Minnesota cities to legislators: Don’t tell us how to fix the housing shortage

Minnesota cities do not want state legislators to tell them how much housing to approve, what it should look like or how many parking spots to require per apartment.

They made that much clear at a Senate committee meeting last week that spelled the likely end of “Yes to Homes,” a bipartisan legislative package that advocates said would address Minnesota’s housing shortage by removing barriers to building homes.

“Likely they’re dead for the year,” said Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, who authored one of the main bills, on Monday.

Nobody’s disputing the shortage of housing. But while Port and colleagues characterized their bills as a state-sized solution to a state-sized problem, opponents, including advocacy groups and cities themselves, called them as a one-size-fits all approach that removes local authority to decide what and where to build.

“We feel as though the package of bills was a sledgehammer when a scalpel will do,” West St. Paul City Manager Nate Burkett said in an interview Monday, reiterating the position his city took in a letter opposing “Yes to Homes” legislation.

Earlier this year, Port and a coalition of Republican and DFL lawmakers introduced a package of bills that would have made sweeping changes to city zoning and housing regulations across the state in an attempt to remove what they characterize as barriers preventing housing construction.

It’s the second attempt for a “missing middle” package. Last year’s similar effort failed, so legislators began meeting with city groups to negotiate this year’s “Yes to Homes” package, which advocates touted as having more bipartisan support and more input from cities.

The measures would have set minimum lot sizes, created more mixed residential and commercial areas and required cities to allow more types of homes, such as duplexes and townhomes, in more places.

They also would have streamlined the review process for approving housing, restricted aesthetic requirements, barred cities from requiring or incentivizing homeownership associations and left it up to developers to decide how many parking spaces to build.

“The Starter Home Act, if you break it down to what it’s addressing and what it’s trying to do, it’s trying to bring back the neighborhoods that we built in the ’50s and the ’60s that literally housed the Greatest Generation,” said Rep. Spencer Igo, R-Wabana Township, an author of one of the bills and House housing committee co-chair.

While the bills got a friendly reception from legislators in housing committees, cities and city advocacy groups rallied behind the League of Minnesota Cities and other city groups, showing up in force to testify against them.

Many city councils, like West St. Paul’s, approved letters to legislators opposing the statewide reforms and touting their own records on building housing.

“We are most concerned that the proposed legislation will limit local decision-making authority on residential development by imposing a ‘one size fits all’ framework on cities, regardless of our unique needs and circumstances,” Fridley Mayor Dave Ostwald wrote in a letter.

The bills stalled in committees where many legislators are former local officials.

“There’s just so much going on in a budget year that I think we just kind of stalled out,” Igo said. He noted the housing budget bill, as of Monday, contained language that would give cities an advantage for competitive grants if they complied with some of the ideas in the “Yes to Homes” bills.

While legislators here have failed, so far, to pass zoning reform bills aimed at increasing density and boosting housing production, the idea has found traction in several other states — particularly in states with more acute housing shortages and higher prices.

New laws in Colorado, for example, limit how much parking some local governments can require to be built with new housing developments and force cities to allow greater density near public transit lines. Some cities there have said they will ignore those laws and are discussing lawsuits against the state. Similar laws have been approved in states including Montana, California, Oregon and Maine.

Port and Igo said they are committed to continuing the conversation next year.

Igo cited concern about the need for more homes across Minnesota, high mortgage payments and the rising age of the average Minnesotan when they buy their first home.

“We are going to keep building the coalition and keep educating people,” Igo said.

Port said she is frustrated with cities’ opposition after so many meetings and dialogue about the bills.

“For us, it’s a stark example of maybe where we shouldn’t spend all of our time and instead should be spending it talking to the people of Minnesota,” she said.

Burkett, of West St. Paul, said he’d like to see legislators come at the issue with a more incentive-based approach, and that while they seem well-intentioned, the bills take too much authority away from local government.

Nathaniel Minor of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.