Twin City Facts

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Minneapolis-St.Paul

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Minneapolis-St. Paul

Still Offering Immigrants a Warm Welcome

The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been a Midwestern immigrant stronghold, beginning with the Swedes, Germans, and Norwegians who arrived in the late 1880s to work in the thriving mining, milling, and lumber industries.  

In the 1950s and 1960s, downtown Minneapolis underwent a major urban renewal that decimated some of the city's poorest neighborhoods as well as a number of historic buildings. The losses prompted a renewed determination that preservation take place alongside development.   In the decades that followed, universities and museums helped to sustain the Twin Cities as one of the Midwest's major cultural and entertainment hubs. Equally important, the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings moved in 1982 from Bloomington to Minneapolis. Low crime rates and a strong job market made the Twin Cities one of the most desirable places to live in the U.S.  

In the 1990s, a new wave of immigrants arrived from Mexico, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, contributing to a population boom that made Minneapolis-St. Paul the country’s 15 th largest metropolitan area by the time of the 2000 Census.   As population grew, rents rose sharply. In 1999, a sobering report from the Minneapolis Affordable Housing Task Force noted both the nationwide drop in federal funding for affordable housing ($7.9 billion in 1990 compared with $32 billion in 1970) and the critical need for local nonprofits to fill the gap. CDCs, however, are not yet sufficiently equipped to do the job themselves. As the task force concluded, “The magnitude of the affordable housing crisis requires a significant and continuing shift in priorities throughout the public, corporate, and philanthropic sectors.”