For Minnesota Housing Commissioner Jennifer Leimaile Ho, there was a lot to like about election night, 2022.
Her boss, Gov. Tim Walz, was reelected. His party retained control of the Minnesota House of Representatives. And the DFL regained control of the Minnesota Senate for the first time since Walz was first elected.
“It goes without saying that I’m delighted that the governor and the lieutenant governor – and therefore I – get a second term,” Ho said. But she added that it took a while for it to sink in that she would be working with a DFL-controlled House and Senate rather than the politically divided Legislature of the last four years.
“With this budget surplus, no matter how large it is in the forecast, between the governor and lieutenant governor and Rep. (Mike) Howard chairing the House and Sen. (Lindsey) Port chairing the Senate, things really do line up for an opportunity to go really big on housing,” Ho said.
A year ago, Walz proposed operating and bonding bills that contained roughly $1 billion for affordable housing, homelessness, workforce housing and down payment assistance.
“I would anticipate trying to grab something that is roughly that big, and that big is huge in terms of historic housing investment,” Ho said. “I’m feeling very hopeful.”
[image_credit]Photo by Josh Nguyen[/image_credit][image_caption]Housing Commissioner Jennifer Leimaile Ho visiting new senior housing at the Lower Sioux Indian Community.[/image_caption]
Housing is a rare bipartisan issue in the Legislature because shortages and affordability confront communities statewide – from a lack of affordable housing in more-expensive markets to a shortage of workforce housing across Minnesota. In 2019, Senate majority Republicans signaled the importance of the issue by breaking it off from a larger committee with Sen. Rich Draheim of Madison Lake in charge. Ho notes that a 2019 housing bill passed the state Senate unanimously.
[image_caption]State Sen. Lindsey Port[/image_caption]
Port, of Burnsville, served on the Senate Housing Finance and Policy Committee the last two years and was selected as chair by newly designated Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, who had been the ranking DFL member of the committee.
“A lot is possible,” Port said of the DFL state government trifecta. The failure to pass housing infrastructure bonds or a larger bonding bill last session leaves work unfinished. She also said there could be more money for responses to homelessness, down payment assistance to help close an ownership gap between white residents and people of color and programs like Homework Begins at Home built on the notion that students do better when they have stable housing. Port also called out the need for what is termed workforce housing – affordable housing for workers in parts of the state that lack housing options for growing workforces.
[image_caption]State Rep. Mike Howard[/image_caption]
Richfield-based Howard will become House Housing Finance and Policy chair, replacing Rep. Alice Hausman who did not seek reelection to the House. He termed DFL control of the three parts of the legislative process “a perfect storm.”
“Frankly, we have an obligation to take action because it is so urgently required,” Howard said.
“The housing crisis has only worsened,” he said, citing post-pandemic evictions, the lack of new construction to meet demand and the lack of state policy changes to address the issue. “I think we should be optimistic about what we can do.”
Currently, housing programs make up 0.3% of the state general fund budget of $52 billion over two years. “The moment calls us to think bolder, to think bigger. We can’t really nibble around the edges,” Howard said.
Because most bonds require a 60% vote, the minority parties in the House and Senate have clout they lack on most other issues.
One type of bond, however, takes away that clout. Housing infrastructure bonds, because they do not pledge the full faith and credit of the state, need just a simple majority. Known as appropriation bonds, these depend on biennial appropriations in the state budget for annual debt service. As such, they do not get the lowest interest rates but are still a cheap way for the state to borrow.
In addition, these bonds are not restricted for public-only uses and can be a source of the state share of projects built and owned by nonprofit organizations. Lawmakers passed $60 million in this type of bond in 2019 when the larger bonding bill failed to pass. In 2020 and again in 2021, $100 million in infrastructure bonds were approved.
Still, the need outruns that supply of state matching funds. Ho said that in years when no bonds are approved – like this year – one of four projects seeking state help get it. In years when infrastructure bonds are approved, that ratio only falls to one in three. Since 2018, the Legislature has authorized or appropriated $612 million in funding for housing via bonding bills and budget bills, the agency reports.
Bonding isn’t the only way the Legislature can boost housing affordability. In the agreed-to-but-ultimately-not-passed taxes bill last session, a simplification in the renter’s tax credit was expected to expand the number of beneficiaries from 318,000 to 438,000. The change would allow it to be claimed on regular income tax filings rather than a separate application in the summer.
