City/Town: Moorhead
Legislative District: House District 04A
Party: Republican Party of Minnesota
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
Get the government out of our housing/construction industry.
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?
I would love to see the complete and total elimination of property taxes. This will allow those, like seniors, to be able to afford to keep their homes. If we keep raising property taxes on them it will eventually push them out of their homes.
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?
Get the government out of the construction and real estate business. Let builders do their jobs without all of the regulations and red tape. I am not against giving first time home buyers a credit to be used towards their first home as long as they live there for more that X amount of years. Much of our problem today derives from the fact that people just don’t want to work like they used to. Too many have come to rely on government help and intervention in their lives. Folks need to take responsibility for their lives, work hard, set goals, and just keep pushing on. They will get ahead. America rewards those who are willing to work. We do a disservice to our citizen by incentivizing everything to the point that people rely on the government to build their lives and “wealth”, and that’s just not the American way.
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?
Again we need less government involvement and more freedom to allow these home builders and entrepreneurs to build freely. If you build it they will come.
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?
Complete and total elimination of property taxes. As a state we need to stop toying with our citizens and their homes. Home ownership means that we OWN our home and we don’t rent it from the government. As a business owner if you remove harmful and restrictive regulations and eliminate property taxes you would see homes being built everywhere. Instead we have a state government that thinks no one has a brain or will to think and do for themselves and that they have to do everything for them. That’s not true! We need LESS GOVERNMENT and more freedom!
Q6: If you have other housing policy priorities, especially specific to your district’s housing needs, please share them here.
As a real estate broker with over 20 years of experience I’ve witnessed first hand how the government has hurt our citizens. I’ve sold real estate in four states and my local community is the only one I’ve ever seen that had “specials” (I call them extra taxes). Lot prices are all about the same across the states that I’ve lived and worked in. It’s the developers and the government who are getting off passing these expenses off on the consumer. I grew up in rural Missouri. I helped build a gymnasium, a least two homes, and many additions. We didn’t need or want the government holding our hands telling us that we need an extra outlet, or that something needs to be an inch higher or lower, or deeper. We just built. Minnesotans have no idea how much freedom has been taken from them. My goal is to show them how much they’ve given up.