Affordable Housing Is An Industry, Too
from streets.mn by Will Stancil
This pattern creates a puzzle. Minneapolis and Saint Paul contain slightly less than one-quarter of the seven-county metropolitan area’s population. Despite this, in the previous decade, about 57 percent of the region’s new subsidized affordable housing has been produced in the two central cities. So why would a largely-private subsidized housing industry build disproportionately many housing units in the areas where construction costs the most? This seems to run counter to the simple logic of the market, in which production declines as cost increases.
The answer, it seems, is that the affordable housing market doesn’t look–or work–anything like a traditional private market. What’s more, affordable construction takes very different forms inside and outside of the central cities.
Minnesota’s healthcare system needs to be responsive to changing demographics
from MN HealthBasics by Melisa Franzen and Alberto Monserrate
To truly understand what communities of color need when it comes to health care we have to first create awareness. If we continue to assume we know what the barriers to better health are for a diverse population of New Americans we are missing the mark on understanding the variation in needs from family to family and from culture to culture. No ethnic group is monolithic. It’s like suggesting all Minnesotans have a grape salad family recipe. Clearly, we have commonalities within our cultures, but we also are unique individuals. First of all we need to start with the notion that diverse communities are highly complex from cultural and religious nuances to family dynamics that can be far from common in more traditional settings. Understanding the spectrum of nuances is a difficult task, but being open to learning can provide the needed insight to bringing awareness and provide solutions to meet the healthcare needs of our diverse families.
Faster Than A Speeding Bullet
from After Thought by Nancy Edmonds Hanson
The time has come for real, everyday people like you and me to stand up to the gun lobby. We need to temper the legion of gun fanatics who hold our communities hostage. We need to keep ourselves and our children safe … not perfectly safe, perhaps, given the many factors that lie behind these massacres, but safe enough to know we’ll live to go to school tomorrow.
Cheerios…where do I begin? Recall, Trust, (shakes head)
from The Savvy Celiac by Amy Leger
I literally have tried writing about Cheerios for months. I have two drafts (well, now three with this one) sitting unpublished as I tried to figure out how to conquer this devil of a story.
Every time I turn around this story is changing– and not for the good. With it climaxing — so far– with a recall of 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios (yellow box) and Honey Nut Cheerios. A quick Google News search found 240,000 hits online when I searched “Cheerios Recall Gluten”. The headlines are not pretty.
What’s on that meat label?
from Minnesota Farm Living by Wanda Patsche
A couple of years ago I attended an ag conference and was listening to a panel of women; a foodie blogger, a mommy blogger and an extension educator. They were discussing their personal experiences at the local meat counter. One statement they all agreed on were the labels at the meat counter confused them and at times, they chose not to buy any meat because they simply didn’t know what the labels meant. As a pig farmer, it felt like a dagger pierced my heart.
Here is a list of labels you will find on meat packages along with their meanings.
Fall Maintenance Checklist for Minnesota Homeowners
from the StructureTech Home Inspection Blog by Reuben Saltzman
Fall is officially here, and that means it’s time to get started on your fall maintenance list. It’s much easier to get this stuff done while it’s still pleasant outside, so don’t put these projects off until we have snow in the forecast.
This list was originally compiled by our very own Duane Erickson, and has been added onto numerous times over the past several years. We post this same list every year, and we modify it just a bit every year with new and updated information.
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