The same bill contained a refundable tax credit of $2,000 per child age 4 or younger. Refundable credits benefit eligible taxpayers whether they owe state taxes or not. Rep. Aisha Gomez, the Minneapolis DFLer who is the new chair of the House Taxes Committee, has been a leader on homelessness responses. Sen. Ann Rest, the New Hope DFLer who is the new chair of the Senate Taxes Committee, recently served on the Housing committee.
During the pandemic, well over $500 million in federal emergency funds went directly to rental assistance for households at risk of eviction. Walz signed an emergency order banning most evictions – a protection that ended this past June. He also allocated $100 million for a state-run but federally financed rental assistance program in 2020. That was replaced with a specific federal allocation that ended up sending out $449 million in rent and utility assistance.
But the agency and its RentHelpMN faced criticism. Rental housing providers complained of a balky application process and slow payments. Republicans echoed those concerns. DFLers were unhappy with a sudden end to applications a year ago when funding ran low.
Republicans who controlled the Senate and the housing committee made noise about using the Senate’s confirmation authority to remove Ho from office, though a vote was never taken.
“I’m proud of our emergency rental assistance program,” she said. “We put $450 million out there to help renters and landlords. We did it in record time. It was enormous.” Three times the federal government sent additional money to Minnesota from states that didn’t or couldn’t use their allocations. But she acknowledges the struggles that the agency went through.
“It’s not what we do. The hardest thing was standing up something that was so big and so urgent at one time because the money was always going to run out,” Ho said.
Still, Ho and DFL housing leaders think the state should consider some sort of rental assistance program – both emergency and permanent – as a better way to provide housing support to very low income residents. Much of the proceeds from bond sales go to housing that is affordable for families between 60% and 80% of area median income. Gathering funds from public and private sources so as to charge rents affordable to families at 30% of median income or lower is much more challenging. In the Twin Cities, 30% of the area median income for a family of four is $35,200, while 60% is $70,380.
Subsidizing rent costs for those lowest income families might be a more achievable way of getting support. Ho said housing advocates have been discussing whether the state should increase regular income assistance to help people afford increased housing costs or whether direct rental assistance would work better.
“There does need to be a conversation about these being 0ngoing programs and not one-time programs,” Ho said. That changes the budget politics because lawmakers are leery about spending surpluses in ways that must be sustained in the future when revenue might not be as robust as it is now.
“I’d love to have the policy discussion,” Ho said.
Port said it will be a “hard conversation” and added she worries that temporary programs don’t eliminate problems but just push the cliff of eviction further into the future. That said, she doesn’t oppose emergency rental help.
“The big concern we have is that it reaches the people who need it, that there is oversight to make sure it is not being taken advantage of, that it can be quickly and effectively managed,” Port said. “We saw how difficult it is to run emergency rental programs that were set up very quickly. The agency learned a lot of lessons.”
Housing will have to compete with many demands on the surplus – set now at $12 billion over the next two and a half years – but Howard tied housing funding and policy into broader social issues and said more of his colleagues understand the connections.
“There’s an understanding that nothing in your life goes well if you don’t have access to a stable home. To me, it’s just so foundational that if we can solve this challenge then we have a shot at improving education outcomes, growing our economy, reducing racial inequities,” Howard said. “Housing really should be one of the top priorities.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misstated how much the Legislature has appropriated in funding for housing via bonding bills and budget bills since 2018. The story has been corrected.
What is missing, is the push to retain affordable single homes for the middle class and below. These massive apartment complexes don’t help people build wealth and tend to benefit more the developers. And why are we subsidizing large corporations who don’t pay a decent wage. You also have higher property taxes and general taxes on the middle class, many who struggle to afford housing, to pay for housing for others. It needs to be more of a universal approach to assisting people.
I agree with Lisa’s points. Rental housing isn’t the only home category needing subsidies. Seniors who own homes but are being pushed out of Minneapolis due to large property tax increases are also at risk. Children who are without stable housing don’t thrive in school. In South Minneapolis, it seems developers’ strategies are to build studio and 1-bedroom only buildings, many without garages, and the rents are way out of bounds. Wages? that’s another subject needing very broad but urgent attention.
The Karmel Village development being built on Lake Street features 77 units of 1 – 4 bedroom apartments. The developer specifically wanted to create three and four bedroom apartments for families. It’s not impossible. Though new, state-funded public housing for larger rentals would no doubt help that market
I agree I think the price per sq ft in some of these newer units is too high.
That value is only realized when sold. You want to push people out of a house that has been their home for decades?
