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An innovative investment program aims to boost student performance at a school on St. Paul's East Side by making sure families have stable, affordable housing.

One of the reasons some kids don't do well in school is that their families keep moving, and they can't get used to a building, to a set of teachers and a curriculum.

On St. Paul's East Side for the past two years, more than 110 people have been trying to do something about that, digging into their own pockets to develop affordable housing so families can stay put.

The group created the Opportunity Housing Investment Fund, each putting in $5,000 to try to provide the stability and academic continuity that students need to thrive.

The housing program is aimed at boosting student performance at John A. Johnson Achievement Plus School on St. Paul's East Side, where just 81 percent of students stayed the entire 2001-02 school year compared to the districtwide average for elementary schools of 88 percent.

Educators say students who move frequently may fall behind in school or don't stay long enough to be assessed for learning disabilities, let alone get the help they need. The difficulty of having to readjust to a new school, meet different teachers and make new friends also can be trying for kids.

But when Mike Anderson, head of the nonprofit East Side Neighborhood Development Co. (ESNDC), tried to solicit money from area foundations to develop more affordable housing, he was told the effort might be more effective if he raised it on his own.

So he did, getting people many of whom live or work on the East Side to put up their own cash to address a shortage of affordable housing. The revolving housing fund was created in July 2002 and is used to purchase and rehab dilapidated single-family, duplex and multi-family homes, which are resold or rented to low-income families. The fund now stands at about $610,000.

"When we look at the reasons families leave the school, oftentimes it's because they've lost their housing. We know kids will do better if they're able to stay in one school. The overriding goal (of this housing program) is to improve student achievement," said Lynnell Thiel, director of student and family support for Achievement Plus, a program that provides a menu of social services for families at the school, from tutoring to a nurse practitioner who can diagnose medical problems and write prescriptions.

The ESNDC's housing case manager, Courteney Roessler, works out of the school helping families that can't afford market-rate rents, have poor credit, evictions or other problems that prevent them from obtaining and keeping decent housing.

"It's a great program," she said. "It focuses on one school, one community."

Nancy Walker's family is one of a dozen Johnson school families the nonprofit has helped with finding a home. When the family of four, which includes dad Corey Lewis, Tierani, 9, and Keith, 10, needed a bigger apartment, they moved to a West Seventh Street area apartment and transferred the kids to a school with which they weren't happy. But the new apartment was condemned last fall, forcing them to move again. So Walker contacted Roessler.

"I said, 'You have to help me get these kids back to where they were because we love that school.' They offer a lot of services a lot of other schools don't offer," said Walker, a stay-at-home mom. "If it wasn't for Courteney and the program, we probably would have been homeless."

In November, the family moved into a Payne Avenue duplex the group had renovated. Sending Tierani, a third-grader, and Keith, a fourth-grader, back to Johnson Achievement Plus "was extremely important" to Lewis, who estimates he moved eight times to different cities in South Dakota, Minnesota and Georgia when he was growing up.

"When I was a kid I was changed around to different schools and I hated it. I kind of pulled off to myself and got in trouble. I know how the kids feel. I think that affects kids a lot," said Lewis, a truck mechanic.

Eric Carpenter, program manager for the Opportunity Housing Investment Fund, believes the program is unique and can serve as a model for other communities.

The 110 people who have donated to the Opportunity Housing Investment Fund are called "charitable social investors." The program is successful because they're vested in the project, they hold shareholder meetings, they recruit other investors and use their business and social connections to help the program.

"They're not receiving gains on their investment" with the exception of the tax deduction, Carpenter said. "They're interested in the community and they want to see it grow and prosper."

Charitable social investor Susan Sands, a commercial property manager who was involved in the development of the Lao Family Community building, said she was impressed with the grass-roots approach community members "investing because they cared about the outcome." And the Falcon Heights resident was sure the program's partners the ESNDC, Wilder Foundation, St. Paul Foundation, YMCA and Achievement Plus could pull off the mission.

The ESNDC takes out a loan to buy a property and uses the investment fund to pay for the improvements. It buys inexpensive buildings in foreclosure or on the verge of being condemned. They're the kind of properties a private developer wouldn't waste time on because the market won't sustain the kind of profit that will make it worth their time, Carpenter said.

When the newly renovated home is sold, the mortgage and the investment fund are repaid.

The goal is to sell three- or four-bedroom homes for about $150,000, affordable considering the median home sales price in St. Paul in 2003 was $170,000.

The ESNDC retains ownership of apartment dwellings it rents out at below-market rate to low-income families.

Seventeen units were rehabbed in the first year of operation, from July 2002 to June 2003, and the nonprofit is on pace to meet its 15-unit-per-year goal for 2003-04.

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Toni Coleman can be reached at tcoleman@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5442.

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