ST. PAUL — A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers is trying to ease the state’s housing crunch by making more homes available to people looking for a first home, but some local officials are concerned the approach will bypass the decisions of their communities.
The lawmakers are pitching legislation they call the Minnesota Starter Home Act, which aims to remove restrictions to make building affordable starter homes easier and faster. The bill would allow smaller single family homes, duplexes or townhouses to be built in areas where they are currently restricted by zoning laws.
Sen. Jordan Rasmusson, R-Fergus Falls, said removing restrictions would help speed up the rate at which homes are built and ensure they are affordable for new homeowners. Additionally, the Starter Home Act would remove aesthetic and parking mandates that raise the cost of new homes.
“This would ensure requirements are focused on health and safety, not economic redlining,” Rasmusson said.
Building affordable homes would make it easier for people to afford to live near where they work, said Sen. Lindsey Port, D-Burnsville. Port said the shortage of housing in Minnesota is partly a result of the restrictions the bill aims to eliminate.
“We have a housing crisis in Minnesota,” Port said. “We are over 100,000 homes short for what we need in our state, and part of the reason for that is land use and zoning restrictions that make it difficult or more expensive to build homes in this state.”
Brittany Hennessy, executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Winona County, said despite the work Habitat does building affordable homes, Winona County has a rental vacancy rate of just 1.7%, meaning there is a lack of available housing. She said the legislation would allow her organization to work even faster.
“It would reduce regulatory barriers and incentivize the development of smaller more affordable homes, allowing working families to achieve home ownership by streamlining zoning and infrastructure costs,” Hennessy said.
Some groups are concerned that a blanket statewide approach would ignore the needs of the communities where new houses would go up.
Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire spoke for the Municipal Legislative Commission, which represents 18 cities in the metropolitan area. He said the cities are all working to address the housing crisis in ways that best support their needs, and this proposal could interfere with that.
“One person streamlining the process is another person shutting out the community from the process,” Maguire said. “We have traditionally been able to work with our communities on developments not through administrative process, but because we get to engage with our community and take ownership of the housing stock in our community.”
If the bill passes, new housing developments would still have to comply with their respective city regulations to ensure safety requirements are met. Homeowners associations would not be required, which could also help lower costs and make homes more affordable for first-time homeowners.
The bill has bipartisan support as well as a House companion bill, and supporters are hoping it will pass as part of a package of other housing measures.
Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news in all areas of the state.