BY ELAINE KLAASSEN
The organic gardening project of Hope Community, at the corner of Portland and Franklin, is a work of love and cooperation. It serves the interests of related parties, but it is not competitive and doesn’t seek to turn a profit. There is no money involved. It produces environmental healing, education, companionship, and last but absolutely not least, FRESH VEGETABLES. Right now about 3,000 square feet are farmed and next year 5,000 square feet of garden will be added.
Hope Community is a nonprofit community developer in the Phillips neighborhood. In partnership with Aeon, an affordable housing developer, it owns and manages 173 rental units, many of which are affordable housing. The units are located in five neighborhood rescued crack houses as well as new buildings on three of the four corners of Portland and Franklin. Two buildings under construction on the fourth corner, northwest, will be finished in fall, with 120 new units.
According to Betsy Sohn, community organizer and program manager for Hope Community, the entity now known as Hope Community has been in the neighborhood in one form or another since 1977. It began on Portland Avenue as St. Joseph’s Community, a Dorothy Day-styled hospitality house that “didn’t try to fix homeless people but rather offered them support and space to do what was best for themselves.” In an area “nobody wanted to be ‘from,’ encased in freeways,” where the wealth was draining away freely, St. Joseph’s had to constantly adapt as it attempted to minister to people. Surviving the crack/cocaine years of the 1990s, it evolved, merged and emerged as Hope Community, a vibrant, supportive place to live. While it now has a definite spiritual dynamic, Hope Community is not affiliated with any religious, political or spiritual organization or practice.
Sohn, whose heart was planted in the neighborhood in 1977 when she rented her first Minneapolis apartment there, is committed, along with many others, to making this particular place on the planet Earth valuable, not as real estate that would bring a high price, but as a good area, a place to raise kids, a place to locate a new business, a place to be “from” that you’re proud of.
About five years ago, 40 residents of Hope Community determined that one of their dreams was to have a garden. With the partnership of The Land Stewardship Project, two plots were established, one next to the apartment building on the southeast corner and a second one in the middle of the same block. The second garden was set up so that individuals could sign up for plots and grow their own little gardens. Often people would abandon their plots in mid-summer and someone else would take them over, said Betsy. It seemed that model was less successful than the other garden, which is worked communally and harvested communally.
A wide range of people work the garden. First and foremost it’s the residents—who have the privilege of living in a housing project where low-income, moderate-income and full-market-price units are intermixed and no one knows who is who—and the others are young people on the block or from the Step-Up program, people from Peace House or random friends and relatives from other parts of the city who care. The main requirement for participating in the gardening project is the ability to show up and learn and work. Altogether Sohn estimates there are from 120 to 150 “investors” who work with Reese, an organic farmer/mentor, when he’s there, or once a week with the Hennepin County master gardener. The Permaculture Research Institute also provides knowledgeable gardeners.
The pay-off starts before the vegetables even start to grow: There is fun with old friends, making new friends and knowing that the sunflowers, for example, will help to clean the air. Then comes the harvest. This year Hope Community created a program called “Community Kitchen.” Every two weeks, from April to October, Hope Community tenants, neighbors and friends get together to cook a big meal. Ethnic recipes are favored, such as collard wraps, ginger/lentil/yam soup and sautéed kale. Ingredients that don’t come from the garden are found at ethnic stores or co-ops and provided by Hope.
A new funder of Hope’s garden project is the Center for Prevention, a nonprofit division of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota whose goal it is to prevent death through healthy eating, avoiding the use of tobacco and increasing physical activity. Since its new studies have shown that there are significant barriers to affordable, healthy food in Minnesota, not just for low-income people, the organization is looking for ways to contribute to the solution. Supporting the garden project at Hope Community was a no-brainer.
Of course 3,000 plus the new 5,000 cultivated square feet for a population of about 500 will not solve the entire problem. But it’s a start—and not just for Hope Community.
It is based on a concept Betsy calls the “new economics.” It’s the people’s investment of time and energy and love in a particular place that gives it its value. Since there is little hope of improving one’s financial situation through the manipulation and acquisition of actual capital these days, the way to survive and thrive is through the management and nurturing of the true wealth: the people and the place.
