The Minnesota Community Action Partnership (MinnCAP), in partnership with the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, released a report on poverty in Minnesota. This report sheds light on Minnesota's poverty disparities. For many Minnesotans, particularly African-American and Native American households, federal benefits programs and income are not enough to cover the costs of meeting their basic needs.
As highlighted throughout the report, federal benefits programs can help people with low incomes meet their basic needs and mitigate the effects of poverty. However, for many Minnesotans, especially BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) households, the costs of these basic needs are too high to be offset by federal assistance programs. To ensure that more people are able to escape poverty, MinnCAP proposes three statewide policy initiatives to be implemented immediately.
The report calls on lawmakers and policy makers to:
--Increase the eligibility threshold for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to 200% of the Federal Poverty Level to assure that more food-insecure families are served.
--Invest immediately to address the affordable housing crisis throughout Minnesota by taking advantage of the historic budget surplus.
--Create a new Poverty Commission, through Gov. Walz’s executive authority, to end poverty in Minnesota by the end of this decade, with a focus on BIPOC income disparities highlighted in this report.
Find and download the full report here (Updated September 2022)
One-pagers specific to each region can be found here (Updated September
2022)
Find the Press Release for the Minnesota Poverty Report here
For more information contact: Lori Schultz, Executive Director at MinnCAP: Lorischultz@minncap.org
