Amid opposition, bill to allow duplexes across Minnesota is likely doomed this session

A bill aiming to make it legal to build duplexes on any residential lot in Minnesota has been left out in the cold this legislative session.

The bill, carried by Rep. Larry Kraft, DFL-St. Louis Park, would create statewide zoning rules requiring cities to allow duplexes, small apartment buildings with up to six units, and smaller single-family homes. In suburban cities especially, local zoning rules make it essentially illegal to build anything other than a large, single-family home.

Many city leaders balked at the bill and asked lawmakers not to support it, tanking its chances this session. It would have been a disruption to the status quo, said Rep. Mike Howard, DFL-Richfield, who chairs the Housing Finance and Policy Committee, adding that legislators “heard from cities the sky was going to fall.”

City leaders, for their part, said they worried about ceding power to the state and about how more duplexes would affect their communities, and wondered if the bill would really make housing more affordable.

South St. Paul Mayor Jimmy Francis said he was concerned the bill would make it more profitable for a landowner or corporation to knock down an existing single-family home and build a fourplex and even an accessory dwelling unit in its place. They could then rent it out for five times as much, he said.

“We’ve been fervently working on this issue for decades and to have that local control taken away is not in the best interest of any of our residents in our city or any other city,” Francis said. “I’m screaming for local control right now because we’re right there with boots on the ground.”

Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs said mayors and city leaders came together quickly to oppose the bill, making sure their legislators knew about their concerns — such as infrastructure that wouldn’t be able to handle even a small apartment building because city sewer and water pipes couldn’t accommodate increased capacity. He also said the bill undermined the work that cities do to create comprehensive plans.

Briggs said those opposing the bill included some superintendents, real estate agents and local chambers of commerce. He said he worried that pieces of the bill could be resurrected next year or included in this year’s omnibus bill.

Though the bill appears to be dead this session, Kraft said he wants to keep trying.

“I think we’ve started a really important conversation, and raised the profile of the issue in cities around the state,” he said.

For the League of Minnesota Cities, a path forward would be more of an opt-in system, and not a statewide requirement. “That would be far more likely to result in meaningful changes to housing density, affordability and availability, and could be better tailored to individual community needs and sensitive to regional market differences,” said League lobbyist Daniel Lightfoot in an email.

Kraft said that after hearing cities’ concerns, the starting point would be much different. But ultimately, he said, it will be important to have a statewide standard so that smaller and more affordable homes can be built in any city, rather than in just a few islands of less-expensive places.

“We have to address this housing deficit we have,” Kraft said. “We are not doing right by the next generation.”

Howard said the Housing Committee will shift its focus to another bill that would create a statewide requirement to allow apartment buildings in commercial zones. Briggs said he thought that bill, carried by Rep. Liish Kozlowski, DFL-Duluth, could bring “significant harm” to a city like Prior Lake by taking a bite out of the potential commercial tax base. Howard said he wanted to see the bill altered to require mixed-use developments, maintaining a commercial space on the ground floor of a new apartment building.

Howard said he wants to see more statewide zoning rules to help ease the housing affordability crisis. “I think that it’s time for the state to have a more vested interest, when you look at the scope of the housing crisis and how zoning has been used to exclude,” he said.