Session Update: Enacting Efforts to Increase Affordable Housing

A measure that seeks to encourage cities and municipalities to adopt policies that would lead to more affordable housing development passed its final committee stop Tuesday, March 16. The Senate Local Government Policy Committee heard from proponents and opponents, including trade associations, realtors and local governments, to SF 915.

Senator Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, the bill’s author, said that Minnesota ranks among the highest U.S. states in the cost to build a new home and has the greatest gap between white people and people of color in housing equity. In addition to encouraging cities to alter lot sizes to create more density, he said that the bill would also close a loophole in the use of Planned Unit Developments (PUD), which are sometimes used to require decorative add-ons and ensure larger lot sizes.

Senator Karla Bigham, DFL-Cottage Grove, suggested it would be better to get stakeholders together to look for duplicative efforts from cities, counties and the state to lower the costs of building new affordable homes. “I think this is a pretty heavy hand of government coming down on our local partners. I don’t think we would accept this from a federal government; we’d be in unison, Senator Draheim, screaming about this,” she said.