City/Town: Duluth
Legislative District: Senate District 08
Party: Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
Candidate responses in italics.
Q1: Housing plays a critical role in economic stability, health, and quality of life for individuals and families. However, disparities in housing continue to affect communities of color, people with disabilities, rural communities, and other historically underserved populations. What meaningful actions should be taken to acknowledge, address, and eliminate housing inequities and advance housing opportunities for all Minnesotans
Housing should be viewed as a human right. This means we must ensure the provision of safe, affordable, and equitable housing to people regardless of who they are or where they live.
The private housing market has not met our needs for quality affordable housing. The public sector must therefore step in. There are many methods for fulfilling this government responsibility, such as direct investment in publicly-owned housing, public-private partnerships, subsidies to tenants, and rent control. Unfortunately, over the past several decades, government at virtually all levels has abandoned its obligation to ensure a sufficient stock of quality affordable housing. We need to recommit ourselves to that principle and then determine the proper mix of policy tools to achieve it.
At the same time, we must move away from using our tax dollars in an attempt to entice private developers to build affordable — including low-income — housing. Instead, we should be using our public dollars to directly fund housing that is truly affordable for middle and lower-income people. Great ideas and models such as tenant-run housing, cooperative housing, and rent-controlled housing are already out there, paving the way to a future where we can have housing for all. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can have our tax dollars start housing people rather than going to profiteers. We must build the housing people need.
Q2: Supportive housing combines affordable housing with support services that help people who face the most complex challenges to live with stability, autonomy, and dignity. Supportive housing provides better outcomes and is fiscally responsible. What will you do to ensure community members who are unhoused or unstably housed receive the support they need to obtain or keep their own homes?
We must provide supportive services to help those who face financial and non-financial barriers to housing to keep a roof over their heads. We must also employ a “housing first” approach to tackling homelessness; research shows this is the most effective, both in terms of cost and outcomes.
We must ensure that strategies such as community- and site-based supportive mental and chemical health services and community health centers are part of our housing development portfolios.
At the same time, however, we must raise appropriate revenues from the wealthiest individuals and corporations in Minnesota to secure the kind of money we need to provide housing and adequate services for all as a right. Having a stable place to live is among the most significant social determinants of health. The wealthiest individuals and corporations must pay their fair share in tax revenue so we can ensure housing as a basic human right for all people. We need to rally political courage to take on the powerful for-profit interests that do not view housing as a human right, wish to continue profiting from it, and lobby against meaningful change.
Q3: Homeownership is a way to build generational wealth, provide family and household stability, and support community vibrancy. More and more Minnesotans are priced out of owning a home because of rising housing costs, including purchase price, homeowners’ insurance, and property taxes. What steps will you take to increase opportunities for renters and first-time homebuyers to purchase homes, condos, or cooperative ownership models?
My hometown of Duluth, like many communities in Minnesota, has a housing shortage and aging housing stock. Where there are housing shortages, we must build more housing that people can afford. We must also place and enforce limits on short-term vacation rentals, which negatively affect housing availability, and we must enact rent stabilization measures to stop profiteering landlords from taking advantage of tenants.
Also, when the rich do not pay their fair share, the costs are disproportionately shifted to the rest of us, most notably in the form of increased property taxes. Many of us dread seeing our property tax bill every year. For those on fixed incomes, this ever-increasing burden is unreasonably harsh. Taxing the ultra-wealthy appropriately so we can fund our municipalities and schools adequately is key to reducing property taxes.
Q4: In the last several years, bipartisan action to streamline building of new homes and apartments has passed in several states, including: allowing for multifamily buildings in select commercial areas, limiting parking requirements, allowing smaller homes on smaller lots, and more homes per lot in residential areas like duplexes, fourplexes, and accessory dwelling units. What reforms do you support to modernize zoning to both enable homes to be more affordable statewide and improve city tax bases?
We need to remove unreasonable barriers to denser housing. Denser housing leads to more vibrant communities while expanding cities’ and counties’ tax bases. I support Yes to Homes MN and its Starter Homes Act (HF3895/SF4123). We need to limit local zoning restrictions that inhibit new housing, and we must abolish zoning laws that have historically been used to keep low-income people and families of color from certain neighborhoods.
Q5: Despite housing being the largest cost in the average household budget, housing receives only a small fraction of the total state budget at just 0.3%. A lack of ongoing reliable funding for housing in Minnesota’s state budget has resulted in an undersupply of stable homes affordable to our workforce, our elders, and our families. In recent years, a constitutional amendment for housing, which would dedicate revenues from a sales tax increase to housing, has gained momentum at the legislature. What revenue options will you champion to more adequately meet our need for reliable funding for homes we can afford?
I support a constitutional amendment that would dedicate revenues from a sales tax increase to housing. I will also fight at every opportunity to raise more revenue from the wealthiest individuals and corporations in our state. The richest 1% of Minnesotans now own nearly a third of all the wealth in our state. This level of outrageous wealth inequality is not normal, and it should not be acceptable to any of us. I introduced a bill recently to increase taxes on the top 2% of Minnesotans by 2.6%, which would raise over a billion dollars each year to go toward the public goods that we desperately need, such as housing. I also have a bill to create a fifth tier in our state taxation system, a bill to increase taxes on corporations in proportion to the growth of the disparity between their highest- and lowest-paid workers, and I am looking into other options, like a wealth tax, to reduce wealth inequality in our state and bring in the revenue we need for housing, schools, healthcare, etc.
Q6: If you have other housing policy priorities, especially specific to your district’s housing needs, please share them here.
There are currently people sleeping under I-35 in Duluth. In the wealthiest nation in history, this is wrong.
In recent legislative sessions, our Duluth delegation has been able to secure tens of millions of dollars in housing aid and funding for northeast Minnesota. I’m pleased we have been able to achieve that, but it does not get to the core of the issue. Particularly now in light of massive federal cuts, the amount we previously allocated will serve more as an emergency measure (build more units through non-profit organizations and provide continuing rental assistance – the typical way housing funds are spent in Minnesota) than a long-term solution.
As I said above, we need to formally recognize housing as a human right, and the lack of low- and moderate-income housing as an intolerable and actionable human rights violation. A more sustainable approach will be to develop more non-market-based solutions, like fully funding and expanding public housing, strengthening tenants’ rights, increasing access to housing cooperatives and community land trusts, and enacting rent stabilization measures.