I wouldn’t call lower property tax increases a subsidy. Many of the homeowners seeing annual double digit increases are middle or fixed income individuals who are being taxed .
Our state has an incredible need to tax and spend. Go big on everything is the new slogan.
“And why are we subsidizing large corporations who don’t pay a decent wage.”
Any examples come to mind? And we’re not talking Starbucks here. We are talking building trades. And the chances that the larger the corporation the more likely the building trades are unionized and are paying a very decent wage. I agree on an emphasis on home ownership, but the reflexive, “The man is evil” reaction is thoughtless: Construction and manufacturing jobs are among the best we can encourage.
Outstate corporations, such as Digikey in Theif River Falls and Polaris in Roseau, have begged for government handouts. They whine that they can’t attract more workers due to the “cost of housing”. Actually, they can raise wages, or spend their own money to subsidize employee housing.
We’re told rural MN “just wants to be left alone, that they don’t want”interference from Saint Paul “. But they sure want our Metro tax dollars.
One Minnesota. The people have spoken, please listen.
Most of us Metro libs are fine with our tax dollars subsidizing rural MN. What we don’t care for, and may at some point no longer tolerate, is rural folks constantly campaigning against the evil city folk, cursing us while holding a hand out, do they can fix their roads, water treatment plants, and get high speed internet.
Are you really ok with people electing small government conservatives, then accepting big government dollars? The people of rural MN have indeed spoken, they want to shrink the size of government. So they should tell Digikey and Polaris to get out of the wagon and help push.
You can’t name a single metro lib politician who slams rural MN the way rural politicians slam the Metro. Not one.
Single family homes are great – I live in one too. The problem is they’re an inefficient use of space. Building more single family homes means developing more land further & further from core cities. Maybe, given how the nature of work is changing it’s not a big deal. On the other hand, multi unit buildings are more efficient to heat & can house more people in less space. And some people prefer the lack of yardwork & snow removal.
It would be great if everybody who wanted to buy a home could. But it’s not very realistic. As a society, ensuring the housing is available – at all – is a higher priority than ensuring single family homes are affordable for everybody.
How about the state jumping in and actually providing some lots for sale, state funded development, helping reduce a major cost to new home ownership? Apartments don’t do much to help anyone grow their finances.
Apartments absolutely could enable tenants to build wealth if rent costs were more like a quarter of one’s monthly income rather than half. And rents would be lower if people stopped fighting apartments getting built on their block and we had a supply of housing that exceeded demand. State-funded development should be for state- or municipally-owned public housing (townhomes, not towers), not subsidizing more private property speculation on suburban-style, single family developments that are more ecologically harmful, more expensive, and house fewer people.
Because the only reason to run for office and get elected is so you can spend other people’s money. We could tax people at 100% and it would still never be enough for these people.
“Because the only reason to run for office and get elected is so you can spend other people’s money.”
And never better evidenced than when we have a Republican president and deficit spending goes thru the roof.
Democrats: The party of fiscal sanity (based on actual results).
Seeing as Dems have had a Gov for the last 12 years your comment makes no sense
Right, no need to educate them hillbillies or have roads outside of the metro. No on ever teavwls
Dude, are you deliberately being obtuse?
Four metro counties account for 60% of state tax revenues. There are rural counties that can’t afford to pave their own roads without state aid. Rural MN elects small government types, but they sure love that state aid. Those rural folk just despise it when their kids get educated and move to cities so they can actually make some money. We want those kids educated, they’re going to move here and we want a knowledge workforce.
Rural MN needs to stop biting the hand that feeds them.
Trust me, I f I was a resident I would be living in rural MN and it would be mostly democrats (well now all democrats) spending my tax dollars, both those tax dollars paid to the state and the portion of my federal income dollars which would flow to the state. Someone earlier posted alluding to metro dollars providing internet/broadband to rural communities. I’m guessing those are federal, not state, tax dollars.
Red states, and red counties, are takers. Blue states, and blue counties, are makers.
My blue city is very low on the list for LGA on a per capita basis. There are rural hamlets that get over 1/4 of their annual budgets from the state.
So I guess we’ve come to the conclusion that none of the metro tax dollars are generated by Republicans. Bigger question is how many people in Hennepin county pay little if any taxes and what political party do they support
One of the driving forces of the MN GOP in the last year has been the budget surplus, which they hoped to spend in tax cuts to the rich once they won the House and the Governorship as well as kept the Senate. To that end, they furiously griped about and opposed anything except complete capitulation to their usual list of grievances, and blocked any possibility of a special session by threatening to fire Jan Malcolm – all this in the deluded assumption that they would control Minnesota government in 2023.
