearns County.

Wednesday's wild weather came two days after powerful storms ripped down power lines, toppled scores of trees and damaged buildings in Chisago County and in Polk County in western Wisconsin. Residents in Lindstrom, Minn., were still cleaning up damage from Monday's storms. There was damage throughout Chisago County, the sheriff's office said.

Behind the storms, temperatures will fall back into the upper 70s Friday and low 70s Saturday and Sunday.

Staff writer Vince Tuss contributed to this report.