Community Impacts
Aim to End Veteran Homelessness
Over the past five years, AHI has supported ending Veteran homelessness in Minnesota by hosting its annual Aim to End Veteran Homelessness European Pheasant Shoot. During this time, AHI has raised over $75,000 towards their mission of giving back to individuals, families experiencing homelessness and Veterans.
Veteran Valor is a local non-profit that brings veterans out of the woods, basements, garages and onto our farm to motivate them to live a quality, purposeful life. They are given the time and resources to straighten out their life and move forward with the knowledge and security that the farm and its community will always be there to support them. Veteran Valor's mission is to combat Veteran homelessness by providing a safe and stable environment for Veterans to succeed. AHI and Veteran Valor have partnered to donate proceeds from the Aim to End Veteran Homelessness event to further Veteran Valor's mission at Veteran Valor Farm.
Holiday Cheer
During the holiday seasons, AHI has partnered with local companies in providing Veterans at Linden Grove Veteran Apartments in St. Cloud, Minnesota with gift cards, bus tickets, groceries and household items, and provided gift cards to homeless individuals and families in Maple Grove, Saint Cloud, Saint Michael, and Saint Paul. In addition, AHI has also provided Thanksgiving and Veterans Day meals to residents at Linden Grove Veteran Apartments.
In 2019, AHI partnered with Every Third Saturday (ETS), a non-profit in the Twin Cities, which gives back to homeless veterans by providing shoes, bags, blankets and other necessities to them. They have collected and distributed over 45,000 items, to help hundreds of veterans. Through AHI's work with ETS, AHI learned that ETS had recently purchased two buildings near the Minneapolis VA campus and were working on a remodeling plan to expand their space and services to be able to provide homeless veterans with basic items. AHI donated to help them complete the design of their future space to further their mission.
In support of the Veteran Administration’s and the State of Minnesota’s goal of ending Veteran homelessness, Linden Grove Veteran Apartments was constructed in 2016. Linden Grove is a 37-unit affordable, permanent supportive housing community with priority placement for homeless or at risk of homelessness Veterans and their families located on the St. Cloud VA Medical Center campus.
The drug and alcohol free community allows Veterans to live very close to their health care facilities with on-site referral support for a broad spectrum of services, including job search assistance, literacy and computer skills training and a referral system for physical and mental health issues directly to the St. Cloud VA Medical Center. This approach grants the resident Veterans access to a wide variety of programs, specialties and disciplines in the community in which they live.
Affordable Housing Initiatives is the managing general partner of Linden Grove Veteran Apartments.
Affordable Housing Initiatives is a supporter Solid Ground in particular, their HomeFront program. HomeFront works with Veterans experiencing homelessness by providing affordable housing and supportive services to household in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Twin Cities area. HomeFront has allowed 97% of Solid Ground’s families achieve housing stability in 2020.