Now that it is clear that their strategy of kissing up to Trump, embracing nonsense like railing about furries and litter boxes in schools, blaming worldwide inflation on Democrats, praising authoritarianism, and pushing science denial has failed, perhaps they can be convinced to come to the table on issues like housing. The need is obvious, but the scope should be broad enough to include more permanent solutions that allow for home ownership instead of rental subsidies. And for those senior Minnesotans who want to stay in their homes, that should be another goal.
I trust all of you are writing to your state legislators with these ideas and not simply posting them here on MinnPost.
Aren’t they reading them here with great diligence?
They should be. There is actually a legible path of comment communication here as opposed to the incomprehensible, 1 sentence noise of the comments in all of our major newspapers.
“Aren’t they reading them here with great diligence?”
Perhaps the best sarcastic line I have ever read here at MinnPost. Congratulations!
I also agree with commentor Berg, communicating to your local Legislators is the best hope for action.
None of this money would go to areas that voted for small government conservatives, right? If a legislative district voted for the GOP in the recent House, Senate, and guv’s races, they probably don’t want any interference from Saint Paul, and we wouldn’t want to “shove this down their throats”.
More money, more money…. Nearly all homeless are drug addicts or mentally ill. Having a house is not what they need, they need help not an apartment. When you build these large low income apartment buildings the only folks amassing wealth are builders, lenders and operators of the building. Any time you take tax dollars and bring in private money, you have issues. HUD was supposed to be the answer to all of the issues with public dollars mingling with private companies. No one hears of HUD any more and their budget for 23 is 72 billion. No problem just give us more money!
Exactly!
Most any comment on metro housing from someone who lives 200 miles away is all perception and no reality. They have not been inside the 494/694 loop since Governor Rolvaag.
What we need from Mr. Callaghan is a big pie chart something like this:
1 Street homeless, tent or underpass or similar
2 Homeless in night to night shelter
3 In temporary subsidized housing
4 In subsidized housing with no term
5 Renter without subsidy
6 Homeowner
Break out 1-4 and also the whole list. And then we would know the scope of the problem and where to put the money…
Of course erudite urbanites fewl.more Ryan qualified to.determine what is in a rural person’s best interests
Who was that GOP AG candidate, who ran disturbingly well in rural MN, who wanted to take over the Hennepin County prosecutor’s office?
But yeah, urbanites are hoity-toity.
Finland has made a big push to eliminate homelessness so that, once someone who is an addict or has other issues is in safe consistent housing, that person can get help. It’s much easier to deal with your problems if you don’t have to worry about where you are going to sleep every night, and whether it is safe and warm. “getting help” is unfortunately not enough to tackle the problem.
The rental market has a few big corporate landlords. Corporate landlords prefer to charge high rent rather than building more housing units that would lower their profit margins. The market has very little incentive to build affordable housing. After considering the risk, the return on investment for affordable housing isn’t better than putting your money in a series I bond.
We have seen the low-end housing market shifting from individually owned properties to corporate owned properties. This rent-seeking behavior will lead to depressed housing stock and lower wealth for the lower middle class.
If you let corporations control the market only the upper-middle class and wealthy will own their own home. People will get less housing for their paycheck and the city will also get increased homelessness as people who don’t return enough profit get priced out of the housing market. Potterville versus the Bailey Building and Loan on a larger scale.
It’s not just apartments being aggregated by big corporations. It’s also single family housing. A quarter of all the single family homes purchased in 2021 was purchased by investors. They pretty much had free money to do it at the time – the only thing slowing them down right now is interest rates. But higher interest rates are also preventing families from purchasing homes because the cost of homes hasn’t cooled off enough to make them affordable for your average first time home owner. Cities and states need to start putting limits on corporate ownership levels of housing.
Exactly. Corporations and venture capitalists can pay cash and thus are more attractive buyers. It’s a huge problem in vacation areas and becoming more so elsewhere.
Many of the comments here seem to focus primarily on the metro area, but from what I understand, there’s a great need for affordable housing across the state. This is especially true in places like the North Shore, where real estate prices are elevated due to all the vacation homes and rentals. I frequently listen to WTIP and heard a discussion not long ago about how difficult it’s become to fill many jobs simply because people can’t find an affordable place to live anywhere near their work. The Polaris factory had similar problems hiring up in Roseau, IIRC. So the housing shortage is not only a metro area problem.
