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Lori Sturdevant's March 22 column "As a topic among policymakers, housing is hotter than it once was" missed a number of important points.
It is correct that the private marketplace is underproducing affordable housing. The Minnesota Housing Partnership's estimate is that more than 114,000 families that earn under $30,000 can't find affordable housing. But Sturdevant misdiagnoses the cause. The cause of a lack of affordable housing in Minnesota is not zoning protections for single-family homes restricting the construction of new housing. It is that the cost of building things has increased substantially.
The Mortenson Construction Cost Index tracks the cost of construction (mortenson.com/cost-index). It shows that the cost to build in the Twin Cities has increased 88% since 2009, when adjusted for inflation. The private marketplace simply cannot produce housing at a cost affordable to an increasing number of Minnesotans without government subsidies.
This is the core reason for the housing crisis that Minnesota is facing, not zoning. Changing zoning will not produce new low-cost housing. It hasn't in Minneapolis. Almost all new affordable housing in the city has been created by city government subsidy.
Last year, the Legislature put funding toward subsidizing the construction of new affordable housing. But housing is very expensive and there will always be a limit to how much government can subsidize. What is needed is a national discussion about what is driving up the cost of lumber and copper and steel and all the other things needed to build new housing, not just increasing levels of government subsidy.
Owning a home is the absolute best way for the average person to build wealth. Renting keeps people poor. Taking away zoning protections for single-family homes is designed to incentivize the destruction of wealth-building ownership housing and replace it with wealth-losing rental housing. The state is projected to grow only 8% in the next 20 years, according to the Minnesota state demographer, and it is hard to understand why this radical change is needed to accommodate so little growth. Instead, the state should be laser-focused on protecting existing ownership housing and producing more. It should refocus its existing affordable housing programs — from just producing affordable rental property — to also producing affordable ownership housing. That is key to helping low-income people build wealth. It should also change laws that incentivize the construction of apartments over condominiums.
Sturdevant quotes former St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman saying that people who oppose taking away protections for single-family homes oppose density. It is quite the opposite. We all recognize that the state needs to grow. But there is an abundant amount of land available, including in Minneapolis, to meet the state's 8% growth projection without sacrificing wealth-building single-family homes. The Legislature should reject this push to remove protections for single-family homes and preserve wealth-building opportunities for generations to come.
Lisa McDonald, of Minneapolis, is a former City Council member and is one of the founding members of the citizen group Minneapolis For Everyone.
