‘Missing middle’ housing bill off the table at the Legislature, for this session

It was the kind of political coalition that should have meant the bill should have had an easy time in the Minnesota Legislature.

DFLers and Republicans. Social justice organizations. The chamber of commerce. Home builders. Construction unions. Affordable housing advocates. Realtors. Environmentalists. Transit promoters.

“In my time in the Legislature, I haven’t seen a coalition like this,” said House Housing Committee chair Mike Howard, DFL-Richfield.

It wasn’t enough.

A proposal often referred to as the “missing middle” bill that would promote the construction of more types of housing in traditional single-family neighborhoods will not move forward this session, Howard said last week. Opposition from cities in the Twin Cities region was successful in causing suburban lawmakers from both parties to balk at the sweeping change.

“The bill is a disruption of the status quo and anytime you are disrupting the status quo it creates heartburn and challenges, especially for the cities,” he said. “We built a really strong coalition. In some places, this has been talked about for years but for some cities this is a new concept. We just didn’t have time for the depth of conversation with cities and some legislators that are needed.”

“For some folks it will be confounding that you have this large a coalition and there isn’t a path to get it across this year,” Howard said. “But when cities, and cities that are talking to their members and saying the sky is going to fall, that can have a pretty profound impact.”

Howard still has hopes of passing two related measures: one that would restrict city authority to reject multi-family apartment buildings in commercial zones and another that would allow accessory dwelling units in single-family zones statewide.

On the multi-family bill, Howard and prime sponsor Rep. Alicia Kozlowski of Duluth have agreed to amendments to respond to city concerns about building heights and parking requirements. They will consider other amendments that look for ways to preserve commercial property, such as the storefronts in historic downtowns that many cities want to preserve, Howard said. Sen. Susan Pha, DFL Brooklyn Park, is the Senate sponsor of the multi-family bill. 

Local control 

The missing middle bills in the House and Senate emerged from a changing view of traditional urban zoning and planning. While Republicans have often complained about onerous rules that either prevent the construction of more housing or add to its cost, Democrats, locally and nationally, see the same rules as contributing to housing shortages and affordability. Recent changes to Minneapolis and St. Paul’s comprehensive plans reflect the emerging approach to promote density.

Related: Why a sweeping housing density bill opposed by Minnesota cities, suburbs has broad support in the Legislature

As introduced, the bills by Rep. Larry Kraft, DFL-St. Louis Park and Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, would have required cities to allow duplexes, triplexes, and other “missing middle” housing types up to ten-plexes in single-family zones in larger cities. Such housing would both increase supply and create density that makes transit, cycling, and walking more likely, supporters said.

The bill also would have limited the authority of cities to use large minimum lot sizes and parking requirements that make it more expensive to build in some suburbs. It would prohibit demolition of affordable units unless a like number of such units are part of a new project. Another controversial element would have limited public participation to object to proposals that would be legal under a city’s comprehensive plan.

During a press conference early in the session, Mitchell said she had heard from local officials who privately welcomed a way to resist public opposition to legal projects.

“Sometimes, it is a loud minority that will come and fight more housing coming in. So that can be a hard decision for a city council member or a mayor to make,” she said. “If we have a state law that helps with that framework, they don’t have to make that decision that could cost them in a future election.”

Cities objected to what they saw as state preemption of local government authority over how to implement state rules for comprehensive planning that meet local needs. While proponents have blamed cities for making it difficult to build new housing — especially duplexes and apartments, especially those that are affordable — city officials asserted that they are trying to accommodate more housing and more density. They also worried that mandates from the state that don’t take into consideration infrastructure requirements to provide water and sewage treatment to more people would stress city budgets.

“We are open to discussions with legislators on how to turn that approach from a statewide mandate and preemption approach to a more locally driven framework of options and incentives that can be state-supported but locally implemented,” said Daniel Lightfoot, a lobbyist for the League of Minnesota Cities.

“We feel that would be far more likely to result in meaningful changes to housing density, affordability and availability that can be better tailored to individual communities,” he said.

Luke Hellier is the mayor of Lakeville, one of the fastest growing cities in the United States. With 2,000 acres of land set aside for residential development and 650 acres of that for multi-family housing, the city spends a lot of time and money on these issues. But Hellier said he was caught by surprise when the missing middle bills were announced at a President’s Day press conference.

“They had not looped in city stakeholders, the people who are supposed to be setting policy,” Hellier said. “It was such a wholesale change with how cities do business when it comes to growth.” Requiring a fourplex on a lot that had water and sewer designed for a single house is a big change, he said.

Hellier said he was also concerned with the limitations on public participation. 

“It didn’t have enough support from the people actually doing the work on the ground to make the bill happen,” Hellier said of the decision to stop working on the bills this session.

The bills easily passed Howard’s and Port’s housing committees but slowed when they moved to other panels, especially the House and Senate state government committees. In March, the Minnesota Housing Partnership urged members to contact the chairs of those committees — Sen. Kari Dziedzic and Rep. Ginny Klevorn — and urge them to hear the bills.

“Please tell your lawmakers to stop sanctioning practices that make it so hard to address our housing crisis and that continue to perpetuate segregated communities,” the “Action Alert” stated.

A ‘systems failure’

Anne Mavity, the executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership, an affordable housing and community development non-profit, said she was disappointed at the decision to stop working on the missing middle bill, but the coalition would keep working on the issue of housing availability and cost.

“We have a systems failure in Minnesota so we need a systems-level solution,” Mavity said. Twenty states have passed similar laws, states with both Republican and Democratic governments. She is a former St. Louis Park City Council member and has served on the board of the League of Minnesota Cities and said she is sensitive to city concerns about losing local control. But she said such fears have not been realized in the other states that have adopted similar zoning changes.

“It’s important that we have opened this conversation in Minnesota to say the status quo isn’t working,” she said, citing estimates that the state is 100,000 housing units shy of what is needed.

Libby Murphy, the director of policy for the partnership, said the portion of the package that remains alive — the multifamily in commercial zones language — is by itself a significant change. Keeping multifamily buildings out of some communities, especially affordable housing, has been a way of keeping low-income and racial minorities out of communities.

“The multifamily bill has the potential to be a game changer,” Murphy said. “Affordable housing faces unique barriers and this bill would remove many of those barriers.”

Editor’s note: Peter Callaghan wrote this story for MinnPost.com. Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost.

This article first appeared April 3 on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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