Polaris can pay more for labor, or build housing for it’s workforce. Another option is to locate where the workers are.
I just have a couple comments to ad to this discussion, and I make this observation after some personal experience… is that the “non-profit” housing sector is a mess, and it’s riddles with fraud and inefficiency. If the plan here is to hand off billions or hundreds of millions to private sector non-profits without building in serious oversight and auditing procedures, no matter how much money they through at this problem it won’t work. I have yet to see any legislator or appointee acknowledge this issue much less discuss solution. So along with all the other thoughtful comments here someone needs to look the actually companies that will supposedly do this work.
Another contribution is this ProPublica article (and follow up articles) about the software landlords and leasing agents use to pump up rents and the recommendations. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent We’ve noted this before but the idea that housing costs are simply the product of simplistic supply and demand models is so riddled with garbage assumptions as to be almost comical. For instance, we know that some landlords will sit on empty units in order to manipulate availability to their advantage.
Finally, I’m afraid I can’t put a lot of faith in Democrats at this point since they and their Party so brazenly betrayed their constituents in St. Paul recently by dismantling the rent control regime. This was clear indication that a majority of Democrats on that City Council, and the Mayor, think that “rescuing” landlords, investors, and developers who need no rescuing is a priority over creating stable and affordable housing for tens of thousands of actual constituents. If they can’t it right in St. Paul, I doubt they’ll get it right statewide. If Democrats were serious about this they would be looking at Statewide rent control legislation.
Ken, when rent control landed in their laps neither the mayor nor the city council made any good faith efforts to make THAT policy work. At the very first opportunity they gutted it and tuned it into a rescue plan for developers, investors, and landlords. Obviously they didn’t support the plan they scrapped. We’ll see what happens the next time they’re up for election.
Your claim about thousands of units disappearing or whatever is simply an outrageously false claim. One set of figures appeared to show a decrease in permit applications, a different set data showed no such decrease, and neither the mayor or anyone on the council tried to explain the discrepancy. In fact, for any developer or landlord that doesn’t want to build and collect rent, there are plenty of others who will be would happy to do so. And the flood of people trying to move into a city with predictable and controlled rent increases would create plenty of demand for developers not mention other business people who would meet the demands of a growing population with more disposable income.
On the contrary, the version of rent control that passed was the best version they could have gotten, and the mayor and council tore it up. They took a rent control policy that worked for renters, and turned into a rent control policy that works for landlords, investors, and developers… which means they took a rent control policy that would have worked and killed it. You will note what is now happening to rent in St. Paul… do you see rent being controlled?
You can throw as much magical supply side garbage economics at this as you want but the fact is that this was just another example of the old Democratic Party machine springing into action on behalf of it’s wealthy elite and financial benefactors. We see this with stadiums, and health care, etc. etc. The Machine assumes that as long as they meet minimum requirements elsewhere it earns them the right or privilege to dump on their constituents in these scenarios. These people will stand for election again some day, and the vast majority of St. Paul voters who sent a loud, clear, and unambiguous message that this council and mayor completely ignored… may remember why their rents continued to increase and their housing remained in crises.
Ken, the reason guys like you who don’t believe in rent control, support this version of “rent control”, is it’s not rent control. And yes, magical thinking pretty much makes the discussion a waste of time.
The “revised” rent control simply shreds rent control. We know that the revised model won’t work, that’s why voters approved the original model. The original model “worked” for everyone but it put some guardrails and brackets on how much wealth developers, investors, and landlords could extract from their renters. When anti-rent control free market supply and demand folks talk about the “failed” rent control experiments of the past… this revised ordinance is what they’re talking about. They took a program designed to give some relief to renters and converted into a rescue operation for the wealthy.
From the street homeless / tent / underpass people it is interesting to note the approach by Mayor Adams in NYC: Pick them up and put them in the hospital as they have drug and mental illness issues problems that threaten their lives. Consistent with WHD’s earlier comment that as a park board employee, every individual he encountered in a homeless encampment had drug and/or mental illness issues.
Solves the problem of street homeless: gets them off the street and forces a confrontation with their issues/problems. I am at a loss on the nature of the hospital system / treatment system that accommodates this.
