Following last month’s release of The Star Tribune’s “How Twin Cities Housing Rules Keep the Metro Segregated”, Rep. Jim Nash (R-Waconia) called for the gathering of the Housing Affordability Commission. There, Rep. Steve Elkins (DFL-Bloomington) introduced the most comprehensive Housing Affordability bill in decades.
Last Tuesday, the bipartisan, bicameral commission reconvened for the first time in over a year and began to hear portions of Rep. Elkin’s bill. While introducing his bill, Rep. Elkins said, “My legislative assistant bought a home in Minneapolis. 1,500 square ft, one parking space, vinyl siding on 1/9th of an acre lot for $305,000. Why shouldn’t it be legal to build a new home like this, today, in a developing community?”
Elkins continued: “In my bill I’ve got a provision that says newly developing cities you have to allow homes to be built on a fifth of an acre and I’ve got this incredible pushback. The perfectly suitable starter home that my legislative assistant lives in is half of that and still you have cities saying, ‘oh god we can’t stand the density of a fifth of an acre home or a duplex on a quarter acre home.’
David Siegel, executive director, also testified during the two-hour long hearing. “I appear before you today with a message of urgency,” said Siegel. “We must act with purpose on comprehensive housing policy modernization with the goal of advancing recommendations to the legislature in the 2022 session.”
“We haven’t built enough homes for nearly 15 years, and our problems are driven primarily by the vanished starter home in our state. A housing market cannot function properly without the steady supply of new and existing starter homes. Over the past decade-plus, starter home construction has been largely blocked by the accumulation of outdated and needlessly expensive approval and zoning processes.”
Senator Rich Draheim, chair of the Senate Housing Committee, expressed his thoughts about the direction of housing policy for the upcoming session. “If we focus all our resources on naturally occurring affordable housing, we’re not creating more units and not addressing our deficit of housing. We need more units. That should be our top priority right now.”
Draheim continued, “Some of the tools mentioned as a need for the league are already in place and have been used for decades and with that we have a large deficit of inventory, we have some of the highest priced housing, if not the highest priced in the Midwest and then we have the racial disparity that is the worst in country…We need to do things a little different.”
In addition to receiving an update on the housing market and the shortage of available homes, the commission also heard testimony from the League of Minnesota Cities and nominated new co-chairs of the commission, Rep. Jim Nash (R-Waconia) and Sen. Kari Dziedzic (DFL-Minneapolis). The commission is expected to continue to meet monthly until the 2022 Legislative Session begins in January.
Watch Fox 9 Coverage of the hearing here.
