As a topic among policymakers, housing is hotter than it once was

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When he was a newly former St. Paul mayor six years ago, Chris Coleman’s lament was that the candidates still running for governor (he had bowed out of that race) were barely mentioning housing.

When Coleman and I talked recently at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, where he is president and CEO, we marveled at how much things have changed.

“When I got here, if housing was mentioned in the news, we were amazed,” Coleman said. “Then it started taking up a whole couple of sentences. Then the first half of the story. Then it made it to the front page.”

Bet you’ve noticed it, too. Whether the problem-solving venue is in Washington, the State Capitol or your local city hall, policymakers are talking about a shortage of housing this year.

“It was a long time coming, but it finally came — the recognition that if you don’t have a foundation of stable, safe, affordable housing, it’s really hard to do anything else,” Coleman said.

Ample social science research backs him up. Increasingly, so does a sizable, surprisingly bipartisan coalition of advocates and elected officials. They see not only that housing distress is at the root of other social ills, but also that housing distress in one form or another has become widespread enough to have political repercussions.

Why do so many Americans tell pollsters the economy is bad, when most economic indicators are good? My hunch is that high housing costs are the biggest reason. Too many millennials are unable to afford starter homes, which also means too many boomers (their parents) are unhappy about their kids’ situations. And too many renters — more than half in this state, according to a new study — pay an unaffordable half or more of their incomes in rent.

Yet a rift has emerged over one possible remedy to the housing shortage — zoning — within one notable segment of the advocacy coalition — Minnesota’s mayors.

I’m talking about Coleman’s people — the same folks who counted on him as a spokesman for cities while he was mayor of St. Paul for 12 years. Many of them now disagree with him over who should decide how much housing density to permit in Minnesota cities.

At issue is proposed legislation that would end single-family zoning in cities with populations greater than 10,000, opening the door to more accessory dwelling units, duplexes and the like. It would also remove or limit cities’ authority to regulate such things as number of parking spaces and street-facing aesthetics.

In other words, it’s a bill that would make more housing density possible at the expense of local control. And local control is something mayors instinctively rise up to shield from legislative incursion. That sentiment was evident in a March 12 commentary, signed by seven mayors, all of them from politically sensitive suburban swing districts.

Coleman knows their thinking well. He even has some sympathy for it.

“A state mandate to cities, it’s always going to be a challenge,” he said. “It shouldn’t be necessary to do this at the state level. But this problem has become so big, so overwhelming — and we have communities still refusing to recognize it. We are so many units short of what we need.”

How many? According to the Minnesota Housing Partnership’s annual survey, more than 114,000 households in this state earning less than $30,000 annually can’t find an affordable place to rent.

Many more Minnesotans struggle to buy a home. The same survey found that an $98,580 annual income is needed to afford a median-price home in Minnesota. The state’s median household income is $77,720.

The Legislature has been nibbling at this problem for a half-century. But only last session did legislators put some real money — albeit mostly one-time money — into housing, taking the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency’s biennial budget from $115 million to $1.06 billion. It also imposed a 0.25% sales tax in the metro area dedicated to housing needs.

Housing advocates are ready now to talk about how to follow those one-time funds with a permanent revenue stream. Legislators aren’t eager for that conversation this year. But the zoning bill, which does not tap the state’s treasury, has been chugging through committees, even as lobbyists for municipal governments try to slow it down.

Coleman used to join forces with those lobbyists. Now he’s urging them to recognize Minnesota’s housing shortage as a genuine crisis and participate in finding new solutions.

“There’s a certain fear of density,” Coleman said. “But they know it’s not realistic to have everyone live in a 4,000-square-foot house. If they’re worried about crime, they need to deal with housing instability. It’s a major contributor to crime.”

He then told a story about a family in Hugo — one of those suburban places with too few affordable houses — who were beneficiaries of Habitat for Humanity’s assistance in finally getting a house they could afford. The family’s son approached Coleman and disclosed that he has “really bad asthma.” Every other place the boy had lived had worn carpets whose dirt and fibers triggered his asthma attacks. His new home was carpet-free.

“He said with a big smile, ‘I can breathe in this house,’ ” Coleman said. “The benefits of getting more people into decent housing are beyond what we even know.”

Lori Sturdevant is a retired Star Tribune editorial writer. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.