Minneapolis needs rent stabilization

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Minneapolis is at a crossroads. Our city and state face a housing crisis caused by skyrocketing rents. Many residents have been forced out of our city, while others have seen their rent jump even as vital building repairs are neglected and they are forced to live in increasingly unsafe environments. We love our city, but too many people have been stretched to the breaking point.

That is why voters clearly supported rent stabilization when it was on the ballot in 2021. That is why both of us — a housing advocate, and staff from the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers, representing 30 years of community development experience — were proud to serve on the working group the Minneapolis City Council convened to recommend a rent stabilization policy that would insulate us and our neighbors from the worst failures of the housing market.

Rent stabilization is popular because most of us want the same thing — for every person in our city to have a safe, stable place to call home. We want every student to be stable in their education, not rocked by eviction and midsemester school transfers. We want every senior to be stable in their community, not forced into isolation in an unfamiliar place. We want every working family to be stable enough to make a home for themselves, not shuffled from one glorified storage unit to another.

For-profit developers and landlords will continue to wail and gnash their teeth in the coming months, claiming they'll have to leave the city if they can't force massive rent hikes on tenants. Yes, creating that stability will eat into profit margins, but the alternative is leaving the most vulnerable alone at the edge of an eroding cliff. (They have a playbook for this, so don't be surprised when it comes.)

Backroom politicking is just one example of the anti-rent-stabilization blitz we've seen from big developers, large corporate landlords and their allies. Before that, these same rich and powerful special interests used their political connections to secure nearly half the seats on the working group. And before that, we saw them spend a record amount (nearly $4 million) to stop rent stabilization from even being considered.

Despite these hurdles, after hundreds of work hours filled with thoughtful deliberation, nearly 60% of our working group voted for a clear recommendation: Rents shouldn't rise by more than 3% per year (unless the owner made specific upgrades). There shouldn't be any carve-outs or exemptions because every loophole — no matter how well-intentioned — will be drilled wider and wider by an army of corporate lawyers. It's a clear, straightforward, common-sense policy that would help tens of thousands of families in our city.

We want the City Council to follow through on their promise to listen to our recommendation. This means they need to put the (one) recommendation from the working group on the ballot in 2023 so we can finally have a rent stabilization policy that levels the playing field and helps working families in our city.

Voters gave them their marching orders, and the council's and mayor's very own working group laid out a path to make it a reality. It's time for our elected officials to show they believe keeping families in our homes is more important than putting even more wealth in the pockets of corporate developers and landlords. It's time to dig in and do the work to craft a strong rent stabilization policy that protects renters in our city and makes Minneapolis a more welcoming, fair and inclusive city.

Democracy only works if the government respects the will of the people, and voters and residents of Minneapolis have been crystal-clear now across multiple steps in this process: We want a strong policy to address the housing crisis.

Kadra Abdi is a director of policy and field building at the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers. Jennifer Arnold is the co-director of Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia, or United Renters for Justice.