When Jamez Staples returned home after spending a year in the Virgin Islands, he did not expect to see that conditions had further deteriorated in the north Minneapolis neighborhood he was raised in — one that has often been described as among the poorest corners of the state.
“When you leave you notice the new buildings, you notice the state of the people, you notice if things have changed and when I got back, I realized that my people in my neighborhood looked like they were doing even worse than when I left,” Staples said. “And maybe they weren’t. Maybe that’s the way it always was and I didn’t pay as much attention as well because I was so close to it.”
Staples had gone to the Virgin Islands to complete his education and while there had learned how to install solar panels. He returned just as the Solar Energy Jobs Act had passed and a year later, in 2014,…
