Minneapolis Rent Stabilization Charter Amendment
November 2021 update: The voters of Minneapolis voted to approve this Charter Amendment! Now begins the work to advocate for an equitable and impactful Rent Stabilization Ordinance within the City of Minneapolis government. At Align MPLS we will be watching for opportunities to lift up the voices of those with lived experience of homelessness as the work continues.
*This Amendment was endorsed by Align MPLS*
Background:
Initially, there were two proposed ballot measures related to rent stabilization, the Resident initiative (Article I), which provides a petition process for residents to refer a rent stabilization ordinance to voters, and the Council initiative (Article IV), which would give Council the power to adopt a rent stabilization ordinance or refer a rent stabilization ordinance to the voters. The Resident Initiative failed in the City Council and will not be on the ballot. The Council Initiative was approved to be on the ballot.
The Council Initiative (Article IV) is a charter amendment that would allow the council the opportunity to work on rent stabilization at the City Council level and would provide a path for potential implementation of rent stabilization measures at some point in the future, it is not itself a rent stabilization ordinance.If this measure passes in November, the City Council could then create a rent stabilization ordinance that could go on a future year’s ballot to be voted on by residents, or the City Council could enact a rent stabilization ordinance.
Full Ballot language for November 2021:
Rent Stabilization Ballot Language and Resolution
Endorsing Organizations:
Align MPLS
The Align MPLS Steering Committee voted to endorse the Rent Stabilization Charter Amendment on 8/25/21.
Take Action MN
“As rents continue to rise, and more and more working families are being priced out of housing across the state, that alone is reason enough to support these amendments. But it’s also useful to look at who opposes these amendments to guide us. Property owners and their well-funded associations strongly oppose rent stabilization, as it actually places a check on their ability to run roughshod over actual and potential tenants. For these reasons, TakeAction Minnesota supports efforts to control rents in Minneapolis (as we do in Saint Paul), and we urge you to vote YES on these amendments.” https://takeactionminnesota.org/a-run-down-of-the-5-charter-amendments-minneapolitans-will-vote-on-this-november/
WedgeLive
“...It’s simple: The first step is giving permission to pursue a policy, the second step is the policy itself… This is an easy one to support.”
https://wedgelive.com/say-yes-to-rent-stabilization-in-minneapolis/
Twin Cities DSA
“Rent prices have seen staggering increases year over year, to a degree that many pay unsustainable rates of their income toward housing or have already been forced out of their communities. In places where it has been implemented, rent control has been a veritable lifeline for the many tenants who would have been completely priced out of cities. Current state law prohibits Minneapolis from passing an ordinance related to rent control unless we amend the city charter to specifically allow it. In support of this, TCDSA has endorsed the Minneapolis United for Rent Control campaign to amend the city charter and subsequently pass a meaningful rent control policy…”
https://twincitiesdsa.org/2021/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-our-2021-endorsements/
Our Revolution Twin Cities
Research on Rent Control:
University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) Recently Published Research-
Context from The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty-
“Currently, only 25 percent of those poor enough to be eligible for housing assistance receive it. Meanwhile, wages have stagnated or fallen, and other social safety nets have shrunk. As the overall number of low-income renters has increased over the years, the availability of affordable housing in the private market has also decreased. As recently documented in Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond’s best-selling book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, this has led to high rates of housing instability, evictions, and difficulty finding housing—any of which can be a proximate cause of homelessness.
Affordable housing is rapidly decreasing nationwide, and today there are only 35 units that are affordable and available for every 100 extremely poor renter households. This housing gap is even more severe in many of the nation’s large and growing metropolitan areas. Multiple factors contribute to the affordable housing gap, but perhaps none more so than the rapidly rising costs of rents as compared with household wages.
Renter households that pay more than half of their total household income on housing are at a record high of over 21 million. While housing cost burdens affect renters of multiple income levels, our nation’s poorest renters—which comprise 26 percent of all U.S. renter households—feel the housing burdens most acutely. Indeed, approximately 1 in 4 of these renters pays nearly 70 percent of household income toward rent and basic utilities.”
Summary of limitation of research, from the Urban Institute-
“Most research on rent-control laws has come from economics literature, where it is often referenced in introductory texts as a classic case of an ineffective and counterproductive policy. Economists argue that rent controls reduce incentives to maintain existing housing or build new housing, leading to a growing mismatch between housing supply and demand and an increase in prices overall. Because contemporary rent-control policies usually have features that mitigate some of these negative impacts, however,this general critique is less salient when applied to real-world examples, and empirical studies looking into these effects have found mixed results. More broadly, economic analyses often ignore other social benefits associated with neighborhood stability, displacement prevention, and inclusivity (Glaeser 2003; Harvard Law Review Association 1988).” https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99646/rent_control._what_does_the_research_tell_us_about_the_effectiveness_of_local_action_1.pdf
Potential positive effects of rent control seen in some of the research-
Higher stability, lower displacement of tenants
More affordable rent
Positive health and mental health outcomes (esp in children)
Possible drawbacks of rent control (note these can provide learnings to ultimately build better rent stabilization legislation)-
Long-term can lead to conversion to owner-occupancy
Constraint of housing stock if developers don’t see as much profit potential
Lack of targeting to specific low-income households