DULUTH – In the city’s Central Hillside neighborhood, life expectancy is 10 years lower than in other parts of Duluth, and homeownership is rare.
This is where most of Duluth’s black residents live, and black-run nonprofits will receive $500,000 in neighborhood investments over the next five years.
The Duluth Senior Area Community Foundation (DSACF) awarded the funds to the Family Freedom Center, which is already working on building what it calls a hub for people of color in the city’s core.
Jacob Bell, executive director of the Family Freedom Center, said the vision is to create “a community where new families will move to the hillside because the families here are successful.”
The center was founded in 2008 to give the city’s small black population (about 8% of residents) a sense of belonging in a community that has been difficult to break into, he said.
Since then, we have grown to offer life-building programs focused on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, skilled trades, and technology careers. The center includes an educational hair salon and recording studio, as well as a maker space. We recently acquired a youth services group and now all groups share the space.
Bell said the homeownership program in collaboration with One Roof Community Housing is a new initiative, as the low numbers of businesses and homeownership among Black residents could be reversed with financing and assistance. He said it would be a part of it. Lowering poverty rates will help people live better and longer lives, he said, because economic security is linked to health.
The initial $100,000 allocation represents 10% of the budget, and the grant is “a huge catalyst for us,” Bell said.
Eventually, the Family Freedom Center hopes to use the grant money to own its own space in Central Hillside. It is currently rented within the Washington Center and serves up to 1,000 households annually.
Sean Frolke is a former St. Louis County judge who currently leads DSACF. The Family Freedom Center was chosen from nearly 30 applicants for the largest grant in 40 years because he believes it is “making a difference.”
“I spent time in the courtroom sentencing 20-year-olds and wished this place had been better when they were 2 years old,” Frolke said of Duluth.
Opening opportunities for people of color while helping them build their resilience and reduce their sense of isolation is the kind of “transformative” work that Family Freedom Center does, and to do so. He said it would require a large amount of funding.
For decades, there was little investment in housing in urban centers. But that is changing, said Sumer Sheikh, LISC Duluth leader. The organization supports neighborhoods in need and is part of the Hill Country Coalition affiliated with the Freedom Center.
“The hillside is the most important,” he said.
Central Hillside resident Trish Jones is happy to hear this. She sends her three children to the center’s after-school program. She juggles her three jobs, including running her own business making soap and candles, and she plans to graduate this month with an associate’s degree in psychology and then pursue a four-year degree. Jones wants to own her own home, she said, but “it’s been very difficult for me.”
She said she is looking forward to the center’s help with that and feels “this is really my year.”
When people of color do well, everyone does well, Bell said.
“I think the BIPOC community is too often seen as a community that needs support, and less often as a community that can be supported,” he said.
DSACF also awarded $500,000 to the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northwestern Wisconsin for food sovereignty programs.
