Saint Paul, MN
A city with a kaleidoscope of heritage and opportunity
St. Paul is built on a rich history of cultural experiences and a longstanding reputation as the entry point for offering newcomers opportunity.
It’s the ancestral land of a tribally diverse American Indian population who remain today and whose deep-rooted heritage and traditions significantly shape the city’s identity. Following the Civil War, newly freed slaves established a thriving Black community of businesses, homeowners, and civic institutions. In the 1920s and 1930s, Mexican migrants found work on sugar beet farms, persevered, and later built the Chicano movement for social justice and cultural autonomy.
Why Saint Paul?
Perpetual rebuilding after a cycle of forced relocations
Despite such promise and possibility, centuries worth of forced displacements of Indigenous people, decades of upheaval of Black and Latino neighborhoods by urban renewal projects, and racial covenants and redlining targeting Black residents have repeatedly destroyed these communities and left many Black, Indigenous, and Latino residents in a perpetual state of playing catch-up.
St. Paul has some of the worst racial disparities in the U.S.
4x
Unemployment rates among Black and Indigenous are roughly 4 times higher than white residents
63%
63% of white residents own homes, compared to 19% of Blacks, 25% of American Indians, and 39% of Latinos
$29k
There’s a $29K per capita income gap between white and BIL residents
I’m drawn to what Dr. King and others referred to as ‘the beloved community’, and what it would take to create [that]…Equity will get us there. Equity is a means towards an end, not an end in itself. The goal is really to have this beloved community whereby we value each person, and we value them so much that we’re willing to customize, and adjust accordingly to what they need.
Daniel Rodriguez, Merrick Community Services, PERC Saint Paul Lead
St. Paul Local Partners
Forging a stronger community through collaboration
Merrick Community Services, lead organization for PERC St. Paul, has curated a coalition of 60-70 healthcare, education, economic stability, social, community, and environment and neighborhood professionals and organizations. The collaborative develops and prioritizes projects to secure federal funding, working closely with the Office of Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter.
Image: PERC Saint Paul collaborative table
PERC St. paul in action
Building the action plan
Using PERC’s model for shared decision-making and consensus building, PERC St. Paul has designed a data-centered action plan to apply for potential investment dollars, and to execute and deliver measurable, results-based outcomes once the investment is received.
Image: PERC Saint Paul collaborative table
Research & analysis
What is currently driving the inequities?
The coalition conducted a comprehensive data review and analysis of the factors currently sustaining the racial disparities in the city, and found that Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities are caught in a vicious cycle of factors which stall growth, limit opportunity, and prevent building wealth, including:
- A lack of affordable housing options, thus limiting the traditional pathway to building wealth
- Lower incomes and higher poverty rates limiting what Black, Indigenous, and Latino families can afford and driving higher rates of crimes of possession
- Depressed job opportunities exacerbated by a racial digital divide and significant changes to employment practices in sectors hit hardest by the pandemic
- Decades of disinvestment in neighborhoods leading to lower quality infrastructure in schools, transportation, etc.
Identifying Solutions
Catalyzing growth through public investment
The St. Paul coalition is currently developing public investment opportunities to influence the factors driving racial inequities while building new systems for long-term impact. Here are highlights for the coalition’s five-year targets:
Key Milestones Achieved
Building infrastructure for the long-term
Carefully curated multi-sector coalition with 65 community members across five sectors
Identified and staffed three working groups to focus on housing, economic development, and civic infrastructure
Completed 10 learning sessions on equity framework for collaboration
Logged 30.5 hours of collaborative table meetings, including five planning sessions
Designed 10-year implementation plans for 15 projects aimed at improving the lives of more than 85,000 people
Expanded coalition capacity by hiring a project manager
Awarded $2.5M in local philanthropic dollars over the next 3 years
Submitted one federal grant application for funding opportunities
Are you interested in becoming an active participant in PERC’s transformation process? Let’s partner!