Amid pressure, St. Paul council considers weakening rent control

St. Paul could weaken its rent control law in the coming weeks, following pressure from developers, landlords and Mayor Melvin Carter, and worries about the future of the city as construction feels stalled.

But council members aim to link the changes to a new slate of tenant protections, which developers and landlords have opposed.

“It’s critical that as we amend rent stabilization, those protections are brought back,” Council President Rebecca Noecker said in an interview Wednesday.

The proposal, which Noecker said could come before the council in the next few weeks, would exempt all new buildings from rent control forever. The 2021 rent stabilization law applies to buildings 20 years or older, and rolls onto new buildings 20 years after they are issued certificates of occupancy.

The proposal to change rent stabilization, first reported Wednesday by Axios, comes as developers complain that they cannot profitably build apartments, including at the Highland Bridge development in the former Ford plant site.

Across the metro, developers have been building fewer apartments since 2021 and 2022. In January 2025, the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Minneapolis and St. Paul each saw developers start two multifamily units — compared to 85 in St. Paul and over 130 in Minneapolis in January 2022.

Voters approved the rent stabilization ordinance in November 2021, and the law took effect in May 2022.

The rules limit annual rent increases to 3% for any building 20 years old or older, counting back from the date the of the building’s certificate of occupancy. The law limits rent increases even if a tenant moves out.

That would mean buildings that opened in 2005 would become subject to rent stabilization this year, along with all older buildings.

Lynn Ferkinhoff, the head of St. Paul’s Rent Stabilization Office, said the city does not have current figures showing how many apartments are covered, though Noecker estimated 85%.

All buildings less than 20 years old are excepted from the rent stabilization ordinance, as are those that are part of other affordable housing programs, Ferkinhoff said, which have separate rent stabilization requirements.

This new proposed change would impact newer buildings — anything built since 2005 — and buildings that have not been built yet.

Instead of applying rent stabilization to a building after it has been open for 20 years, the proposal would exempt all new buildings forever.

That new-construction exemption is estimated to cover about 3,000 apartments, or about 5% of the units in St. Paul, according to certificate-of-occupancy data provided by the mayor’s office.

Current rent control rules would not limit rent increases for the first 20 years after buildings open — 2045 for a building that could be completed this year. After that, rent could only increase by up to 3% a year.

Developers have complained loudly about rent control and said it is preventing them from building in St. Paul. In one recent example, Ryan Companies, the developers of the Highland Bridge area, said rent control means they cannot profitably build apartments at the corner of Ford Parkway and Cretin Avenue.

Mayor Melvin Carter did not openly take a stance on rent control during the 2021 campaign, but has since spoken in favor of exempting all new buildings.

“I think that we landed on a pretty balanced approach,” Carter said in an interview Wednesday. “This gives us an opportunity to give us a significant number of rent stabilized units in the city, while opening the door to building new housing.”

Noecker said the council has listened to developers, and has been discouraged by the slow pace of construction in the city since rent control took effect in 2022. She said developers large and small have found difficulty getting loans to cover projects that will eventually be subject to rent control.

“The rent stabilization ordinance is having a depressing effect on housing production, and that’s not something anybody wanted,” she said.

Noecker said city council members want to do something else to help renters if they will extend this break to developers, and the council is preparing to re-introduce a tenant protection ordinance.

“That support for (changes to) rent stabilization depends on tenant protections,” Noecker said. “Bringing back tenant protections is long overdue.”

Landlords sued to block tenant-protection ordinances in 2021, the last time St. Paul tried to pass these rules, and the city backed down after a judge issued a preliminary injunction favoring landlords.

Noecker said the council is trying to learn from that lawsuit, and said the new protections will likely have weaker language around what constitutes “just cause” for evictions, giving landlords more leeway in ending leases and evicting renters.

The 2021 rules also included limits on security deposits, required advance notice before a building was sold, and limited landlords' ability to turn down an applicant because of bad credit or a bankruptcy more than three years old.

A community meeting to discuss both policies is set for March 27 at 6 p.m. at Neighborhood House, 179 Robie St. East in St. Paul, and the City Council will hold public hearings in April.