editorials

When Hope Community, a little nonprofit with a big vision, began talking about transforming the weedy, trashy, crime-infested corner of Franklin and Portland Avenues into desirable affordable housing, not a few skeptics scoffed.

Those skeptics are especially invited next Saturday afternoon to the corner now called the Franklin-Portland Gateway. Hope Community's 30th birthday party offers a fine opportunity to see what visionaries who believe in the power of community can do.

Two handsome apartment buildings now anchor the southern half of the intersection on the near South Side of Minneapolis. Groundbreaking is scheduled next month for a third, The Wellstone, in the northeast quadrant. Other reclaimed vintage houses nearby bring Hope's current housing total to 126 units, 17 of them rented at market rate. When Hope executive director Mary Keefe says that a fourth, the largest of the quartet, is on the drawing board for construction in 2009, nobody scoffs anymore.

Fifteen years ago, Franklin Avenue east of Interstate 35W had been given up by many in the city as permanently blighted. Today, though still a place with challenges, it's on the rebound, and Hope Community is a big contributor to the change.

Hope's strategy is to be more than a low-income landlord. It's to connect tenants and homeowners to each other and to the larger neighborhood. Its facilities include plenty of places for neighbors to gather -- a picnic pavilion, indoor and outdoor playgrounds, a learning center, a hip-hop studio, an attractive assembly room. Its program staff meets with each Hope resident and offers a rich array of activities, from English language learning for adults to documentary filmmaking for teens to reading lessons for young children. The Hope calendar is loaded with meetings, meals and special events.

Those things are made possible in large part by donations from foundations, individuals, churches and businesses, and partnerships with government and private institutions. Hope Community raises nearly $1 million a year to sustain its housing discounts and programs.

That's a big yearly challenge -- but proven results help keep the support coming. Those results also offer a model for other crime-plagued low-income neighborhoods that seek safety, stability, a decent quality of life, and an alternative to gentrification. Hope is living up to its name at Franklin and Portland, and its lessons should apply to other places too.