George Nelsen, 'Mr. Housing' on the North Side

George L. Nelsen was known as "Mr. Housing" in north Minneapolis, where he lived and promoted affordable housing for more than 30 years.

He obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars for home rehabilitation from foundations and other sources, said Veronica Davis, executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services. He also had worked in transportation for the Ebenezer Society and Minneapolis schools.

Nelsen, 72, died May 23 in Minneapolis from thrombosis after a long battle with Parkinson's disease, said his wife, Vivian Jenkins Nelsen.

Davis, who worked with Nelsen for 28 years, said he was a founder of several housing agencies and a charter board member of her nonprofit agency. Nelsen was key in obtaining government grants and large donations over the years from the McKnight and General Mills foundations, she said.

"He was a brilliant man," Davis said. "He came up with wonderful ideas for housing strategies and ways to reinvest in north Minneapolis. He was a strong supporter of diversity. He loved assisting minority people into home ownership."

Nelsen was honored for his housing work in 2000 with the McKnight Foundation's Virginia McKnight Binger Human Service Award. He was called "Mr. Housing" because he could cut red tape to help low-income people become homeowners and to protect neighborhoods from large projects that would have changed their character, according to a Star Tribune article.

Nelsen told a reporter then: "Our approach always has been that we wanted an economically mixed neighborhood as well as a racially integrated neighborhood."

"He was a real advocate, very much a leader and ... he was a lot of fun," Davis said. Some of his ideas led the agency to restore front porches on houses and remove front-yard fences in order to foster neighbor interaction.

In 1988, Nelsen and his wife were founders of the International Institute for Interracial Interaction, a diversity think tank at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. He was the chief financial officer.

Jenkins Nelsen said her husband's greatest passion was providing housing for the less fortunate. She said that after college, they both worked with poor youth in a government jobs corps program.

"He always said, 'You gotta have a home to build a life,'" she said, adding that her husband epitomized the Bible verse Micah 6:8, in which God asks people to love mercy, act justly and walk humbly with their God.

Nelsen rarely argued and liked to surprise her with gifts, his wife said. She recalled a plane trip they took on which a flight attendant brought her a breakfast tray bearing a small box. Inside, she found a silver bracelet.