St. Paul City Council gets an earful on rent control, tenant protections
With St. Paul's housing construction numbers dragging lower last year than at any time since 2013, the three letter writers joined a cadre of others who say it's time to end rent control for new housing construction, as well as buildings that received their certificate of occupancy after 2004, as the mayor and three council members have proposed.
'Prominent buildings at the core of our city are being vacated, abandoned and boarded up,' said Matt Majka, CEO of the Minnesota Wild, in a letter to the St. Paul City Council bemoaning the state of downtown. 'We must do everything we can to reinvest in these properties and reposition them as housing.'
But Deborah Schlick, a resident of the city's West Side, took the opposite tack, arguing that the city already watered down the 2021 voter-approved rent stabilization ordinance with a number of amendments and was poised to shred it to 'Swiss cheese' with yet another, an affront to renters that now comprise nearly half the city.
'In this economy, there is time to do this right,' wrote Schlick, in her own letter to the city council. 'Put a hold on any decision. Between interest rates and tariffs, no one is rushing to build anywhere. Build a thoughtful, effective strategy to ensure low wage workers and people unable to work can afford to find a home in St. Paul.'
The city council held public hearings Wednesday on two hot-button questions likely up for votes in early May. At the urging of St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, housing developers and certain affordable housing advocates who have called rent control a well-intentioned but failed effort, the council is contemplating exempting any construction that received its certificate of occupancy after 2004.
Carter and several council members have said those changes should move forward hand-in-hand with a raft of proposed tenant protections also vetted through a public hearing on Wednesday.
City officials have expressed alarm that only 293 housing units were constructed in St. Paul last year, down from more than 1,400 in 2019, and only a few dozen of last year's new units were non-subsidized, market-rate housing. They've pointed out that multiple rent-controlled cities offer exemptions for new construction, including Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Matthew McMillan, a renter, noted that while St. Paul has struggled to draw interest from the development community, housing construction also plunged in cities that do not have rent control. Given high interest rates and other economic challenges, an attorney with the Housing Justice Center, based in St. Paul, told the council the city is 'scapegoating' rent control for construction slowdowns increasingly evident throughout the Twin Cities.
On the city's East Side, 'one in three Ward 7 renters pay over half their income to rent,' said another speaker, who identified himself as a graduate student who studies the housing industry. 'This is absolutely a supply issue. … It's a downtown issue. But rent control is not the cause of those problems.'
Some critics expressed fear that creating a two-tier system will offer extra incentive to developers to tear down older, naturally affordable properties and replace them with pricey new units exempt from rent control.
'Trickle-down affordability is both grossly insufficient and … unjust,' said another renter, pointing to limited recent construction and high rents in Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Denver and other cities without rent control.
Rent control's opponents have argued that the blanket policy has done more to protect wealthy renters from large hikes than to protect the poor, given that many owners of older properties have been granted exemptions to the rent caps because of high maintenance costs, inflation and property tax increases.
In a letter to the council, real estate broker Renee Spillum, a former director of real estate with the University of Minnesota Foundation's Real Estate Advisors, said she once spent seven years struggling to find financing to build new apartments in a low-income Minneapolis neighborhood. St. Paul's rent control ordinance has made a difficult slog even harder, she said.
'I want more competition in St. Paul between landlords, not less,' Spillum wrote. 'The only way that happens is adding more units. And the only way we add more units in our city is not to make it impossible for developers to raise equity capital to build here.'
Scott Cordes, chief operating officer of affordable housing developer Project for Pride in Living, told the council Wednesday that rent control has had too many 'unintended consequences,' such as limiting affordable housing production at the Highland Bridge development, where affordable units have only moved forward at three of 10 parcels.
St. Paul City Council to hear rent control, tenant protections
St. Paul Mayor Carter appoints Matt Privratsky as interim council member
St. Paul Ward 4 race: School Board member Chauntyll Allen declares; Hamline-Midway Coalition disavows Cole Hanson campaign
Cristen Incitti: We need more housing of all types, sizes and locations. Let's make building easier
Rent control, budget, acrimony, attendance issues dog St. Paul City Council
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