Black nonprofit sees investments in Duluth’s Central Hillside as ‘catalyst’

DULUTH – In the city’s Central Hillside neighborhood, life expectancy is a decade lower than elsewhere in Duluth and homeownership is rare.

It’s where most of Duluth’s Black residents live, and a Black-run nonprofit will receive $500,000 over the next five years to invest in their neighborhood.

The Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation (DSACF) awarded the money to the Family Freedom Center, already at work building what it calls a hub for people of color in the center of the city.

The vision is to create “a community where new families move to the hillside because families here are making it,” said Jacob Bell, executive director of the Family Freedom Center.

The center formed in 2018 to give the city’s small Black population — about 8% of residents — a sense of belonging in what can be a tough community to break into, he said.

It has since grown to offer life-building programs, focusing on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, skilled-trades and technology-related careers. An educational hair salon and recording studio are available at the center, and a maker space is on tap. It recently acquired a youth services group and all now share a space.

Low business and homeownership numbers among Black residents could reverse course with loans and outreach, Bell said, so a homeownership program in collaboration with One Roof Community Housing will be part of new efforts. With financial stability connected to health, he said, reducing poverty rates can help people live better, longer lives.

Ultimately the Family Freedom Center hopes to leverage grant money to own its own space in Central Hillside. It currently leases inside the Washington Center serving up to 1,000 families a year.

Shaun Floerke is a former St. Louis County judge and now leads the DSACF. The Family Freedom Center was picked out of nearly three dozen applicants for its largest grant in four decades because he sees it “moving the needle.”

“I spent time in courtrooms sentencing 20-year-olds, wishing this place could have been better for them when they were 2,” Floerke said of Duluth.

Opening opportunity to people of color while helping them build resiliency and reduce isolation is the kind of “transformational” work the Family Freedom Center is doing, and it needs a substantial amount of money to do it, he said.

There has been little investment in housing in the center of the city for decades. But that’s changing, said Sumair Sheikh, leader of LISC Duluth. The organization helps distressed neighborhoods, and is part of a hillside coalition partnering with the freedom center.

Central Hillside resident Trish Jones is glad to hear it. She sends her three children to the center’s after-school programs. She holds three jobs, including running her own business making soaps and candles, and will graduate with an associate degree in psychology this month before taking on a four-year degree. Jones would love to own a home, she said, “but it’s been super hard for me.”

She’s looking forward to the center’s help with that, and feels like “this year is really my year,” she said.

When people of color do well, everyone does well, Bell said.

“I think, far too often, the BIPOC community is seen as a community that needs help, and not often enough, seen as a community that’s capable of helping,” he said.