Tag: rural

On this week’s episode, Julie talks with Rhonda Otteson, Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, about homelessness in rural Minnesota. It’s easy to overlook since homelessness doesn’t always look the way we think it should. Rhonda and Julie discuss the many hidden factors that put people at risk for homelessness, why the housing situation in Greater ...

By Whitney Oachs, CRPD research intern Last summer the Center for Rural Policy reported a “sea change in engagement” after racial justice protests were held in rural communities across the state following the death of George Floyd. Though more attention has been paid to these protests in urban environments, towns as small as Grand Marais ...

Last year finally brought into sharp focus just how important child care is to maintaining a functioning economy. As we noted in our original report on child care, “A Quiet Crisis,” in nearly 80% of Minnesota families, all parents work, and child care issues are the primary cause of absenteeism among American workers. Child care ...

by Marnie Werner, VP Research A unique opportunity? For a printable version of this report, click here. To view the accompanying webinar, click here. To download the slides from the webinar presentation, click here. After a year of COVID, spiking unemployment, closed schools, and restricted businesses, rural Minnesotans may be looking at a unique opportunity in ...

In a previous episode, we discussed the importance of rural grocery stores. Kathy Draeger, the statewide Director of the Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships at the University of Minnesota,  discussed their discussed their recently published report outlining results from a survey they sent to rural grocery stores  across Minnesota. For this episode, we brought her back ...

By Marnie Werner, VP, Research & Operations Ready for a silver lining? So much of what we hear about the pandemic is doom and gloom, but as a new report we released last month on workforce and job vacancies showed, rural Minnesota is sitting at the crossroads of two important trends that have created a ...

For the last ten months, Minnesotans have been waiting along with the rest of the world for a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19. Now that we have one, though, officials face the next big issue: how to get those shots out to the public. For this topic, we’ve invited back Sue Grafstrom, a CRPD ...

Pandemic paints a different employment picture in rural Minnesota January 2021 By Kelly Asche, Research Associate, & Marnie Werner, Director of Research For a printable version of this report, click here. Our podcast episode diving deeper into this research can be found here. On January 21st, 2021 we hosted a webinar presenting this research as ...

Today marks the start of the 2021 MN Legislative Session. A session that will likely be very different than any other legislative session since it will begin and likely remain an online affair. Our CEO, Julie Tesch got an opportunity to chat with Scott McMahon, the Executive Director of the Greater Minnesota Partnership about the ...