Minneapolis has a housing crisis. It disproportionately hurts renters, public housing residents and Black, brown, Indigenous and immigrant families.
City must stand up to interests, enact robust rent control
We must pass policy that reflects the needs of Minneapolis's majority-renter population.
By Elliott Payne, Robin Wonsley Worlobah, Jeremiah Ellison, Jason Chavez-Cruz and Aisha Chughtai
January 6, 2022 at 11:35PM
On Nov. 2, nearly 76,000 Minneapolis residents voted to authorize the City Council to enact municipal rent control. Renters, working-class homeowners, and small "mom and pop" landlords understand that fighting skyrocketing rent increases is a key tool to address the housing crisis in our city.
Also on Nov. 2, St. Paul passed the most progressive rent control policy in the country by ballot initiative through a citizen-led petition.
Twin Cities residents get the best results when policies are enacted at a regional level, just as we saw with the $15-an-hour minimum wage ordinances. Residents have been clear: Minneapolis must enact the strongest possible rent control policy.
Various policies will be proposed in the coming months, but we must pass one that reflects the needs of our majority-renter population. We are committed to working with our new City Council colleagues to pass a policy that:
- Is universal: Rent control must include new developments. Every single renter deserves the stability that comes with predictable housing costs. The persistent myth that rent control stops new development is not supported by evidence. In fact, studies have found rent control fosters new housing investments.
- Caps annual increases at no more than 3%: Two-thirds of Minneapolis apartment buildings (four units or more) are owned by large corporations. Rent control evens the playing field for small landlords, who rarely raise the rent more than 3% annually, unlike the price-gouging tactics of corporate landlords. And it means that every month, renters have more money in their pockets to support local businesses and make sustainable long-term choices for their communities.
- Rejects vacancy decontrol: Vacancy decontrol is a corporate loophole that applies rent control to the tenant, not the unit, meaning that when a tenant leaves a unit, the landlord is free to raise the unit's rent. A strong rent control policy must not include exemptions that impede our goal of stable housing.
We represent different parts of Minneapolis, but housing instability hurts all our constituents. As the Star Tribune recently reported, the lines are already being drawn at City Hall. Some are interested in protecting the status quo, which directly protects corporate developers; we are interested in protecting the people.
As council members, we will continue to organize alongside our constituents and advocacy organizations like Minneapolis United for Rent Control (MURC), a coalition of community, faith and labor groups who have been leading the fight for rent control. MURC has had thousands of conversations with renters across our city, and they're continuing to fight for a strong rent control policy.
It is our job to fight for working-class people, who for the past decade have had to navigate a predatory housing market that continues to exacerbate the housing crisis. We need a multifaceted approach to housing stability — increasing access to homeownership through the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Agreement (TOPA); fighting attempts at privatizing public housing, and protecting against evictions and forced displacement.
In order to be effective, these policies must go hand-in-hand with strong rent control.
Our city's racial inequalities are well documented, especially after the civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd's murder. In February 2021, the Minneapolis City Council received the study they commissioned from the University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) to inform a pragmatic rent control policy for our local economy. The study found that in the last decade, BIPOC renters have experienced the most severe rent increases.
As a city that has declared racism a public health emergency, it's our responsibility to treat inequitable rent hikes as a racial justice issue.
As City Council members, it is our job to amplify community-led social movements, stand up to corporate interests in City Hall, and support every effort to enact robust rent control. We look forward to fighting alongside our constituents and fellow city leaders to build a better system — one where Minneapolis truly recognizes housing as a human right.
Elliott Payne (First Ward), Robin Wonsley Worlobah (Second Ward), Jeremiah Ellison (Fifth Ward), Jason Chavez-Cruz (Ninth Ward) and Aisha Chughtai (10th Ward) are members of the Minneapolis City Council.
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Elliott Payne, Robin Wonsley Worlobah, Jeremiah Ellison, Jason Chavez-Cruz and Aisha Chughtai
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