Neighborhood Revitalization

Hope Community in the Neighborhood, ilustrated by Shari Albers, 2007. Click here to see the full map.

Community Change and Sustainability

Hope Community exists today because we saw opportunity where others had given up. In a very challenged and diverse neighborhood a mile south of downtown Minneapolis, Hope Community, along with people from the neighborhood, created a vision for change that few believed could happen.

In the mid-1990s, the neighborhood was a place to leave, not a place to invest. Where notorious drug dealing, violence, and disinvestment dominated, Hope saw devastation as creating space for possibility. We were driven to that vision because of our understanding that the people left in the diverse, low-income community – and others like them – wanted a safe and healthy neighborhood to raise families.

Now on formerly abandoned land there are inviting and useful buildings that anchor the neighborhood for the future. But buildings alone do not make community. People must build a community. Through Hope’s work hundreds of youth and adults make a difference for themselves and their community. Our goal is to build community capacity for the long-term, so opportunities are not limited to Hope’s tenants. Our community engagement work impacts the broader community and is at the core of our community revitalization mission.