Richfield City Council: Churches can build tiny homes to help unhoused people

Richfield churches will be allowed to build tiny homes on their grounds, after the city council approved an ordinance that allows churches to bypass the public hearing process to build the homes.

Churches in Forest Lake, Roseville and St. Paul have built tiny homes on their properties to house people who had been homeless. A 2023 state law requires cities to allow churches and other faith communities to use their land to house people in "villages" of small buildings. Because cities can't block churches from building the dwellings, Richfield city staff members dubbed a public hearing process "pointless."

There are 16 churches in Richfield with properties large enough to build the micro-unit villages, according to city meeting documents, but so far none of those churches have expressed interest to the city.

Tiny houses are not the only way churches are working to ease the shortage of housing for low-income Minnesotans. Elsewhere in the metro, including in St. Louis Park, churches have sold their properties at below-market rates to nonprofit developers to build apartments with rents set well below market rate.