Neighborhoods

The Bridge and Mshale, two of our community media partners, published thoughtful and thought-provoking articles this week on the murder of a Somali teen in the Cedar-Riverside area in April, and the views of friends and community as the search for the shooter continues. Read Somali teen’s murder unearths generational conflict in community by Edwin Okong’o from Mshale and Cedar-Riverside mourns death of Somali teen by Jeremy Stratton from The Bridge. MORE »

The West End of Saint Paul has always been a solid working class community with a strong sense of neighborhood pride. Over the years that pride was bruised as the neighborhood changed and residents moved away, leaving the West End as a place to pass though rather than a place to be. Population patterns changed as Interstate 35E was cut through the neighborhood in the 1970s causing the permanent loss of many homes. MORE »

Beth Hyser sits on an advisory board at Dayton’s Bluff Early Childhood Family Education Program and is also involved in the Saint Paul public school that her daughter attends. She has spent her career in the non-profit sector, and has been very involved with community work. And yet, in all her years of community work and leadership, she never received any leadership training. MORE »

We hear it on the news every day: The severity of mortgage foreclosures. We see the statistics. But those are just numbers. Behind the numbers are people—families losing their homes, totally overturning their lives. What is the reality of foreclosure? This is the first in a series of articles that will personalize the foreclosure crisis in our community. MORE »