Hennepin County Profile

Learn more about how Hennepin County works for you, the District 3 team conducts a profile series with employees of the county who live in the district. Each month we spotlight a different person from varying departments and occupations.  Find out about the day-to-day aspects of occupational fields and work environments at the county, and how each person’s work affects your life.

Markus Klimenko Tangletown Neighborhood, South Minneapolis Program Manager of Housing and Homeless Initiatives Human Services and Public Health Department 20 years at Hennepin County

Describe your work.

I am the manager of the County’s Housing and Homeless Initiatives. Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health department provides services to a variety of populations: people with disabilities, young mothers and their children, residents who are homeless, and clients with long-term complex needs. Our expert staff support a system of housing and services that benefit the County’s human services clients.  We support a variety of models of housing and services which includes different types of facilities, or housing subsidies clients receive and utilize in an apartment setting. These models include Board and Lodges, Housing First Partnership, Adult Foster Care, Assisted Living and other types of Group Residential Housing.

We are a centralized housing unit for Human Services, and we view connecting clients to housing as providing an essential platform for their growth and success.  The Housing and Homeless Initiative staff do great work and have been doing this for many years. Key to our success is that our policy leaders recognize housing as a core part of the County business. Without housing, County services and supports cannot be effective.

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What part of your job do you find most challenging?

The most challenging part of this role is that housing should actually be dealt with on the federal level and isn’t. It shouldn’t be the county’s role to solely fix the affordable housing crisis. The federal government abdicated that role 30 years ago, so we continue to fall behind in the availability of affordable units. The biggest losers, then, are the human services clients we work with, because they have to compete against enormous odds to get housing. My job is to help them compete in that market. Generally, the housing prices have edged out a lot of diverse populations in the market as well, and that also concerns me.

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What do you find most enjoyable?

At the end of the day I realize that if we support stable housing, we support stable families and stable communities. The work I’m involved in is incredibly effective. We don’t fix people, we find them housing and help them with the opportunity to better their lives.  Having stable housing creates a base for them to stabilize their lives so they can be successful. I work with a team of really good, smart people who are dedicated to achieving that goal.

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What is one thing everyone should know about the work you do?

Housing is a necessity for growth, stability, and success. We work hard to provide that for our clients so everyone has that chance, and I feel really lucky that Hennepin County and its policymakers support that.

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Recent Board activity around housing:

In Hennepin County, housing costs for 150,000 families consume more than 30 percent of their gross incomes; for about 60,000 households, rent is in excess of 50 percent of their incomes. In this housing market, nonprofit and socially minded developers cannot compete with investors who are ready to purchase properties with cash on hand, ready to renovate and raise the rent. Their eagerness to buy up housing has further constricted an already tight rental market.

On June 14, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners, voting as the Housing and Redevelopment Authority, agreed to invest $3 million in a fund that will be used to finance the purchase of about 530 units of existing affordable housing in the county. The county's investment is part of a $25 million metro-area initiative by the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund’s Naturally Occuring Affordable Housing Impact Fund to acquire these units to keep them affordable. The program will target rental properties that are at risk of being converted to higher rents and where low- and moderate-income residents are at risk of being displaced.

Markus Klimenko is a resident of the Tangletown neighborhood in south Minneapolis, and is the Program Manager of Housing and Homeless Initiatives in the Human Services and Public Health Department. Their mission is to increase the safety and stability of people, promote self-reliance and a livable income, and improve the health of the community, and have overarching goals to protect children and vulnerable adults, support communities and families in raising children who develop to their fullest potential, and assure that all peoples/ basic needs are met. To learn more about housing and homeless initiatives in Hennepin County, click here.