OK, let’s get something clear because this ALWAYS come’s up now when we discuss homelessness… Yes, a lot of homeless people in the camps have drug and mental health issues, but thousands of homeless people are sleeping in shelters every night, and thousands are being turned away. Many of these people have no drug or mental health issues, and many of them actually have jobs that simply don’t pay the rent and have lost their housing for a variety of reasons. And I hate to tell you this, but sleeping under bridges and inside tents and cardboard boxes after losing your housing inflicts sufficient trauma on most people to provoke drug abuse and mental illness. So when your passing all your judgement on these people for being addicts or crazies you can’t assume they started out that way when they because homeless. Unaffordable housing is the THE cause of this homeless crises, as of late there seems to be an attempt to shift the blame elsewhere around here. And anyways, since when did sleeping in tents become our best and only response to mental illness and addiction?
“thousands of homeless people are sleeping in shelters every night, and thousands are being turned away.”
Not that I would not just take your word for it, but here is the closest I could find to actual fact:
2018 Wilder Foundation assessment for all of MN:
10,233 Experiencing homelessness during the year.
7,539 Being accommodated within the system.
2,694 Not being accommodated within the system.
2,694 Not being accommodated within the system. Leaving the key unanswered question as to how many have been turned away and how many declined to accept the rules of the shelter? If someone experiencing homelessness accepts the rules of the shelter and is being turned away, I agree that is a problem in need of a solution and there seems to be much activity on getting funding and finding a solution. I’m all for it and see it as a deserved use of tax dollars. If someone declines to accept the rules of the shelter they are not being turned away and instead making a personal decision that for at least NYC, Mayor Adams says will not be accepted.
HUNDREDS of people in MN are making this elective decision. Otherwise known as an order of magnitude exaggeration.
Well Edward, there’s a lot of data on this and you can keep digging if you wish, but since the figures you provide represent thousands… i.e. ten-plus thousand, seven-plus thousand, and two-plus thousand; you’re obviously confirming my claim… thank you.
I am confirming your comment was correct + / – a factor of ten, the thousands you describe represent a user: maybe 300 night, maybe 1.
Be happy that we agree on nobody should be turned away if they agree to follow the rules
Let’s see how NYC does.
Two thousand is “thousands”. He didn’t say “tens of thousands”. The data is helpful. 2700 people is 0.05% of the state’s population. It’s a significant problem but there are other housing problems facing many more citizens of Minnesota.
Thank you Dan. A Wilder Foundation study a few years ago actually found that as many as 19,000 Minnesotans a year are homeless for some period of time. They’re median income (yes, they have a median income) was around $500 a month.
Another fact worth noting: The vast majority of those who suffer from mental illness and chemical dependency are NOT homeless. Again, it’s economics not mental illness or addiction that drives the housing crises.
You provide data that backs up Paul’s statement and then expect everyone to believe your unsubstantiated claim that the people who are not accommodated are simply being obstinate. By a factor of 10. That’s a huge, and wholly unsupp0rted claim. I’d like to point out that the very study you refer to clearly states that of the 19,600 Minnesotans that experience homelessness at any given time, about 1/3 of them had experienced the inability to get shelter at least once in the previous 3 months. That is, over 6000 homeless Minnesotans could not get shelter at least once in the previous 3 months. It stands to reason that the number of unaccommodated individuals is unlikely to be mostly due to “not following/accepting the rules.” And certainly nowhere near 90%, which would be necessary to get to your “order of magnitude” claim.
Ken, “Maybe voters passed it because of Mayor Carter’s representation that he would modify it… The claim that the mayor and council betrayed the voters is nonsense” No, your attempt at telepathy here is nonsense, you don’t know what voters were “thinking”, we just know what they voted for.
“When you say the revised policy won’t work, you are saying that most rent control doesn’t work.” Well, if all rent control regimes are equal why do oppose the original ordinance? Obviously when I criticize a ordinance that doesn’t work, I’m not talking about a difference ordinance that would have worked, even if they’re both called: “rent control”. Like any other law or ordinance, details are significant and differences can lead to success or failure.
Finally, the idea that rent control is some kind of class warfare or an attack on the wealthy is simply facile. This the original ordinance guaranteed profitability for landlords and developers, it just put some guardrails on the amount of wealth the could extract at the expense of renters. Stable, affordable, predictable housing wouldn’t be “bad” for St. Paul. Economies organized entirely around the well being of the wealthy elite tend to blow up in many different ways more predictably than those that distribute prosperity more equitably. You trickle down supply side economics created this crises and has sustained it for decades. The destruction of this rent control ordinance guarantees that trend will continue.