Barbara Allivato: The mother of affordable housing in Minnesota

Too often we deal in theory, not action. We expound at the coffeehouse about how the country should be governed, but we fail to run for office, attend caucuses, or even vote. We complain that our kid is not playing shortstop, but we don’t hit ground balls to him. We plan to organize the closet before a family visit, but…well, relatives have come and gone and the closet is still the pits.

Barbara Allivato was a woman who acted. She took purposeful action in her private life, her political life, and her professional life. Her departure from this earth should be noted as example and encouragement to the rest of us to get off our backsides more often and follow through on the issues and people we believe in and care about.

An appreciation of Barbara Allivato

Barbara spent much of her working life as a banker, and she was a world champion for making a better community in all that she did. Her primary work was in community lending, social responsibility programs, and engaging with community organizations.

Barbara counseled countless non-profit community organizations about financial reality, in a practical, no-nonsense way. She not only served on numerous boards of directors and chaired many boards, but she was a key founder of several organizations helping underserved people in our community.

In 1983, Barbara was working for what was then First Bank as a loan officer when she saw Kathy Keeley on public television mention the idea of loans to women starting small businesses. Today businesses owned by women are commonplace, but in 1983 they were not. Barbara immediately contacted Arvonne Fraser about the idea, and they decided to work with Keeley to start a non-profit organization that would make such loans—now called “microloans.”

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Today businesses owned by women are commonplace, but in 1983 they were not.

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Barbara obtained a start-up grant from First Bank, and they were off and running. Women’s Economic Development Corporation (WEDCO) became highly successful and later merged with CHART to become WomenVenture, which still today provides many outstanding services to women in business.

In 1986, Barbara helped start Central Community Housing Trust (now Aeon) to counteract the loss of over 4,000 units of affordable housing in downtown Minneapolis. Twenty-two years later, Aeon is one of the leading non-profit providers of quality affordable homes in Minnesota. Because of her work with so many affordable housing organizations, I refer to Barbara as “the Mother of Affordable Housing in Minnesota.”

Barbara was a tireless worker on political campaigns. When something needed to be done, she attacked it—usually behind the scenes. The rule used to be that you could campaign until midnight before Election Day. One night Barbara was with another worker knocking on doors to get support for a candidate, and it started to get dark. The other person hinted that perhaps it was time to go home. Barbara was shocked. “Just a couple more blocks,” she said. “Just a couple more blocks!” Only two hours later, when almost all the windows in the neighborhood were dark, did Barbara agree to stop.

As Deputy Mayor for Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser, Barbara was a catalyst and coordinator, pushing people to do the right things and pulling together the right teams to get them done. If it had Barbara’s name on it, you knew it was the right thing to do—and that it would get done.

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If it had Barbara’s name on it, you knew it was the right thing to do—and that it would get done.

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Perhaps most importantly, she was a rock of support for her family. She was the sister and aunt who family members turned to when they had problems. Even when her health began to fail, and even though it consumed a lot of her diminishing energy, she insisted on organizing and hosting the 2007 annual family Christmas party.

Barbara never wanted credit for any of this. At her funeral, a relative remarked, “We had no idea that Barbara was so famous!” The relative proceeded to tell me stories of Barbara’s support for her family that sounded very much like the support she’d given me and so many others in the community. That’s my kind of hero.

Barbara lived by the mantra, “See it. Own it. Solve it. Do it.” Perhaps we should all reconsider the depth of our engagement in the issues and people we care about. In these times, we need more people like Barbara Allivato. We’ll miss her.

Alan Arthur is president of Aeon, a non-profit developer of affordable housing.